[9250] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: an Internet buying coop?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Karl Denninger)
Sun Dec 26 15:28:51 1993
From: karl@mcs.com (Karl Denninger)
To: tenney@netcom.com (Glenn S. Tenney)
Date: Sun, 26 Dec 1993 14:28:11 -0600 (CST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <199312262016.MAA00293@mail.netcom.com> from "Glenn S. Tenney" at Dec 26, 93 12:16:32 pm
> At 1:07 PM 12/26/93 -0600, Karl Denninger wrote:
> >> Karl, I think your choice of words indicates the answer. In the voice
> >> world, where the telephone is an accepted necessity that few homes,
> >> much less businesses, would dream of doing without, metered service is
> >> "tolerated" by businesses. They tolerate it only because they have no
> >> choice. It is resisted heatedly by the public. I think the evidence
> >> shows pretty clearly that people do not like metered service.
> >
> >Yep, it does. Yet they don't dislike it <that> much -- at least not to
> >the point where they will all convert to a flat-rate charge.
>
> Karl, as Dick pointed out above (which it seems you didn't "hear") the
> public DOES resist any attempt to shift residential service from unmetered
> to metered -- ie. they dislike metered service a great deal.
For phone service I disagree. But the reasons for this are non-obvious, and
indeed, the two used to existed side-by-side (and some were used by both).
What the public resists heavily is an attempt to prevent the <choice>.
"Choice" is a word that seems to be something that the phone company doesn't
deal with very well (as in choice of providers, choice of fee plans, etc.)
Then again, neither does the cable company really...... (and we think
they're going to provide us "choice"?) Monopolists have that
characteristic.
> >MCSNet, as an example, offers both <unmetered> and <metered> services. We
> >have plenty of people who like both. ...
>
> Perhaps your experience is based on a metered vs. unmetered rate structure
> that makes the choice much less obvious; or perhaps those of your users who
> go for the metered service are business users who, as Dick noted above, are
> accustomed to metered service; or perhaps some people don't know that they
> have a choice?
>
> ---
> Glenn Tenney
> tenney@netcom.com Amateur radio: AA6ER
> (415) 574-3420 Fax: (415) 574-0546
That's funny, they're on the same sign-up form about 1/2" apart from one
another on the check-off boxes :-)
LOTS of people go for the metered service. Why? Its cheaper for their
intended volume of use. That ought to be (and is) obvious.
--
Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.COM) | MCSNet - First Interactive Internet and
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