We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot -- perhaps I've been unclear :

> There is an epistemological problem here about what "full price" means, which is subjective... You seem to want there to be some "other" type of price that is the "real price".

I think I made this pretty clear, but I'll re-state it to try to clarify what I mean : "Real price" is not an 'epistemological problem', it's simply the cost of dedicated internet service. That might come from AT&T or Comcast, but it might also come from US Signal, or Level 3, or Cogent, or Zayo, or any number of other providers.

When you pay for a typical home or 'small business' connection, you are not buying dedicated internet. You are buying shared internet. You've bought a small fraction of a connection. That's why, under times of heavy load, the connection slows down.

"Real price" is the cost of a connection that "never" slows down, because it is literally dedicated to you and only you.

For example, when you buy a connection from Comcast / Time Warner / Cox / Charter, they might advertise it as "up to 50mbps". Your not buying a solid 50mbps, your buying a tiny portion of that 50mbps line (a portion you share with your neighbors).

The "real price" of a 50mbps connection is much higher, because it's cost can't be spread out / shared among lots of people (since that connection is dedicated to you alone). I'm not inventing this price, it's a figure you get from an upstream provider in your area.

> Perhaps you are saying that ISPs make more money from business customers than from residential customers. Perhaps this is true, but the fact that it is convenient for the business model of an ISP to charge some customers more does not mean that other customers are not paying "full price".

Your twisting my words. I said business typically pay for dedicated internet ("full price"), where as residential users pay for shared internet ("partial price", or a small portion of the full price of that service.

Lots of people will complain they paid for "50x10". But they didn't, they paid for a small shared portion of that 50x10. They paid "partial price" for partial service, but feel entitled to full service. (They bought a shared connection, but feel entitled to a full, dedicated connection).

> You seem to be suggesting that the primary factor in network costs is use, but all the sources I read (for example this one)[1] suggest that connecting the last mile is expensive, and routing an arbitrary volume of packets over that pre-installed copper is extremely cheap.

Your have a few facts correct here, but have come to the wrong conclusion.

You are correct that 'routing arbitrary packets is cheap'. However, there are lots and lots of other costs your ignoring. For instance, installing copper is not cheap. Hooking up that copper to the internet at large, is not cheap. (You have to have internet access, to sell it.) Maintaining copper is not cheap. Simply letting copper sit in the ground, without touching it in any way, is not cheap. (One quick example: Copper is not a fixed expense in the US, you typically have to pay each month for the 'right of way' to even let copper sit in the ground or in the air, untouched. Every single foot is billed. In my city, that cost is 33cents per foot, so to run a cable from two buildings two miles apart, costs $290 per month, just for the right-of-way for that cable to exist. That doesn't include the cost to install or maintain it, or connect it to the internet, or pay anyone to install it, or pay anyone to maintain the network behind it, or any other expenses -- simply for permission for that cable to exist at all runs multiple-hundred-dollars each month)

You are correct that 'last mile is expensive'. But you have it backwards -- high-margin business connections subsidize cheap residential ones. Businesses pay for those two to three mile hops, and home users get cheaper access by virtue of being 'on-the-way' to a business. This is why many businesses have fiber to their location even while most homes don't.

> There is an epistemological assumption in here that "the system" is fair or impartial or acknowledged in general by society or based on objective costs, or something.

Nope. No assumptions. Every home user signs an agreement, that clearly states what is "fair". They include terms like "no hosting a data center" or "don't use more than x00GB per month bandwidth". I'm not inventing or assuming a definition of "fair", it's spelled out in detail when you subscribe for service.

If you don't like a given ISP's definition of "fair", you buy something else with less restrictions that you feel is "fair". That usually ends up being dedicated internet service, since you can typically do (almost) anything you want with it.

Some ISP's have ridiculious definitions of what's "fair" that break traditionally expected norms. ISP's with ridiculous restrictions should totally eliminate those (e.g. ISP's should allow friends to play Minecraft on their connection).

But the simply act of having some restrictions is not, in and of itself, ridiculous. Since the product is by-nature shared, you need some level of protection against bad neighbors, or you end up with a 'tragedy of the commons' problem.

> I did a cost comparison, and consumer vs business class in my area for my ISP is merely double.

Your comparison is not even remotely fair. You did a cost comparison for "consumer shared" and "business class shared". The marginal cost between those is very little (they're both the same shared connection, business class just gets higher priority).

A real comparison would be you comparing your home ISP, with a Business Metro Ethernet line, or a Business Dedicated Fiber line. It will probably take you a little while to do a proper comparison, as at these prices, you almost always have to talk to a sales person first (pricing isn't public). In my area, a dedicated 20x20 runs $400 to $800 a month, assuming your already on-net (most businesses aren't, they pay even more).