a2aviator@gmail.com wrote:
The really hoaky thing here in comparing it to electric consumption is with electric consumption, something has to generate that electricity. It's a carefully hedged balance. If everyone suddenly unplugged refrigerators in an entire city, the grid would probably crash. If everyone stopped downloading suddenly.. nothing would happen. The average cable and DSL infrastructure is able to handle the load. The capping and charging is a profit center move. Nothing more, nothing less. It's not a "fairness to everyone" deal. Just like email is free in your phone but text messages can cost 20 cents. Whats a text message? Damn near the same thing as an email, with a different address and a drop dead stupid client to view it.
The system will slow down to a crawl if to many users are online in a certain area, mostly in a Cable or Cable like system like FIOS. The communications system is set up to hand;e a certain percentage of the subscribers and if that amount is exceeded then systems slow down or in the case of phone service you will not get dial tone or access to a cell network. If the companies were to put the infer structure in to handle 100% then the cost of the equipment would be hundreds of millions of dollars and would only be used at peak times and waisted most of the time. This is not a guess, I have spend 40 years with the telephone company in network construction and we are moving and adding trunks as needed.
As to e-mail verses text, if you have a data plan you e-mail is free, text is something different, even though it should not be; I have 100 messages each month and never use them.
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