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Death of Decent Australian Broadband
iamplasma writes: "As reported by several Australian newspapers, Optus cable internet services will be switching their standard plan to a 3gb "soft-limit" broadband service (once the limit is passed, the service slows to 28kbps). This is effectively the end of decent broadband in Australia, with Optus being the only major provider to offer a service without a highly restrictive usage cap. This is also the ISP who proudly promoted themselves over their main competitor specifically over the issue of the competitor's 3gb limits."
While I know the vast majority of broadband packages I've used either don't have a cap, or simply have a "per gb" fee after a cap is reached, I have the sinking suspicion that my current provider (1.2mb DSL) puts "heavy" users on a cycle that gradually decreases bandwidth with total amount used. In talking to others in my area with a similar file sharing setup, as we approach 2-3gb of data per week, our speeds slow to a trickle (only to mysteriously appear at 12am monday). Could this be the implementation of an unoffical soft limit? Could similar tactics be in place already with many other providers across the US with most users not aware of it? The "gradual" drop in bandwidth is the scary part though. Until I talked to friends and realized the relationship between amount downloaded and speed, I didn't see anything other that occasional "traffic jams" down the line. Now my paranoia has kicked in. . . .
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See the site of the Australian Broadband Community - http://www.whirlpool.net.au/
So suck down that data while you still can
What are they thinking? 28kbps is slower than what you'll get out of the average DIAL-UP, let alone broadband.
In fairness though, they have a point. $54.95AUS per month does compare favorably with getting a second phone line and hooking a modem up to it all day.
And it's also true that regular users don't need anymore than 3Gb per month. Unless you're a techie and downloading a lot of Linux ISOs or watching independant movies, 3Gb per month will get you a long way. It applies to Web hosting, so why not here?
Perhaps it's time for ISPs to charge per megabyte? There's no such thing as 'unlimited' or 'free'.. you end up paying in the end. So why not charge per megabyte, which will force users to consider what they're actually downloading. US$0.01 per megabyte sounds fair.
(In the UK, BT is also trying a similar scheme with dial-up. That is, their 'Anytime' service is not actually 'any time' anymore.. you can only use it for a maximum of 12 hours a day!)
mogorific carpentry experiments
In truth, your post is coherent and logical, but let me play devil's advocate:
I've heard I don't know how many times that "xxxx is enough for the average user" in computer-speak, and every time it's short-sighted. It may be enough given usage patterns right now, but as soon as video is distributed on the network, all software is distributed that way, and as soon as The Next Big Thing (tm) comes along, your point becomes moot. Believe me, 3GB a month will seem like a pittance sooner than you think.
Computers in general aren't even 1 1,000,000th as powerful as they need to be. Look at the latest greatest game, look at how beautiful the 3D is, and then look out your window and realize how truly shitty it looks and you get the idea. We will need more computing horsepower for graphics and AI and everything else, and we will definitely need more bandwidth than 3 lousy GB per month.
Well, it makes business sense, pure and simple. If I want to download the 500 MB Lineage installer, and that alone takes one sixth of my monthly allotment, then it ought to be my problem, right? Wrong. The problem is, the Internet is as much an entertainment medium as anything else, and it's competing with technologies that are not pay-as-you-go, like television and so forth. I think the public will demand unlimited access, if given a choice. The first time they get a bill for $1000 in a month, they'll be looking elsewhere.
Of course, the industry coould just collude and force per-download pricing, but it's ridiculous.
As a consumer, I'm already pissed off that my cable company won't allow me to broadcast. It's their way of keeping distribution in the hands of the few; a way to maintain the status quo. Yes, I understand the reasons why they don't want to host my pr0n and wArEz, but I'm being selfish here; this is about what I want.
I for one will always seek out unlimited pricing if possible.
gameDB
1. 550Mb/Month $AU64.95
2. 3Gb/Month $AU79.95
3. 5Gb/Month $AU164.95
4. 10Gb/Month $AU305.95
The average user, according to Optus, uses around 65Mb per day (or almost 2Gb/Month). The 3Gb plan could therefore be construed as offering 50% more than the current average usage.
For comparison, the plan I am currently on is $AU74.95/Month (incl GST) for up to ten times the average monthly usage, or 19.5Gb.
So, time to start hunting for alternatives. Oh, and ways to monitor my usage.
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
I'd be lying if I said I was surprised. Fortunately our equipment here has been set up to count the data going in and out. We're planning to setup a huge squid cache (not to mention a dumping ground) and we should be able to stay under 3Gb per month.
Two things that deserve a mention though are the speed being "throttled" and no extra charges. At least you don't run up a massive bill as you do with another company we know well!
They are. When OptusNet aquired the optus@home business after the partnership died, they upgraded the solaris based system to one centered around Linux.
Having started and run an ISP in the mid nineties, there is a simple equation. In Australia, bandwith costs money and is considerably more expensive than in the US (because of the poor deal Australia gets on bandwith to/from the US).
Asking Australian service providers, no matter how large to foot the bill for file sharing networks, movie downloads etc. is a non starter as an idea. Would you like Optus to go the way of One.Tel? No bandwith is considerably worse than limited bandwith.
As far as file sharing goes, why not start building networks using wireless links etc. in urban areas (I realise this is a non starter in rural areas), or perhaps start an ISP who's emphasis is on file sharing (connections provided via wireless or ADSL (I have a feeling such an ISP would quickly attract the attention of the Australian equivalent of the RIAA)).
As far as distributing Linux ISOs via CD/DVD is a far more efficient method while bandwith is still limited. Perhaps talk to Optus about putting certain large files like this online for download at reduced bandwith cost (i.e. the bandwith used is say 10% when downloaded from their "mirror"). This could be a different way for Optus to distinguish their service from Telstra's (perhaps some sort of voting system could be implemented to request files)
First all these telecom companies start going out of business because they say they put in too much capacity that is not being use, then they start creating an artificial scarity of bandwith to make more money...maybe we should put together a class action lawsuit...oh, sorry, I forgot we were not down in the States....
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Yeah, though people on the netstats system will lose out too. When the usage becomes capped like this, you can obviously expect the average usage to fall dramatically, affecting the netstats figures quite a bit too.
I've heard I don't know how many times that "xxxx is enough for the average user" in computer-speak, and every time it's short-sighted.
It is short-sighted, but complain when the Next Big Thing actually arrives. We have 2.4 GHz Pentium IV's, and I'm 'chugging' along on my 500 MHz Celeron, and the most processor intensive operation I do (aside from dnetc, but that doesn't count) is run mplayer, which eats 25% CPU. This is why the tech industry's in a slump, we don't have a Big Thing and haven't had a latest Big Thing for a while now.
Look at the latest greatest game, look at how beautiful the 3D is, and then look out your window and realize how truly shitty it looks and you get the idea. We will need more computing horsepower for graphics and AI and everything else, and we will definitely need more bandwidth than 3 lousy GB per month.
And in twenty years when we're at that point, we'll have a far better Internet infrastructure than what we have now. You presume that the 3GB a month limit will still be the same in the year 2022, and it won't. Sorry.
The problem is, the Internet is as much an entertainment medium as anything else, and it's competing with technologies that are not pay-as-you-go, like television and so forth.
While the Internet is an entertainment medium, it differs from traditional devices by the method of transport: Waves vs. bytes. You can put a 100,000 watt FM tower and cover millions of people with your radio station. With radio and television, you don't pay for each user like you do with the internet distribution.
Calculate the bandwith costs to cover four million people listening to 128 kbps Internet radio instead. To serve this, you'd have to be thinking 4,000,000 * 16 * 1024 bytes per second. Each OC unit (Optical Carrier, as in OC-3) transmits data at 51.84 Mbps, or 6,794,792 bytes per second. Divide out and you're going to need an OC-9645.
Even if this were a regular day, ie, not four million people listening, and you had a fraction of the total listeners, you'd still have to serve massive bandwith out; the costs of which would be far more than any large-market FM radio station could cover.
I'd rather put up my 100,000 watt FM antenna.
I hate to rain on your parade, but the Internet is not the best method of distribution for, uh, packaged entertainment, like pay per view and radio and television shows. Maybe in 2022 when we have your true-to-life 3D, things will change, but it is unfortunate that in 2002 we have advanced so far but still have a long way ahead of us.
If you disagree, reply.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
It's just a case of greed. Corporate greed and user greed. The OptusNet cable division has turned a profit for the first time, but they need more money to pay for the other bits of optus, so to speak, that run at a loss.
The users want more. Fair enough, people like me have become accustomed to the soft download limits we have previously had. We don't use the phonebook. I don't watch TV or listen to the radio. The Internet is everywhere, accessible anywhere in the house from the nearest PC or laptop with wireless card.
Compared to Telstra users, who are used to their 3GB/month cap, this is a major blow to our habits. This also affects the broadband acceptance in Australia - we've had all sorts of politicians and companies (even Bill Gates himself) tell us that our broadband is too expensive and inaccessible.
First off 28kbps is far too low for a "cutoff". Also monthly setups mean you can go quite a while at low bandwidth. While I have posted this idea before [the idea of a cutoff] I normally mentioned a daily cutoff not monthly.
What they should have done is say limited the connection to a couple 100 MB a day, then after that quarter the bandwidth. If you normally get around 2Mbps down 28kbps is 1/71'th of the bandwidth!!!
Seriously while it would be nice to be able to listen to shoutcast 24/7 and download fresh ISO's of *nix every two weeks you have to face the fact that this "unlimited inet pipe" was really just a fluke. It wasn't supposed to happend yet!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
There are plenty of decent deals out there. You just have to be reasonable. Leechers should get their head around the fact that they are *not* profitable customers, and will be treated accordingly.
In Perth, Western Australia, Arachnet offers ADSL at pretty much the same price points, which the bonus that traffic to and from WAIX, a local peering point, is free. (Subject to fair use; don't run a heavy-traffic VPN across to your other office in Sydney over it). PlanetMirror is on a network peered to WAIX, so that's all your ISOs taken care of.
The wholesale situation with exchanges and the local loop has finally reached the point where companies other than Telstra and Optus can offer decent pricing. They just need people to start buying the services they offer.
There are others here in WA too; Westnet, iiNet and probably more. I personally don't have any of these products at home (can't justify a long-term contract) - I'm a satisfied Arachnet dialup customer. At work, we have iiNet's offering and it's very, very nice.
It is short-sighted, but complain when the Next Big Thing actually arrives. We have 2.4 GHz Pentium IV's, and I'm 'chugging' along on my 500 MHz Celeron, and the most processor intensive operation I do (aside from dnetc, but that doesn't count) is run mplayer, which eats 25% CPU.
Great, so you don't do much with your computer. If I merely capture some video from my DV camera and compress for Web playback (i.e., take a home movie and show to my friends), my computer is at 100% CPU utilization, and the compression takes a goddamned long time (it shouldn't). There's plenty of room for speed improvements. And that's to say nothing of gaming. Pretty much any game will max either your CPU or video (pick one). I'm talking consumer applications here; not futzing around at command lines writing code, which I also do, but which requires a computer made in 1985.
I have no idea why you selected 2022 as the year we will need more than 3 GB a month. 3 GB is nothing! I've downloaded that inside of a week before. Hell, a few movie trailers and some game demos will get you there pretty fast, not to mention casual surfing.
While the Internet is an entertainment medium, it differs from traditional devices by the method of transport...
Thanks for the primer on how the Internet works, but you're missing the point. I was discussing it from the consumer perspective, not the business perspective. From the consumer perepective, I don't care how they do what they have to do. If they could give me a bajillion terabyte per second connection for $20 a month, I would be more than happy.
My point was, whether IP networks are an efficient mode of transport for television or whatever, compared to broadcast, it doesn't matter, because that's one of the things it's going to be used for. And they have to get used to it.
Furthermore, just like Cable TV fragmented the television market (the networks are getting smaller and smaller auiences all the time), Internet distribution of viewable media will fragment the market even further, and this changes the economies of scale.
In other words, there will never, ever be 4,000,000 people listening to your online radio station. The only reason that happens at all is because there are so few stations, and people have to listen to something....so they do.
When there are a hundred thousand online stations for you to choose from, you will be able to choose "traditional sumatran folk music", with 15 other people, and the listening communities inside a given genre will be much smaller. In short, there will be different metrics for success.
This also means there will be different metrics for usage patterns, and different metrics for creating business models. The slowdown in the technology industry is, in my opinion, largely due to the fact that technology companies are operating under old economy business models rather than new economy business models (in short, they hemmorrhage way too much money and hire way too many people).
I agree with what someone said in another thread on this topic: these decisions are partly motivated by money, yes, but they are also motivated by a desire to maintain the status quo. These companies want to limit broadcasting, file sharing, etc., as much as they want to limit costs.
And, as a consumer, that's why it irks me. If I thought they would go out of business without a limited pricing structure, I would agree with you. But money is not the only operative concern here.
gameDB
I'm only going to discuss a few points here, as almost everything here is incredibly well-said.
First off, the reason why I picked 2022 is that you compared looking out the window to today's modern 3D graphics. We're running into hard, physical limits with what we have now, and to get to that true-to-life 3D will require a radical architecture shift (like PlayStation 2's Emotion Engine vs. conventional x86 computing) or maybe those CFNET-manufactured chips, which are 10 years off. Maybe 2022 is a bit late, but I try to be realistic. But I digress.
You made a loose tie-in to bandwith usage: We will need more computing horsepower for graphics and AI and everything else, and we will definitely need more bandwidth than 3 lousy GB per month.
Key word: Will.
Second thing while I have my soapbox:
I don't know what the average Joe does, and you're not an average Joe either--you're posting on slashdot. You can throw out statistics that X number of people own a DV camera and Yahoo has Y million users and casual surfing eats 6 - 20 MB/hour and try and correlate them to till the cows come home, but discussing what the average Joe does is wholly academic, and you can't add up anecodtal evidence of a hundred slashdotters to figure Joe out. He's a mythical bastard like that.
I read somewhere that something like 1% of cable internet users eat 90% of the bandwith used, and Optus cable is doing something about it. And this whole slashdot discussion is largely that 1% complaining.
From the article:
The [Optus] spokesperson said about 75 per cent of OptusNet Cable users would fall within the 3GB download range, but conceded that some customers would eventually pay more under the new system.
75% is a pretty clear majority, and I think Optus, after much research, has figured out Average Joe.
Lastly, you made one very disagreeable point:
These companies want to limit broadcasting, file sharing, etc., as much as they want to limit costs.
Start apache on port 8080 to circumvent your ISP blocking incoming port 80. Serve and broadcast at will. Pay for business class service which raises your upload cap and removes port restrictions. If you have something to say, pay the messenger, just like everybody else.
By the way, @home only blocked incoming port 80 on my segment because of Code Red, et al. Cox.net continues this cap and block as most people are too stupid to run a webserver, and looking at the big picture, I'm actually kind of glad they do this.
If you disagree, reply.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
Australia is *the* country which could make Wireless useful and ubiquitous. Even UMTS would be a good alternative in that country.
However large Australian corporations tend to be run by greedy little bastards who have no qualms in squeezing their customers for those last few pennies. Perhaps Telstra should be known as Taipan and Optus as Funnel Web.
Customer satisfaction is not a widely recognised concept in Oz.
Only some parts of Sydney, Brisbane and Melborne ever had cable internet.
As far as warez goes: the main reason I want broadband is so I can download linux ISOs.
The second reason is warez. But people, if the entertainment and software companies arn't forced to provide downloadable versions of their products, they ain't going to do it out of kindness.
I'd pay for fast servers. I already do for some programs (ei DAVE, Virtual PC and EV Nova). The rest of software, movies and music will be legally downloadable if the corperations are forced by consumer soverignty. I'm not advocating free beer. But internet distribution (not just the ordering) is a good thing, and better when it's legal with artists and programmers compenstated.
BTW the only broadband for those aussies not in syd/melb/bris is ADSL. Decent ADSL (3GB peak, 7GB off-peak 512K/128K) is AUS$100 (US$50)
The again relates to why adam smith's free market is a good thing. As it is, their is 2 cable companies in Australia. If one changes terms, there far less incentive for the other to keep there old terms. This is far different with real competition.
Barto
First of all, it would be hard to make it fair and profitable at the same time. Take my current connection at home: I download 20GB/month, and pay $40/month for that capability. However, there are some people who just check email and do very little web browsing, with usage around 300MB/month. If they were paying for thier usage based on the same rate I pay, they would be paying less than $1/month. That would not be profitable for the ISP.
Another reason, is the simple fact that tracking bandwidth usage and billing for that usage can be very expensive in itself. It's not enough to just say "You transfered 8GB last month, so the bill is $80". With per MB billing, the biller would have to break down where exactly each download came from and each upload went to. That isn't cheap. This also brings to mind the fact that denial of services would take on a whole other meaning, someone on a hacked cable connection could suddenly have a $200 bill. And then the real reason against per MB charges, is that the real cost is in laying the lines, not running data over them. It doesn't cost the real ISP much at all to transfer data, why should the end users pay?
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
Does anybody know the difference between GB and Gb? Here's a hint...one is bit and the other is byte. If the article is posted correctly then it would seem that they have capped their users at a total of 384 megabytes of downstream per month, not even enough to download a single Linux ISO. Why is it that I get the impression that they're actually talking about gigabytes instead of gigabits, even though the original poster and the Slashdot editor can't tell the difference?
Maybe they could get a job at NASA converting meters to yards.
If you need more than 3Gb, you should just order more than one 3 GB plan. The 5 Gb and 10 Gb plans are more expensive per gb than the 3 Gb plan. And when the soft-limit kicks in, you still got 2x28k or 3x28k. You will need to use load-balancing to use the bandwidth, but that should be possible. It should work at least for web surfing.
Jan
Optus was never going to be a viable competitor to Telstra. The Australian broadband industry is being held by the balls at the whim of this one company.
v e.gif) wasn't a soul-less ex-banker, we could have cheap unlimited broadband in Australia. Yet, if you study his strategy and read his speeches through the years, his plan is to get Telstra the brand into every aspect of Australian life. The company whose example he cited in his plans was AOL, and if you look at the directions they have been taking, a clear picture can be seen. Telstra have blamed their introduction of a 3GB cap (upload and download inclusive) on the 'fact' that overseas data is too expensive and due to leechers, those people who buy broadband but don't continue using it like a dialup connection. Interestingly, Telstra own 90% of the fibre and copper wire infrastructure in Australia but have also included local data transfer into the 3GB as well - *except* (And here's the good part) when using Telstra's own web portal www.bigpond.com. You can download as much music and reviews, streaming video, game demos and files, news, and other amazing content as you want without being charged to the quota. Yes ladies and gentlement, they are succeeding where AOL has failed. Telstra's aim is to cordone off the entire Australian Internet population into their own Intranet, like a herd of sheep, and all is going to plan. Now that the artificial bottlenecks have been put in place and we have been charged to buggery out of accessing the global part of the Internet (US8 cents per megabyte if you go over the 3GB), the shackles are popped on and we're *free* to roam around in captivity.
Telstra is a telecommunications company that happens to be the largest company in Australia. It was created by the government as a public utility by from the public purse in the early 1900's. Through the 20th century, the Australian public paid for all of its infrastructure development many times over.
If the CEO of Telstra (Ziggy - http://members.ozemail.com.au/%7Eisherwood/fugiti
The only way for this situation to get better is if the government (who still owns 51% of Telstra), make a decision to split the company into service and infrastructure, then keep the infrastructure publicly owned (just like the road system). Only then are we going to see competition in Australian broadband, and only then will we find freedom.
There should be a class action lawsuit against Optus suing for emotional damages arising from the new pricing plans.
;]
... who's with me?
Actually, I can see this being a problem with any type of bandwidth counter.
Let's say I don't like you or whatever, and at the beginning of every month/billing period I send 3 GB of UDP packets to your IP address. It will only take me a few hours to transmit this amount of data to you.
Your computer will ignore the packets, but the ISP's counter will log them and, blammo, have fun in 28k land.
I can only imagine the tech support hell I'd have to go through to get satisfaction - if ever.
That would suck, for lack of a better word.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
On June 12th, Bell Sympatico here in Canada is implementing a cap as well. 5GB/month @ $44.95 (CAD), and then $7.95 per Gig over the limit (in 100MB increments). The plan seems to be to add tiers later on.
"Basic" service - 128kbs, 1GB limit - $29.95
"Normal" - 1.2Mbs up, 250kbs down, 5GB limit - $44.95
"Ultra" - 3Mbs up, 650kbs down, 10GB limit - $69.95.
Raising quite the uproar here, as the only major alternative is Rogers Cable, which will be doing the same thing shortly.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
With the 3Gb limit, how will we ever be able to keep up with Microsoft's security patches? This could be a national security threat.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Calculate the bandwith costs to cover four million people listening to 128 kbps Internet radio instead. To serve this, you'd have to be thinking 4,000,000 * 16 * 1024 bytes per second. Each OC unit (Optical Carrier, as in OC-3) transmits data at 51.84 Mbps, or 6,794,792 bytes per second. Divide out and you're going to need an OC-9645.
Or you could get an ISDN line and multicast your Internet radio program to the entire Internet. The only problem with that is that it seems the average commercial ISP doesn't deal much with multicast users and definitely doesn't promote it like it should, especially with home users. I suppose it'd be a support hassle in their minds, but it'd save a ton of bandwidth.
In the end though, do ISPs really care? You're paying them for bandwidth and they don't really have any incentive to help you conserve it.. especially if you're a large Internet radio broadcaster as their customer. They'd rather sell you some massive pipe when you could have gotten by with a much smaller arrangement and used a more efficient "broadcasting" technology.
Example: I'm downloading a 650 Meg file. The first minute I'm really cranking speed, but after that it kicks down because I've exceeded my burst rate. This would have let me load a web page in no time, but keeps me from sucking bandwidth. This also doesn't nail me in the fourth week of the month for getting a new distro in the first week. Bandwidth is not per month, it's per second. Overall usage really shouldn't matter (who cares what I do at 2 AM? I'm the only loony on!), it's the bitrate. Want it faster, pay more.
When you buy a line, you should own that bitrate at every second for no extra cost. Bursting ought to be something you can buy above that. And the smart provider would include that in the default plan to make their customers really happy. I just can't stand this per month thing...
SIG: HUP
This will happen where ever the telecoms are privately owned. Don't tell me you didn't see it coming.
It wasn't the US as a country, it was Al Gore who invented the internet wasn't it? :)
4,000,000 listeners off a single 100,000 watt antenna? where do you live anyways? I haven't heard of any single radio station that can claim 4 million listeners, the weekly top 40 which is run on thousands of stations is still in the tens of millions of listeners.
Besides which, radio does have a saturation point. Every large object can reflect or absorb that radio signal, so that there are shadows, or possibly echos. Not to mention static that can interupt the signal.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html