Consumer bandwidth by the gig - it is going to happen.

[tawker]

I read this article, a user on dslreports paraphrased it.

From the Jan. 30 edition, page A2, Vancouver Sun:

"Companies consider extra charges for high-traffic Internet users"

"... Telus spokesman Shawn Hall says ... The industry has to move toward different charges for Internet customers with diverse needs."

"... Its simply not fair to charge someone who's using the Internet for a simple e-mail the same as someone who's streaming their TV or phone calls."

Will we see ISP's start charging extra for customers who use VoIP, who use Skype, who use gaming servers (even on their internal network where it costs next to nothing to deliver) and more. That's the tech question in the Sun today.

 

[tawker]

RE: Consumer bandwidth by

Ok, I just did a price breakdown.

I can get a ServerBeach server w/ 2TB of xfer, 2x 80 GB HDD's, a gig of ram and a decent proc for about US $120/mo. Of course, that bandwidth is oversold about 4 times over (Peer1 and other top tier providers want about $250 CAD /mo for that kind of connectivity.

What it comes down to, with MPA's (mutual peering agreements) what does it cost to deliver a gig of data from point a to point b. Obviously the further a packet travels the more routers it's going to go through and the higher cost but for a lot of data, it's locally within the telus network. Once they pay for the fiber and end gear / routers the cost basically consists of power and a tech to fix the thing if it breaks down. With the capacities of a strand of fiber, transfer comes down to the cents if not fractions of cents a gigabyte range.

Of course, if you're on satellite internet that's another story alltogether.....