Re: Pricing Fairness<p>The article claims that if the Cable industry offered pricing based on what is fair, it would offer very cheap plans for little old ladies who barely use their connections. This definition of "fair" assumes that what you pay is proportional to how much you use it.<p>The real world almost never works this way.<p>Does a new car cost less if you drive it less? Perhaps a little in terms of maintenance and gas, but the initial cost is still the same. Does a banana cost less if you only eat half of it? Does a comb cost less if you're bald?<p>This leads us to the other definition of "fairness", which is also not often closely associated with real-world prices. i.e. What you pay is proportional to the cost of producing it. If Cable plans were priced this way, a Granny plan would be just a few dollars cheaper than the super-high-use plan. Why? Bandwidth is <i>cheap</i> compared to last-mile installation and maintenance costs. The cost of getting the first bit to grandma is astronomically more expensive than getting the last gigabyte to a heavy bandwidth user.<p>So how does the real world work? In the overwhelming majority of cases, companies charge whatever people are willing to pay. This price frequently has little or no correlation to actual cost. This is why airlines typically lose money while cable providers do pretty well for themselves. The NCTA's claims that "fairness" is the motivation behind usage-based billing is complete BS. People who use more bandwidth are willing to pay more. That's the reason for usage based billing. Fairness has nothing to do with it.
It should be made clear that this problem does not necessarily exist outside the US. Here in the UK, I'd say that we have healthy competition in the ISP industry, due to a sensible regulatory system. ISPs have a variety of different pricing models here.<p>If you want to fix the problem, look at what's happening outside the US.
They have a right to offer whatever terms they want, and you have the right to accept or reject those terms.<p>If you can't find a company that will grant you the service you want on your terms, you have the right to <i>attempt</i> to form your own company and find customers.<p>One thing you do not have the right to do is to try to assemble a mob and get them to vote a new law into place that would force the company to bend to your ideas on how it should be run. That kind of unlimited democracy is precisely the sort of tyranny that killed Socrates, and I say that is morally wrong.