[e2e] More on bandwidth charging

[Markus Peuhkuri]

"Henning G. Schulzrinne" <hgs at cs.columbia.edu> writes:
>    big users appropriately. But it makes consumers 
>    (justifiably) nervous. What if you get a $1300 bill 

Given the possibility of modern communications, it would be possible
to notify user if his usage exceeds some limit.  Mobile phone
operators here have following services:

- limit charges; only calls to one number are allowed if the bill
  exceeds some limit (set by subscriber)

- notify if charges exceeds some limit: a short message (SMS) is sent
  to user, if limit is exceeded.

- send SMS notification weekly indicating current bill

- you can check your current bill by sending SMS or via Internet

These are quite popular among young people, even if the automatic
services have monthly charges.

If I had two options

- full Internet with byte charging after some amount with
  notification, or 

- crippled web surfing service

I would go for the first one.  One more option would be dropping
traffic priority after limit is exceeded and user notified.  The user
could then allow or disallow (==do nothing) extra traffic with normal
priority and byte-based charging.

-- 
Markus Peuhkuri        ! http://www.iki.fi/puhuri/