Bandwidth costs

Bandwidth (at least in the U.S.) doesn't cost anything to consumers. However, it does cost something to content providers. Virtually all hosting packages (even ones where you put your own server in someone's building) involve limits on bandwidth, usually involving higher fees if certain bandwidth measurements are exceeded. Charging for band is pretty much the best way most colocation and back-end providers have to make money.

Bandwidth does cost money though - for example, if you wanted a gigabit router for your home network, it would cost you more than for a 100 megabit router. Or if you wanted to run fiber in your home, it would be a lot more expensive than CAT5.

Companies that operate the fiberoptic backbones face a similiar situation, just on a much larger scale.

Essentially, bandwidth cost is decided by bandwidth providers. They take numerous factors into consideration, such as how costly it was to lay new lines (if they had to do so), how close their customers are (a data center that has huge bandwidth to a single building pays less than a neighborhood wanting the same bandwidth to the same number of computers would simply because it's easier to provide all that bandwidth to a centralized location), expected line maintainence fees, how much they pay to have connections to higher-tier providers, etc.

A home network is only inexpensive because you start with some quite sophisticated equipment - imagine how much it would cost an ISP to shelter their lines as well as your house shelters yours (or, more realistically, how often they have to repair lines that are damaged due to weather since they don't have such nice protection)

Of course bandwidth costs money. Do you think the internet backbone cables suddenly appeared from nowhere and managed to dig their way underground by themselves? Did the switches and routers appear from nowhere and suddenly start generating their own electricity from nothing?

All this equipment had to be purchased, and costs money to run. The money has got to be recouped somehow, so they need to charge. Why not charge depending on how much traffic you put through these cables, aka the bandwidth you use.

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Original post by gavco98 Of course bandwidth costs money. Do you think the internet backbone cables suddenly appeared from nowhere and managed to dig their way underground by themselves?

Just a note: In the USA, almost all costs for digging and laying cable are subsidized by the Government. The cable and phone companies, decades ago, basically said "we're not laying cable unless you pay for it". Hell, the government even requisitioned the land for the cables using Eminent Domain (the railroads did this a century prior, so it's really nothing new), and then handed that land over to the cable/phone companies.


So it really pisses me off when the companies go around complaining about how much it costs to lay cable, since WE the taxpayers are actually paying for it. And then paying for it again when we pay for their services.