1996-08-05 - The Myth of Flat Rates and Infinite Bandwidth

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From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: ea5d2940b9a3dc22402f3a4a267f188d8a169c22a4f8b3b9b0f778ecc10ccfd1
Message ID: <ae2b842502021004a399@[205.199.118.202]>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1996-08-05 20:51:05 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 04:51:05 +0800

Raw message

From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 1996 04:51:05 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: The Myth of Flat Rates and Infinite Bandwidth
Message-ID: <ae2b842502021004a399@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 4:40 PM 8/5/96, Martin Minow wrote:
>Arun Mehta <amehta@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in> writes:
>
>>
>>True, though even better would be simply to charge you a flat
>>rate. If billing is that expensive, why bother?
>>
>
>Tragedy of the Commons.
>
>Flat rate works only if no single user can use more than
>a tiny fraction of the total bandwidth.
>

This was also the fallacy of the "dark fiber" vision of George Gilder, who,
as an economist of sorts, should've known better.

--Tim may

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
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