Re: Net Neutrality and Your Internet Bill

On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 2:24 PM, Peter T. Chattaway
<petert-LOVM4QxV+tDq6eQxt3vRmLDks+cytr/[email protected]> wrote:
> 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.

I used to think that, then I switched to a pay-as-you-go provider for
my home phone (on VoIP). I pay a flat fee of $2.49/month to have
service and then 1 cent/minute for incoming calls and 1.25
cents/minute for outgoing calls -- throughout North America.  For
September through November I have paid $7.47 (service) and $6.44 for
my calls, for a combined total of $13.91.  That is for the 565 minutes
of calls made & received during that time period.  $14/3 = $4.66, so
I'm averaging under $4.66/month for my land line, and I have a tenant
who placed a lot of those calls.  At that price, I don't care that
it's not a flat rate.

Oh, instead of the $2.49/month fee I could pay $6.44 and get unlimited
incoming calls (still pay-as-you-go for outgoing), but as you can see,
that wouldn't be worth it for me.  Also, that $2.49/month fee was
$2.99/month when I started, then they lowered the prices after getting
better deals for their bandwidth.

If I could pay reasonable rates for pay-as-you-go Internet I would.
But I'd consider reasonable to be less than $0.20/GB, which would
match the current monthly plan of the best independent ISP in Southern
Ontario.

>> It's a more honest and more easily audited business transaction than
>> "unlimited" service that gets mysteriously cut off or throttled when you hit
>> the unpublished limits.
>
> Unpublished?  Wouldn't it be specified in your contract and elsewhere?

Nick's already cited American examples, but there are Canadian ones
too... If you want I'm sure I can do a google search and find a few.

Another problem with ISPs is that they block/throttle usage and don't
clearly state it anywhere.  Instead of paying for software/hardware
that can detect the types of traffic people are using, some providers
just throttle *all* encrypted traffic -- which can be a problem for
anyone who wants to use VNC to access another computer/network (like
to log into school or work to get stuff done).  Data is data and it
should all be treated the same.

Jeremy Ladan

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