[585] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
At What Price Will TCP/IP Connections Gain Wide Market Appeal?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Will@cup.portal.com)
Sun Apr 14 18:50:24 1991
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: Will@cup.portal.com
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 91 15:54:06 PDT
I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts on the pricing of TCP/IP
connections to the growing commercial Internet. Specifically, I'm
interested in getting answers to two questions: 1) at what price
will TCP/IP connections become of interest to a wider commercial
audience? 2) what is the price likely to be for such services in
one year, two years, three years, ten years?
Regarding the price of TCP/IP connections and larger commercial audiences:
I understand that PSI offers such connections for a fixed price of $175/month.
The thought occurs that at the current price level the primary markets
for TCP connections are:
a) UNIX professionals who want to have a personal account on the net
so that they can use higher-level applications such as FTP, Telnet,
and Finger from home.
b) Businesses who want a low-cost electronic mail backbone for the company.
I gather that most businesses do not see much of a business case for
letting their employees have access to FTP, Telnet, etc., and I know
that netnews is frowned on by most management, so I guess this leaves
us with electronic mail. What are the primary reasons that most
businesses use commercial TCP connections? Is it really just mail?
Are there other markets for TCP/IP services at the current price level?
It seems to me that in order to have TCP/IP services appeal to a broader
market of home users, the price of the basic TCP/IP access service has
to come down to something more along the lines of a basic utility.
Something like a $10-$30 monthly access charge would probably open up
the market to home users who are not UNIX professionals. I assume that
such users would then be willing to pay additional charges for actual
use of the service, depending on their level of use.
Regarding the second question of price of TCP/IP connections in the
future: does anyone have any good guesses on this one? Are we going
to see charges of around $200/month for the foreseeable future?
Or is this price likely to drop sharply very fast as more users
come on board and help subsidize the costs for additional users?
How long is it likely to be before we start to see TCP/IP connections
being sold for under $30/month?
Thanks,
Will Estes Internet: Will@cup.portal.com
UUCP: apple!cup.portal.com!Will
