Oof - hadn't considered that. Myopic bear is embarrassed. I guess I just figured they'd work out their average usage and build it into their monthly rates.
I don't know that it would be hard to explain if the system's set up right - I know Telstra/BigPond in Australia does something similar, perhaps even for a similar reason. Certain sites are tagged as "Unmetered" and people can use them all they like without impacting their data transfer cap. Not exactly the same thing - but surely a NZ ISP could target popular local-to-NZ sites (say, anything and everything to do with the government, libraries, etc., and anything with a .co.nz domain name perhaps) and exempt those from the data cap. That might not help you guys too much - I have no idea what your traffic consists of - but it would be good public relations, at least.
It's also my impression that IP blocks are to some degree assigned by country - that's how the BBC prevents people from other countries from using iPlayer, and Hulu blocks anyone not in the USA. Seems like it should be possible to use that info here. Of course, that leaves the question of why they'd want to make less money... *sigh*
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I don't know that it would be hard to explain if the system's set up right - I know Telstra/BigPond in Australia does something similar, perhaps even for a similar reason. Certain sites are tagged as "Unmetered" and people can use them all they like without impacting their data transfer cap. Not exactly the same thing - but surely a NZ ISP could target popular local-to-NZ sites (say, anything and everything to do with the government, libraries, etc., and anything with a .co.nz domain name perhaps) and exempt those from the data cap. That might not help you guys too much - I have no idea what your traffic consists of - but it would be good public relations, at least.
It's also my impression that IP blocks are to some degree assigned by country - that's how the BBC prevents people from other countries from using iPlayer, and Hulu blocks anyone not in the USA. Seems like it should be possible to use that info here. Of course, that leaves the question of why they'd want to make less money... *sigh*