The Great Exchange

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1

"John A. Tamplin" writes:

> 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.

They *could* measure on cable. They don't. Ever wonder why?

> Local phone service in many places?

And the phone company most definitely wants you to switch to metered
local service.

They've *reintroduced* flat rate service in NYC.

> Matchbooks?

If i go to Walmart to get matches, they are most definitely metered.

Yeah, but no one bothers to buy them that way.

I'll point out, btw, that matches were once extremely expensive.

Just because some places give them away for promotion doesn't mean
they are free any more than caps and T-shirts are free.

Caps and T-Shirts are effectively free if you take them with advertising.

> Sewer service?

Don't know where you are from, but I pay for sewage based on consumption.

I don't.

I think you are missing the point, though.

There is no good long term reason for metered internet usage at the
end user level, and there is also considerable market pressure against
it.

Perry

2

In article <199805291432.KAA29721@jekyll.piermont.com>,

There is no good long term reason for metered internet usage at the
end user level, and there is also considerable market pressure against
it.

OK, NANOG means North American ... etc, but do you have _any_ idea
what connectivity _to_ the US costs?

"The" internet backbone has traditionally been the USA. So foreigners
payed for a line to connect to the US and the US got connectivity to
Europe, Japan etc basically for free. But that is changing.

So for high speed access to destinations outside a country one would
need to meter that. With 28k8 access, there's no real need, but once
an end user gets the possibility to use his 2Mbit/sec ADSL line to
download at full speed from, say, Europe, you're looking at a different
picture.

Mike.