Internet providers consider returning to "pay as you go" pricing

[Shadoglare]

Hey, remember those nostalgic days of services like AOL and CompuServe where you had to pay by the hour to use what was, at that time, considered the 'net?
Remember how much that *sucked*?
Well, at least three major carriers are considering going back to it:

Some broadband providers argue that a pay-as-you-go Internet is unavoidable. "A flat-rate, infinitely expandable service is unachievable,"Dick Lynch, chief technology officer of Verizon Communications Inc., said at a recent industry conference, referring to the industry in general. "We're going to have to consider pricing structures that allow us to sell packages of bytes."

[Link]

[grimrebuke]

Yeah, and remember how many companies got really wealthy by providing unlimited service for 10 dollars a month that were then bought by the major telecoms? This language is being put out there to try to limit and prevent net neutrality.

[DngrMse]

Similar stories have popped up ever since flat rate pricing became a reality. I'm not really worried...some savvy entrepreneur will just purchase several gigabytes of bandwidth from one of the carriers, and make a fortune selling unlimited internet....the big carriers will go broke.

[Betrade]

Originally Posted by DngrMse

Similar stories have popped up ever since flat rate pricing became a reality. I'm not really worried...some savvy entrepreneur will just purchase several gigabytes of bandwidth from one of the carriers, and make a fortune selling unlimited internet....the big carriers will go broke.

I agree. I remember paying over 300 bucks a month back in the days before I realized how terribly horrible AOL was/is. I switched to Compuserve but only paid a small fee to use it as a gateway. You could do that but you had to "sacrifice" all of their useless, annoying junk, like their browser, channels, and other completely unnecessary BS.

The first company in my area to offer unlimited service was Erol's, and it was only about 15 bucks a month back then. Once that happened, almost everyone was forced to follow their lead because everyone was switching over to unlimited. If the big companies revert back to hourly rates (which I doubt), someone will get around it and make millions.