[ih] History of the Economics of the Internet?

[John R. Levine]

On Fri, 31 Jul 2026, Sebastian Moeller wrote:
> Montly is not the issue, the question is more, flat rate or based on some proxy of caused cost. In mobile plans over here often traffic volume is used, so you get X GB of high speed volume monthly and if you transfer more the data rate is severely capped and users are offered additional volumes of high speed data. ISPs between each other often realise that cost is driven by capacity and so use utilisation of that capacity to derive montly cost, see burstable billing.

Oh, sure.  Mobile operators in the US do the same thing, monthly data 
bundles of various sizes, and "unlimited" bundles which are speed 
throttled depending on price.  North American mobile rates are quite high 
compared to Europe--I pay $15/mo for 6GB which is cheap for the US.

But for mobile, the bandwidth between the phone and the ISP is shared 
among all of the users, while with fiber it isn't, and with cable it is 
but rarely hits capacity.  The cost models are quite different.

>> For news and other content sources, see the recent discussions of micropayments.
> My hunch is that part of the dislike comes from the fact that micropayments increase friction...

That's clearly it.  People don't want to microoptimize for lowest instant 
price, they want something predictable and affordable.  See Odlyzko's 
papers.

R's,
John