U.S. Department of Commerce
                    Economics and Statistics Administration
                          Office of Business Analysis
                                (202) 482-1986
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                          The ECONOMIC BULLETIN BOARD
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                   How much time it takes to download files

                             Last Updated: 10/04/93
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Users often ask how much if costs to download files from the Economic Bulletin
Board.  Costs are directly related to the speed of your modem connection with
the bulletin board.  A 300 bps (bits per second) modem takes four times as long
to download a file as a 1200 bps modem does.

The EBB charges users based on the amount of time they spend on the system.
Current charges are as follows:

300/1200/2400 bps service:

* Peak (8 a.m.  to Noon Monday through Friday):  $0.20 per minute.  This
translates to $12 per hour.

* Mid-peak (Noon to 6 p.m.  Monday through Friday):  $0.15/minute or $9/hour.

* Off-peak (6 p.m.  to 8 a.m.  and all day on weekends and federal holidays):
$0.05/minute or $3/hour.


9600 bps and Internet service:

Prices are exactly twice the 300/1200/2400 service prices.


The following table shows the cost of downloading roughly 100,000 bytes of data
from the EBB.  All charges are exclusive of any long-distance charges.

                         Cost to download 100,000 bytes

                         DL time       Cost      Cost      Cost
               Speed   (Minutes)       Peak  Mid-Peak  Off-peak

                 300        55.6     $11.11     $8.33     $2.78
                1200        13.9       2.78      2.08      0.69
                2400         6.9       1.39      1.04      0.35
                9600         1.7       0.68      0.51      0.17


Trade Opportunity Promotion (TOP) files are separated into Private Sector files
(with file names being PRyymmdd.TOP) and Government Tender files
(TNyymmdd.TOP).  At the end of each week, the 10 files for the week are
compressed into a self-extracting file (called TOPmmdd.EXE).

If you are specifically interested in how much it will cost to download the
TOPS files every month, the answer depends on your line speed as well as which
TOPS files you're after.  The following table gives you a rough idea of what
downloading costs would be for four week's worth of TOPS files using a 2400 bps
modem.  (The time period included one federal holiday which is pretty normal.)
Figures include some overhead for connecting into the system and logging off.

             Time of day        *.EXE      PR*.*     TN*.*    *.TOP
               Peak             $8.50     $12.50    $17.00   $22.00
               Mid-Peak          6.50      10.50     13.00    16.50
               Off-Peak          2.00       3.00      4.50     5.50