Cogent Offers 90th-Percentile Pricing

ISP Cogent Communications Group Inc. said today it will bill its wholesale customers at a 90th percentile, rather than the industry norm of the 95th percentile, for excess bandwidth usage.

Doing so, the company said, provides even more competitive pricing to customers including universities and online gaming sites whose bandwidth requirements vary from month to month.

Nth Percentile calculation is a mathematical algorithm most large service providers use to calculate monthly bills for customers of burstable service to accommodate peaks above baseline service agreements. Most service providers, including Cogent, measure bandwidth levels every 5 minutes over the course of a month for all customers. Cogent’s 90th-percentile billing throws out the highest 10 percent of bandwidth usage peaks versus the 5 percent offered by other ISPs, according to the company.

As bandwidth demand increases significantly through the growth of applications such as VoIP, IPTV and video on demand, Cogent will continue to lead the industry by providing unprecedented value to other service providers and corporate end users,” said Dave Schaeffer, CEO of Cogent Communications.

The 90th-percentile billing goes into effect today.

Cogent Communications Inc. www.cogentco.com