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U.S. Carriers To Share Connection Fees To Oz
T J Quoll pointed us to this story from Australia's The Age announcing an agreement reached this weekend among telecommunications officials from Australia, the U.S. and other members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group. The officials, says the article, "agreed to scrap arrangements under which non-U.S. Internet carriers had to pay for the cost of links to and from the U.S., while U.S. carriers paid nothing." Sounds only fair to me. The article concentrates on Australia; can anyone enlighten us on how it will affect connections to other countries?
The 2 billion odd dollars is more like AUD$100 (US$60-65) per person per year, given approx. 20 million people.
"In person, WAP'ed up and making your life a misery!" BOFH, 2003
What you do forget is that the United States Telcos are actually getting the better deals. Because of their power and size they get the best deals (though alot of countries still rip them off) If you don't live in the United States, you really are screwed. Because your telco isn't as important as the US telcos, they have to pay even more for the connection to other (espescially third world) countries. This has had as a result that it was often cheaper to first call to the US and then to the country you really wanted to talk to. That is why companies like Callback have been growing so much.
I would figure that your question would have to be answered with the statement that the United States on balance is probably doing better then the rest of the world. Or to put it in your words: Other countries are more screwed then the US.
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And yet you forget that we subsidise our gas prices.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
I seriously hope this is a trend that will spread. The cost of internet connections in non-American countries is insane because of this factor (that most US citizens don't/didn't even know about). Of course it's not the only factor, take for example the crazy profits of our own British Telecom - their profiteering and monopolising makes sure that my internet costs remain at over £360 a month for a 64k link.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
about time! access costs up to $40 per month for a reasonable ISP are starting to get annoying.
Will this have any effect on speeds of traffic Aus<->US? or just cost?
If they're mostly owned by US-based companies, then the US negotiators were probably laughing up their sleeves when they made this "concession."
Whatever, it's a start. For the first time, the US companies have admitted that maybe they should pay for some of the cost of connecting the US to Australia.
Think about that next time you download a copy of Samba
This seems to me to be a fairer reflection of content on the internet. As far as I understood, the pricing structure whereby other countrys would pay the US ISPs for 'net access was a result of most of the content on the web being a US export in the early days. This has obviously changed now, with more and more content having a non-US origin. It is only in the last few months that the number of internet users from outside the US have exceeded those in the US (or is this only a rumor?)
Ben Tindale
"Patience is a virtue, afforded those with nothing better to do." - I don't remember
one the the problems with the lack of settlement in the past has been virtually no incentive to host any content in australia - not only does it end up on the deep end of the internet gravity well but you actually have to pay a component of this *back* to american telcos when you ship bytes in that direction in "backchannel" costs. this starts to be significant when you're shipping terabytes of traffic a month and as your outbound is growing quickly, so is the bill.
with some settlement now available perhaps the long term trend will be that it simply makes more business sense now to leave content within australia instead of hosting it offshore.
as a maintainer of a large public archive i can state that we had to shut down international access to it because _more_ people in the US were accessing us than locally in australia, which was incurring horrendous network charges for to keep letting them do this!
-jason
30% of IP traffic between us and the USA comes from us to the USA, so the USA should have to pay for that traffic, just like we have to pay for the 70% that we get from the USA, it's just like paying for what you download.
But it's not just about downloading, it's about uploading as well. At least, that's how most traffic based accounting works. And if the ISP is going to charge for the traffic regardless of direction, they might as well equally share peering costs. (And even if traffic is not metered, the same logic applies - the better network infrastructure is a bonus for both sides, so they should share the cost.)
A few simple packets to some unfortunate foreign open mail relay and then bango, that relay is initiating mail back to mainly U.S. addresses.
The spammers cry: "I paid for my ISP account, I can do whatever I want. Save the trees, unsolicited e-mail is free."
OK, maybe this isn't the joke it was meant to be. All of my U.S originated spam lately seems to be bounced through open foreign relays... :(
I assume you are a resident of
www.eFax.com are spammers
Telstra started to make a major issue of this, including petitioning the FCC and then filing a lawsuit against the FCC, after the FCC threatened Telstra and other international phone companies with unilateral reductions in the international settlement rates applied to international telephone calls.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I have personally had two modems fried from lightning hitting our underground phone cable. In one case I unpluged the computer from the wall before the store (which I knew was coming). Both of the modems didn't work at all, and both computers lost their serial ports (but the computer otherwise worked) FWIW, our electric service is above ground.
The US isn't going to be paying for .AU access. The problem was that, say if for every 100 megs downloaded from the us to Australia 30 went the other way (no, I have no idea what the true figures are, but this is what the article implies). The Australian telcos would have to pay for the 100 megs, but the US wouldn't have to pay for the 30 megs. Australia will still be paying for what we use - just not what the US uses.
The question really should be why should the US get it for free?
OTOH, I think the figures in the article are mixed - I'd be very surprised if "Seventy per cent of Internet traffic between the two countries is from Australia into the US". I thought it would have been the other way around. Or does that mean 70% of requests?
Simply, what it means is that right now, 30% of IP traffic between us and the USA comes from us to the USA, so the USA should have to pay for that traffic, just like we have to pay for the 70% that we get from the USA, it's just like paying for what you download. Currently, the fastest connection one can afford here in Australia is a 56K modem, that in most places the fastest it will connect at is about 36K. Telstra (Tel$cum) won't pass on this saving because just like banks, they are greedy and only answer to their shareholders now they have been privatised, but at least we're seeing prices for calls finally come down in price! (Even if a local call costs 22c as opposed to 25c) Until the day arrives that Tel$cum make xDSL affordable to the average bloke who doesn't have glorious co-ax running past his castle (thanks to the freak'n greenies - 'no more overhead cables!') I'm not going to be a happy chappy. Perhaps we need to organise a 'walk for cheaper bandwidth' over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to show just what we think of the outrageous telecom prices we've been paying for so long.
just kidding
Therefore, as there will be no immediate change in what our supplier's suppliers will be paying, nothign will change. When they do renegotiate, will they pass it on?
As mentioned earlier, there are only a few major providers of bandwidth at the moment - telstra/aarnet, optus, and tig/ihug. Smaller satellite based services 1) suck, and 2) arent big enoguht to challenge formentioned ISPs.
Disclaimer - myt info is a few months old, but i dont think it has changed much.
Australia may be getting screwed on the cost of IP links, but the USA is getting screwed by many countries on international telephone calls. Many countries charge high rates to terminate international phone calls, much higher than their actual costs. While rates in the USA have dropped over the years, rates in most countries have not followed suit. This has resulted in the USA subsidizing the telephone systems of many countries, the outflow was $5.4 billion in 1996. I wonder what the actual telecommunications balance of trade is between Australia and the USA is when both voice and IP are considered.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat