Re: [Latest draft of Internet regulation bill]

["Christopher L. Morrow" <christopher.morrow () mci com>]

On Fri, 11 Nov 2005, Sean Donelan wrote:

> On Fri, 11 Nov 2005, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:
> > oops ;) my point wasn't that bandwidth wasn't necessary over X speed, it
> > was that the main motivator for consumer purchase was no long bandwidth
> > but price alone.
>
> In 1997, Vint Cerf was advocating the necessity of usage based pricing
> when he was still with MCI.
>
> http://www.cookreport.com/05.10.shtml
>   Although MCI has not yet made a formal announcement via a press release,
>   Cerf explained that "we are plainly discussing this with you, Gordon,
>   and your readers." The MCI move is the outcome of what Cerf describes
>   as a crunch between the Internet's flat rate pricing model and usage
>   patterns where both the amount of use and disparity between use by
>   applications has increased dramatically.
>
> Will consumers prefer to pay higher flat rate charges for everything, or
> prefer different pricing models when they access applications which
> require dramatically different service levels to include the cost as
> part of an application specific fee?

I'm not sure, but 1997 was a long time ago, when 20$/month DIALUP was
normal. Today 20$/month is normal, I can't see people wanting an extra
'tax' for things that their carrier deems to be 'better' or 'more costly'
than other things.

Actually, thinking about this, does a bit cost more when delivered from
china or 'mci' (pick any domestic isp)? I'm asking not about the total
cost, but say the cost from (to pick on sbc) SBC's front door to the
consumer's front door ? Does a bit from Google (not yahoo since they have
a 'relationship' with SBC) cost more than one from playboy.com ? (again,
from sbc front door to consumer front door)

If the cost is the same front door to front door, then why would a
customer willingly pay more for playboy over google? (or the other way
around)

This is an interesting topic :)