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FC: Why per-minute Internet fees are a bad idea, by Andrew Odlyzko
From: Declan McCullagh <declan () wired com>
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 09:53:59 -0400
********* Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 23:52:28 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Odlyzko <amo () research att com> To: declan () well com Subject: FC: Wired magazine article on 1997 dispute Declan, Here is some work that documents the disadvantages of per-minute fees. Best regards, Andrew Three papers on the history of communications and its potential lessons for the Internet are available at: <http://www.research.att.com/~amo/doc/networks.html>. Hopefully they will be of interest to you. Comments are invited. 1. Content is not king Telegraphic abstract: The current preoccupation with content is a distraction. Both currently and historically, people have been willing to pay far more for point-to-point communication than for content. This suggests that content delivery will play a secondary role on the Internet. 2. Internet pricing and the history of communications Telegraphic abstract: There are repeating patterns in the histories of communication technologies, including ordinary mail, the telegraph, the telephone, and the Internet. In particular, the typical story for each service is that quality rises, prices decrease, and usage increases to produce increased total revenues. At the same time, prices become simpler. The historical analogies of this paper suggest that the Internet will evolve in a similar way, towards simplicity. The schemes that aim to provide differentiated service levels and sophisticated pricing schemes are unlikely to be widely adopted. Both of the above two papers are essentially extended abstracts, drawn from a more detailed work: 3. The history of communications and its implications for the Internet Telegraphic abstract: There are repeating patterns in the histories of communication technologies, including ordinary mail, the telegraph, the telephone, and the Internet. The goal of this work is to draw lessons from the evolution of all these services. Little attention is paid to technology as such, since that has changed radically many times. Instead, the stress is on the steady growth in volume of communication, the evolution in the type of traffic sent, the qualitative change this growth produces in how people treat communication, and the evolution of pricing. The focus is on the user, and in particular on how quality and price differentiation have been used by service providers to influence consumer behavior, and how consumers have reacted. Andrew Odlyzko ************************************************************************ Andrew Odlyzko amo () research att com AT&T Labs - Research voice: 973-360-8410 http://www.research.att.com/~amo fax: 973-360-8178 ************************************************************************ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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- FC: Why per-minute Internet fees are a bad idea, by Andrew Odlyzko Declan McCullagh (Jun 19)