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Cable Industry Taking Control of the Net
Tompaine.com has a piece warning of measures that cable internet providers are taking to control their users' experiences online. We've touched on this before, but this issue needs a lot of attention and it has gotten very little from the mainstream press.
But the big media companies offering Internet service; Comcast, ATT, AOL -- would like to change that, and already have in a few test locations.
Would you mind telling us where these "test locations" are? This is the same rhetoric we've seen over and over again. There's nothing new in this article and no supporting evidence for ANYTHING that's stated. What a waste.
Is your browser retarded?
People may just decide that an Internet Broadband Co-op is a good idea, form one, and snub their nose at the likes of ATT, Comcast, Rogers, Cox, and Mchsi. Policing users is not the job if the ISP, rather assisting law-enforcement once illegalities are done is. That is not a fine line but a really big one, and hard to miss.
It seems we have someone predicting the "Imminent Death of the 'Net" again. While this is concerning, unless we can have certificable proof (like the test locations for example), then we really ought to take these things with a bit of a grain of salt. Just IMNSHO.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
You cannot go and shove the genie back in the bottle in America. Once you give something to Americans they consider it their god given and constitutionally protected right. I have my bandwidth now and I'll be darned if I'll give some of it back and I'll be darned if I'll pay substantially more for it.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Actually, ISPs DO control the internet...
Without the core layer routers, root domain system, and communications backbone that the major corporations own and control the internet doesn't operate.
People often forget that the internet is more than just a bunch of computers connected together. It depends on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment that SOMEBODY has to buy and maintain.
because the "Mainstream press is the cable companies
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
The classic net.geek blunder is at work here in this article, as it assumes that we're the majority, instead of the minority.
/. reader. AT&T uses port scanners to make sure you don't run services on their pipes. The neighborhood scheme is flawed, leading to saturated bandwidth, and frankly, it sucks for what I want. A side effect of this is that users like me are unhappy, but their continued efforts to work around restrictions placed on them by the ISP has made cablemodem suck for mom & pop web surfer, too.
Cablemodem has sucked for a while now if you're a user like the typical
There's a lot more mom & pops than there are net.geeks. Cable ISP's that survive on volume see more money in providing service to mom & pop websurfer, so they're taking steps to make the network suck more for people like me, and less for mom & pop.
Eventually, the very-lucrative-for-AT&T-Broadband mom & pop will be all that's left on their networks, and that's fine by me.
There's other providers waiting to pick up the slack that cable ISP's leave behind. I've already given my business to a DSL provider who lets me do whatever I want with my line, including hosting web/game/email/dns servers from it.
This looks like a win-win for everyone.
Cable ISP's get the market they want (e-mail & websurfers), I get the service I want from another provider (gaming, running http / ftp servers, etc.), the other providor carves a profitable niche serving me & those like me, and everyone's happy.
So what's the big deal?
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
As long as you are on the internet, and can connect to IPv4 or IPv6, you cannot be stopped. The technology inherently allows you to move around blockages or outage points.
Unless you have a tunnel established, I'd say blocking port n at your cable modem pretty well controls your access to services that run on port n, wouldn't you?
Sure, we could cram everything into port 80-- technologies like SOAP are built around that basic premise already. But that's not exactly the greatest idea ever.
This sort of thing is a pendulum. Consider pop-up ads. Earthlink is running television commercials advertising their pop-up ad blocking software. Somebody at Earthlink thinks they can get subscribers to sign up by offering a hassle-free Internet experience, and they're probably right. If the pendulum swings too far-- cable modem providers arbitrarily limiting service in ways that customers don't like-- then somebody will see a business opportunity to offer unmetered, unshaped service and the pendulum will start to swing the other way again.
I write in my journal
Yes, Free Market Competition would be a very nice thing to have. It would eliminate the problems this article describes very nicely.
The problem is there is little competition and soon there will be less. The vast majority of broadband suppliers have an effective monopoly in their area of service. And the consolidation is continuing.
Sure would be nice if we actually had a competitive free market rather than a few giant companies buying monopolies for themselves.
I don't think *you* get it. They don't have to block you. When they give you a 5GB/month quota and charge $8/GB for anything over that, you have no choice. Unless you're made of money.
The problem is that some operators are trying to prevent users from using P2P applications, that effectively convert normal PCs into servers that can be accessed by other users. In other words, the cable user should be able to use his computer as something like a TV or a radio (to access information from other people) or like a TV or a radio station (spreading his message to anyone in the world).
People of the Free Software Foundation say that the computer is not an ordinary machine that can process software, it is a machine that can be used to make new software. In a broadband world, it can be a new medium, accessible to anyone with the technical expertise.
Many cable companies block the ports with firewalls to prevent their computers to act as servers, and that is what we should fight against. Managing a server is no sweet cake, it can be used as a platform to generate spam or a hacker attack. But, if the user signs some form of responsibility agreement, he should be able to use his broadband anyway he likes.
That's utter BS. Most of the cable news networks and the three major broadcast stations here in the US get their stories from the New York Times, or the major news wires (AP, Reuters, etc). Television is only a fraction of the news outlets out there. You have the internet, newspapers, magazines, journals, etc. To say that they are supressing this is utter conspiracy at best.
Secondly, they aren't taking control of the internet. There will always be several ways to get internet access. You have telephone lines, satellite connections, other companies that own the last mile fiber, and more. Ten years ago, it looked like the telephone companies would 'own' the internet. But looking back, it turned out to be nothing. The same thing holds true right now. Just because cable companies are doing a good job providing high speed access doesn't mean that it will stay that way ten years down the road.
actually the price isn't that bad.
....will be called net hogs and booted.
here in san antonio, people have FLOCKED to Time Warner/Road Runner cable internet.
it's a virtual lock in....dsl got it's ass kicked.
-they promised movies, music, and tons of stuff to download.
now the bate and switch plan is about to go into effect.
they are going to scrap the whole multimedia aspect, and now want people to barely use it....which at $40/month...now becomes expensive for the usage.
people who do stream movies, download large files
cable companies say one thing...."come to us...multimedia is plentiful...the internet is beautiful"
but what they really want is users that barely turn on the computer, check their email, read a text site or two, and sign off.
message to cable companies:
I'LL DROP YOUR ASS IN HEART BEAT....I'LL GO TO DSL, OR EVEN BACK TO DIAL UP...AND I'LL TAKE 100 PEOPLE WITH ME.
I've got a Comcast (formerly @Home) cable modem, and I would happily pay more for DSL from somebody like speakeasy, but it's not available in my area.
The techs laughed at my circuit-- it was the dirtiest they had seen in some time, especially in a major city. Bridge taps, unterminated pairs (one nearly a mile long), some sort of coil, and so on. He said every problem on their list was present more than once, on top of the distance being 50% outside their max window for IDSL (which would have been a whopping 144kbps anyway).
Satellite is out because of the ridiculous ping. Okay for web access, crap for games.
Don't forget that there are plenty of people who still live inside a geographically-enforced cable internet monopoly.
essentially I see a time when we have bandwidth meters on our house just like the water and electric meter. It's the only way to be sure that we get what we are paying for.
I think you meant to say, "it's the only way to be sure that we're paying for what we get." Which makes a hell of a lot of sense to me.
I write in my journal
It's pretty evident that you don't have the slightest idea what "monopoly" means here. If there's a cable company, a DSL provider, a dial-up provider, a satellite provider, and a cellular dial-up provider, then there's not exactly a monopoly, is there?
I write in my journal
There are options for most people in most places. However, these options are typically not cost effective. Here's an example of things in my area.
Dial-up: $20 per month
ADSL: 1.5Mb/384Kb $40 per month
Cable: 1.5-2Mb/128Kb $40 per month
SDSL: 384Kb/384Kb $90-130 per month
SDSL: 768Kb/768Kb $100-200 per month
SDSL: 1.1Mb/1.1Mb $120-250 per month
SDSL: 1.5Mb/1.5Mb $140-300 per month
Wireless: 1Mb/1Mb $50-350 per month
Wireless: 3Mb/3Mb $100-500 per month
Now, these all differ in policies, there are ports blocked on some of the cheaper solutions to prevent business from getting residential accounts and paying reduced prices etc, but for the most services this covers the cheapest residential services offered and the more expensive business counterparts from providers that aren't offering broadband to residential customers at a residential rate.
For the most part people don't need upload and don't care about ports being blocked so they are going to go for the cheap ADSL or Cable solution. For those that want high speed bidirection connections they are going to have to shell out a few more dollars. If you don't want ports blocked you are going to have to pay a bit more.
I currently pay $179 per month for a 1100/1100 SDSL connection and have had few complaints with the ISP. I'm getting what I'm paying for and I'm paying a premium. If your average consumer doesn't care about unblocked ports and thier upload capacity then $40 per month seems fair to them and anything more than that seems unreasonable. The broadband market is moving more towards these types of consumers and away from the geeks that want complete 100% unrestricted access with no ports blocked and no bandwidth restrictions. Bandwidth isn't cheap for the isps, and for the most part they have shouldered these costs to sell thier product. That's not feasable, and really never was. So what you see is the ISPs changing thier pricing policies and and thier service policies. I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a smart business decision.
You get what you pay for, and if you aren't willing to pay more for a better service then you shouldn't expect it.
Hrm, I'm rereading this and not sure If I've made a point or remained coherant at all, but I had a point when I started..... Oh, right my point is there is plenty of competition, it's just not in the price range of the average joe because the average joe doesn't give a rats ass about what the competition is offering.
I don't mind paying for what I use. If I use a ton of bandwidth then I should have to pay for it; it's how most companies pay their upstream ISP. It's how I pay for phone or for power.
Having said that, if I'm paying my $5 per GB, I'd damn well be able to use that bandwidth for whatever I deem necessary. The part of the article that makes me nervous is the talk of redirecting requests and the like. Not good...
For starters, I think this guy needs a lesson in bits versus bytes in his net radio rant. Of course, that fact that nobody follows a 'b' = bits and 'B' = bytes convention doesn't help, either. 20kBps is 1.2MB per minute. And 20kBps net radio is damn good if you ask me.
I guess this guy's never priced a real connection to the internet. Bandwidth is just expensive. Now, I have no idea why it's that way - seems like it shouldn't be - but it is. Our business DSL line costs us $220/mo for 768kbps symetric. That fact that that same line costs me $70/mo at home is because my ISP knows that our business line is going to do more throughput that my home line. It's factored into the price that the expected behaviours are different.
Now, when people with consumer DSL/cable/etc. connections start behaving like business customers in their usage patterns, telcos start to put the brakes on and say "You need to be paying business-grade prices of you're doing business-grade traffic." What's so wrong about this that it gets every geek up in arms?
If you're going to be keeping the line at capacity >10% of the time, you deserve to pay for it. Any real connection you pay 95th percentile bandwidth charges (that means you pay for your actual metered usage, minus the top 5% of the measurements). And if you're pulling ISOs and MP3s and warez and porn over that, you're gonna get a bill that you may not like.
But...if I've got a 768kbps line that I use for web surfing and email and SSH sessions into work when something breaks, I don't really feel like paying the same amount as you. I say "Bring on the metered lines!" It won't raise my bill - I'm actually using the line the way the telco expects. I've got a line that's 12 times the speed of my old modem for about 4 times the cost. And I certainly do more than 4 times the transfers that I used to. But not 50 times or more.
So, to end my rant, I just wanna know why people think they shouldn't have to pay the actual costs of their transfers. Prices for high-speed connections via cable/DSL are SO low compared to what business-grade connections (T1, etc.) cost. Just be grateful you can afford 5GB/mo in the first place. Try pulling that over your modem.
One of the reasons I enjoy my broadband is just that: the bandwidth is "broad". I can listen to the 128kbps stream from Digitaly Imported, or Bassdrive Radio. I know most of you think techno/dace music is crap, well try listening to precise-frequency synths at 20kbps. Ok, now it's WAY crappier.
:-P
I just had this discussion with a friend today... what will be the point of even HAVING boradband if you get 56k speeds? Isn't the whole reason everyone switched to broadband to enjoy the SPEED?
If cable companies can't handle the traffic load, perhaps it's time for some infastructure upgrades? We're going to use more and more bandwidth, and if you cap me slow and then charge me extra, I'll go back to my old 56k. At least that allows me unlimited usage at the same effective speed
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
No, the word is oligopoly.
Or do you maintain that it's a coincidence that cable, dsl, and satellite access each cost $44.95/month here?
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It's always been my contention that the current economic model used for the Internet is fundamentally flawed, and that some form of "pay-per-bit" is inevitable. Anybody familiar with "The Tragedy of the Commons" want to explain to me why that principle doesn't apply to the 'Net? Bandwidth is neither infinite nor free; at somepoint, people need to be discouraged from grabbing as much as they can, otherwise our ping times will be measured in minutes. Why do we take it as a given that the Granny checking her email once a week should pay the same as the student hosting a huge peer-to-peer file sharing node up 24/7? Next you'll be telling me that bicylists should pay the same road use fees as semis...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Bandwidth isn't free, the facilities for distributing bandwidth aren't free, the people who maintain those facilities aren't free, and I think it's entirely fair that companies charge more to the people who use more. I do think the caps could be a bit more reasonable in some cases; something like 10-20GB/Month with the ability to carry your unused KBs to the next month. That would be enough to curb the continuous 200KB/Second all day, all night, all month types (ie; people who queue a dozen movies, a couple binary newsgroups, then play various 3D online games for a few hours until their movies are transferred) and still allow the majority of users to continue regular use without noticing a difference. Maybe as an added benefeit they could allow people to purchase 'chunks' of extra bandwidth to add to their account at a reasonable discount.
We may yet see a day where continuous 100MBit/Sec connections are as standard in homes as water pipes, but today isn't that day.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
On one hand, I can understand that the up-front capital expenditure for all the cable infrastructure has yet to pay for itself, and that while bandwidth is currently a somewhat scarce resource, it does need to be divvied up more fairly.
But a real menace lurks within all this: the prospect of cable companies charging different fees according to types and providers of content.
What this could mean is that there could be a list of news sites, music stations etc which can be accessed freely, even gigs per month. But accessing any site which isn't in the cable companies' "good books" (read: payola), runs up the traffic charges.
This to me is the bigger threat.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
I've seen satelite; it's expensive and rare, and the latencies are outrageous. Most of the time, only downstream is broadband, and upstream is over a modem. Most importantly, however, is that it doesn't scale. Modem doesn't count, and neither does cellular (except perhaps for some mythical 3G solution I haven't heard anything about yet in Japan or Korea, let alone in this country). We're talking about broadband - one of the many ways you've confused the issue.
The TA96 mandated that phone companies could drop a bunch of regulations, but had to share hardware with competitors. The result was a spate of competition in both local, long-distance, and internet services firms, and a dramatic price drop. The RBOCs saw their end and successfully bribed the government to change course. Cable had never really been deregulated in that sense, and have successfully kept it at bay; their approach is more akin to blackmail.
For an agency that found its niche after the Bell breakup, the FCC has authorized some inexplicably massive telecom mergers lately. The notoriously corrupt Michael Powell made his position eminently clear on competition at the outset, with zero enforcement against the RBOCs' many egregious behaviors toward their "client-competitors." Then, he decreed that Cable providers wouldn't need to share their hardware (as phone companies were "theoretically" required to do by law), and he's since gone on record as being opposed to the CLECs as well... in short - he's sold out any notion of competition, and his figleaf is basically your sham argument, that because we have a choice between Time Warner and Verizon, there's no monopoly.
Which is completely absurd.
It doesn't take a genius to fix prices and rig restrictions in a market with two suppliers in any given region, and less than a dozen nationwide. Prices are already on the steady rise, but TomPaine hits it on the head: the money is unimportant to them compared to control - and they may get it, since this hijacking of the internet is in the interests of the same companies that control the major media outlets, including almost all of the TV news... Putting the internet, ironically, at the center of one of the largest media conspiracies of our time.
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Using the term monopoly here is really fuzzy terminology.
The problem isn't that there is no competition at all (true monopoly), but that there is inadequate competition.
If I want broadband, I can either pay ATT or Bell South. If I try to pay a CLEC instead, Bell South will make sure that my order is prioritized just slightly lower than the crank complaining that the phone pole is all scuffed up. (In other words, there is no true competition in DSL as long as a single company acts as a gatekeeper).
A choice between two is not a true monopoly, but IS an unusually small choice for a popular product/service. If I want a burger, there's 5 major competitors and dozens of lesser ones. A CPU? Even if I restrict the choice to IA32, there's 4 I can think of off the top of my head. If instruction set isn't a constraint, the choice opens up a good bit more.
Cola has two huge players and dozens of smaller ones. That's an interesting case really. At the top where there are two majors, prices are pretty high for sugar water. The next tier down (store brands), there are dozens of players and prices are less than half the majors.
Gasoline has sevaral (at least 5 choices).
In short, in order to have a healthy competition, we really need 4 or 5 comparable broadband choices.
The other source of broadband complaints is the screwy and quasi-ethical marketing. Rather than offering a service level that will be profitable at a decent price, they offer the moon, and then impose a bunch of bizarre constraints to make sure most can never actually manage to use more than a profitable amount of the service. The net result is that they unnecessarily constrain the usefulness of the service and close off choice.