[tpm] [u-u] Usage Based Billing - What you should know..

D'Arcy J.M. Cain darcy at druid.net
Mon Jan 31 12:57:08 PST 2011


On Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:01:41 -0500
"J. Bobby Lopez" <jbl at jbldata.com> wrote:
> 160,000 Strong Petition to Stop Internet Metering to Become Largest Online
> Action in Canadian History:
> http://openmedia.ca/news/160000-strong-petition-stop-internet-metering-become-largest-online-action-canadian-history

Where is the petition to oppose this petition?  I'm not sure about Perl
Mongers (and also not sure why the cross post) but I have trouble
believing that most members of Unix Unanimous have a problem with pay
for use.  Why should sensible users be subsidizing the heavy users?

The problem here is that the big guys have been lying all along
(unlimited usage - yah, right) and now they have to own up to the fact
that there never has been such a thing as unlimited usage.

I do question the actual billing model but that's a different issue.
They should be reducing the base price first.  Under the new rules heavy
users will pay more but light users aren't getting the corresponding
break.  That's not fair.  That's just increasing their total revenue
stream.  If anything their total costs (traffic) will go down because
of this, not up, so why should the revenue go up?  Fair would be
reducing the amount that Grandma (who sends three messages a month) is
paying to subsidize some goof who spends every waking moment surfing
for porn.

By the way, I am a heavy user (80GB/month - no porn) so my costs are
going up in any case. I just think that fair is fair.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.net>         |  Democracy is three wolves
http://www.druid.net/darcy/                |  and a sheep voting on
+1 416 425 1212     (DoD#0082)    (eNTP)   |  what's for dinner.


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