Will Cable Unplug the File Swappers?

netringer writes "The cable companies are planning to give the RIAA's case a hand and limit P2P file swapping. Yahoo has the Business Week story that cable companies are considering going away from the flat rate pricing model for cable Internet access. They plan to set a lower bandwidth cap for the flat rate and the raise the rates for bandwidth hogs who exceed the cap."

Comments

They aren't doing this because of the RIAA...

[Rombuu]

...they are doing this becuase they are losing their asses providing broadband at current prices.

Re:They aren't doing this because of the RIAA...

[Dun Malg]

AT&T Broadband says on its system, 1% percent of users account for 16% of bandwidth consumption.

What bugs me is the way they throw out this stat as if it's astounding-- it's not. Look at any system used by numerous people and you'll see about the same distribution. Take the US interstate highway system, for example: I'd lay money that 1% of the drivers thereon account for more than 16% of the traffic. How about campgrounds? 1% of the population accounts for a whopping 90% of campground usage. Their complaint is statistically meaningless.

Re:They aren't doing this because of the RIAA...

[letxa2000]

Look at any system used by numerous people and you'll see about the same distribution. Take the US interstate highway system, for example: I'd lay money that 1% of the drivers thereon account for more than 16% of the traffic. How about campgrounds? 1% of the population accounts for a whopping 90% of campground usage. Their complaint is statistically meaningless.

You got that right. Their "complaint" is not important. Virtually no businesses are able to obtain the exact same profit level on every single sale. There will be sales that are more profitable than others, but the idea is that the pricing is such that, as a whole, you make money.

As you said, the entire population subsidizes the highway system used heavily by a small minority.

Consumers that carry large balances on their credit card give banks the money so that I can charge everything, pay it off, and pay absolutely nothing.

Many people have insurance and they end up paying for my mistake if I crash and cause lots of damage and medical bills. My premiums certainly didn't cover it.

It is also incredible to see companies trying to ration the use of their own product. It's counterproductive. The whole point of broadband is to be able to consume tons of data quickly. When they start limiting that they are reducing the value of their product and also limiting the things that can be done with Internet--and not just P2P. Videoconferencing, VoIP, gaming, streaming radio... These are things that 99% of the people still don't do, and WON'T do if they are limited on their bandwidth.

As has been said, it's a monopoly. They can charge, so they will. They want millions of users using their broadband at dial-up levels, but charging them $50/month instead of $9/month that dial-up costs.

Cable modem providers business model flawed

[fruey]

Every major company providing broadband got it wrong. Modems peak out at 56kbps. That's usually about 4KB/s, 5 if you're lucky. No single consumer can hurt your bandwidth.

Now provide broadband at the same flatrate type scheme. Now, your guy who stays online for hours but just chats on IRC and reads mail costs you way less than some dude who d/ls ISOs and streams 300kbps from real.com once a week.

They all got it wrong. Now they have to backtrack. Lowcost flatrate, unlimited broadband will become a thing of the past. I'd put my house on it.

Re:Cable modem providers business model flawed

[theCoder]

I wouldn't be so quick to put your house on it, unless you define what lowcost means. Consumers tend to like flatrate, unlimited things. Not all consumers, but there's a market for it. Why? Because it's (a) easier to deal with, especially in a budget and (b) not going to increase sharply without warning. Other service markets have flatrate options. For example, AT&T is advertising a lot for some program that offers unlimited calling to certain people (that's the catch) for a flat rate. ISPs did flatrate service for years after it had been metered. Memberships to zoos and museums or season passes to theme parks are the same idea.

The cable market is in a crunch right now because they didn't charge enough for their flatrate. Because they're a monopoly, they may be able to get away with charging per use like electricity, but that's only because also like electric companies, there's not much competition. If there was competition in the cable market (not other forms of broadband, actual cable provider competition), there would always be a flatrate option, IMHO. It may not be lowcost (compared to the alternatives), but it would exist.

Broadband Held Hostage to Corporate Greed

[SirChive]

The whole concept behind broadband was that we, the user, would have high bandwidth to do with as we like. But now this idea is completely lost.

Since the broadband provider in a given area is usually an effective monopoly they have figured out that they can jack prices on those who want and need broadband.

It's only incidental that this helps the RIAA. It's really about huge corporations lobbying the government in order to preserve their monopoly and then turning around and putting the screws to the end user.

The dream of cheap broadband for the masses has died on the altar of the holy corporation.

Re:Broadband Held Hostage to Corporate Greed

[PhxBlue]

The whole concept behind broadband was that we, the user, would have high bandwidth to do with as we like. But now this idea is completely lost.

No, the concept behind broadband was that they, the corporations, would make money from selling you high-speed internet access. When they no longer make money doing this, they will either stop providing the service altogether or will change their pricing plan so they make money again.

Not even close

[adam613]

Cable companies dropping their customers by raising prices isn't going to hurt P2P that much. The xxAAs are up against a much bigger enemy: college students. Most large universities have dorm-room ethernet connections which are far superior to cable modem access (I've had both, so I know the difference). A big problem with cable is that the upload speed sucks. Universities don't have that problem. And dorm-room ethernet isn't going away or going up in price just because the RIAA says it should. So maybe the cable companies can cause a few people inconvenience, but they can't win the RIAA's war.

The media companies

[LennyDotCom]

The media companies that have beeen waiting for broadband to become popular so they can sell streaming entertainment might have a problem. How will people feel about paying to watch a movie online plus have to pay thier cable provider extra for each movie they watch?

Hatchet job

[Alomex]

That story is the textbook definition of a hatchet job.

Cable ISPs could care less what you download. Bandwidth hogs are actually a net loss for ISPs, so they intend to charge those more. It is a mere accident that those hogs happen to be MP3 users.

For all the ISP cares, they could be SETI hogs, or pr0n hogs or remote X server/client hogs. So please drop the reference to the RIAA.

Sounds reasonable to me... perhaps

[HiThere]

Bandwidth isn't free. It isn't expensive, really, but it sure isn't free. So flat rate, while desireable, probably isn't reasonable.

Problem: Monopolies.
You can never trust a monopoly to set a fair price.

Problem: Spam
The cost should be born by the party that initiates the transaction, not the party that receives it. But this can be quite difficult to determine for non-persistent protocols. Mail is easy, bill it back to the sender, and if you can't, you don't forward it. http, ftp, etc. are much more difficult. The user who initiates the transaction is the one who receives most of the data. The sender is essentially reactive. So the sender shouldn't be paying here. Without micropayments, I don't see any reasonable method to handle this.

Problem: privacy
If transactions are billed back to the sender of the communication, then it will be possible to trace who sent what message. This has obvious unpleasant implications for privacy of communication.

But bandwidth isn't free, and I object to paying to receive spam. Perhaps everyone needs two addresses. One where the sender pays for the transmission, and one where the receiver pay. You would use the receiver account for ftp, http, mailing lists, nttp, etc. (oops! that opens you up to spam!) and the sender for normal e-mail.

This needs careful design. Remember the inherent dangers of any single point of failure. (Look at what mailing lists could to the spam prevention of the separated addresses!)

Look at what it can be used for...

[stienman]

I find that a good portion of the websites I visit can't send me data faster than 1Mbps anyway, so the 2Mbps down I get is only used when more than one person is browsing in my house. It's nice when I find a good server that has an ISO or file I want with a fast connection - I can download Mozilla 1.0 (10MB) in two or three minutes, but the majority of people don't need or use it.

If they raise my price, then I'll shop around and likely find that it's still the best deal. However DSL and regular dial up will get a shot in the arm, at least for a little while. I may even be motivated to get a T1 (or more) to share with my condo neighbors.

Either way, they're still raking in a cash. AT&T says 1% of their users use 16% of their bandwidth - well that means that 50% of their users are paying $50/mo for the equivilant of dial up bandwidth. Cash in the bank.

What they're selling now is bandwidth, not transfer. If they cap my transfer to 5GB per month I'll expect them to leave the bandwidth where it is or higher - it'll only make them more money since I have more oportunity to go over - and those who transfer very little will feel that they are paying less for faster service. Happiness all around.

At any rate, there'll be options.

-Adam

Re:Subscribers should sue...

[Kamel Jockey]

Any lawyers interested in a nice big class action suit?

This reminds me of when a bunch of idiots sued Blockbuster video because they were too lazy to return their tapes on time. Each member of this class got about $18-$22 credited to their Blockbuster accounts, which essentially cost Blockbuster nothing.

Of course, if people do sue, the cable companies will then raise their rates to cover legal fees, court costs, settlement payouts, etc. In essence, the consumers would be suing "themselves." The only way to protest any kind of metering (if it happens, I highly doubt it will) is to simply cancel the service. Companies don't listen to anything but the almighty buck. You can whine and complain all you want but they won't care until you stop the gravy train.

eMail

[adamjaskie]

If MY connection gets capped, I will complain every time I get an unwanted email. If I spend 20kiB of my download limit downloading an unwanted email, I better get that 20kiB back, or the sender better PAY me for the bandwidth they used by sending me a message. If each email I get costs me money, it should be illegal for people to send me unsolicited emails. (Hey, unsolicited faxes are illegal IIRC)

Not too bright, are you?

[legLess]

I just turned WinMX on, gave high priority to all of the anime uploads, and then set GetRight to download as many episodes as possible. And it's not because I'm afraid that I'll lose my high bandwidth. It's because I feel like sending a nice little "fuck you" to Comcast while I still can.

That's like protesting a possible water rate hike by running your tap all day, or an electric rate hike by leaving your fridge open all day. Your sad little "protest" is cutting off your nose to spite your face, and doing demonstrable harm to everyone else who wants to use the resource. You're a short-sighted, anti-social idiot.

Good, but with some caveats

[gdyas]

Jesus people, cut the knee-jerking and think for a second. Having additional charges for those who exceed a certain bandwidth point CAN be a very good thing for most of us. Setting it in the context of "shutting down file swappers" though is a red herring. It comes down to paying for what you use, nothing more or less.

Look at the data. In the linked article, it cites AT&T's data that 1% of users use 16% of the service's bandwidth. Elsewhere, I've seen numbers like 5% of users consuming 30% of available bandwidth. Part of my monthly DSL/cable bill, and yours, goes to supporting these bandwidth hogs. If implemented correctly and regulated as a public utility like the phone / gas / electricity, having the mega-users pay for excess bandwidth can make it less expensive for casual users to access the internet with a fat pipe. At least in CA, electricity consumers like wasteful home owners or power-intensive companies that use more electricity than others pay more for it because, like broadband, it's a limited resource that they're using more of than others. Why should broadband be exempt from similar controls, if implemented and regulated reasonably?

What sort of guidelines should be in place? Primarily, there should be a mandated minimum amount of bandwidth one gets for the flat rate so that broadband ISPs can't turn it into something analogous to basic cable service -- I would expect regulation such that the per-capita amount of bandwidth used by around 95% of a service's users would set the minimum flat rate. Also, I'd advocate against speed limitations wherever possible - the purpose of broadband is the fat pipe, so why have it if you can't use it?

I believe such a pricing scheme can be implemented fairly and work as a benefit to both us and the continued implementation of broadband service. There just needs to be adequate rules to prevent the broadband carriers from using it to screw us over. But the people who see everything AT&T or SBC says as part of a sinister plot to double everyone's rates and halve their download speed are just a part of the bloviating tinfoil hat crowd, not really deserving to be listened to.

Re:Subscribers should sue...

[Kamel Jockey]

Their not necessarily metering just charging you more for more bandwidth.

That's not a bad thing. Metering not only ensures cable companies keep their costs down (figuring the worst downloaders will either buy the cheapest service and download at slow speeds, or they will buy the most expensive service and pay their cost), it also ensures indirectly that people with smaller budgets can get access to broadband, since presumably these people would buy the cheapest service.

P2P a victim of it's own success

[cryptochrome]

Universities have to pay for that internet too, and you bet they're starting to cap student use. They just don't get as much press over it and do so in a slower, more beauracratic manner.

I am one of those people that shares gigabytes per day, primarily through the anime fansub scene. For those of you who may not follow it, two years ago, a 25 minute anime episode was about 50mb in size, and was in 320x240 realplayer format. Then broadband and DivX came along, and suddenly everything is DVD quality and over 200mb in size at 640x480. The catch was, despite more broadband actually getting it has become much harder. Downloading takes forever. Connections are quickly saturated. ISPs are capping like crazy. All the fansubbers and primary distributors are so obsessed with high quality that they failed to appreciate the tradeoffs.

The point it, the internet is neither unlimited nor free. There are costs, but we weren't directly paying for them, so we pretend they don't exist. The P2P networks were a manifestation like this. They don't even make a distinction between the guy next door and someone halfway across the world.

We're all going to have to get used to working with a lot less bandwidth, and paying for our fair share. Unlimited flat-rate broadband was untenable. It should have been this way from the beginning.