> It doesn't make sense to compare retail prices to wholesale prices.
It very much does. It gives you a sense of real world marginal costs, a fair assessment of fair market value (fair retail cost = reasonable markup factor * wholesale cost) and a sense of scale.
> If an average coder can't even get bandwidth at $0.001/GB with some serious effort,
If I can, you can. I've even given examples with links to order pages. Not that I recommend FDCservers, mind you.
> then how this this a valid point of comparison for how much bandwidth should cost for the average internet user?
It's a valid point because it tells you how much bandwidth ACTUALLY costs compared to what Comcast says it costs.
> I doubt you can get Level3 or Internap to beat HE prices.
How much money do you have on you? There's a bet I'd like to win.
It very much does. It gives you a sense of real world marginal costs, a fair assessment of fair market value (fair retail cost = reasonable markup factor * wholesale cost) and a sense of scale.
> If an average coder can't even get bandwidth at $0.001/GB with some serious effort,
If I can, you can. I've even given examples with links to order pages. Not that I recommend FDCservers, mind you.
> then how this this a valid point of comparison for how much bandwidth should cost for the average internet user?
It's a valid point because it tells you how much bandwidth ACTUALLY costs compared to what Comcast says it costs.
> I doubt you can get Level3 or Internap to beat HE prices.
How much money do you have on you? There's a bet I'd like to win.