Should broadband be charged on a sliding scale?

john_s_2

Probably fair to say that up to 8Mbs is gonna be faster than up to 2Mbs.

And like I say, if a decent broadband connection is worth anything, it will be reflected in the value of the property/rent. The presence of these descriptions suggests it is worth something. The absence of it suggests it isn't.

Want a decent BB connection? Move. Simples.

ComplexP

I rent and one day hope to buy my own place and I am definately going to be checking cable and LLU availability before I buy. I'll also be bringing up a map and measuring the distance between the house and the local exchange.

Once these important things have been dealt with I'll let the wife think about the minor details like school catchment areas etc :rotfl:

john_s_2

ComplexP wrote: »

Once these important things have been dealt with I'll let the wife think about the minor details like school catchment areas etc :rotfl:

Like your thinking!

fiendishlyclever

When I first got a dial up modem I used to dial Compuserve (the closest thing back then to an ISP). You paid a connection fee (on top of the phone call) and the faster your connection speed, the less you paid. I remember forcing my modem to connect at a slower speed to save money when I was using the chat channels.

To do this with broadband would be complex. Would you have a tiered structure? What about people who have variable connection speeds? What we have at the moment isn't ideal, but it isn't going to change in a hurry (and is more likely to change to charging by the Gb than pricing by your individual line speed).

Marty_J

john_s wrote: »

Probably fair to say that up to 8Mbs is gonna be faster than up to 2Mbs.

Not really. If a line can only support 2 megs, that's all it's going to get.

The presence of these descriptions suggests it is worth something. The absence of it suggests it isn't.

Want a decent BB connection? Move. Simples.

It's in those descriptions because the broadband is included for free. Nowhere does it give any indication as to the speed, other than one is less than 8 megs and one is less than 2 megs (and of course, the 2 meg connection could very well end up being the faster of the two).

Money_Grabber13579

ComplexP wrote: »

Based on whatever the 'up to' bit of your package says?

For example, if I'm on an 'up to' 8MBit package for £10 per month but can only get 2MBits due to my distance from the exchange, should I justifiably be able to pay just £2.50 per month?

Interested to hear people's views.

Personally, I agree in principle, but it'd be far to complex to sort a billing system out that could cope with this, as some issues with speed are caused by internal wiring, so 2 houses right beside each other might get vastly different speeds. Who's to say what the actual speed is? And everyone would be on different rates, so there'd be endless problems. But I like the idea though!

ComplexP

Money_Grabber13579 wrote: »

Personally, I agree in principle, but it'd be far to complex to sort a billing system out that could cope with this, as some issues with speed are caused by internal wiring, so 2 houses right beside each other might get vastly different speeds. Who's to say what the actual speed is? And everyone would be on different rates, so there'd be endless problems. But I like the idea though!

The consensus seems to be that basing it on line speed would be too complex but basing the charges on actual download usage would be a lot fairer and might just work.

globalds

Just keep things as they are ..I would be paying a fortune

Money_Grabber13579

globalds wrote: »

Just keep things as they are ..I would be paying a fortune

And I'd be paying next to nothing!