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Originally Posted by danielf
I wouldn't be surprised to see many ISPs move to a usage based business model in the future where everyone gets top speed,
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ntl had that idea and dumped it... they were going to offer all 10meg packages with differing usage limits.
the pay per use techniques don't seem to work with uk consumers- say "cap" or "download limit" and people run a mile. Numerous companies have tried limited broadband but i can't think of any that have had masses of success with it.
The uk market seems to thrive on broadband speed rather than quality- personally i would rather have a 20:1 2meg adsl connection for £20 than a 50:1 4meg adsl connection for £20. But joe public (to whom the vast majority of advertising is targetted) would go for 4meg because it is faster.
It is interesting how internet use changes related to speed- i remember a company which was an all online clothes shop (can't remember the name) it lauched when 56k dialup was the norm. Lovely site, you could rotate clothes, view different colours, zoom in/ out etc etc. Unfortunately the business collapsed because it was so infuriatingly slow that no-one used it. However if it lauched today, it may well have a lot more success, because the average internet connection could handle the images.
If speeds were to increase more then i can see usage changing more- perhaps a switch to more streaming, more interactive websites- maybe your local video shop, or services such as ilovefilm would just allow click, buy, download. With a Media centre pc and a connection that can download an entire dvd quality movie in minutes, why would you go to the video shop?
Why would you have a phone line when you can make decent quality calls using your internet connection? Or perhaps video calls?