[2197] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Charging for low-end services
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (matsb@sics.se)
Thu Jan 30 04:00:22 1992
To: brian@lloyd.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 29 Jan 92 09:26:30 -0800.
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 92 09:58:44 +0100
From: matsb@sics.se
Brian said:
But I must applaud CERFNet for offering usage-based charging. This
makes great sense when the resource (the dial-in port) is being
shared. The port costs N dollars per month whether it is used or not.
If you have M users using the port equally they each should pay N/M.
If the usage is unequal the pay should be proportional to the usage.
What about if the site gets a full load of trash mail shipped to them?
Should they pay usage for this too?
What about if they get a request to their "directory service" to give
a lot of info? The request may be a couple of packets, but the result
will be a set of files?
Of course the customers/users should be able to decide on what model
for payment they should use, and the providers should get a reasonable
return on investment, but beware of the "Pubic X.25 trauma" - open
ended costs, and even worse: if your network is congested, or if the
service end-to-end is bad, you will see retries and retransmissions, THAT
YOU PAY FOR!
--mats
