To cap it off
June 15th 2008 09:05
Some people use the Internet simply to check e-mail and look up phone numbers. Others are online all day, downloading big video and music files, so writes Brian Stelter in an article entitled Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic.
While spending hours on the Internet looking up travel guides, movie clips, and YouTubes, or reading lengthy articles, or checking out facts, I normally don’t give a thought to the number of bytes I’m using. For a while it became a bit of an issue when I was regularly just going over my limit, but since I’ve upped that to five gigs a month, I now never come anywhere near it.
So I was a bit surprised to see this article from the States. They’re only now talking about putting a cap on people’s internet usage, and charging them when they go over it. That’s been the norm here in New Zealand for as long as I can remember. The article compares it to the days of dial-up, so obviously people in the States have got so used to being able to surf the Net freely (virtually) that they find the idea of being restricted in any way a little horrifying.
I can understand that there might concerns about bandwidth – one of the other horror stories is that we’re running out of Internet ‘space.’ But it makes pretty good sense to me to charge people who would normally spend unlimited time on the Net (whether they’re actually on it or just have it on, is another issue, maybe). What other area of life do you get enormous breadth for next to nothing? I find the article a bit amusing really.
While spending hours on the Internet looking up travel guides, movie clips, and YouTubes, or reading lengthy articles, or checking out facts, I normally don’t give a thought to the number of bytes I’m using. For a while it became a bit of an issue when I was regularly just going over my limit, but since I’ve upped that to five gigs a month, I now never come anywhere near it.
So I was a bit surprised to see this article from the States. They’re only now talking about putting a cap on people’s internet usage, and charging them when they go over it. That’s been the norm here in New Zealand for as long as I can remember. The article compares it to the days of dial-up, so obviously people in the States have got so used to being able to surf the Net freely (virtually) that they find the idea of being restricted in any way a little horrifying.
I can understand that there might concerns about bandwidth – one of the other horror stories is that we’re running out of Internet ‘space.’ But it makes pretty good sense to me to charge people who would normally spend unlimited time on the Net (whether they’re actually on it or just have it on, is another issue, maybe). What other area of life do you get enormous breadth for next to nothing? I find the article a bit amusing really.
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