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  Anonymous Coward, 22 Jan 2004 @ 10:57am

  
  

  Already in place

  Shaw in Canada has had tiered pricing for a long time (http://www.shaw.ca/highspeedlite/). They don't really mention it to a lot of people, except when they are trying to win them away from dial up ISPs. After all, if someone is willing to pay more for their connection, even when they only need a lower priced connection, why complain?

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  Mark, 22 Jan 2004 @ 12:05pm

  
  

  Tiered pricing

  I've been waiting for years for broadband to get down around $30 per month, when I'll sign on. Still waiting. If tiered pricing would bring the service down within that range, it will get me aboard; speed caps don't bother me too much since I'm not much of a downloader in the first place. But my cynical expectation is that Comcast (my local cable company) will just use this idea to put into effect something they've had in mind all along, that cable modems *should* cost upwards of $60 a month. So I expect the lowest tiers to be priced at $35-40, with the upper "super premium" tiers consisting of nothing more than current cable modem packages, but priced much higher. And, as my personal end result, I will still not be a customer, and will continue to await more sensible price structures.

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  Adrian Anders, 24 Jan 2004 @ 1:37am

  
  

  Multi-tiered plans? More efficient? Yes. Benefits

  Being an economics major in college, I believe that this kind of price discrimination (second degree) will do nothing but raise the profits of broadband companies, and reap more from the average consumer. After all, the broadband internet market is already highly concentrated, bordering on monopolistic in certain counties (in my county, there is only one broadband internet provider, Comcast, soon to be two with Qwest). Broadband companies will use their power to provide multi-tiered plans to price each according to the maximum each internet user group is willing to spend, only providing small quantity (of bandwidth) savings to those high end consumers. Consumers that are at the middle to low end of demand will lose value, as they will pay the same or more for less of the service they once had, as their "plans" expire. Expect the low end prices for broadband to remain high (30-40 a month for half the speed of the full service), while the "full" service kept as a slightly higher rate than the low end (50-60 a month). Consumers don't win with oligopolies having the freedom to set their own service plans. Only through regulation of the broadband internet market as a natural monopoly will we see multi-tiered service plans become beneficial to consumers.

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