roundtable: Re: Fwd: BA Cuts ISDN Usage Rates

roundtable: Re: Fwd: BA Cuts ISDN Usage Rates

Re: Fwd: BA Cuts ISDN Usage Rates

David Levine (motodave@butterfly.net)
Mon, 5 Jun 1995 16:49:25 -0400 (EDT) 

Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 16:49:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Levine <motodave@butterfly.net>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Subject: Re: Fwd: BA Cuts ISDN Usage Rates
In-Reply-To: <9506011040.AA20999@a.cni.org>
Message-Id: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950605164135.3489I@iron>


On Mon, 5 Jun 1995, W. Curtiss Priest wrote:
> 
> FYI, (These rates will make many reconsider the trade-offs between 
> ISDN and a leased line)

I don't think they will make people reconsider. If you are leasing a 
line, it's because you do not want metered traffic (5,000 hits on my 
system will be very expensive @ $.02 shot.

There is flat-rate service if you order voice rather than data, and 
there is not difference between voice and data service.

You can also order "cross-centrex" which is a milage-based service. The 
per-connection (per-minute) data rate at $.02 is still a problem.


> Beginning June 1, Bell Atlantic telephone companies' "basic rate" ISDN
> (BRI) customers will see a  60 percent reduction in usage costs for
> local data transmission -- from 5 cents to 2 cents per minute -- for
> each ISDN data channel.  BRI offers users two separate data channels
> that, combined, provide communications speeds up to 128 kilobits of
> information per second.

they don't mention that cross-centrex and voice service are available at 
lower, reasonable costs.


> With the new rates, a typical telecommuter, for example -- working
> remotely from home and using ISDN to access his or her office database
> for about an hour a day -- will pay only $12 a week in usage costs,
> about the price of one day's parking at a downtown office building.

This is a mischaracterization of a "typical" telecommuter, and not the 
way business and individuals want to use ISDN, which is to set up a 
connection between 2 points and allow for passive, non-metered traffic. 
Each email message, if it initiates a new connection will cost $.02.


> For Internet users, it will mean being able to navigate -- and
> download -- the rich graphics, video and sound files of the World Wide
> Web at four times the speed of today's fastest modems, and at a cost
> of about half-a-cent per megabyte.

This is clearly usage based (metered pricing) language. Contrary to the 
Internet model.

regards,

David Levine, President
HuskyLabs
http://www.butterfly.net/motodave/

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