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Peer-to-Peer Networks Blocked in NZ
mjl writes: "It seems that Time Warner is not the only ISP that limits bandwidth of residential customers. In New Zealand, Telecom is also blocking the use of well known P2P applications. What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come."
Exactly, I can't figure out how anyone could ever make any real money on these technologies. P2P has it's uses, but it won't have any more impact that anything else in the computing world.
The ISPs doesn't have the money to build superfast networks and charge almost nothing for it. I am afraid that the massive use of bandwidth will only result in services where you pay according to how much bandwidth you eat up. That in turn will deliver the internet completely into the hands of the rich media companies that can afford setting up servers.
For those who haven't been following the entire debate, when the article was first posted online yesterday Chris Barton suggested that vampires on their 128Kbit connections were downloading "5Gb (gigabytes) a day / 120Gb/month."
Today, it has been corrected. Not annotated, acknowledged or errata'd -- silently replaced.
Telecom own the local loop. They are our spun-off-from-the-Government telco. We have no choice.
The problem with ISPs only happens when the pipe is 100% full. They wouldn't limit if the pipe was only 40% full. They don't want to upgrade bandwidth on a pipe that's 100% full to support low-cost DSL subscribers.
As an ISP employee, I understand the business model of buy in bulk, sell in pieces. But don't think that I'm making money in this market... I bet I earn less than you by a large margin. Even relative to the price of living.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
It's not "blocked" as such, the p2p ports are just allocated a smaller pool of bandwidth than the rest.
What would Brian Boitano do?
If you don't like Telecom products, go to someone else.
I'm afraid the options for consumer broadband (16KB/sec broadband?) are somewhat limited in New Zealand. Very, very limited. Go to someone else? I wish that were an option!
Having said this, I can fully understand the ISP's decision as I've seen what MP3 and DivX can do to my server's bandwith.
Yeah, the only reason they haven't done it earlier is because they're trying to get the high users. All the other ISPs have been forced to put 10GB or so caps on DSL because of the low profit margins (half of the money, at least, goes to Telecom no matter which ISP you choose). So this has left Telecom's Xtra as the only real option if you want to download more than that. Now they feel they've saturated the market for high-usage flat rate users they're now considering introducing a monthly cap of 6GB of so, which is lower than even the other ISPs have previously done.
I guess they're hoping that the benefits of switching to another ISP for an extra few GB aren't attractive enough to overcome the aggravation of dumping people's current account?
No there are many ISPs in NZ. Telecom, the main/only provider in the local loop also have a ISP called Xtra. The number of ISPs that offer high speed connects is more limited, and you really need to be in a main centre to have any choice at all. Most ISPs have to use Telecom's infrastructure at some point.
An no, they didn't censor a large part of the internet - that would be Australia.
BTW, NZ is far more technically advanced than many western economies. There is very little or no regulation in the telecoms field.
Not in NZ mate. Well, not for a long time. The second biggest telco - Clear (or rather TelstraClear) - couldn't even provide a DSL line for my Co' in the 4th biggest city in NZ.
History Lesson:
Govt owned Post Office, which owned phone lines.
Govt deregulated, Telecom formed to operate phone system, and therefor owned phone lines.
Telecom basically has all the phone lines, and unless govt steps up and forces it, that's how it's gonna stay for a while. Others provide alternatives in some CBD's etc, but it'll be a long time bfore it changes.
BTW, Power co is different. We have Power Producers, Line Companies, Retailers, etc. Telecom owns the lot. It's just a different game, and I can't see Telecom giving it up so easily.
And the irony is, NZ started off with pay per packet charges.
When ISP's first started turning up in NZ, as a corporate or individual, you basically had two options, pay per hour online, or pay per meg of traffic.
In fact, most ISP's in NZ still charge (at the corporate level) per meg, it's just that you pay $X and get Y megs per month, then if you go over Y megs in a month, you pay $Z per meg (which will be higher than the $X rate).
I know of one ISP in NZ that provides true flat-rate bandwidth at the corporate level.
Flat-rate in NZ is really only available in dial-up form, as most ISPs offering flat-rate DSL have bandwidth caps (between 5 and 10 gig usually) and that's only on their already rate-limited services (128kbit/s down and up).
I haven't heard of anyone providing "flat-rate" on full-blown ADSL (8meg/s down, 800kbit/s up max).
When it comes to per meg charging, Xtra (aka NZ Telecom) has to be the worst, as they don't differentiate between NZ and other traffic! Nor do they differentiate beween upload and download traffic!
There's always been plenty to gripe about with NZ Telecom, the biggest being that due to certain political situations and local loop issues, many corporates are stuck with them (my work included).
They have poor performance, high prices, low levels of service and wouldn't know a "Managed Service" if it jumped out and bit them.
Bah!
Mr Grumpy.