In One Timeline

The Internet Used to Cost $1,200 a Megabit

Wholesale IP-transit price in dollars per megabit per second, 1998-2025, on a log axis: from ~$1,200 a month to about a nickel — a ~24,000x collapse that made "just stream it" possible.

—credits4sourcesAll episodes
No third-party image credits. This episode's visuals are original charts/animations and AI-generated b-roll — nothing that requires attribution.

Data sources & references

01IP-transit pricing 1998-2010 — DrPeering / William B. Norton, "Internet Transit Pricing — Historical and Projected"
02IP-transit pricing 2012-2025 — TeleGeography (10-gig port medians; lowest 10/100-gig on offer)
03Inflation adjustment — BLS CPI-U; cross-check Nielsen's Law of Internet Bandwidth
04Music — "Between the Lines" by Ondrosik, CC0 1.0