What do people think of this? I don't know how much bandwidth I use but I'd bet it's well under 250GB (maybe 50-75GB). Although I think it's a slippery slope to get people used to tiered pricing, I think this is a pretty fair limit for the typical customer.
it's a slippery slope to get people used to tiered pricing
Yeah. I'm nervous too. I'm also curious. Services like electricity don't have unlimited pricing, but they don't gouge either. Anyone know exactly how that works? Is pricing regulated?
Services like electricity don't have unlimited pricing, but they don't gouge either. Anyone know exactly how that works? Is pricing regulated?
How do you know they don't gouge? There is no competition in 99% of US cities (there are two cities I know of with competing electric companies), so it's pretty much impossible to say they aren't gouging.
And yes, pricing is regulated, even in the cities with competing companies...they can only compete on service (naturally, consumers in those cities report higher satisfaction than average with their power companies). Consumer energy is very similar to the telcos before deregulation.
It's actually pretty interesting how the regulation of power pricing effects business decisions in the industry. It has occasionally led to pathologically bad decisions. Nuclear power, for example, was more expensive than coal until very recently...but there was a time when many power companies in the US were building a nuclear plant because it would allow them to raise prices (because pricing is based on the amount it costs to produce the power, and nuclear was, for a time, something that the powers that be wanted to happen). It's really quite unfortunate that it shook out that way, because it gave nuclear a really bad name and so we're still several years away from nuclear being considered a politically viable alternative energy source, despite the fact that it is economically and environmentally the best option many locations have available (compared to coal it's downright miraculous).
FIOS will kill comcast by giving people more bandwidth then they currently need, would use, or even notice? I'm a pretty hardcore downloader and don't see any reason I need more bandwidth today. It is not going to kill comcast that a few nerds think FIOS is "sweet". Its a great and reliable product for me.
FIOS has single digit latency to many large sites, even halfway across the country. If you've never used it, its hard to describe how much snappier everything feels.
Waiting 60ms each for a dozen or so dns lookups may not feel slow if you're used to dsl, but FIOS is just a whole different animal. Even the neophytes in my family get it instantly when they use it.
Please feel free to explain to my senile parents and their equally if not more senile friends as to why their internet connection (which will usually be the best residential connection they can get without paying fortunes) sucks for downloading HD and regular movie rentals from iTunes.
I try, but it's hard to get across that it's a monopolized and generally awful situation where apathetic people aren't helping just because they don't perceive a need for better bandwidth anytime soon.
At the least, what an increase of bandwidth will do for those really apathetic people is to lower the prices of what they have now. So you should consider FIOS to be "sweet" because it means you can pay less for whatever speeds you have now, not just because it's way faster.
Morally, nothing. Business-wise, it's stupid, because a fiber provider (Verizon) will kick your ass, as their per-byte last-mile maintenance costs are a magnitude lower than with cable.
