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The Internet as an Information Utility
The Problem
Most people view the internet as simply the World Wide Web and E-mail. However this is like thinking that electricty is only good for lights. Those may be the primary uses for most people, however the internet is a open system for transmitting data. Over time, more and new applications will become available (Voice over IP, iTunes, online games, IPTV). For them to become successful, the data flowing over the internet will need to be treated in an unbiased way. We are about to run into this issue head on.
"Unlimited" internet access works on the principle that the average user actually pays more than they use. This over payment is balanced out by the smaller number of users that use more than the actually pay for. However this is an outdated system that will quickly fail. Most new customers for ISPs are going to young and "savvy". This means that they will know about bit torrent and VoIP, they'll play online games and download music and movies. They are going to use more and more bandwitdh as time goes on. As well, if a new fabulous internet application comes along that uses a fair amount of bandwidth, the ISP's bandwidth costs will jump significantly. They may find themselves losing money. Although they could just raise prices, is more likely that they will degrade their service by blocking ports or traffic shaping.
Traditional ISPs tend to be one of two forms, the telephone company or a cable company. They already owned cables right to your door, and they had lots of unused bandwitdh (free space to send the data over). However these companys already provided a traditional, and very limited data service, telephone or television. Within a few years, both of these services may become available over the internet from a provider different from the ISP. In fact, Voice over IP [VoIP] (phone calls over the internet) is already widely available. However the ISP has the ability to cripple such third party services. This puts these large ISP into a serious conflict of interest. Why would your cable company provide you with access to an internet television service? Why woud the phone company want you to be able to make phone calls over their lines (using the internet) instead of paying for their seperate phone service? Or if your ISP offers a VoIP service the could force you into using theirs by crippling your third party VoIP traffic.
Note
Just as a note, what really got me thinking about this was my ISP blocking port 25. For those that don't know port 25 is primarily used for E-mail, to connect your client software to an Email provider. The reason for this port blocking? "Combatting Spam". Of course they failed to mention the problem was out going spam, that is, spam originating within their network and travelling to the internet as a whole. Instead of trying to stop the spammers (which I suspect they could easily detect), they just downgraded their service across the board, for all users. Of course, this service downgrade was not accompanied by a reduction in my monthly fees. Once I started looking around online, I saw lots of stories about ISP downgrading their services. Other examples, port blocking or traffic shaping bit torrent, competitors VoIP services, and, of course, the major ISPs trying to get paid twice for the same bits, once by their customers and once by the content providers.
What I want
I believe that internet access should be treated like a utility (similar to water, electicity, etc). I want ISP to offer a service that basically provides me with naked internet access. That is, no traffic shaping (slowing down particular services) and no port blocking (denying access to certain types of services). I can run my own firewall. All I want is a DHCP server to give my router access to the internet and I'm golden.
For this, I am willing to pay, a flat monthly rate, plus a per gibibyte cost. That is, I am willing to pay per byte for the data that I use (like a traditional utility). I am also willing to pay asymmetrically, more for upload than download, however this may not be necessary.
I also don't need, or want an Email address or web hosting from my ISP. I pay for these services seperately.
Naked, metered internet, just like electricity and water. An information utility.
Why This is a Good Idea for the Customer
The main advantage I see for the customer is in a system like this is that there are far fewer reasons for your ISP to mess with your service. If you use lots of bandwitdh, the ISP gets paid for it. If the ISP needs to upgrade their network, that is good for the ISP. It is a sign that they are making lots of money. Money they can spend on upgrading their network. When they upgrade their network, your service gets better.
The internet is not all that different from electicity or water, in the end someone has to pay for each byte that is transfered around. It makes sense that everyone simply pay for what they use. This would provide the ISPs incentive to provide higher speeds (because higher speeds mean more downloading) which will help drive up the speed of the internet in general. It also means that instead of trying to block protocals that use lots of bandwitdh, (like bit torrent) they would be encouraging users to use such tools. Imagine if an ISP has one customer running a bit torrent client and another that is downloading from that customer. The ISP gets paid TWICE for the same bits.
For those who balk at the idea of paying for your internet access by the byte consider the following. If your ISP has a download cap, you are already paying by the byte. If you pay, for example, $60 for 60 GiB a month, then you are paying $1 per gibibyte, however even if you use less than 60 GiB, you still pay for it all. I suspect that if I paid $20 per month for 20 GiB of data and then $1 per gibibyte beyond the first 20, my cost for a month of internet would be less than it is now.
Why This is a Good Idea for the ISP
There are many advantages for the ISP as well (in addition to those listed above). Any sharing of the internet service becomes much less important. Getting paid by the byte means that if one customer lets ten people use the service, the ISP still gets paid for all the traffic used. When paying by the byte, the customer will have a large incentive to keep their computer from becoming a spam zombie and securing their open WiFi access points. Such security issues will eventually cost the customer money.
The ISP could offer add on services at additional cost. For example, if I did want an Email address and webhosting, I could get that at an additional cost (or the ISP could just point the customer to a 3rd party professional webhosting company). However, I suspect most people would be more than happy with a Gmail account and I suspect most people don't use their free web hosting either. If the ISP does not need to offer these serives, they can reduce their own costs, and simplify and focus their business.
The ISP could offer other services as well, for example, I could request a cap be put on my account to make sure that I don't accidently spend excessive amounts of money. If I do get hacked and my computer becomes a spambot, I'd like to make sure that I don't accidently spend hundreds of dollars in bandwitdh. If I want my ISP to block services or ports, or provide me with external firewalling, then I could enable these extra services and pay for them. Why not charge your customers for the services they use instead of bundling them all together?
So, is there an ISP out there willing to give me what I want? Please?