Re: Net Neutrality and Your Internet Bill

> I'd rather not have to think that each phone call or e-mail is costing
> me a particular amount of money.  I'd rather just pay a flat rate for
> a certain range of service and then enjoy the freedom within those limits.

When you pay 20¢/GB or less, you don't sweat the small stuff.
Rackspace cloud servers charge a flat 22¢/GB.  Amazon S3/EC2 charges less as you
use more: 15¢/GB for the first 10TB, 8¢/GB after 150 TB.
Slicehost (now owned by Rackspace) charges $20/month for 150GB ($100/month for
900GB, etc) and charges 30¢/GB after you've gone over your limit.  These are all
outbound traffic prices, downloading is generally about 2/3 to 1/3 the outbound
price.  You pick the plan and provider that works best for your needs and
budget.

**and if I chose an unlimited plan I should be able to enjoy that.  In fact, I
do...


The fact of the matter is that bandwidth is not free for any co-lo or ISP,
wireless or wired.  My estimation is that most customers would pay far *less* if
they paid per GB.

**paying for less is a trap, and the companies know it.  Most people have no
clue how data transmissoin works, so they see 5gb and think wow!  Until they get
a bill with penalty charges for excessive usage, which they now pay at a higher
rate.


> (I've only had this phone for a few months, and I had to be very
> careful in September because of my special trip to Alberta for my
> sister's wedding, and I had to be very careful in October because I
> spent so much time out-of-the-house at the film festival ... but in
> November I wasn't "careful" at all, because I wasn't out of the house
> for any unusual stretches of time, and it turned out I never came
> anywhere *close* to using up my bandwidth limit, but I did monitor my
> usage just to be sure.)

Some of my internet hosts that offer a limit with overage fees will send me
emails if I've gone halfway through the month and used more than half of my
bandwidth, or whenever I hit 80%, 90%, 100% of my bandwidth, etc.  This is much
nicer than the cell companies, but at least I can find out from the cell
companies via an app on my phone, which is more than I can say for Comcast.  I
use so few cell phone minutes that all of the pre-paid minutes would be cheaper
for me than the cheapest voice plan.  I would much rather buy 1000 minutes once
every several months and pay for my data per MB every month.
Unfortunately, pre-paid data plans are either non-existent or very clunky.

**I have a prepaid data plan:.  29 a month and unlimited usage.  :)

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