[TriLUG] OT: URGENT: H.129 to be heard in Thursday's Finance Committee!

[Steve Pinkham]

On 03/15/2011 08:21 AM, Chris Merrill wrote:
> On 3/14/2011 8:50 PM, Steve Pinkham wrote:
>> On 03/14/2011 08:08 PM, Chris Merrill wrote:
>>> On 3/14/2011 6:01 PM, Cristóbal Palmer wrote:
>>> Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of the bill at hand. I am, however,
>>> in favor of tiered pricing - as are most of the people who aren't in that
>>> top 5% of bandwidth consumers.
>>>
>> The problem is that the top 5% today are early adopters of what 95% will
>> be doing in a few years time.
> 
> Please enlighten me on why this is a problem?
> 
> In ANY endeavor, the early adopters pay a higher price.  They do so
> willingly, because they have a passion for their pursuit.  Cars,
> electronics, heirloom vegetables...anything.  I fail to see why the
> rest of us should pay their share for this particular case.
> 

I agree. That's what the part you didn't quote was about.  I agree this
pricing is reasonable at the moment (and much more reasonable than other
attempts to do usage based billing), but I've never known telcos to drop
pricing once it's established, ever. So I'm of two minds on the issue of
this particular usage based-billing, it's reasonable today, but could
have chilling effects in a few years if the caps aren't raised and
prices drop.  Past performance has shown once they have their hand in
your pocket, they rarely take it out, it just gets shoved deeper..

Here's the rest of my post from before.

>> The problem is that the top 5% today are early adopters of what 95%
>> will be doing in a few years time.

>> That being said, $0.20 a GB is not exorbitant pricing *today*,
>> but cable companies and telcos have proven that prices never go down
>> over time to account for new efficiencies. I predict that the cap
>> will stay fixed and the cost the same in the future, limiting an
>> increasing number of users.
>> Maybe AT&T is kinder and gentler with their customers these days, but
>> I'll believe it when I see it.