> The average broadband subscriber — those who only use up about 8 GB or 10 GB of data a month — shouldn’t necessarily pay the same as those whose usage goes above 300 GB in the same period of time.
I really don't like this argument, on its face it appears to be "fair", but if there's no reason for there to be a difference in cost in the first place it strikes me as a false dilema created for the purpose of raising rates, not fairness.
Everything i've been hearing for 6+ years suggests transfer pricing is going down, not up, and if anything the difference is already being pocketed by the service providers.
I've also heard repeatedly from journalists who have covered this subject before that the goal of cable companies is to keep revenue per subscriber above a specific level, likely amounting to administrative and equipment costs + some average level of upstream data transfer (which again, i've heard is the minor part of the whole breakdown), and of course profit.
In that light, letting individual users drop down below profitability by only using 10GB per month on a usage based plan makes no sense, unless the actual goal is simply to start charging more for what people are already using by calling it excessive, and ride the increases in transfer use as a profit mechanism.
Marginalization and subsequent restriction/legislation/oppression is extremely effective in our society, and something that we should always take a stand against.
Based upon my limited information regarding this latest change, I don't have a problem with it. However, their rhetoric for quite some time has revolved around statements along the lines of "why should you have to pay for these abusive users downloading X gigabytes every month?" Of course, in two years you will also be in this "abusive" category. I believe they will happily use marginalization in order to raise rates without objection.
I really don't like this argument, on its face it appears to be "fair", but if there's no reason for there to be a difference in cost in the first place it strikes me as a false dilema created for the purpose of raising rates, not fairness.
Everything i've been hearing for 6+ years suggests transfer pricing is going down, not up, and if anything the difference is already being pocketed by the service providers.
I've also heard repeatedly from journalists who have covered this subject before that the goal of cable companies is to keep revenue per subscriber above a specific level, likely amounting to administrative and equipment costs + some average level of upstream data transfer (which again, i've heard is the minor part of the whole breakdown), and of course profit.
In that light, letting individual users drop down below profitability by only using 10GB per month on a usage based plan makes no sense, unless the actual goal is simply to start charging more for what people are already using by calling it excessive, and ride the increases in transfer use as a profit mechanism.