How Much Bandwidth Do You Use?
Sunday June 15, 2008
According to news reports, some internet service providers have beguncharging based on bandwidth usage. There are two perspectives here. At first glance, it seems natural that people should pay based on how much they use. On the other hand, if people become conservative about their internet usage, they may avoid trying out online video services. This has a lot of people worried--companies like Hulu, YouTube and Netflix have invested millions in being able to easily deliver video online, and they don't want consumers to have to pay an extra usage charge to access their product.
What do you think?
Comments
This is absolutely true, and is already the case in Australia. I lived there two years ago (and worked for an internet service provider). I hada pretty standard $40/month DSL internet access plan. It gave me a 500mb download limit per month, which was fine for general browsing and shopping. On that plan, would NEVER download movies because just one movie would use double my download limit – and there are hefty charges for every MB you download over your limit. Downloading music was also a problem. Even a plan with 10x the standard plan access would be a problem for me now
Australia has always had pay for bandwidth and I was in envy at my US based friends with unlimited bandwidth. Sorry to hear that it’s being introduced.
However as the wholesale price of bandwidth has dropped and competition increased the retail price has come down. I now have 20G/mth on peak and 40G/mth off peak (12pm-7am) for $59.
Also some ISP’s offer that their own video streaming doesn’t count to your quota. I do watch a bit of Hulu etc but am very aware of my usage.
Also I have to be aware of how much time I spend on on-line gaming.