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Re: [Asrg] The wonders of telephones and paper mail

2008-11-14 17:20:33

From: Franck Martin <franck(_at_)avonsys(_dot_)com>

It is not impossible to set up an usage based system 

You could do on the Minitel in France 30 years ago what you just can
do now on the Internet.

Which one is in use now? 

There's a difference between "is it possible" and "if possible, have
implementations produced only successful businesses?"

Besides, Minitel is still around. According to wikipedia it generated
206M euros (that would be about one gazillion US dollars) in 2005. Not
that shabby!

Minitel's initial business model was to make obsolete the need for
printing and distributing phone books for France Telecom. From what I
understand it accomplished this. It was only later that it was seen as
a potential competitor to internet but it mostly stuck with services
more like what we'd call "pennysaver" in the US (see: Juno.)

The Internet is not suitable for usage charging (at the packet
level), otherwise it would have been done long time ago.
 
This is another straw man, nobody is suggesting charging at the packet
level. To say it's infeasible to charge per email message isn't that
different than saying it's infeasible to look at any other email
message header.

But no one (not I!) is proposing per message charges, not quite that
simple-minded. Think something more like postal meters, not stamps.

But, for argument's sake, hasn't Australia had internet data volume
charges for years and years?

Oh well.


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