Once commercial Internet service becomes mature, customers will start to have more sophisticated expectations, and will be willing … to be able to pay differential rates for different services. Indeed, there is already evidence in the marketplace that there is a real need for service discrimination. The most significant complaint of real users today is that large data transfers take too long, and that there is no way to adjust or correct for this situation.
Predictor: Clark, David D.
Prediction, in context:David D. Clark stated the following in a presentation at the MIT workshop on Internet Economics in March 1995: ”As the Internet makes its transition from a partially subsidized service to a commercial service with all costs recovered by direct charging, there is a pressing need for a model of how pricing and cost recovery should be structured … historically the Internet has not relied on pricing to allow the user to select one or another service. Instead, the Internet has implemented one service class, and used a technical means rather than a pricing means to allocate resources when the network is fully loaded and congestion occurs. There is debate within the community as to how in the future Internet service should be allocated. One opinion is that we have survived so far. There is rather substantial experience with the current model, and it seems to meet the needs of many users. However, others believe that once commercial Internet service becomes mature, customers will start to have more sophisticated expectations, and will be willing (and indeed demand) to be able to pay differential rates for different services. Indeed, there is already evidence in the marketplace that there is a real need for service discrimination. The most significant complaint of real users today is that large data transfers take too long, and that there is no way to adjust or correct for this situation. People who would pay more for a better service cannot do so, because the Internet contains no mechanism to enhance their service.”
Biography:David D. Clark was a senior research scientist at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science. (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: March 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Cost/Pricing
Name of publication: The Journal of Electronic Publishing
Title, headline, chapter name: A Model for Cost Allocation and Pricing in the Internet
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/works/ClarkModel.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Catalfumo, Cara J.