[e2e] Re: crippled Internet

[David P. Reed]

Let's get rid of the last mile monopolies first.  Competition and arbitrage 
is the only way we'll see if the "costs" of last mile connectivity are 
real, or only artifacts of the disincentives to innovation that are created 
by monopolies.  Socialism of the worst kind reigns in this world.  If you 
could only see what I've seen of the books kept for regulators by last mile 
telcos and cable companies....



At 11:08 AM 4/18/01 -0400, RJ Atkinson wrote:
>At 11:04 18/04/01, Henning G. Schulzrinne wrote:
>
> >If there was a more load-sensitive charging scheme,
> >where you could pay on 95th percentile or some peak-hour load
> >or some other variation of congestion pricing, there would be
> >less perceived need to force every residential user into
> >web-browsing-only, please, mode.
>
>         While I disagree that we have widespread ISPs in
>North American that restrict customers to email and web only,
>I agree that a more load-sensitive charging scheme would
>be an approach worth mulling over.
>
>         There are a bunch of issues there, starting with higher
>fixed costs for accounting of bytes/packets and more expensive
>billing systems, but worth mulling over nonetheless.
>
>         One wonders if a future Internet might have some form
>of congestion-sensitive charging scheme tied in with the
>congestion avoidance mechanism, to bring this thread back
>on topic...
>
>Ran
>rja at inet.org