[LINK] Coonan's statement -- correct or not?

[Adam Todd]

At 07:59 AM 21/10/2007, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
>Rick Welykochy wrote:
>>Jan Whitaker wrote:
>>>http://www.theage.com.au/news/federalelection2007/australia-in-digital-dark-age/2007/10/20/1192301086691.html 
>>>
>>
>>
>>Let me see now on price.
>>
>>Shaw Cable in Canada offers 5 Mb/s, 60 GB for about AUD $33/month.
>><http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/>
>OK. BigPond Cable is 8M and 12G for $60, which is more expensive. 
>Then again, in Au you have to get Foxtel first, at $38 a month. 
>Shaw's entry-level cable TV is $US30 a month. Swings and 
>roundabouts, a little. I'm not going to  run down all the providers.
>
>What makes me grind my teeth together on things like this is that analysts -

What makes me grind my teeth is that "DATA" itself costs nothing.

It's the cost of routers, pipes and staff that are of issue in the 
Internet construction.

Once you have the connection in your home/office, that's it.  30 GB's 
doesn't cost any more to get from you to the world, than 10 bytes does.

Network Scaling is a clear and easy factor, the bigger your delivery 
pipes the bigger your backbone pipes, but they are ALL still fixed costs.

It's easy to charge a flat rate for connections when you know your 
Wages, Building, Pipes and Equipment costs, plus 15% for profit and a 
5% fat contingent.

Telstra is to blame for Byte Charging. In 1995, it was 30 cents per 
megabyte, thanks to me, we pushed it down to 19 cents per megabyte, 
with capped rate plans.

But I was after 5 cents per megabyte if byte charging was to remain, 
or flat rate pipes, just like we use to purchase in the USA.

In fact in the mid 1990's if you wanted a 128K sea cable connection 
to the Internet, you paid $1400 for a port connection in the USA and 
that was it.  No  Data charge, suck and deliver as much as you like.

Telstra of course set the standard for "consumer" attitudes by 
charging data in BOTH directions (sigh)

I'd love to see an "Internet Free Day" where all consumers didn't use 
the Internet for 24 hours.  It would quickly send a message to ISP's 
that by charging on a model based around data, they can go broke 
really fast, but people will happily pay $100 a month for unlimited 
high speed access with no caps and no restrictions.

Lets face it, people use to pay $240 a month for a permanent Dialup 
Modem connection, without traffic charge.