And also the call packages too?
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They do not get bundles.
They run a network, which lets you transfer data and make calls.
Building and maintaining that network costs money, so you need to pay for it. So they sell you a service.
One of the ways of selling that service is by giving you _this much_ data to transfer and _this much_ calls to make for _this much_ money.
The ISPs build the infrastructure. That is the fibre optics, copper wire, network switches, etc.
That infrastructure has a maximum bandwidth, that is to say, how much data it can handle going through the network. It’s not a finite amount of Gigabytes, it’s how many per second the network can handle. That capacity is the same at 3 am and at 5 pm. That is why data caps are basically useless, they do nothing to reduce bandwidth usage. When kids get home from school and play Fortnite and watch Netflix, it’ll use a lot of bandwidth no matter the data caps. In an ideal world, ISPs would not oversell capacity (that causes speeds to drop significantly at peak hours), build more infrastructure as needed, and price the whole thing fairly. In truth, the US and Canada suffer from a monopoly problem with ISPs where they let infrastructure deteriorate, don’t build out their networks (that would lower their profits), oversell capacity, and put in data caps for no reason other than to charge more money.
In turn, the ISP’s network is connected to other networks that don’t sell bandwidth to consumers, those are called tier 3, tier 2 and tier 1 providers depending on who they connect to.
What ISPs sell you is access to their network at a given max speed that in theory won’t exceed the capacity of the network with the other users on it. In turn, their network gets you access to the content on the other tiers of providers which gets you access to Netflic, reddit, Tik Tok, etc.
They have revenue management and charging departments that use certain software; where they get bundle specifications from the strategy and pricing teams, and then the revenue management/charging engineers create that bundle on the system. For example; the company wants to start offering a bundle that gives you 50 GB of data; and 200 minutes, for $15; and the bundle expires by the end of the month. So the engineers set up those rules on the system by creating a new “prepaid” bundle:
– call limit = 200 minutes
– data allowance = 15 GB
– renewable = FALSE
– validity = 30 days
– price = $15
and so on. And then they test it; and push it to production. And they specify a code that the subscribers dial to subscribe to that new plan.
There are different types of ISP. Your ISP probably has its own ISP that it connects to.
A Tier 1 ISP runs the critical communications infrastructure, also called the backbones. These are the companies that run lines of fibre optic cables within the country, across countries, under the sea etc. They are big enough to have peering agreements with other Tier 1 ISPs, meaning they cooperate to carry each others data without payment. But since their business is wholesale bandwidth, they won’t really deal with small companies or residential users.
A Tier 2 ISP isn’t as powerful, they have their own infrastructure, and may peer with other Tier 2 ISPs. But they aren’t big enough to peer with Tier 1 ISPs, they have to pay for that bandwidth.
A Tier 3 ISP has no infrastructure, they only purchase bandwidth from a Tier 1 or 2 provider.
This is the terminology used for internet/data networks, but there is equivalent concepts for telephony services.
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