NEWS: Free Wi-Fi still a goer in San Fran'

Welcome to the quest for the Holy Grail, in this case, the ultimate fair and profitable internet billing system.

I once suggested that one bill by session, using the telephone network switch model. Payment for local packets, that only went through one router, would be essentially free. Packets that had to go through the cloud, would be billed by the number of routers required (i.e. traceroute hops). I called it FUBAR (Fair User Billing And Routing) which wasn't very popular with my client(s).

Incidentally, such billing systems are often patented. For example, here's one that bills by routing:

I like this one. If your router gets overloaded, you simply charge the customers more. Presumably, that will inspired them to reduce the overload. Probably useful for delaying upgrades:

Here's a method that bills by session:

While intended for cell phones, it can be adapted for internet billing. Customers would be billed by "node" or server. Wanna connect to my web server? Fine, it will cost you $0.00001 per minute. Past implementations were called "micropayments" which are currently functional among some online games.

There was also a time, where some providers (i.e. Comcast) were using the Hollywood model. Movie theaters charged by the user. If you and your friends go to the movies, everyone pays. In this case, you would pay by the number of computahs. Software was scribbled to guess the number of machines hidden behind an NAT router, and telemarketers were dispatched to extort additional money from customers. Predictably, it was a PR disaster and was instantly dropped.

Currently, we're heading for what I call the Smorgasbord model. All you can eat and one rate. However, if you eat like a pig, you get thrown out.

I'll keep my ideas to myself. However, I would be interested in what others consider the ultimate fair and profitable internet billing system. There are plenty that are more fair than flat rate. There are also plenty that are more profitable than flat rate. The trick is to invent one that is both.

Yes, I think that's mostly it -- other things being equal, "minutes" sell for twice as much in Europe, since they include both sender and receiver air minutes. The carriers clean up when you call a landline from a cell. This has a side benefit that there are still more payphones and international-call centers in Europe cities -- nobody wants to use a cell (at typically 20 cents/minute) to call from a European city to a landline in Pakistan.

Those call centers are ridiculously cheap -- it cost me about

6 euro cents to make a 2-minute call from Spain to the U.S. from one.

Steve

Thank you for an intelligent, informative, interesting, in-whatever message! Goes in my "newsgroups classics" collection; the kind of post that helps keep me reading newsgroups.

(End of this response, but remainder of message appended below, just in case anyone missed it the first time around.)

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On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:29:46 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

I'd say we're heading for tiered service levels thanks to those that eat like pigs.

I'd say it's pretty simple -- charge by the (mega)byte, with no accelerator*; e.g., 1 GB per month @ $20, 2 GB per month @ $40 (or less). I also think it makes sense to charge more for uplink than for downlink, in part because it costs more, in part because that discourages illicit filesharing.

*Accelerators are what businesses use to coerce people into buying more than they need in order to avoid the accelerator, a practice I think should be prohibited by law; e.g., if 200 text messages cost $5, then another 100 text messages can cost no more than $5 (instead of $25 thanks to an accelerator).