[9298] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
RE: Cost vs benefit of internet services
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Pat Farrell)
Tue Dec 28 10:30:04 1993
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1993 10:31:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Pat Farrell" <pfarrell@netcom.com>
Reply-To: pfarrell@netcom.com
To: bzs@world.std.com, com-priv@psi.com, digex@ss1.digex.net
In message Mon, 27 Dec 1993 20:08:56 -0500,
bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>>>Where do you see an order of magnitude price difference? I don't see
>>> that.
>
> Well, Alterdial, for example, is $20/mo+$3/hr for SLIP. There are
> other providers offering similarly priced services. Whether that ends
> up costing less depends on your own usage patterns, there are 700
> hours in a month, but there are other considerations also which you
> need to get from a provider.
Netcom offers SLIP/PPP at $2/hr over their usual price of $17.50.
I haven't tried it, because I am more than a little afraid that
I'd use too many hours. So I am stuck with netcom's flatrate unix shell
service.
I'm on the net 10 or so hours a week, call it 50 hours a month, giving a
price of 100+17 = $117 a month. This is not quite the order of magnitude
that Brad Cox talks of, but close enuff for me.
The earlier discussion of dedicated modems versus a pool doesn't ring true
to me. I want to use the net in the evenings. I expect that nearly all folks
with day jobs do. This corresponds exactly to Digex's published "prime time"
of 3PM to 3AM. When a huge percentage of your users want to be on from 6PM
until 9, you get a massive peak that still requires a ton of lines and
modems.
I'm probably willing to spend more than "typical" users, and could imagine
spending $50 a month for SLIP (domain name registration, etc.) for an
average of 100 hours a month over a year. But only with a guarenteed
level of service (blocking probability p = 0.02 or some low value). Having
to dial in repeatedly because of busy signals is unacceptable (unless there
is a price break)
So far, I haven't heard of any service provider willing to offer
anything close to this. So my search for a networking service (I've got
plenty of computer power in the network of computers in my house)
lets me use netcom's Sun shell computers, or pay Brad's 10x. (Actually it
would be 14.2x).
I'd be very interested in feedback as to why I can't find a vendor.
Are my requirements too specialized to be addressed by the market?
I find it interesting that I can easily get $20/month flat rate service
to use a vendor's computer, or $250/month flat rate to use their network.
It seems like a logical extension to have a range something like
Guarenteed (p=0.000) $250/month
High available (p=0.02) $50/m
available (p=0.05) $25/m
usually there (p=0.10) $15/m
The telco will gladly tell you the blocking factor, or you can calculate it
from near trivial queueing theory. Is this too arcane to explain and market?
Pat
Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell@netcom.com
Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
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