Since it’s clear that users want flat-rate pricing – and I should make it clear that I like it, too – any [company] that didn’t offer it would go out of business.
Predictor: Wolff, Steve
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for The Guardian, a London-based newspaper, technology commentator Mike Holderness quotes Steve Wolff, director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Networking and Communication. Holderness writes: ”As Steve Wolff, direction of the NSF Division of Networking and Communications, points out: ‘Congestion pricing is techically challenging … two or three orders of magnitude [i.e. 100 to 1,000 times] more work that switches do at present.’ While [the Washington, D.C.-based Taxpayer Asset Project’s concerns over Internet charges having a negative impact on its ability to enable democracy] are valid, he says, ‘their fears are at present quite groundless … Since it’s clear that users want flat-rate pricing – and I should make it clear that I like it, too – any [company] that didn’t offer it would go out of business.'”
Biography:Steve Wolff was director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Networking and Communication. (Technology Developer/Administrator.)
Date of prediction: June 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Cost/Pricing
Name of publication: Guardian (London)
Title, headline, chapter name: High Anxiety for Hitchhikers on the Infobahn: Just as Millions Outside the Groves of Academe Discover the Joys of Essentially Free Global Communications on the Internet, it’s All Changing
Quote Type: Paraphrase
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.poptel.org.uk/nuj/mike/articles/gdn-netb.htm
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney