Daily average spot bandwidth price at a NYC exchange, 2002 - 2008, down from ~$200 in 2002 to ~$20 (per Mbps-month) in 2008. For comparison, telegeography data shows a substantial (but lesser) drop in prices for transoceanic routes. - ⓞnor

May 2002: http://web.invisiblehand.net/wp... predicts "[Within] 12 months (by mid-2003), Cogent's price for a 100Mbps wholesale circuit will be near $5,000/month ... other providers' prices will probably continue to decline at the historical rate of 30% per year ... In the meantime, buyers should be aware that there is no such thing in the year 2002 as a Mbps for 10 or 30$/month." I think they were wrong about Cogent. - ⓞnor

Mar 2007: http://money.cnn.com/2007... describes Cogent (in Fortune magazine) as if their strategy and surprisingly cheap prices were news. I remember the de-peering events they talked about; some of them created substantial disruptions in Internet traffic. - ⓞnor

Apr 2007: http://www.renesys.com/blog... comments on Cogent de-peering some smaller ISPs in Europe, and discusses their overall strategy. Nothing I've read really explains their anomalous pricing in a satisfactory way. Anyway, I'm done with this curiosity-quest now. - ⓞnor

Cogent released $10/Mbps pricing in 2003 (I probably misremembered what the sales rep told me about 2000). http://www.net99.net/htdocs... I guess availability of $10/Mbps has spread to more data centers and areas of the country since then, though the price hasn't gotten lower. I'm curious how you found the graph, though. Awesome sleuthing! - Sanjeev Singh

I found it with a Google search for [bandwidth prices]. - ⓞnor

So this is your yearly post? - j1m

No, it's just an extended comment on Sanjeev's post. - ⓞnor

i like that graph just as on object. - edythe

Sorry to jump in late but I just stumbled across this. I am the person who wrote that white paper about Cogent and also published that graph every month. I think I was right about Cogent that their pricing was unsustainable. Their price didn't go up from $30 to $50, they went bankrupt instead. Here's a follow-up from 5 years later. http://nemozen.blogspot.com/2007... In terms of the overall market, I think in that period 2002-07, the IP transit price drop was steeper than the historical trend, which as I recall is closer to 30% per year (there's a paper by Lawrence Roberts in IEEE computer magazine that has great data from the mid 70s to the 90s). I'm not surprised the drop in transoceanic routes is lesser. - nemo

Wow, fantastic, thanks for the update. - ⓞnor