Although taken for granted in the U.S and European universities as an essential tool for research and communication, the Internet is still a costly commodity in countries with limited research funds. In several countries where the government has not assumed the burden of paying for Internet connections, universities and research institutions had to devise ways of paying for them on their own.
 
In Chile and New Zealand,  universities pay not only the installation and connection fees, but also charges proportional to the volume of information they transfer in and out of their site. Although the pricing schemes devised are simplistic and perhaps unworkable for the Internet at large, the experiences of the two countries provide insight into the impact of usage based pricing.

Chile            New Zealand