Bandwidth metering made early web broadcasting prohibitively expensive

Evidence

A camgirl’s equipment and Internet access costs were more or less fixed in those days, but the cost of broadcasting was variable and unpredictable. It was common then to hear camgirls speak at length about the price of bandwidth: the fees charged by ISPs for transmission of information to end users. Today most users’ bandwidth might as well be unmetered—a parent can sit in a public park and broadcast images of her child’s new skateboarding technique live to her in-laws without ever giving thought to who is paying for that service. In 2000, however, ISPs would typically ‘serve’ only a few megabytes of data before charging additional fees. A moderately popular site could easily rack up charges in the hundreds of dollars. — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls, 159

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The early JenniCam incurred over $15,000 in monthly bandwidth costs — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in…, 160; Early internet platform costs enabled niche content mainstream media ignored — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 167; Narrower signal bandwidth necessarily spreads signals over longer time spans — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2413 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Early internet platform costs enabled niche content mainstream media ignored #expands (0.80) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 167
• Narrower signal bandwidth necessarily spreads signals over longer time spans #expands (0.80) — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2413
• The tech industry reintroduced scarcity into the internet’s supposedly abundant space #corroborates (0.80) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 723
• Early internet buzz did not yet translate into commercial success #qualifies (0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 191