[1297] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: impact of settlements on provision of free services
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lixia Zhang)
Sun Sep 1 16:48:11 1991
Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1991 13:47:42 PDT
From: Lixia Zhang <lixia@parc.xerox.com>
Reply-To: lixia@parc.xerox.com
To: schoff@psi.com
Cc: com-priv@uu.psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 29 Aug 1991 17:52:53 PDT
> So what is tolerable for RTV?
I'm not an expert on application requirements, however lots of papers
on the subjects have been published. The first one on top of my head
is by Ferrari in Nov'90 issue of IEEE Comm. magazine.
> Spending money is not the problem, it is knowing how much you have to
> spend in the future - this is called budgeting.
I agree with you here, and I'd like to point out that you CAN have a
predictable budget even with usage-sensitive billing. Some people
have been working on these issues.
> The phone - people fight very strongly through various public utility
> commissions to keep their unmeasured flat rate local service. Why do
> they like this? Because they can budget for it.
I say again flat-fee is NOT the only way of billing that's budgetable.
On the other hand, flat-fee does open a potential door to abusing the
system (I'm not saying anyone is doing that; I'm saying it is possible).
Lixia
