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Comment by _greim_ | Hacker News Reader

If billing rates were by volume of data transferred, just like every other utility, that would incentivize ISPs to maximize data flow. But as things stand they're not incentivized to increase bandwidth because they make the same money whether you check email once a week or stream Netflix 24/7. This seems obviously broken to me, but apparently most people can't stomach the idea of paying by volume, so we're stuck with the current system.

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The problem with pricing by volume is that the average consumer can't really manage their volume.

Would the consumer be responsible for paying for: -DDOS (not only can you knock them offline, you can cost them big money) -Spam (Both received and botnet sent) -Retransmissions for traffic the ISP dropped due to congestion -Ads (adblockers could reduce bandwidth costs by a third)

I personally would love volume pricing. But I also would not want to provide tech support next time my parents get hit by malware and get hit with a $1000 isp bill.

Definitely valid concerns, but they don't strike me as inherent problems with the idea, rather technical problems that can be overcome with some ingenuity and incentive.

It's the incentive that's lacking at the moment. My machine may send out bursts of spam at 3am, or a website ad may weigh 10MB, but as long as I can still check Facebook what do I care? But I would care if I were billed for those transfers. I'd start shopping for devices that helped me self-throttle. I'd start caring whether websites were bloated. That would pass the incentive on to those providers, etc.

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