John Linton I read this yesterday:
http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/home-it/44379-broadband-users-have-more-gigabytes-than-they-know-what-to-do-with
and wondered why stating what everyone in the industry, including the majority of experienced customers, have always known constitutes a 'news item' I was curious about its figures and how on Earth the 'analysts' had reached their conclusions on the usage growth over the years.....which don't relate to our 'personal' experience at all. Now I fully understand the disclaimers (which render the conclusions useless by definition) but if someone is going to publish research like this, which would be quite valuable if it were accurate, you would hope they would base it on a sensible and rigorous methodology - not slap dash inanity.
"Stop the presses - ISPs offer down load allowances that few is any of their customers ever get close to using." It's been done for over 6 years that I know of and is, effectively, the only way the major ISPs can differentiate their services and try to get as much money as possible for an ADSL service by "selling" a download allowance that they know will never be used by the majority of the buyers for slightly (or more than slightly in most cases) more money than they would charge for an allowance that would represent what the majority of users would actually use. Every ISP does it (they have to or they wouldn't get any customers if other ISPs do it). Does anyone think that a user would actually download 1 terabyte of data in a month? (except for a few 13 year olds who think they are somehow smart by trying to beat the 'record' for which of their no life friends can down load the most?)
Over the past five years the average amount of downloads per customer has increased each year - but not by that much. The cost of IP has fallen each year by more than enough to make the increase in average down load a non event in terms of general costs. the price of back haul (either owned or rented) has not fallen as much, for all the obvious reasons, but the IP cost decline has roughly balanced the overall equation. In Exetel's case, over the last five years, the average download per customer has increased from around 4 gb per month to around 15 gb per month.....or approximately 400%. In the same period the price of IP has fallen from around $250.00 per mbps to around $50.00 per mbps (much less if you meld the cost of actual IP with the cost of cached IP). The cost of back haul (we rent the back haul from our carriers rather than leasing our own back haul for our own DSLAMs) has fallen by much. much less than that of IP - perhaps 50% or so over that time from Optus and AAPT with back haul from Telstra not moving at all from its stratospheric pricing to us.
Over 40% of our current customers still download less than 3 gb per month. 2 customers download more than 400 gb per month, less than 200 download more than 200 gb a month and the others scale down rapidly from there to a point that over 75% of customers down load less than 15 gb per month........yet today our lowest included gb plan is 30 gb (excluding the zero download/PAYU plans which are only a tiny percentage of our total customers).
Why is this? Why doesn't Exetel offer 5 gb or even 3 gb per month plans?
I don't know but I suspect its a similar reason why people buy capped mobile plans - it's because that's the way the sellers sell and therefore that's the way the buyers buy.
I don't think the referenced 'analysis' offers any insight and certainly no realistic figures as any form of usefulness - but I've asked some of the smart people within our company to see if they can.....meanwhile I will have a shower and go and see what I can find for a leisurely breakfast on the terrace watching the river traffic.
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