DIALing for Dollars: Dialog's New Pricing Structure and the DialUnit Debacle

Abstract

Dialog Corp. has introduced significant changes of its pricing structure for online database services. The principle of the change is that the price component proportional to connect time was discontinued and replaced by a fee called DialUnit claimed to be the fee component "proportional to system's load". An analysis is presented based on sample searches, and the consequences of the new Dialog pricing scheme are evatuated in detail. It is concluded that the new price structure in fact resuits in price rise, and it can affect significantly the market of commercial oniine databases.