[2665] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Settlements
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brad Templeton)
Sun Apr 5 19:08:02 1992
To: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <702490395.0.LAWS@AI.SRI.COM>
Cc:
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 92 16:06:26 PDT
From: Brad Templeton <brad@looking.clarinet.com>
Such stochastic systems were a big moneysaver in the old days, but we're
talking about a world where the accounting systems, once written, can
take care of counting bytes over each circuit for each user, if they want
to, with not a lot more difficulty than any other form of counting.
I believe railways simply charge by how how many miles or how much time
you spend on their system. It's not very efficient -- for example,
to make things work, in many cases a single engine can't haul a load
from one coast to another. Instead the rolling stock is connected to
local engines as it goes from one railway line to another.
Of course railways and others have not had to deal with sharing flat
rate pricing. I doubt you will find a lot of *old* models for sharing
costs in flat rate schemes.
However, I do know that some online services have taken different approaches
when they switched from hourly billing to flat rate pricing for the users.
Two solutions that have been used in this industry are:
a) Take the flat revenues, measure usage, and just apportion the
royalties from the flat revenues according to the usage.
b) Pay royalties on the flat usage as though it were usage billed.
(In this case the royalty payer takes the risk. If the flat usage
actually costs more than the royalty rate to provide, they lose
money. If a lot of people pay the flat fee and hardly use it, they
win.)
