> So to run the numbers: A customer who averages .25Mbit/sec on a tail acquired
> > from the incumbent requires --
> >
> > Port/line rental from the telco ~ $50
> > IP transit ~ $ 6 (your number)
> > Transpacific backhaul ~ $50 (I'm not making this up)
>
> These look like great places for some improvement.
Of course.
Transpacific backhaul may drop in price once the AJC/Southern Cross duopoly
is broken. Perhaps 2009, we'll have to see.
Port/line rental? Ha. We have an incumbent telco who owns 100% of the
copper local loop, who is so aggressive about protecting their monopoly
that they've actually sued the Federal Government to obtain relief from
the requirement to offer wholesale access to the local loop to their
competitors.
The competition regulator has recently imposed an order on them to
drop their price of access to the raw copper; The incumbent's response
has been to initiate a national political debate during the present
federal election campaign campaign over the merits of a nation-wide
Fiber-To-The-Node network which, just coincidentally, requires the
exclusion of competition to make the numbers in the business case add
up.
So I wouldn't be holding my breath about that one.
> > Like I said a few messages ago, as much as your marketplace derides
> > caps and quotas, I'm pretty sure that most of you would prefer to do
> > business with my constraints than with yours.
>
> That's nice from *your* point of view, as an ISP, but from the end-user's
> point of view, it discourages the development and deployment of the next
> killer app, which is the point that I've been making.
Generalizing:
We're living in an environment where European service providers use
DPI boxes to shape just about everyone to about 40 Gbytes per month,
and where US service providers have enough congestion in their
reticulation networks that the phrase "unlimited access" carries ironic
overtones, and where Australian and New Zealand service providers give
uncongested access at unconstrained ADSL2+ rates for as much capacity
as an end user is prepared to pay for, and Asian ISPs where in-country
is cheap but international is slow and expensive (but nobody cares
because they don't speak English and don't need international content
anyway), and most of the rest of the world is so expensive that hardly
anyone uses it anyway.
If there's another killer app on the way, there are enough global
constraints on its development that I reckon Australian ISPs' business
cases probably aren't the be-all and end-all of its developmental
merits.
Five years ago the typical .au quota was 3Gbytes per month. Now it's
more like 30 - 50 Gbytes per month. If there's a killer app there'll
no doubt be commercial pressure on ISPs to bump it again. But until
said app comes along? Well, it isn't an ISPs job to subsidize the
R&D overheads of application developers, is it?
The point here is that you guys in the US have a particular market
dynamic that's shaped your perspective of what "reasonable" is. It's
completely delusional of you to insist that the rest of the world
follow the same definition of "reaosnable", *ESPECIALLY* when the rest
of the world is subsidizing your domestic Internet by paying for all
the international transit.
- mark