Windows Phone Thoughts: Selling Gigabytes by the Pound

Now here's an interesting idea. UK customers of BT will soon be able to temporarily increase their download speeds by paying a little extra. "It is to try out a "flexible broadband" scheme which would allow surfing speeds to quadruple at the click of a mouse. The trial is part of four broadband schemes announced by BT, which it hopes will help it reach its target of five million high speed connections by 2006. …..With BT's flexible bandwidth service, customers will be able to increase the speed of their connection from 512Kbps to 2Mbps whenever they need a faster downloading speed." Hmmm, is it really worth paying the extra to pull down your service packs a bit quicker one time? However, as Ars Technica say,".. value-added services such as this are likely the next wave of broadband."

"Though the price is yet to be finalised, it is expected to cost one to two pounds per gigabyte downloaded. The trials are due to start next month and the service due to be officially launched in the autumn. BT is also strengthening its ties with Yahoo, with a new product that will allow people to make phone calls over Yahoo's instant messenger software." BT getting into the VoIP market should be interesting.

I like the idea of the broadband packages that are 512Kb during the day, but 2Mb in the evening and weekends, when I am more likely to use them. Set it and forget it. I'm just not sure I would ever get around to getting a temporary increase like BT would like. Everything comes down the 512Kb pipe eventually anyway. :) How about you guys?