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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The most sane pricing would probably be per bit with surge pricing during congestion periods. But customers would flip out at that.

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What I would really like to see is peak and off peak data rates. You pay $X/month for 15Mbps (guaranteed, even during peak hours) and "up to" 1Gbps, then you pay twice that much for 30Mbps peak and 1Gbps off peak etc. No usage fees, but if you expect to consume 50Mbps during peak hours then be ready to open your wallet.

The limit has NOTHING to do with peak or non-peak bandwidth!

It's a measure to prevent customers from watching video on-line and stopping their TV service.

I disagree, even if customers would not flip out. Charging per bit is an incorrect alignment to consumption of a finite resource (such as water, gas, or even electric). Data is not a finite resource, as receiving data does not deplete the source providing the data. The only sane way to charge for connectivity is to charge for operations and support, with a profit percentage.

Commercial electricity is charged a lower rate at off-peak hours in many markets.

Any given network can transmit only so many bits per second. That bandwidth is, in fact, a finite resource.

But if you're operating below that limit, the marginal cost is zero.

Of course. That's exactly the justification for charging more during congestion periods. That's when you're operating close to the limit.

Don't charge more, just provide less. Provide a proportional share of the bandwidth that is available.

So people who want more bandwidth are just SOL?

The point of charging more during peak times is to discourage usage during those times, which leads to a greater proportion of available bandwidth per user at that time.

Sure, charge me based on percentile billing, I'm more than happy to pay for it. But in return, they better offer higher speeds, uptime with more than 1 nine and an SLA for intra-network connections (All transit carriers guarantee no congestion within their network, can Comcast do the same?).

I already pay ~$1500/m/rack in bandwidth (5Gbps, 95th percentile, mixed transit product + interconnect fees for an exchange). I'll happily pay $100/m for 100mbit 95th percentile bw at home, with the same throughput guarantees. .

AAISP have operated a time-based bandwidth tariff for many years: http://aa.net.uk/broadband-prices.html

9am-6pm Mon-Friday is charged at 1.25-10x (ratio depending on the technology/broadband type) the price of bandwidth outside of this peak time.

Granted, AAISP customers tend to be more technical and are willing to pay more for an clueful ISP.

People have been used to peak & off-peak charges from telephones for a long time.

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