[lsc]

Metering only makes sense if the costs vary with usage. In the case of DSL, the vast majority of the cost is the cost of maintaining the copper pair to your house, and that cost largely doesn't change, regardless of usage.

Now, if the line from the CO (where the DSL terminates) to the internet was a significant bit of the cost, I'd agree with you. But my understanding is that the line from the CO to the 'net is a very small cost compared to the cost of all those copper pairs.

You also have a point when it comes to shared-loop technologies like cable. Metering is probably the most fair way to decide who gets what percentage of the limited fixed loop. (and probably the best way to get the telco to add more capacity when a loop becomes overloaded)

I'm just saying, the last-mile has many situations where running the connection, regardless of how much you use that connection, dominates the cost. And in those cases, "unlimited" (up to your port speed) billing makes a whole lot of sense.

[zmmmmm]

> Metering only makes sense if the costs vary with usage ... in the case of DSL, the vast majority of the cost is the cost of maintaining the copper pair to your house, and that cost largely doesn't change, regardless of usage.

That's a somewhat naive view of things. It only works if all the upstream equipment has infinite capacity. If you (and others like you) use 275GB instead of 10GB then it absolutely does cause more equipment to have to be installed upstream, which I don't think is an insignificant cost.

I'm like the GP - I wish every connection was metered, the problem is not metering, but the rate which invariably seems to be way above what is reasonable. Metering seems to always just be a cynical strategy to exploit naive users who don't know how much bandwidth they consume (bill shock, etc) rather than a rational economic way of sharing a limited resource.

[patrickgzill]

It is not at all naive, it is very accurate.

After the connection hits the DSLAM it goes onto fiber, which starts at 1 Gbps capacity and goes up to either 40Gbps or 100Gbps per port. Only in the smallest markets would they use a T3/DS3 connection.

Actual bandwidth costs for 200GB (which is about 1Mbps) over the course of a month are about $1 USD in almost any major US city.

Even assuming 4x the cost for Canada's smaller market size, we are talking about a ($4 into $55 upcharge) 13 times markup once the cost of the basic connection, tech support, marketing, etc. is covered by the initial $31.95.

[vacri]

Sounds like a bargain. There's a business opportunity for you!

[nikster]

I think this hits on the real, underlying issue: There is no free market competition in internet access. In the case of Canada it appears one state-owned company owns all the physical lines, and that company is starting to meter access.

So, a sensible approach by the government would be to review the actual access costs - whether it's $2 / 100GB or some other figure - then fix the price at that level. Review it every year. Fair for all. I am sure the guy using 275GB/month wouldn't mind paying $4 for it.

Unlimited access is unrealistic, as is gauging the public for 10x the fair value _when you're a monopolist_.

[jarek]

The really stinging part is that Bell isn't state owned, even though it certainly acts the part.

[jacquesm]

Indeed, but Canada has a long history of the government supporting business interests against the interests of its own population. I have a list somewhere that I prepared for an article that I intend to write about this, it's probably never going to happen because I can't get mad enough about it any more (since I've left Canada that sort of thing has gone on the back burner).

[napierzaza]

Bandwidth is sold in bulk, pennies by the gigabyte. Not dollars. It's not just covering their costs, it's obscene.

[danbmil99]

good argument for a real marketplace, instead of anti-capitalist net neutrality zealots on the one hand, and robber-baron monopolists on the other.

[vacri]

"In the case of DSL, the vast majority of the cost is the cost of maintaining the copper pair to your house, and that cost largely doesn't change, regardless of usage."

Pure nonsense. ISPs have to pay data by volume to upstream providers.

[nikster]

"ISPs have to pay data by volume to upstream providers"

Yes, they do. The question is how much. Chances are it's nowhere near $2.... charging whatever you want is fair game in a free market, but not when you're a monopolist.

[jarek]

Which absolutely does not rule out the possibility that the data cost is much smaller than the cost of maintaining the copper. Do you have the numbers?

[vacri]

I do not at the moment - I perhaps phrased it poorly - but the cost of the in-ground copper wire is but one part of the costs of an ISP - datacenters, call centres, exchanges + dslams, specialist staff, CEO's bonus pay, so on and so forth. To paint the cost of DSL as almost entirely maintenance of the in-ground copper is nonsense.

[Dylan16807]

Well, that's going into the company to provide you with that in-ground wire. It's in the base cost, not affected by how much data you use, which was the main point. Marginal data is cheap.

[vacri]

So you're claiming that the only part of managing throughput is the in-ground wires? That ISPs don't use network admins to manage load congestion? That ISPs don't have to purchase new hardware and other capacity to handle increased bandwidth consumption?

Do you think all ISPs are running off the ancient network equipment they were originally set up with back in the day?

I'm honestly surpised that on /Hacker News/ of all places, so many people thing that the only thing contributing to their bandwidth cost is in-ground copper.

[lsc]

Bandwidth costs money. Nobody says it doesn't. However, the amount of money 5Mbps of bandwidth costs is trivial compared to the cost of maintaining a separate copper pair to your house.

At /my scale/ I can buy bandwidth at around $1 per megabit/sec. 1Mbps is, uh, around 320 gigabytes of data. Even at half utilization that's less than a penny per gigabyte, and any but the smallest of local ISPs are going to dwarf my bandwidth usage. This is the sort of market where cost scales down quite a lot as you scale up, so I would bet quite a lot of money that comcast pays less than I do.

sure, if I wanted to double my usage, I'd have to buy some new network equipment, and spend some network admin time, but generally speaking the cost of your network equipment (at least at my scale) is fairly small compared to the cost of buying the transit in the first place. It certainly doesn't double the cost of bandwidth; and even if it did, bandwidth would still be cheaper than the local loop to your customer's home.

So yeah, uh, your average dsl is what five megabits/sec on a really good day? are you seriously trying to tell me that you can buy a copper loop for less than five bucks a month?

(Actually, I've been in the industry all my life and I've never been involved in buying copper loops; I guess it's possible they are that cheap; If they are, and I find out (oy, the costs of almost everything in this industry are guarded like state secrets. It's such a pain in the ass.) I'll start a DSL ISP. but I'd be very surprised if that were the case. )