At 7:45 PM -0500 25/2/02, Joe Abley wrote:
On Monday, February 25, 2002, at 07:02 ,
Chris Wedgwood wrote:
Let me see... $800USD for the circuit to
our apartment. It probably
handles about 500MB/traffic per day[1], often less. Thats about
5.3c/MB (US) or about 13c/MB (NZD).
Now, that's ball park with what people in NZ pay
Not really -- price yourself half an E1
in New Zealand with IP transit over it, and see how that
compares.
I'll say it once more. The main cost of bandwidth is our
international links.
NZ is a long way to anywhere else, and is not ON the way to
anywhere else much except Antarctica. So our international links are
expensive (and have high latency until we get around to upgrading the
speed of light).
For all the wondrous attractions of Australia, the fact remains
that most Internet traffic---about 80% of it---goes to or via the
USA.
People say they want flat rate. They want unlimited bandwidth at
10Mbps. And they want it for <NZ$50/month.
I would love to provide that, but if you can provide me 10Mbps to
Los Angeles for that rate I *REALLY* want to talk to you. Until then,
we have to find some other model.
"I say we should listen to the customers and give them what
they want."
"What they want is better products for
free." --Scott Adams
Looking at our residential broadband figures, I see that the
distribution is NOWHERE near normal in the statistical sense. In fact
it's basically Poisson with a few people moving GB and most people
moving kB.
In order to offer reasonable pricing for most people (97% approx)
I need to protect against the 3% who can drive the whole service into
the red.
Much lower costs for local traffic (which costs us much less),
and usage charging with pre-buy seems to suit most people. I'm open to
other models.
--
Michael Newbery
Technical Specialist TelstraClear
Limited
Tel: +64-4-939 5102 Mobile: +64-29-939
5102 Fax: +64-4-922 8401