Re: The Great Exchange

["Jay R. Ashworth" <jra () scfn thpl lib fl us>]

On Fri, May 29, 1998 at 09:23:34AM -0500, John A. Tamplin wrote:
> On Fri, 29 May 1998, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> > Michael Shields writes:
> > > Despite preductions, very few resources have ever actually become "too
> > > cheap to meter".
> > Television?
>
> A broadcast medium with no mechanism for measurement without additional
> hardware.  There are also pay-per-view events which are certainly metered.

Cable TV is unmetered, although pay.  You may pay premiums for tiers,
but it's worthy of note in our context here that Pay per View does in
fact require a significant inventment in smarter hardware on the part
of the cable provider.

> And the phone company most definitely wants you to switch to metered 
> local service.  That's why they offer additional calling areas for people
> that switch to area calling.  The stumbling block is that traditionally
> it was unmetered because the old switches had no mechanism to measure it.

Not quite true.  It has been the case for years that local switches
could measure this if the LEC wanted to.  It really does cost money to
keep track, _and fight the arguments over minutiae that it engenders_.

> > Sewer service?
>
> Don't know where you are from, but I pay for sewage based on consumption.
> They don't measure the sewage, but assume it is proportional to water usage.

Yeah, that's roughly how they do it here too.  But this is a John
Levine question...  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra () baylink com
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