Re: Pay-As-You-Use High-Speed Internet?

[Rob Nelson]

At 06:19 PM 5/14/2004, Jonathan M. Slivko wrote:

> Bill - I'm not saying dedicate a whole T1 to a single customer, i'm saying 
> share a T1 or T3 among many customers in a small geographic area, but let 
> each customer have fair use of the T1/T3.
>
> BTW, we have been doing this for the last 6 years in a colo environment 
> and more recently a residential/corporate building with about 300 units 
> (50 of which are lit by us) with a single T1.
>
> As far as the local loop cost being zero, I *know* that that is not 
> feasible, but what is feasible is to make a fixed cost aside from the 
> bandwidth of say $30-$50 per customer per month to cover the cost of 
> e-mail service, support, etc.

What's your cost on managing the bandwidth? You're basically creating 
on-demand frame circuits, and balancing them is tricky (actually, deciding 
on an oversubscription ratio is easy, dealing with the customers is the 
tricky part!) on a low-margin basis. Of course, if you're a BofH or a sales 
guy, I expect that to be less bothersome than if you're a techie who has to 
actually talk to the customer when their neighbor takes up their bandwidth. 
Sometimes I wish I could be a bit more slimey to make paying the bills less 
painful *sigh*

Something I'd be more interested in for personal use would be protected the 
usefulness of my site, as well as the cost of it, against a slashdotting. 
If I get slashdotted on the first of the month, I essentially pay the same 
as if my site gets slashdotted on the 30th. The difference is in 29 days of 
downtime. And no, I don't have a solution to offer for that one, but that's 
what always annoys me - to see a site get slashdotted at the beginning of 
the month, knowing my attention span won't last until next month :)


Rob Nelson
ronelson@vt.edu