[2445] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Billing philosophy...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Haverty)
Fri Feb 28 18:16:41 1992
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 92 15:07:54 PST
From: Jack Haverty <jhaverty@us.oracle.com>
To: bzs@world.std.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Barry Shein's message of Fri, 28 Feb 92 16:18:12 -0500 <9202282118.AA18958@world.std.com>
The subject of this list is COMmercializing and PRIVatizing internet.
Commercializing, to me at least, means making the system viable as a commercial
enterprise, competing successfully in the marketplace. To do that, the product
has to meet a need, and be offered to customers at a price commensurate with the
benefit they perceive.
The question is not whether or not to have usage-based pricing, or how to
technically implement such a thing. The question is whether or not the
internet is commercializable, i.e., could survive as a business, with its
current product offerings (which happen to be flat-rate). There's lots of other
issues too I expect - availability in various places, reliability, etc.
The flat-rate approach is "All You Can Eat" networking. There's lots of
restaurants around which offer that kind of product. They don't usually do it
every day though. And they're probably a tiny percentage of the overall supply
of restaurants. I suspect the "All You Can Eat" restaurant market isn't
commercially viable. It certainly doesn't seem to be a very large market.
The Post Office offers a limited form of flat-rate service - send a letter
anywhere in the country for the same price. I think the jury's still out on
whether or not they're commercially viable. The competition seems to be things
like courier services, package-shipping services, electronic mail, facsimile,
and lots of others (none of which to my knowledge are flat-rate...) The PO is
introducing new services, with different pricing structures too.
So, is "All You Can Eat" networking commercially viable as it is available
today? If government funding were phased out (as in the US PO situation), would
it survive? Or change to survive? Or ???
Jack
