Turtles all the way down

Here’s a simple alternative for people who think ISP bandwidth is wasted by peer-to-peer traffic.

Most last-mile systems, such as DSL and cable have far less upstream capacity than downstream capacity. If the upstream is congested, tiered flat-rate pricing will likely resolve the issue. ISPs can package their service in flat-rate tiers, for example, 128 Kbps, 512 Kbps, 1 Mbps, etc. The pricing can be used as self-imposed congestion control on customers. If the higher tiers are priced appropriately, few people will use them. Thus, total upstream bandwidth is constrained per user according to what they want to pay, but within each tier, the service is all-you-can-eat.

Guess what…ISPs already use tiered pricing. There’s no need to block peer-to-peer, just expand a pricing scheme that already exists.