Pay Per GB @ 2Mbit, Any Point - Why not 8?

Following up from a rather unsucessful thread about the above subject on
ADSLguide, and some rather positive comments made by Zen's staff, what
would you people think of a pay per gig ADSL service, if it let you use
your line up to its full capacity (i.e. a rather tasty 8mbit down /
768kbps up at maximum)

The reason i'm asking is because Ben V. at BT basically thinks that
people dont need higher bandwidth than 2mbit / 256k and needs some
further "persuasion" in order for us elasticband users to get faster speeds.

When you consider the comments that Ofcom the regulator have been making
about the UK's obsession with rollout of DSL services but complete
failure to go above the 2Mbit anywhere apart from a very limited area in
Central London, it seems strange. Last of the G7 to implement ADSL, a
full year behind Germany and France, both of whom have monopolistic
telecoms companies, but both of whom offer a service as fast as the line
will go. Bizarre that the UK is the only one that is failing to do this,
especially when you consider that it is more densely populated that most
of the G7, not far off Japan, and they have 12Mbit DSL for less than
most 1Mbit packages here, going up to 25Mbit!

BT is underperforming on the stock market compared to both Deutsche
Telekom and France Telecom, and investor confidence in BT is not high,
probably fearing more regulatory interferance, or BT being seperated
into network and retail (this is covered on http://www.btplc.com which
shows how paranoid they are about it). With those kind of views right at
the top of the company though from Ben V is it any wonder they are
paranoid about regulators, or the EU kicking them to get a move on -
dunno why they can't just get on with getting some real bandwidth out
there instead of what Ofcom describe as convenience speeds that just
don't give the real broadband experience.

Considering that 2Mbit unmetered is available from £35 a month now, what
is the point in a pay per GB service at that speed for all but the
lightest users, seems bizarre that UK can't have the higher bandwidths,
wouldnt' hurt BT's leased line and ISDN revenues at all, would it?

Any thoughts?

Ignition wrote:

> Following up from a rather unsucessful thread about the above subject on
> ADSLguide, and some rather positive comments made by Zen's staff, what
> would you people think of a pay per gig ADSL service, if it let you use
> your line up to its full capacity (i.e. a rather tasty 8mbit down /
> 768kbps up at maximum)
>
> The reason i'm asking is because Ben V. at BT basically thinks that
> people dont need higher bandwidth than 2mbit / 256k and needs some
> further "persuasion" in order for us elasticband users to get faster
> speeds.
>
> When you consider the comments that Ofcom the regulator have been making
> about the UK's obsession with rollout of DSL services but complete
> failure to go above the 2Mbit anywhere apart from a very limited area in
> Central London, it seems strange. Last of the G7 to implement ADSL, a
> full year behind Germany and France, both of whom have monopolistic
> telecoms companies, but both of whom offer a service as fast as the line
> will go. Bizarre that the UK is the only one that is failing to do this,
> especially when you consider that it is more densely populated that most
> of the G7, not far off Japan, and they have 12Mbit DSL for less than
> most 1Mbit packages here, going up to 25Mbit!
>
> BT is underperforming on the stock market compared to both Deutsche
> Telekom and France Telecom, and investor confidence in BT is not high,
> probably fearing more regulatory interferance, or BT being seperated
> into network and retail (this is covered on http://www.btplc.com which
> shows how paranoid they are about it). With those kind of views right at
> the top of the company though from Ben V is it any wonder they are
> paranoid about regulators, or the EU kicking them to get a move on -
> dunno why they can't just get on with getting some real bandwidth out
> there instead of what Ofcom describe as convenience speeds that just
> don't give the real broadband experience.
>
> Considering that 2Mbit unmetered is available from £35 a month now, what
> is the point in a pay per GB service at that speed for all but the
> lightest users, seems bizarre that UK can't have the higher bandwidths,
> wouldnt' hurt BT's leased line and ISDN revenues at all, would it?
>
> Any thoughts?

ta for posting it here, Ignition

yeah well Ben V cant see further than the end of his nose,
indeed if 1mb costs £41 per month how much do you think BT would charge for
8mb, and seeing that we are still using the copper wire system for adsl and
not fibre opticts like Japan I think it maybe another 10 years or more
before we could benifit from real high speed adsl.

regards Tacky.
"Ignition" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:403ce6ac$0$7061$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Following up from a rather unsucessful thread about the above subject on
> ADSLguide, and some rather positive comments made by Zen's staff, what
> would you people think of a pay per gig ADSL service, if it let you use
> your line up to its full capacity (i.e. a rather tasty 8mbit down /
> 768kbps up at maximum)
>
> The reason i'm asking is because Ben V. at BT basically thinks that
> people dont need higher bandwidth than 2mbit / 256k and needs some
> further "persuasion" in order for us elasticband users to get faster
speeds.
>
> When you consider the comments that Ofcom the regulator have been making
> about the UK's obsession with rollout of DSL services but complete
> failure to go above the 2Mbit anywhere apart from a very limited area in
> Central London, it seems strange. Last of the G7 to implement ADSL, a
> full year behind Germany and France, both of whom have monopolistic
> telecoms companies, but both of whom offer a service as fast as the line
> will go. Bizarre that the UK is the only one that is failing to do this,
> especially when you consider that it is more densely populated that most
> of the G7, not far off Japan, and they have 12Mbit DSL for less than
> most 1Mbit packages here, going up to 25Mbit!
>
> BT is underperforming on the stock market compared to both Deutsche
> Telekom and France Telecom, and investor confidence in BT is not high,
> probably fearing more regulatory interferance, or BT being seperated
> into network and retail (this is covered on http://www.btplc.com which
> shows how paranoid they are about it). With those kind of views right at
> the top of the company though from Ben V is it any wonder they are
> paranoid about regulators, or the EU kicking them to get a move on -
> dunno why they can't just get on with getting some real bandwidth out
> there instead of what Ofcom describe as convenience speeds that just
> don't give the real broadband experience.
>
> Considering that 2Mbit unmetered is available from £35 a month now, what
> is the point in a pay per GB service at that speed for all but the
> lightest users, seems bizarre that UK can't have the higher bandwidths,
> wouldnt' hurt BT's leased line and ISDN revenues at all, would it?
>
> Any thoughts?

Tacky wrote:

> yeah well Ben V cant see further than the end of his nose,
> indeed if 1mb costs £41 per month how much do you think BT would charge for
> 8mb, and seeing that we are still using the copper wire system for adsl and
> not fibre opticts like Japan I think it maybe another 10 years or more
> before we could benifit from real high speed adsl.
>
> regards Tacky.

The UK is absolutely laden with fibre, we are a big gateway of bandwidth
at the moment. I was referring more towards a pay per GB model, not flat
rate pricing, removing the argument that it's not viable to provide a
higher speed service as those who take it would pay for what they use.

As far as real high speed ADSL goes - we have the infrastructure, we
have the backhaul, issue really is more do we have a telco willing to
take the next step, start contending more highly instead of at a
Datastream killing 12:1 - 15:1, and are the UK public prepared to accept
services that will rarely reach their maximum stated speeds, and carry
limits to how much you can download?

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 18:18:03 +0000, Ignition <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Following up from a rather unsucessful thread about the above subject on
>ADSLguide, and some rather positive comments made by Zen's staff, what
>would you people think of a pay per gig ADSL service, if it let you use
>your line up to its full capacity (i.e. a rather tasty 8mbit down /
>768kbps up at maximum)
Having had a 1Mb connection now for some months and I am going back to
512 has I am not getting full use out of the 1Mb service and if it
came to what you are suggesting above I for one would go back to a 56k
dial up.
We are not all millionaires and speed merchants .
Grant .

G Crozier wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 18:18:03 +0000, Ignition <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>
>>Following up from a rather unsucessful thread about the above subject on
>>ADSLguide, and some rather positive comments made by Zen's staff, what
>>would you people think of a pay per gig ADSL service, if it let you use
>>your line up to its full capacity (i.e. a rather tasty 8mbit down /
>>768kbps up at maximum)
>
> Having had a 1Mb connection now for some months and I am going back to
> 512 has I am not getting full use out of the 1Mb service and if it
> came to what you are suggesting above I for one would go back to a 56k
> dial up.
> We are not all millionaires and speed merchants .
> Grant .

I'm very confused by that answer. You don't use your connection that
much, but you aren't interested in a service that would allow you to do
what you do now, but faster, and cheaper than 512k unmetered?

BT *are* implementing a pay per GB service, the point is that it looks
as though it's going to be limited to 2Mbit/s downstream and 256kbit
upstream. There is no reason why for the same charges as this service,
which obviously would need to be fairly modest as a user is paying on a
metered basis, they shouldn't be offering the full capability of a
user's ADSL line. At the end of the day on a network with fixed
capacities it costs the same to download 1GByte in 2.5 hours at 2Mbps as
it does to download it in 35 minutes at 8Mbps, and also would help to
introduce the concept of contention to users, as they are paying for
data transferred *not* speed of transfer they couldn't complain too much
if they were getting less than their max speed all the

That is the point I'm trying to make. I am *not* comparing this to
current products, although I do think for lighter users this would
present a cheaper and faster alternative to unmetered but lower speed
options (no 5GB / 10GB a day downloaders to subsidise!).

Ignition <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
<snip>
> I'm very confused by that answer. You don't use your connection that
> much, but you aren't interested in a service that would allow you to do
> what you do now, but faster, and cheaper than 512k unmetered?
>
> BT *are* implementing a pay per GB service, the point is that it looks
> as though it's going to be limited to 2Mbit/s downstream and 256kbit
> upstream. There is no reason why for the same charges as this service,
> which obviously would need to be fairly modest as a user is paying on a
> metered basis, they shouldn't be offering the full capability of a
> user's ADSL line. At the end of the day on a network with fixed
> capacities it costs the same to download 1GByte in 2.5 hours at 2Mbps as
> it does to download it in 35 minutes at 8Mbps, and also would help to
> introduce the concept of contention to users, as they are paying for
> data transferred *not* speed of transfer they couldn't complain too much
> if they were getting less than their max speed all the

The 8Mbps user would need a really large pipe to not impact on others.

To put a random number in, if you'r using the equivalent of a 56K modem all
the time (18G/month), then you are costing the ISP around 10 quid/month
in charges on their connection to your local exchange (neglecting the cost of
their outbound links to the wider net and the cost for your ADSL connection)

Ian Stirling wrote:

>
> The 8Mbps user would need a really large pipe to not impact on others.
>
> To put a random number in, if you'r using the equivalent of a 56K modem all
> the time (18G/month), then you are costing the ISP around 10 quid/month
> in charges on their connection to your local exchange (neglecting the cost of
> their outbound links to the wider net and the cost for your ADSL connection)
>

Ah I never said anything about them not impacting on others, quite the
opposite I would fully expect an impact. These users would need to be
placed in their own VP.

Regarding costs to ISPs, ISPs don't pay anything to connect to a local
exchange unless they are running Datastream services, they just pay for
an E3, STM-1 or STM-4 from the BT LAC to their own LNS rather than an
individual exchange don't they?

It wouldn't have a massive effect on overall traffic anyway I'd have
thought, as people are paying per GB, and with E3s, STM-1s and STM-4s to
spread load over it shouldn't have a major impact on the ISPs, just a
question of how BT deal with it at the exchange level, no doubt some
exchanges have considerably less backhaul than others, an unfortunate
side effect of the obsession with rolling DSL out to everywhere with a
population over a few hundred, some of them have *very* small backhaul.

When you consider those people who download the 18GB you are referring
to in a single day over a 2Mbit connection though, the 8Mbit @ say £1
per GB doesn't look so bad? Although only BT will know how much they are
going to charge on the 2Mbit services.

Ignition wrote:

> Following up from a rather unsucessful thread about the above subject on
> ADSLguide, and some rather positive comments made by Zen's staff, what
> would you people think of a pay per gig ADSL service, if it let you use
> your line up to its full capacity (i.e. a rather tasty 8mbit down /
> 768kbps up at maximum)
>
[...]
>
> Any thoughts?

I don't really see the point of making unmetered services the main
products. At the moment most people only use the Internet for fairly
light things: email, www, etc. Those people don't need an unmetered
connection. And even those that download the odd ISO, watch BBCi,
listen to the radio or make video calls don't need the connection to be
unmetered.

I'd be in favour of basing the price on data volume rather than maximum
speed and giving users the fastest connection their line/hardware would
support (providing the costs don't jump massively or something).

Alex
--
Alexander Mann

Ignition <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Ian Stirling wrote:
>
>>
>> To put a random number in, if you'r using the equivalent of a 56K modem all
>> the time (18G/month), then you are costing the ISP around 10 quid/month
>> in charges on their connection to your local exchange (neglecting the cost of
>> their outbound links to the wider net and the cost for your ADSL connection)
>

> Regarding costs to ISPs, ISPs don't pay anything to connect to a local
> exchange unless they are running Datastream services, they just pay for
> an E3, STM-1 or STM-4 from the BT LAC to their own LNS rather than an
> individual exchange don't they?

Sorry, was generalising.
Talking about the cost of BT central pipe bandwidth.
<snip>
> When you consider those people who download the 18GB you are referring
> to in a single day over a 2Mbit connection though, the 8Mbit @ say ?1
> per GB doesn't look so bad? Although only BT will know how much they are
> going to charge on the 2Mbit services.

No, 18G/month, not per day equals around 10 quid/month.