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BellSouth Will Charge Providers For Performance
smooth wombat writes "In a follow-up to this Slashdot story from last month, BellSouth has confirmed that it is in discussions with content providers to levy charges to reliably and speedily deliver content and services of the providers.
Bill Smith, chief technology officer at BellSouth justified content charging companies by saying they are using the telco's network without paying for it. "
Common carrier status.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Oh, I guess you want to have your cake, AND eat it too?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
But their other customers are paying for it. They just want to get paid twice!
The companies aren't pushing any data across your networks, they aren't the ones using it. Quite on the contrary, your subscribers are the ones pulling data across your network from the various sources, and I'd wager a bet that you are already charging them a fat monthly fee.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
I know it sounds cheesy, but this is a big moment in the history. If we do not stop this, internet will be changed completely as we know it today. I hope people are outraged and something is done to stop this! Unfortunately, the media in US is completely ignorant of the importance of this thing...
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
Does this mean it will be free, or are they actually going to start paying other people?
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
Bell South have just Proven themselves to be a total bunch of useless bas[TT]ards . .. what next charging someone for receiving a phone call .
If we pay for an Internet connection , then it us using their lines to connect to someone
Hurn in Bell I say
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
So we will get their service for free now? Or maybe they'll even pay us to use them?.. :P
It's been fun, guys, but it looks like the net finally actually is dead.
I mean, seriously, the service providers are about to start openly extorting the content providers.
In a normal country, regulators would put a swift end to this kind of silliness, but we live in the USA...
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
Seriously though, these "charges" will of course be passed along to us end users somehow, much like the telcos do now with the fees they are charged (look at your phone bill). More plentiful/intrusive ads, registrations a la NYT (note from mom and teste req'd) or just a flat out service fee. The folks playing MMORPGs will probably see the spike most directly in their monthly fees. Of course this leaves us schleps with personal servers and such with yet one more bill to pay if they get aggressive enough about deciding who a content provider is. The bandwidth wars are begining, methinks.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
That just seems crazy to me... The people accessing the site pay for their internet access, but that's not good enough - they need to double-charge. Seems akin to charging grandma a toll when relatives came to visit her via a tollway on Thanksgiving. She got some benefit from the tollway too, right?!? Cough it up, you leeching old hag!
You'd better jump ship now! Think about it. Your surfing speed is about to take a hit because all the sites that you go to will refuse to pay his extortion.
My only hope is that BellSouth subscribers all jump ship and this idea crashes and burns hard. Yea, it's a fantasy but, I have to hang on to hope. Hopefully a mainstream news rag will educate the great unwashed and put this schmuck in his place.
Where's Telebit when you need them?
My Heart Is A Flower
This is nothing but greed at its worst, and it will ultimately ruin the Internet if it succeeds. I'm guessing they are aiming this primarily at VoIP companies since they are worried about losing their local phone monopoly, but it could affect a lot of other things in a negative way too (by undermining the whole economics of the Internet, and vastly increasing expenses for running a website). I think the best move would be for all the bigger companies (like Google, etc) to just refuse to pay their money. Then it's the ISP that looks like the bad guy if they intentionally downgrade the service for refusal to pay "protection money".
My understanding is that I have paid for a specific download and upload rate from my provider. That rate allows whatever content I download - iTunes or Limewire, applications and product updates. My Understanding is that Apple pays for their connection to the internet, as well, and that there is some level of service ( in bits/sec) that they pay for. So where is this - "they didn't pay us" The transmission of the bits has been paid for, whether those bits were html pages or mp3s or program updates is irrelevant to the discussion. This is all the outcome of the FCC decision not to apply the telecom rules to the broadband market and to 'regulate' it as an information service. All of which ought to sway those who argue that regulation is unnecessary that their view is inadequate, regulation can be good or can be bad - it depends on the regulations, but the lack of regulation always gives the person or group in a power position the right to dictate terms. Some people may argue that you can always switch from BellSouth, but that isn't reality for most people - it is their only choice. If telcos have mispricedthe service, for me or for the content providers, then the price for a level of service should, and will, rise, but charging to tilt the playing field (in favor of the paying content providers) will raise the barrier to entry, and ultimately it will foreclose certain types of internet use, specifically shared, non-commercial applications.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
Sounds like those who have a web site, even those with a small website, will be getting a bill from each provider that allows information from that page to pass to a user viewing that information?
You've got mail....
From Verizon, Cablevision, Time Warner, Earthlink, SBC, AOL....
Good way to get rid of those small, annoying web sites by charging them into oblivion. Right???
I have a bumber sticker in my cubicle that says
Smile, it confuses people
...this will definitely get the FCC involved more heavily in regulating Internet providers. The "information service" loophole they've been using to get away with less regulation won't hold up much longer if things like this kick up. The Internet is quickly becoming one of those pieces of infrastructure vital to the public good, just like electricity , phone service, etc, especially when cable, phone and Internet access are now (or soon will be) virtually one service. States may have been deregulating the traditional utilities recently, but I could see something like this swinging the pendulum to the other side.
Are they going to start charging consumers?
I guess that means the end of my free all-you-can-eat DSL.
Their customers would not stand for blocking either internet searching or security updates.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
Their ISP, or a particular content provider, say Google. I see 2 potential outcomes here:
What needs to happen here is that word needs to get out that BS is not offering better service to those who pay, but is rather offering crippled service to those who don't pay. Both statements are true because granting one group of traffic priority over the other reduces the quality of the connection available to the other groups of traffic.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
A little JavaScript box pops up: "If youse would like to download the remainder of dis' song, youse need to contribute to the fund, or we can't be held responsible for what might happen to da' data, see?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Who does BellSouth think their customers will blame when "the Internet is slow"? Especially when they ask their tech friends who point out that switching to a different ISP will make it faster?
their business. If I were an "content provider", and asked to pay that fee, I would quit serving BellSouth customers. (This can be easily done by checking the IP address the customer is connecting from). I would put up an simple page explaining why and directing them to call BellSouth customer service to complain. If BellSouth gets enough calls, they will have to drop the fees or start losing customers.
This may be a bit off topic, but I remember that the Bell South brand telephones were of the absolute WORST quality of all manufacturers.
They were cheaply made, rattled when moved, and broke fairly quickly as I recall.
Maybe their poor quality can say something about their overall business practices. Maybe not.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Aren't we paying for the use of their network by signing up for their service? Sounds like a case of double billing.
The companies aren't pushing any data across your networks, they aren't the ones using it.
Exactly. It's amazing this "eyeballs vs. content" battle still hasn't gone away, especially after several notable disasters where the eyeball owners (service providers to consumers) tried to exact a toll for the content their subscribers were consuming.
I was at the Commercial Internet Exchange annual meeting in 1996 when this issue popped up there. Many theorized then that the Bells, who had lost out on their NSFNET NAP scheme (which Al Gore was a strong proponent of), would find another way to get a measured use model into the net. It's apparent they still dream of ratcheting measured use costs, since they happen to be rather good at billing complicated use schemes. Still, it's amazing to wonder how they think they can carry this out. What would they do - require a fee per domain name to be consumed by a household (and enforce it how? That's one heck of an ACL - as if RBOC DSL service isn't sluggish enough already - Qwest can't get you down the street from home to serving wire center under 40-45 ms typically).
Or would you block it on an AS basis and pick up the whole bilaterial battle that saw Exodus and BBN (if my history is correct) fight? Unfortunately for the RBOCs, there are alternatives to their mediocre DSL. If you think a consumer will pay $55 for partial Internet when they can get complete service from the cable or wireless provider for the same fee, they're gone.
What they're talking about is charging content providers that want higher priority, not charging all content providers for access. This is still very bad, but it's not like you won't be able to run your own servers any more.
I fundamentally don't understand this.
TFA says that Apple, for example, might be charged a nickle or dime per song to make sure that the data transfers completely and quickly. Ignoring the big bad implications of the word "completely," I just dont' get it.
Apple doesn't magically or arbitrarily produce it's own bandwidth. They have, at some level, an ISP, which they pay for a certain amount of bandwidth use.
That ISP also has a carrier, and the ISP pays that carrier.
And so forth...
So, if Apple is already paying for their bandwidth, why do they have to pay again? I just don't understand. The only analogy that I can come up with as a comparison is like renting a car that the rental company has leased. In this case, if you go to Enterprise and pay to rent a car that they have in turn leased from GM, does GM come after you for an "extra fee" because you drove 1,000 miles? Is that the kind of situation that's being explained here?
God-fucking-dammit! I really hated BellSouth before, but now I'm REALLY pissed. Making the analogy to driving on highways and interstates that were built using federal funds: wasn't the Universal Service Fee that's still tacked onto every phone bill supposed to actually build the basic telco infrastructure? Wouldn't that make the "pipes" the same as the interstates, and therefore already paid for by us (or the government)? These goddam telco carriers tack on all the extra fees and taxes ON TOP of their base charges already, just so they can keep their advertised costs "competitive". That alone is more than unfair, but this really takes the cake. Who would be best to recieve comments, state reps in government, or direct to the FCC?
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Were I a provider, I'd decline to pay. If BellSouth doesn't want to let people visit my website because I won't pay, we'll let the subscribers decide. My little website won't make a difference, but what happens when BellSouth subscribers can't get to Google or iTunes all of a sudden? Somehow I don't think people are so enamored of BellSouth that they'll give up major sites to stick with their ISP.
To be truly annoying, a provider might turn it around and send BellSouth a bill for their use of the provider's resources. After all, all those BellSouth subscribers are using Yahoo's server CPU time and bandwidth without paying for it... :)
As Bellsouth are now claiming responsibility for the content and as the data from my sites will be copied into their systems when their customers seek to access it who do I charge for the copies they make?
Does anyone know what are the other options for current BellSouth customers?
Or are they stuck?
So does this mean if a content provider doesn't pay up, BellSouth will throttle down data coming from that provider? Will they arbitrarily lose packets to slow down transmission? Or do they block all access altogether?
Also as to what Mark Cuban said: Don't we already have different levels of service quality? If I pay for dialup access at say $9/month I get a certain amount of bandwidth. If I pony up $25/month for DSL I get even more. If I decide cable is the way to go and pay $50/month, even more than DSL (in my case at least). And finally, if I really want guaranteed access, I pay for business-level service. So what the hell are these poeple talking about? If I'm already paying for my bandwidth, why am I being asked to pay again. Because we all know that it's the consumers who will end up paying these extra fees.
All these old-school legacy companies need to get a swift ass kicking.
I recall that back in the early 90's, there was a ISP that wanted to charge other ISP for access to the networks and services they hosted. I don't think that lasted all that long. Anyone recall the ISP? I am at a loss.
If so, then those MMF guys better pay up or they're going to become MMS, Make Money Slow.
This asshat should be charged for steal intelligent peoples air supply.
Note: This isn't going to happen. Rather, Bellsouth is going to charge two parties for the same service.
... your data were routed through West Elbonia, now wouldn't it?"
How is this different from paying off the guys with the baseball bats? Or having to hire a "fixer" to get your building permit?
And just how would they be able to "enforce" anything? I see a RICO lawsuit headed their way...
When I call my mom, she will have to pay for the call? I mean let's face it...even though I pay to speak to my mom, that doesn't mean she has a right to hear it or respond...she needs to pay my phone company also....as DSL clients finally switch to Cable - and a monopoly gets created by the phone company that works in THEIR disfavor.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
it sounds like they are talking about QOS (quality of service) charges. It would be entirely reasonable to offer a new level of service with priority QOS tags for extra dough. This could be worth paying for VOIP or other real-time applications. I can't believe they would get by with charging other ISPs customers just for internet access. (But I've underestimated greed before.)
>Bill Smith, chief technology officer at BellSouth justified
>content charging companies by saying they are using the telco's
>network without paying for it.
I thought the internet service customer was the one paying for use of the vendor's network?? As in, I as a Comcast cablemodem customer am paying for use of Comcast's network. Comcast's product that I am buying from them is the ability to access Google, hotmail, webmd, or whoever's web sites I care to look at.
It sounds like they're wanting to double-charge for a single service. Kindof like if Walmart decided to charge me for the DVD, and also charge the movie producers for the right to have their DVD sold in Walmart's store.
I've heard rumors that Verizon may be considering this policy as well while I've been asking around about DSL and FIOS. If they pull a prank like this, I may stick with Comcast, even though I'm relatively unhappy with their service's reliability in my case.
...just like ma' Bell used to make. =)
This seems to me to be very much related to all the talk of net neutrality buzzing around. Vint Cerf wrote a good letter that was posted on the Google Blog, check it out: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/vint-cerf-s peaks-out-on-net-neutrality.html
and they own YOU, too. BellSouth is part of CorpGovMedia. The media will do little about this.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Quite apart from the protection-racket sound of this that you point out, I wonder just what Bellsouth think their customers are paying them for?
They're a broadband internet service provider, right? What is attracting customers to broadband internet services? What's the killer app that's getting them all these customers and driving uptake?
Could it be music downloads? It's music downloads, isn't it? Yeah. That's what it is. That's why every damn advert I see for broadband connections emphasises that you can download music and movies and such over it.
FFS, guys. Apple are providing your killer app, your main marketing bonus, the reason why people WANT YOUR SERVICE. Talk about killing the golden goose...
Who came up with this? I'm betting Marketing, with a side-bet on Legal.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I know some one else that charges providers for proformance.
This type of business extortion is not sustainable. Imagine putting up a web server and having to contact every ISP on the planet to pay for "premium" service. Imagine what the first 1000 tech support calls will sound like:
cust> why does site foo load so slowly but site bar loads fast?
supp> site foo did not pay for premium service across our network.
cust> but _I_ pay you for access to the internet. and I want that site to load fast.
supp> please contact site foo and tell them that.
cust> but my friends connection at home loads everything fast.
supp> uhhh hmmm.. please contact site foo and tell them to pay us for premium fee's.
cust> ohhh nevermind, can I cancel service now?
This system of premium extortion only works if _every_ isp on the planet does it. Let's watch them lose customers and see how adamant they are then.
--jboss
I guess Akamai will benefit the most, since the way for a content provider to minimise all the charges is to ensure that the number of networks their packets cross on their way to a customer is minimised.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Find an ISP -- preferably a small, mom-and-pop operation, or at least a customer friendly, yes-we-do-have-a-clue company -- and switch.
I mean it, vote with your dollars and with your feet, so to speak, and leave Bell $outh behind for good. Send a clear message to the extortionists that they are: we won't tolerate this, we won't accept this and you will pay the price for your stupidity.
I just hope Bell South will understand the message when they see their customers desert in droves.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Bellsouth DSL users, post up your alternatives... my bet is they're a network of regional monopolies. Of course if there's cable modems competing against them, the cable modem providers are probably thinking of a similar tactic.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Sounds more like the mob then a 'common carrier'.
Does this mean they also lose that status, since they are mananaging the data now? Scary concept for future privacy ( of what we have left anyway )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I would have no problem with this if they charged for guaranteed speed above and beyond what's normally available, which would invovle building more infrastructure and then using it as a 'premium channel' so to speak, but the way this article is phrased... ie. "Apple would asked to pay 5 or 10 cents per song" and "Online game companies would be targeted" makes the whole thing sound like extortion rather than providing a value-added service for a fee.
Look, moving video over the net requires a steady high-bandwidth transfer while downloading the latest Fedora iso does not. Guaranteeing a steady high-speed transfer is a different level of service that has a cost.
Big companies would rather deal with other big companies than millions of households. There's less overhead.
Besides, this is just the Walmart model. Walmart charges it's suppliers for shelf usage and placement, why can't Bell South charge content "suppliers" for premium bandwidth with guaranteed service levels?
It goes without saying that BellSouth are probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, gateways between IPs in US and the rest of the world. But what about their Global reach?
Will traffic between EU addresss be affected by this? EU and Japan? China? Middle east? India? Are Canadian content providers going to have to pay BellSouth extortion money to host for customers outside of the US?
Anyone have any ideas on this? How long has his arm grown while the armies of good lay sleeping?
May the Maths Be with you!
How big is BellSouth? I mean, do they think they can take on Apple, Google and Yahoo? In the end the BellSouth subscribers are on the internet for the content. If The big content provider refuse to pay it how long could Bellsouth last?
Bell will succeed with this, even though it sounds ridiculous. Bell will sell this under the guise of Quality of Service(QoS). They will not penalize a provider for not paying them, not in the beginning anyway. What they will do is offer QoS guarantees to providers that need or would like it like Vonage or Skype. These providers will pay for the QoS because it will improve the quality of the provider's offerings to the provider's customer who is also a BellSouth customer.
For instance, Vonage will pay BellSouth because with QoS, Vonage can provide better VoIP call quality and even guarantees to their customers through Bellouth.
But, quite some time after this catches on, when all the big guys are paying for BellSouth QoS, the little guys that do not pay will start being squeezed out. Only then will people realize that if you don't pay BellSouth, your connection will be total crap and basically unusable but, by then, the concept of providers paying BellSouth for the QoS will be firmly entrenched.
It is actually an ingenious strategy. BellSouth increases its revenue by charging more for QoS but, instead of charging BellSouth customers more than they do already, they are reversing the charges and increasing their customer base. It's sneaky and underhanded and is almost guaranteed to be highly successful.
I am sure that most of these companies have already paid for quality of service and are not paying $40/month for their internet, they would have very high speed fibre connections coming in to give them the high speed connection to the internet allowing them to upload media to clients.
Don't wait, tell them what you think about this: Contact BellSouth Internet Services.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
How is this different from current DDOS extortionists?
Maybe a slight tech difference, but to me in a social context it means exactly the same.
Its not like the 'big change' hasn't happened before.
Some of us remember the good old days days, before it was commercialized in the first place. That day was the beginning of the end.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You are the man. No one knows about telebit anymore......
I know someone who works(ed) for them. He is great to bounce things off of. He showed me old router and modem code that het used to write for them. He knows most WAN protocols off the top of his head to the bit level. I like talking with him... He wrote his own packet sniffer (and sells it, it is a good piece of software)
Starting next Monday the Yellow Cab Company of Chicago will begin charging all business to which a fare is delivered. "It is unreasonable," said Abraham Stoley, President of Yellow Cab, "for businesses to receive the benefit of customers and employees arriving at their sites in a safe and timely manner and for them to pay nothing. We spend time, we spend gas, and quite frankly, we expect them to pay their fair share of the fare." Although they are not implementing it at this time, Mr. Stoley went on to say that they may also begin billing all businesses passed on the way to a destination, as these business receive "free marketing". Businesses everywhere were unavailable for comment.
I already pay a fair amount of money for "high speed" internet. What the hell am I paying for, if not to use Vonage, Skype, and the other high-speed services I need? If I were a Bell South customer, I'd be looking for alternatives.
You guys just need to tell all your friends to vote Republican again , Not!
Isn't BellSouth also an ISP? I guess they just cut their throats in that business.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If I had internet service through them, and I noticed that some web sites did not come through as fast as they did on my friends system with a different ISP, I would tend to call BellSouth and ask what is happening. What are they going to tell me? "Oh, Skype did not pay us $3000 this month, so it is slow for you, but if you switch ISP's we will sue you to death." hmmm I guess customers really don't have any value in today's society.
It's pretty east to block the entire subnet from reaching your website, no? So until BellSouth stops acting like complete lunatics, dont allow their users access to your content. Start an uproar.
If we don't fight back now, more and more ISPs will think this is a good idea.
"Joy is contagious," he said, peering into the microscope.
If Bell South expects to charge content providers a premium to run on their network they have no clue how this works. There is no way they could administer the tolls without cutting the existing service level or building a seperate network. Content owners have to stand up and say NO. If Bell wants to create a QOS premium offering then let them go and build it out but, don't expect people to pay more to access a service that already exists.
What's to stop BS from colluding with other ISPs to have them all engage in this pay-for-play gig? They're not called Baby Bells for nothing.
The idea will crash and burn if BS is the only one doing it... but if ALL of the ISPs get in on the gig? Oh yeah, we are royally screwed!
Samsonite now charges airline companies. Philips, Samsung, and Sony started a class action lawsuit against CBS and CNN. The American Association Of Shopping Bag Producers is looking into charging WalMart. And everywhere the same cry can be heard:" They are using us without paying us!".
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
TFA says that Apple, for example, might be charged a nickle or dime per song to make sure that the data transfers completely and quickly. Ignoring the big bad implications of the word "completely," I just dont' get it.
I could understand it if they provided an additional service. For instance, providing a local high bandwidth proxy/caching service. This could ensure that watching music videos would be a smooth experience regardless. How much it's worth however is another issue.
And can I pay to have my competitor's service not accelerated?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I am currently a BellSouth DSL customer. That will be changing today when I switch my service to Comcast.
So, does this mean I can bill Bell South for all the zombie PC's on their networks sending me spam? How about if Google charges Bell South a "delivery surcharge" to ensure that BS customers' searches are completed in an accurate and timely fashion? What if cnn.com only shows the first 50 words of each story to Bell South customers unless they receive an extra fee? Who is going to scream with pain first? If BS becomes an unusable paraiah network, where will BS be as a company in a couple of years?
But we are the lamb. CorpGovMedia is the Lion.
I guess that would make Slashdot the Valley of Darkness.
May the Maths Be with you!
Stop with the melodramatic, pessimist, defeatist "Well, it's been a fun ride, but the internet is dead" posts. Do you really think anyone in a position of power at any company will respond to this by saying "Aw shucks, I guess that's the end of that! We'd better divert some of our profits to BellSouth!"?
The only people who benefit from this practice are the telecommunications providers. And even among them, the only ones desperate enough to try this manuever are the old dinosaurs that still depend heavily on POTS for their revenue. Every other company in the world suffers because of this, and they're not going simply going to roll over and pay what amounts to protection money.
Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Google. Hell, every company whose employees work from home over a VPN, or every company that links small remote offices with a VPN over cheap DSL lines. They're not going to take this lying down.
If BellSouth does go ahead with this, consumers will be made abundantly aware of what they're doing: every website that provides downloads will have a prominent link on it, stating "An important notice for BellSouth customers."
Government intervention isn't even necessary - the free market will take care of this. BellSouth is not a monopoly.
This space intentionally left blank.
Bill Smith, chief technology officer at BellSouth justified content charging companies by saying they are using the telco's network without paying for it.
No, they're not! You're customers who are paying you a monthly payment for network access, are paying those companies as well and are moving their content across BellSouth's network as allowed in the contract.
The content providers are being ASKED (and payed) to move content. They aren't stealing bandwidth. Stop being greedy, and try to solve real problems like spam, network reliability and getting your service to more people.
Who do we call? What legal action can we take? I'm in a northern state so I doubt Bell South will listen to what I have to say.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
"they are using the telco's network without paying for it."
Wouldn't that be like the DoT charging Ford and Chevy for people using the HOV lanes? If Toyota doesn't cough up a golden lung then none of the Toyota drivers will get to use the HOV lane.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Bellsouth does not do my internet, but they do handle the telephone lines to my house. Is there any competition to the local telephone company besides the VoIP services? This makes me so mad i don't want to give Bellsouth any business at all if there is an alternative.
Why is it always american business that threatens the internet? Surely if you believe all the movies this kind of thing is perpetrated by a british guy with slicked back hair and a stutter.
It is very simple.
Consumer ISPs try to bring goods to the consumers at the cheapest possible prices to the consumer. One way of reducing this price is to shift part of the cost to someone else.
By charging VoIP and Itunes for consumer's bandwidth they plan to subsidize the consumer, thus making their prices less than their competitors (which should temporarily bring customers, assuming they are not a complete monopoly).
In your toll road example, the idea would be to charge grandma for the use of toll roads, so that more people would chose to take the toll road to drive to her.
The closest example to this is caller pays cell phone, where the caller is charged for his minutes and for the minutes of those he calls, instead of each party paying for their own minutes (send and recv). Interestingly enough, this is just as stupid as what BellSouth is doing, but more people seem to be ok with it.
badness 10000
Seriously, I hope everyone collectively gives BS the finger. Maybe their peers will have enough of them also and just de-peer them.
It reminds me of the days where net access was charged by minute, only now they are charging people who are serving the content. And those people are already paying hosting fees and bandwidth charges from their provider. Peering agreements exist in order for the internet to exist. I'll let you route traffic on my network if you let me route traffic across yours... But now, it's let me route traffic on your network, and any traffic passing through mine I'm gonna extort money from the people serving the content. That's not how the internet works.
What happens if Google, Yahoo, and other large sites get together and just block BellSouth's IP ranges so no BS customers can use their sites? You bet your ass that BS is going to lose customers if they can't access what they want. I would say that the Yahoo's of the world have got BS by the balls, because they could certainly block BS IP's, and BS could do nothing about it. If I don't want a certain IP range hitting my servers, I have every right to block it.
Note that this will not stop transit traffic from passing through BS's network, but it will certainly piss of BS's customer base.
And Mark Cuban's comments on this? He's an idiot. Maybe he should stick to commenting on things he has actual knowledge of.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Now I'll no longer have to pay a monthly fee for broadband access! The content providers will pay for me!
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
>Bill Smith, chief technology officer at BellSouth justified content charging companies by saying they are using the telco's network without paying for it.
So is he saying that CNN is NOT paying for their hookup to the net? Somehow, I don't think that's true. I would guess that wherever their server farm is (might not be Atlanta), the fat pipe connecting it to the rest of the internet already comes with a fat bill from Bell South or some other telco. I guess he's talking more about MS and Google that are already paying someone else, and he wants to add a tariff to every packet from outside the Bell South system. Does that apply only to packets delivered to BS customers or to those that transit their system on their way to somewhere else?
I can see it now:
To: Bob@ourbiz.com
From: John@ourbiz.com
Subject: Closing the big deal
Bob, We can close this deal for six figures if you meet the client for lunch at [this packet of this email can be made available for reading by logging onto tariff.bellsouth.com and authorizing payment of the tariff from your account. If you do not have an account, one can be set up after arranging the account setup fee and monthly payment structure. Have a noce day, Bell South] late we'll lose the whole deal to those slimeballs at theirbiz. Good luck, John.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I think of all the software and OS patches I've downloaded over the years. What happens if MS has to pay to update your computer? Taking it a step further, I'm not sure if open source could survive as we know it today. I could only imagine there has got to be a fare amount of people updating something at any given time.
If you are a content provider DO NOT pay this extortion. Instead you should refuse to service BellSouth customers at all. Put up a simple web page explaining the situation and asking BellSouth customers to call up their suppor number and complain. Then redirect all BellSouth IPs to that page.
If BellSouth is not seriously spanked by their customer base all of the ISPs will be doing this within a year.
Outrageous!
"It's the shipping business of the digital age," Smith said, arguing that consumers should welcome the pay-for-delivery concept.
Egad - he's been trained in the Force: "You like it when we rip you off..."
Damn Sith...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Non Bell South customers who receive calls from Bell South Customers will soon see charges from Bell South on their phone bill. After all they are not paying to use Bell Souths lines.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Excuse me, but I'm paying for it, and I expect you deliver all my content equally!
The only advantage a citizen has in dealing with a regulated utility verses an equally sized -- and equally uncaring -- company is your ability to put pressure on you regulatory body and elected representatives. In this regard, you are the shareholders.
Stop this now before it spreads more widely.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
to let the POTS (broadly telephone) system rot.
We've got Cable, Fiber and Wireless, both local/intermediate (LAN WLAN), and long range (cell).
Cable's rolling out everwhere. Fiber is the future of telecom companies 'in-the-know' (not Bellsouth or SBC). Wireless is easily deployable by small ISP, and Cell technology can currently handle ALL our phone needs, and will be able to handle quite a few data needs in the near future.
Tell me again why we need the old fashioned copper telephone companies again?
Competition is a beautiful thing. The FCC should let these companies strangle themselves, while the rest of the providers out there should use this as yet another selling point versus the bells.
I dunno; at least the Cable companies(yes, plural) in my area heavily advertise about all the fees/micropayments with phone companies, and sell every one of their services as 'all-you-can-eat' (phone, cable, internet), with stable pricing. This means they tell you what your monthly bill will be, taxes etc. . . included, before you sign up.
The only areas in which this is not the solution is areas with geographical monopolies. In those areas, the local utility commission need to slap the local telephone company, or make a nice deal with an alternative carrier. Either that, or roll out a community network. Or invite Google to do so, tax free, with various other incentives.
*shrug* This is a nonissue, unless Bellsouth is your only choice. Vote with your dollar, people. Change providers! Not when they implement it, change _now_.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
My lay understanding is that this is extortion! Who's the one that are being claimed to use services without paying for it? When Netflix On-Demand (fictional example for new) streams a movie to me, *I'm* using the network service, for which I'm already paying. Netflix isn't the user; they're the provider. Am I totally missing something here?
--Jim (me)
The model in concept makes sense: You pay more, you get higher roughting priority.
From the telco's perspective this makes allot of sense. Sure your paying for a T1 but that's bandwidth, not response time. And the telco has to pay for more and more expensive routers that are switching more and more complex packet destinations; P2P, has gotta bugger their roughters something vicious.
Everyone and his brother is pushing multimedia today. And VOIP companies (espcially Skype) are killing one of their cash cows, while at the same time putting a bigger load on their routers. They are not a gov't, they don't have to guarantee QOS, they have to compete for it.
So charging for the QOS makes sense. It offers a huge advantage to traditional B2C buisnesses like Google, Google Video, and SIP h323 companies, because they can just pay more and offer a better service, guaranteed. On the other hand technologies like Skype and Bittorrent suffer since nothing they do will improve their QOS over back bone routers. It's a good short term win-win for companies in general (small and large), not just the Telcos.
If you were a VOIP company who would you rather get your connection with: a company that is egalitarian in it's router priorities, or one that you can bribe to bump you to the top?
The sand in the oinment of course is that ISP's won't pay for this, since this is nearly imposible to explain to average consumers. It doesn't make good marketing sense. And no matter how much content vendors pay for QOS, it's only a half solution to users at a sucky ISP. Telcos loose their P2P screwing ability if they give the ISP's good QOS as a sales ploy.
In the end, it probably screws consumers who want "off the beaten path" services, but will give better service to users who only visit big content providers (Google, Microsoft, CNN, et all)
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I pay $50 a month for 3Mb DSL from Bellsouth. I don't want to keep paying for increased fees for someone downloading 100+ GB a month in movies and other services. Bandwidth costs, so who should pony up the cost other than those who use it. I don't want to see monthly caps or a ridiculous metered service like some countries have. I'm sure it's more cost effective to hit a single provider with fees than parsing it out over thousands of consumers.
Just a crazy thought: I wonder if he has figured out how to bill KaZaA yet for their network usage?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I pay for a 7mbps pipe. I expect that speed to whomever I connect to. This bandwidth is already owned and paid for by me. How dare they have the audacity to resell it to the entities to whom I choose to connect.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Hmm... since connection speed can be slowed down at both the server and the ISP, couldn't a popular website do the same thing to BellSouth. Take Yahoo or Google for example. They could demand that BellSouth pay them a hefty monthly fee or they'll throttle any traffic to their IP space to 5 KB/s or perhaps add a 7500 ms delay. Such a slow speed (and an explaination from the website about the new two-tiered internet) would cause a LOT of customers to switch. (Why pay for high speed access if everything is throttled?) Websites obviously couldn't do this to every ISP, but they could certainly do it to any one of them. After all, since a lot of websites use ads to generate revenue, they probably couldn't afford to pay every ISP some fee. Of course, even if they did then their ads, being hosted on a different server, would either slow down their entire webpage (making paying the fee pointless), or simply not load before the user moves on.
I find this incomprehensible. Right now, Comcast is attacking BellSouth continuously in TV commercials over the incredible speed difference between cable and DSL. Yeah, I'm sure you can find someone with a shitty cable connection, but right now I'm getting 6Mb/s from Comcast. I've seen downloads at night of 850KB/s sustained, and regularly get 500KB/s during the day. They are continuously working to speed up their network and advertise that fact.
BellSouth is stuck with technology that cannot compete on speed, so their response is to make the speed worse? Only in a monopoly telecom would that make any sense.
Comcast is also doing an all-out assault on "the dish", which BellSouth pushes as an alternative to cable. I think Comcast is winning that battle, too.
I'm waiting for the next step where BellSouth tries to buy some legislation to shore up their failing internet business.
Do you have ESP?
How long with BellSouth customers put up with BellSouths antics if Google simple cut off their access to Google services? Given Google's response to when Elinor Mills posted Eric Schmidt's personal info I wouldn't be surprised if they do just that.
4. Pay all your obscene profit (and then some...) back to HNS, as patent infringment fees. Just Read claim #12 of EP1050117: Yes, they do patent stuff such as this (don't be fooled by the complicated language... it's really as trivial as "limit bandwidth by webserver and user"). While I usually don't agree with software patents, I have to admit that in this case it's beneficial: at least it prevents Bellsouth from being too annoying to its users and to the world at large
Say no to software patents.
The telco's in my opinion can go to hell and stop sucking their profits through their noses. The bandwidth has already been paid for. Bell South is an ISP right? .. well then, are they not getting enough money? That bandwidth is paid for by each user that they have connecting to the internet through them.
... I can't even believe that a CTO of a company could have the audacity to even try this. I hope the companies from whom they are trying to extort money crush Bell South.
Let the net unite and destroy idiots like that
Of course. The left hand realized that the right hand wasn't also collecting money for them at the same time. Two hands, two ends of the wire, two different groups benefiting from the connection = two pots of money to raid. And here we were thinking that the RIAA/MPAA were the only villains out there on the Internet.
Of course, how much of this will go to true infrastructure improvements -- and how much to lawyers and executive salaries?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's a fee hike plain and simple. Bell South can't raise rates without loosing customers so they go after another source of revenue.
I started a beginner economics course and I learned some interesting things about the market and taxes. When you impose a tax, regardless if you tax the seller or the buyer, it ends up in the buyer paying more for a product. If Bell South wants to charge Apple a fee for each song downloaded, you can bet Apple will pass it on to the customer.
If Bell South needs more revenue to cover costs they can;
1) Raise rates, meaning less customers, meaning less bandwidth usage.
2) Set a tiered usage rate to encourage less use like my service provider does. Have a "low use account" with low bandwidth that charges less, and a heavy user account that charges more.
Going after contect providors for more money is futile and silly.
As a constructor of networks for many years, BellSouth must have been short selling. Typically when a customer requests connectivity there are two factors, and charges. More than once a month I request connectivity expansions to my private network. I get a quote for the local loop and a quote for the access port. When you start a private network, you get two sets of quotes. one set for each end. Pay both all the bills and you have connectivity. The local loop covers the charge to move data to the backbone. The access port is the cost of the backbone infrastructure; switches, lines, other vendors, etc. BellSouth must have been short selling thier access port charges to claim anyone is using it for free.
in my area, Bellsouth provides (whether you like it or not) access to Usenet as part of the monthly fee. Anyone have any idea/speculation how Usenet traffic could be affected?
Internet Archive: Live Music Archive
So Ma Bell wants to charge companies and people that deliver content to Bell's very own customers.
So let them. But don't pay. And inform the customers WHY they recieve such bad troughput when using their websites.
Imagine e.g. Google, doing a simple revers IP lookup to determine the provider and if it's Ma Bell, adding the following message to their search sites.
Dear Visitor,
We apologize for the possible slowness of our service.
However your provider BellSouth, has decided to demand "bandwith charges" from all major website transmitting data over their network (in addition to any subscription charges from you).
Google has declined to pay those additional charges, as this traffic - like searching via Google - should be (and with all other ISP is) covered with your subscription charge.
If you have any questions, please contact your local BellSouth service center.
Happy Googling!
Tens of thousands of unhappy customers calling BellSouth should make them do another reality check and stop demanding those ridiculous charges.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Excuse me, but do you think Cox/Comcast/TimeWarner are the white hats here? If the telephone companies can extort the content providers, are the cable companies far behind? I doubt it.
The only person who should be shaping and/or prioritizing my Internet traffic bandwidth is myself.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Wouldn't this be like calling someone long distance and having the person receiving the call pay for it too? According to Bellsouth's logic, a person receiving a call would be "using the network without paying for it". What if someone was calling a Bellsouth customer using SBC's network? Wouldn't this be the same thing?
Bellsouth sux.
--If you don't test it, it won't work. Guaranteed.
I'm not a lawyer, but there have got to be laws that apply to this. People here use the word "extortion", and that sounds right to me. It's really not hard to equate what BS is doing to what the Mob does to get "protection money." The moment a big company like, say, Microsoft/MSN, Yahoo!, or Google starts getting threats and degraded performance from BS, what do you think is going to happen? These companies would rather pay this money to their lawyers than throw it away on profiteering from Bellsouth.
BellSouth should be paying the big content providers for giving them a reason to sell bandwidth. Without iTunes and Google and all the other content providers why the hell would anyone buy broadband? I'd love to see some big content providers hit BellSouth back by requiring them to pay fees or get cut off from their content. That would kill their ISP business in a hurry.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
BellSouth charges end-users for network (Internet) access. That is what you're paying those DSL charges for, if you're a BS customer.
Data that comes from some other network, like MCI or Level 3, is handled thru a peering agreement with that other network.
Many hosting providers have backbone connections to multiple networks, to make things faster. For example, Gnomovision Co-Lo and Hosting may have direct links to BS, Time Warner, MCI, Level 3 and more. These type of customer shouldn't be affected because they are already paying BS for a link.
Customers that have to go thru peered links seem to be BS' target. They *should* negotiate this with the peer, not the provider.
Google, with their rumored "data center in a container", could just drop a container on BS' network and not peer at all. They'd have to pay connect charges, but they would have a direct link to BS' network.
It seems to me that this would threaten the peering arrangement that makes the Internet function more than anything else.
Note: In order to complain to the FCC you must be a customer of BS, submit your complaint in writing and include a copy of your telephone bill.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Considering where Google is going with their business, and the significant fees this would impose upon them - I wouldn't be surprised to see them enter the ISP market in some way. Especially since they could run it at-cost (or very low margin), as it wouldn't be their core business but protection for it.
MS does similar things, taking losses on many projects (hello XBox!) to ensure they keep their competitors weak.
I'm sure there is going to be a constant battle against people who are going to spoof packets so that they are sped on through.
Having said that, I feel like this business idea is going to be successful for Bell South. And the big companies are going to be able to pay for the service, spammers are going to attempt to take advantage of it, and the average honest small businessman is going to get burned again. Hopefully, the mystical hand of the market will be able to stop this from occuring at other telcos and backbone providers, but that is doubtful.
What happens if this idea is implemented at EVERY telco? How much money is it going to cost to send data? How many telcos have to be paid?
Let's look at the history of the telcos. Compared to the telephone, the Internet is still in it's infancy. How long did the phone companies have brutal customer policies? I remember listening to Off the Hook when I was like 15 and just hearing horror stories. Granted, those are one side of the spectrum, but does anyone remember the state of telco's in the 80's.
I'm getting all verklempt.
and bad business strategy, without a doubt.
It would be nice, if they do this and get away with it for even a short period of time, if every other ISP out there decided to charge BS, and just BS, for allowing their subscribes to access their corporate web sites and marketing content. That could even be a nice campaign for the afflicted and otherwise outraged. Flood all the ISP's with requests to support the protest.
expletives welcomed
Wait till a few hundred thousand WoW players find a surcharge on their bills for using "an expensive broadband provider." Or after WoW doesn't pay the bill, and when their legion of players starts complaining about bad response, they're told to simply change ISP's and all will be good again. Where do you think their loyalty lies? To their ISP who has degraded their service and/or raised their bills, or to the game?
And what's next? Don't talk too fast on the phone or you'll have to pay extra. We'd lose New York in a minute that way.
Obviously I've got a future career in political speech-writing ahead of me after this post.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
then Qwest, Verizon, AT&T... each RBOC wants its tolls. So the content provider has to send a check every month to *every* ISP? Wow. That's gonna hurt.
:)
I suspect this is a response to declining wireline revenues. I don't know very many people who don't already have a cell phone and/or use VOIP. In fact, I know several who've turned off their landline phones, since they have no use for them.
Should we blame them?
Sorry if I'm a total N00b here, but dammnit, just got DSL and am happier than a pig in a puddle of manure about it, after several years of dialup. Just exactly what is the problem ? Are they going to charge me even more than I'm already paying?? Is that asshole Bill Gates behind this somehow ? /inquiring minds want to know
"Hmmm. You know, that's a mighty nice stream of IP packets you've got there. It's be an awful shame if some of them started getting broken, you know, kinda accidentally like. Awful shame..."
But consider:
Translation: The Internet which drew you here was just a temporary illusion. I hope you enjoyed the ride, but please watch your step as you exit carefully to the right. Have a nice day.
I really feel sorry for all the people who built their business and made their investments based on this flawed understanding of what the Internet is.
This doesn't mean the Internet is going to go away, but it does mean the Internet you have right now is going to change. My predictions:
- More Web-based resources will become subscription-only services. Less content will be freely available.
- Higher prices for consumer-grade Internet access, but with that expanded service area coverage.
- Much more restricted capability of consumer-grade access. No more 'naked DSL', $60 a month will let you browse the web (and use web-mail) but nothing more. If you want to run a web server, use a VPN client, run your own mail server, or p2p you'll be paying extra.
- To get less-expensive Web access, you'll have to run everything through an Internet access device at your premesis which you don't own, like a cable modem. satellite receiver, or Xbox.
- Free Software will be severely impacted. The Free Software movement was made possible by reducing the communication and colaboration costs to near zero. Very few private individuals are going to be able to finance their own web site for their own pet project, even if it's on someone elses server.
- Just as VoIP finally makes headway into the telephony business on a large scale, it will become every network provider's favorite cash cow. The same will happen with any popular technology.
We'll watch as the network owners divide the Internet up into pieces which individually are smaller, more tightly controlled, more closely held, and thus more profitable. This will kick-off a period of Metcalf's Law operating in reverse, where the aggregate value of the network as a whole will be reduced exponentially as entire classes of connectivity are disconnected. This 'destruction of value' will take the form, for example, of thousands of Linksys owners collectively waking-up one morning (literally) to discover their $50 investment has become worthless. This is the same process (in reverse) which built the Internet as we know it, but will happen a lot quicker than the 5 years of carpet bombing with AOL disks.The good news in all of this is that the noosphere extends beyond the current Internet, and the noosphere has not been damaged by this process. Expect a new Internet (not Internet 2.0) to rise from the ashes of the old.
The bad news is that there are a lot of big new dinosaurs which will need to be made extinct before that can happen, and the last time it took 150 years to get rid of just one.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Nice memory for that patent though. It should make this verrry interesting.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
This is ridiculous! It's not like Apple is pushing this stuff to people over B.S. their own CUSTOMERS are the ones requesting the data. Sure it comes from Apple, but at the customer's request. WTH should Apple, or Google or whomever be charged for that? It's like charging GE for the power your dryer is using (while charging the customer at the same time)
Maybe I'm not understanding the issues here, but aren't the "providers" providing content to BellSouth customers through their network? I pay for a DSL connection and then stream video or have Vonage or some other use of the bandwidth, aren't I paying for the access already?
Isn't this just BellSouth double-billing for the same service? Why not just recover cost from their already paying customers? I assume the answer is that they can't, either for regulatory issue or because they have already maxed out what they think their customers are willing to put up with.
Here's a sneaky/evil idea. If you are an Apple sized company and you recieve this sort of extortion request, degrade the network performance TO BellSouth networks with a big old link to a notice as to why! Let your customers fight their ISP's for you!
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
Too late. That's your cell phone in action. By bringing out the same idea in new technology they have managed to get what they couldn't get with the old technology.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I know it might be a pain, but I think T-Mobile has a decent unlimited data plan for cell phones, and I know Verizon has a couple different options for data (14K/144K/2Mbit).
SBC couldn't get me decent DSL service, so I kicked ALL of their services to the curb. I now rely on cable for internet, and cell phones for voice. If I had to kick my cable provider to the curb, I'd switch to internet on the cell phone.
should have read
Now, if Bellsouth loses {some large number} of customers to VoIP
...but the filter didn't accept the carats I originally enclosed it with.
Also, I'm well aware that many of these providers' networks were originally built witt government subsidies (i.e., our taxes), and/or continue to be built and maintained at very tax-advantaged rates, and that many operators have what is essentially a government-mandated monopoly for the "last mile". However, even with all of the advantages, it still costs massive amounts of real money to build out, operate, and maintain. And minus the "tax advantages" or even subsides, that cost is still spread across the customer base. When you lose customers, something has to replace it.
Now, is it "our" responsibility to figure out how to replace Bellsouth's lost revenue? Of course not. That's Bellsouth's responsibility. And, not surprisingly, that's exactly what it's trying to do. And, even less surprisingly, without doubling broadband customer rates, which would come with its own problems.
As much as we can bitch about lack of competition, legitimately, and all of that sort of thing, having a healthy physical wired infrastructure, whether it be twisted pair and/or coax (or fiber), across the majority of the country is critically important. The model by which all of this physical infrastructure is maintained is probably here to stay for a while.
A couple of years ago, I was on the receiving end of some major Bell South bogosity:
A Floridan spammer, subscribed to Bell South, was using my address as a From field on his garbage (a so-called "joe-job"), and I got "back" all the bounces, to the tune of about 2000 per night. Well, actually this same guy has been subscribed to other ISPs before, but usually, after complaining to the ISP, the flood would cease after 1 or 2 days, until he moved on to the next.
Not so at Bell South. Basically they ignored me for weeks...
After I saw that my emails got ignored, I called them, and was basically told that, as a non-customer, they owed me nothing, I should just suck it up...
That's when I felt it was time to turn up the heat! First thing, I rigged my mailserver to redirect all these bounces back to Bell South's abuse desk, via the same open proxies that the spammer used (I used those proxies, so that they couldn't just block the mails at the firewall). Nothing happened.
Then I targeted the help desk. Still nothing happened.
Then I targetted random Bellsouth employees. Still nothing.
Finally, as a last desparate move, I targeted random Bellsouth customers. Within hours of that, the flood of spam stopped dry!
I also think that this is what will happen in this circumstance here. The harmed content provider will do everything in their might to make the Bellsouth customers aware of what is going on, and then watch just how fast Bellsouth will be caving! They may not owe anything to the victims of their spam, nor to random content provider, but they sure as hell do owe something to their customers!
(The spammer actually moved on to a couple of different ISPs after that, but a few weeks later, all available ISPs had been used up, and then the flood really stopped...)
Say no to software patents.
So when does Google turn on this shadowy network they've been building and flip yet another industry on its head?
useless sig advice - Read Nabokov.
...infinitive with three words: '...to reliably and speedily deliver...'. What, is this some Germanic conspiracy? This goes on any further and we won't know what any sentence is supposed to mean until we reach the end!
You're assuming that the content providers have a choice in the matter. Yes, you're right, Walmart does charge a shelf space fee to companies who want to sell their product at Walmart stores. Companies make a concious decision to pay this fee, in order to sell at Walmart. However, your analogy falls a little short here. Content Providers have no such accord with Bellsouth. Bellsouth isn't doing anything to drive traffic through the site. They're simply trying to tack another price tag on service that has already been sold and paid for. Namely by their subscribers. I believe the following analogy sits a little neater.
If I were to rent a pickup truck solely to haul firewood, I would pay the rental company a fee for the truck. This does not give the rental company the right to charge the fella who sold me the wood a fee for his wood's ride in my truck, because I've already paid for it.
And just what makes you think Comcast won't follow suit the moment they can?
I think the only way left to profit from the greedy bastards is to become a shareholder yourself. And this includes in oil companies!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I am in the yukon and am not a Bell South customer but it is obvious to me that if this BS does not stop with BS than it could only grow and once that happens it is quite likely it will be impossible to stop. Since I can not send a letter to a political represntitive, or vote with my choice of ISP (anybody who uses bell south should switch ISP's and make sure bell south knows why!). What can I do to fight this from happening? Is there a non-profit group that is fighting this that I can donate to? or?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I pay to connect to the internet (charge #1). THe company I'm connecting to (say xyz.com) has some servers somewhere. They're not just hanging on the internet for free, they're probably in a CoLoc or Server Room somewhere that has to Pay to be connected to the internet (charge #2). It's in this way that pulling files from friends websites work too. We ALL pay to connect to "The Internet". So basically I'm paying for my half of the digital journey to their website, and xyz.com is paying for the other half of the digital journey to their website (and vice versa on the return trip).
So now the ISP wants me to pay for my data to get ALL THE WAY to xyz.com even though xyz.com already paid for that leg of the journey, and vice versa.
ALSO. xyz.com is probably leasing a T/DS3 from the ISP. part of this leasing agreement states that the T/DS3 must be relyable (most have a 99.9%+ uptime promise) and fast dedicated bandwidth. So again, this is already been done and paid for.
And lets all remember that if companies didn't exist on the internet, people wouldn't want to be there either... So if companies can't afford this, their subscribers will leave too and they'll end up loosing money from both sides.
-=JML=-
This coming from the same company that screwed over New Orleans after the hurricanes came to town.
s -screw-you-new-orleans.html
http://www.binaryspiral.com/2005/12/bellsouth-say
They just keep building up the bad karma... maybe we'll see a metor drop on BS HQ in the near future?
I can't wait until the try to send a bill to Microsoft for the windows update content.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I think it's time that we bypassed them completely. With the advent of longer range wireless, as well as the proliferation of access points, we could theoretically setup a large peer to peer 'internet 2.0'. Granted the latency would be hell at this point, but we can work out the details later. This also opens the door for for satellite access etc to re-enter the market.
Since when did operating systems become a religion?
For years and years I've been reading about all of this supposed "dark fiber"--fiber optic lines that were laid during the Internet boom but never lit up because the demand just wasn't there. If the demand for bandwidth is growing so much isn't it time to light it up? Or has it already been lit up? Or was it just an urban legend?
I'll be right back, I gotta take the poodle out of the microwave.
Insert witty sig here.
Most large news media outfits now offer some sort of on demand video clips now and are expanidng those services. If their customers notice a dramatic slowdown in use or they get complaints about extra fees, etc, they'll cover it in some stories their customers will see. Then maybe some legislative acdtion will happen.Bellsouth won't be able to pull this off in a vacuum. Even if a simple google search had some text to it with referencing information, that's enough to get the matter noticed. Or how about if one morning several million people couldn't get a google search at all, instead just the "news" on the extra fees? Google is popular, they could generate a lot of grass roots lobbying action and hit a lot more eyeballs than bell south could in one day.
"You'se got a nice looking Web site there. Shame if somethin happened to it. Know what I mean?"
[Insert pithy quote here]
I was going to "Act Now". I even went to the web site url you posted. When I got there the very first question was "are you a BellSouth customer?". "Well of course" I thought getting ready to proceed when I paused. I'm a customer. If I write to complain about this rather open extortion fest they want to implement would I begin to notice *my* bandwidth getting degraded. my phone lines getting more disrupted with static, my general service going downhill?
Perhaps that thinking is close to tinfoil hat time, but I can't help but feel, if there are those within the dark recesses of Castle BS that can hatch this alarming idea of demanding payola, protection money from content providers why could not they also think, let's stop dissentients by effecting them where it hurts most, connectivity.
My analogy:
In my fantasy neighborhood there are stores that sell goods and there are people who can not get to those goods since they are house-ridden. A company starts up a service the provides delivery of goods to these homes on a monthly fee to the house. The house pays more for quick delivery, less if they want lower priority in scheduling. The company does well because they provide a good service to the neighborhood and finally everyone is using the service. At that point the company says to the suppliers, hey, our bikes, vans, and sneakers cost us money so you need to pay us for our efforts or we will start to put those who do not pay on the lower priority list.
What's a provider to do, not pay and begin to lose business to those who will pay? Complain to the government (and we know how long that may take). So in the end the supplier pays, they wrap the cost back to the customer who is already paying for the service, and the only winner is the delivery service that just extorted money.
Now, is it possible that if this is extortion/racketeering then providers(suppliers) can contact the FBI and report the delivery service company as such and have charges filed? Which one would have the courage to make such a move? Apple? Google? Yahoo? I doubt it. While I agree that I can tell my ISP BellSouth to go pound salt and get me a new ISP, Bellsouth is the physical data entry point into my home. Again, what stops them from effecting the switch from one DSL service to another. I could switch to Cable, but then they may start the same shenanigans.
This is a very cynical viewpoint, but these days, once a company like BellSouth begins to implement these types of business practices there is little effort to stop them. I would (and may) write to my US Rep, but he is so busy trying to scamper away from the latest D.C. scandal I am sure he would not be to concerned about the extortionist practices of one of his campaign contributors. Companies like BellSOuth see that they can initiate these ethically shady business models because the current government is pro-big business and will only interfere if an even bigger company steps into squash this before it takes hold. Best bet I see, write to Google or Microsoft and say "This practice sucks, this will cost you because BellSouth wants to charge you and if they do, and you charge me, I will not use your service any more. It is Government by the dollar and I think I am beginning to hear a fiddle playing off in the distance.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
This is crazy, if content providers want to reach customers quicker, they have alternatives such as Akamai. ISPs generally get Akamai servers FOR FREE (they pay for hydro), and Akamai updates the servers for them. When local users go to Microsoft.com for example, they end up hitting a local machine on the ISPs network. There is no need to go "on the internet," so theoretically, the user can take advantage of the full bandwidth of their modem. This works out for the ISP because they can offer faster downloads to popular sites without having to increase bandwidth to end users, or the pipe to the internet, and content producers receive less local traffic and can deliver content faster. The content provider makes that choice without being forced, and this is usually welcomed by the ISP.
I just hope that BS customers have some alternatives in their area. I hope they can show Bell South that they will not be bullied. This goes for content providers as well.
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
When they sold us all asymetric home internet connections we said nothing.....
Isn't the customer/end-user paying to access the network? Why should SBC (or whoever) get to charge Google for me to access my email, when I'm already paying for that network connection?
This is one reason why people should be promoting alternative networks such as FreeWans, Muni-nets, mesh networks and so on. As the Internet continues to stomp the local telcos, post offices, media cartels, and the corporate stanglehold on information, the establishment corporate-government alliances are desparately trying to hold on to the control they have enjoyed in the past. Since they own or control most of the wires, fiber and airwaves on which this information travels, they have decided to control the information by charging excessive fees. Once this rip-off spreads, we can probably spell the end of the freedom that the Internet provides.
UNLESS that is, if people start promoting and experimenting with ways of passing information on conduits not controlled by big business or government. Many communities and organizations have started local networks that allow computers to communicate for free. Some of these network are even linked together.
The main problem preventing the establishment of a global free network is the fact that no one has yet found an affordable way of transmitting large amounts of information over a long distance quickly without violating some government rule. Once a way of doing this is found, we can expect much, much lower Internet, phone, and cable TV bills. We will learn the true cost of providing these services, and
people will see hoe much they have been ripped off by local monopolies.
...complain. Because they deliver encrypted content for which a (DRM) license is accessed elsewhere. Those sending encrypted promotional content (date-limited single track from an album, for example) will not like the idea because, for them, it is cheap at the moment. One system in Holland from a national newspaper delivered time-limited exam papers (the exam would run on your laptop for the exam time) a little before the peak exam period to students as a successful promo. Will this sort of idea be crushed before it's really got started?
Hey you stupid Son Of A Bitch. I'M PAYING FOR THE USE OF YOUR NETWORK! And for any and ALL content that I CHOOSE.
Posted with a sore ass and a Bellsouth DSL connection.
Why on earth would any company actually pay the fee. The profits lost from not being able to provide to BS customers is nothing compared to what they stand to lose if this becomes reality for many ISPs. Apple is a perfect company to take a stand. If they refuse to pay and are somehow shut out from BS's customers then BS will have a backlash from those not able to access itunes. Assuming this works out for BS, then every ISP would follow suit and there would be a huge amount of money going from content providers to ISP's. All the content providers have to do now is say no and alienate BS until this all goes away.
Considering that the cable companies are trying to make inroads into other areas than TV (voice, data, etc), I would think that they would jump at the chance to say something during their commercials such as, "We don't block traffic or degrade the signal on purpose like Qwest does, in addition, you bundle with us and save on your phone and cable".
"Mark Cuban wrote on his blog at BlogMaverick.com that such fees are critical to the survival of the Internet. "Our ability to consume bandwidth is growing far, far faster than the speed at which it is being added," he said"
I was just talking to my aunt, a VP for Qwest telecom, about how much new and as yet totally unused fiber was laid down during the boom days of the 90s.
How many of the fantstic companies that are on the net today could have afforded in their infancy to pay for decent content delivery speed and reliability under this kind of system?
Maybe we'll get lucky and the politicians will actually try and put a stop to this blatant greed before it gets out of hand.
Isn't the Internet dependent upon cooperatve peering agreements between the pipe providers?
If Bellsouth starts putting restrictions and demands on it's portion of the pipe, won't the rest of the Internet just consider it damage and route around it? Or is too much of the Internet in the control of money-greedy corporations these days?
I can see major content providers refusing to serve content to Bellsouth customers in retaliation, thus pissing of Bellsouth's subscribers, causing them to seek service from elsewhere...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
That is unbelievable. I actually had to read the summary twice and then the article to believe what I was reading. I thought I was reading it wrong.
This is ridiculous!
[alk]
what about the company bellsouth pays? i don't really understand it all, but isn't there a larger, less well known company that provides bellsouth with access? i would imagine they are slightly less driven to punish consumers and may know how retarded this is.
maybe they would deny bellsouth access.
-- lol pwned
It won't work that way, because the baby bells still have local/regional vendor lockin. For example, I am on dialup in bell south country, can't get broadband here. Uhh, who do I go to? It won't matter which dial-up ISP I use, they ALL still travel over bell south copper. Even if I could get broadband DSL from a variety of places, unless they own the copper, bell south can still control the throughput or access. Just because it's one transparent step away from the surfer doesn't mean they don't have a monopoly still. The basic phone service is the same, although there are a variety of "local service" providers, all they do is buy bulk from bell south and resell it retail, again, only putting it one step away from the consumer, and those "local alternative" phone services are already in deep doo doo with recent changes to the law as regards pricing and access. It used to be bell south (and all the other regional bells) HAD to offer at bulk cost, now they can charge those others whatever they feel like. It hasn't happened yet, but it will be coming, we had a lot of discussions about this last year in a few threads. I talked to one of my local "alternative" phone companies, they are prety worried about it, because they can see this is going to put them back out of business at some point.
For all practical purposes, we are pretty close to being back in the bad old days of "pay us or you get NOTHING" as regards telco services, when it was all one big phone company. This is going to impact everyone, even if you get pure satellite internet service it still has to travel over other comapnies copper and fiber, all of whom are going to want a bigger check.
This REALLY sucks for the end user consumer, there's no work around for it. It will be slower to affect a few urbanites, but they'll see it. Even those website folks saying they'll block requests from bell south, it won't matter once the other regional telcos start the same extortion racket, you'll have to block from everyone then. What's the point in having a website then when you'll have to block EVERYONE because someplace in the mix is a regional monopolist with the electronic extortion gun?
What many people who advocate deregulaton fail to realize is that there was often a damn good reason why regulations were put there in the first place. That's not surprising, however, when you consider that many people were born 30 or so years after such regulation.
Being fairly old, I recall hearing directly about the days of deregulated utilities in America from relatives I had living there. Situations similar to this were common, where the service would be terrible, if not outright exploitive. The users had no real choice in the matter, either, nor any remedy. Eventually things would get far out of hand, and regulations would be put in place and enforced.
I always laugh when I hear Republicans talking about how much better it is for certain markets to be deregulated. They go on about the free market, and all that. But the regulations are there because the free market failed horribly, as it sometimes does, and thus government intervention was necessary. Not only that, but the people supporting such things were born years after the regulations were first put in place, and thus did not understand the conditions that lead to the regulations.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
If the content providers formed a guild then they could force outfits like this to pay for access to the content. I wonder how many subscribers Bell South would have if the only content they had on their system was what they actually owned.
The Telcos have been getting a free ride on the backs of those who create internet content. Its time for this to change.
Is Qwest going to start charging me for purchases I make by phone call?
A lot of people seem to have misunderstood completely what's going on here. BellSouth realizes that the end-users (through ISP's) are paying for the use of their network. However, they are realizing they also have a potential market at the supplier side, by charging companies to get better "pipes" installed so the experience is better on the end-user side. Another way to look at this is as a network "subsidy" charged to the content supplier so that a site like CNN.com is more responsive than say BBC.com. This might first come off as illegal, but it's not really when you think about the cable TV channels are supported by both subscribers and advertisers (probably more money generated through advertisers). No one seems to have a legal problem with being flooded with advertisements during Desperate Housewives (arguably wrecking the end-user experience), but all of a sudden people are complaining that charging content suppliers is wrong (for improving the end-user experience).
When dail-up ISP started to pop out I noticed one that was really cheap.
Something like $5 a month and unlimited time. The catch was it was not unlimited data.
The $5 had a cap on how much data you could transfer. After that you paid extra for each MB you transfered.
At the time of 1200-9600 baud internet connections it would take about 5 hours of solid tranfer time to reach the starting limit.
I did not mind the pay-pre byte scheme because it was fairly cheap and good for people who did not do much on the internet.
Now a days they have the high speed lite and other offerings that charge you a really reasonable free.
I figured the pay-pre-byte business model would never last as most non-techinical people have a hard time understanding it.
I can only see this as a boon to Peer to Peer software. Real companies will come up with P2P solutions that are unfeasible to throttle.
Prioritization filters will be a riot as well. How long before BitTorrent variants start spoofing packets as FoolishBigPockets Inc?
The first thing you need to do is call and complain. There's nothing that can cause BellSouth to switch gears faster than a bunch of whining customers. This can only work as along as the majority of people allow it to.
The second thing you need to do is tell everyone you know that's a BellSouth customer and tell them "Don't like it? Call this number and complain". The more that complain the better.
The third thing you need to do is call your congressional representatives. Sure, they may be corrupt, but if you whine to them, they will whine to business leaders.
And they say whining doesn't solve anything...
What is that... fall down, split sides, roll around, pee your pants, convulsions and histerics, hillarious?
Yowzer!!!!! This moderation thing works awesomely.
LL
Don't quote me on this...
If they try to pressure Apple into paying their "nickel or dime per song", Apple can just stop transmitting data to Bellsouth customers. Let's see how fast Bellsouth drops this plan when people start calling in foaming at the mouths because they can't access the service b/c their ISP is trying to extort Apple.
I'm not using Bellsouth anyways, but if I were I'd say it's about time to do a boycott. Only thing in the way is that in a lot of areas there's only 1 broadband ISP to choose from. Mine's been good so far, but if they tried to pull this type of crap I'd go back to dial-up just out of principle.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Can somebody write a script for a website that will detect when a visitor is coming through Bell South's network, and alert the visitor that "the slow performance you may be experiencing is due to Bell South's Network... we recommend these alternatives."
Most broadband ISPs do this in the UK for BBC content. Of course, they don't charge the BBC for doing it because the fact that they do it means that they generate less off-network traffic, which reduces their costs. Most BBC content is not available to subscribers of ISPs that don't offer this service, so they are all forced to if they don't wish to be at a competitive disadvantage.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Would do that instantly if you could please find a broadband service provider in the same coverage area as BellSouth that 1) doesn't just resell DSL over BellSouth's lines 2) Isn't a clueless, lumbering giant with its own share of customer service and reliability nightmares, like Charter Communications.
wifi, wimax, data over power and now even the gas pipes! Maybe we will not need them soon?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
All it will take is a few major websites to stop servicing any customers of Bellsouth, and they will cut this. Consider if CNN, Amazon, and Yahoo all denied bell IP's access, and Bell will realize it is THEY that are dependent on the content for business, not the other way around.
Okay, if I understand this correctly, they're going to charge content providers for priority packet delivery, basically. But what if nobody pays extra? Sure, some sites will get slower, but then what's going to happen? Are they going to intentionally degrade the performance of high traffic sites?
On top of which, everyone is already paying. I pay for my internet connection. My ISP pays for its internet connection. Content providers pay for their internet connections. The Content Provider's provider pays for its connection. They're already charging for every link in the connection. Now they want to charge one link twice?
I don't think anyone's going to do this. It just doesn't make sense to anyone except Bell South. Nobody is going to see the logic behind their argument. It's as simple as looking at the responses here on Slashdot. How many people here are saying, "Gee, this makes sense." Nobody. How many content providers, who are generally going to be technically saavy, are going to say, "Gee, this makes sense." The answer is none.
Personally, I think this is going to be a very short-lived experiment.
I'm all about letting the consumers decide the way the market will go. For things like clothes, cars, food and toys for the kids, this seems to work exceptionally well. People can choose to buy whatever clothes, cars or toys they want because all are readily available across the country.
For something like a utility or high speed internet, it fails exceptionally so. I can't simply choose to use a different cable company, or internet provider. There's nothing else available. I can't choose a different electric company, or water company. These have all been chosen FOR me. So to call that a free market, and let these companies charge whatever they want, provide whatever service they want, and there's nothing I can do about it? Sorry, but that needs to be regulated. There is no free market when consumers only have one choice in product.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
They're charging $70-ish for 400-700kbits average with burst to 2Mbits. That's...tolerable...if you're in an area that isn't going to get Cable, DSL, Fiber, or fixed Wireless anytime soon. But, they pile some extra restrictions on top of it- you can't use it for gameplay, servers, etc.- the service in all cases of the providers is intended to do light-duty web surfing and email reading ONLY . You might be able to avoid being "caught" on a breach of the TOS for a while, but they have better tracking frameworks to see what your useage actually is- and if you're hitting it HEAVY, then you might get the plug pulled on you.
Basically, the providers of data connectivity think there's a goldmine out there and their greed's getting in the way of actually GETTING that gold- and you're going to just have to get the best deal you can manage. It may be that you'll have to step up to a business account- you'll definitely get less sillybuggers out of the ISPs that way. Of course, if they do this stupidity and it flies, you'll just have to scream along with the rest of the business users.
I know I will- and I'll sue the hell out of them if they DO this to me and my stuff. I paid my fair share (business account...) by my subscription to MY data provider, Verizon. Any data from me through their damn network, most of the time, came from a request from one of THEIR subscribers, who allegedly paid for that privilege- if not, it's because I'm contacting a data supplier that's one of THEIR subscribers. If they're not charging enough because of market pressures, perhaps they shouldn't be offering the service or consider it solely as a loss-leader for the rest. You're not guaranteed a business model- ever. If you can't keep it going within the legal means allowed you, it's perhaps time to change to another one or shutter the doors.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
This is an opportunity to provide improved performance by funding network enhancements not an opportunity to start reducing existing capabilities...
It would seem that BellSouth (hereinafter known more appropriately as BS) has forgotten that their CUSTOMERS have already paid for the network. THEY pay BS to be able to pull 3rd party content through the network to their machines. The content providers should charge BS for giving people a reason to get DSL. After all, if they were to all null route BS's IPs, everyone would switch to cable overnight. I just can't imagine advertising with "Access the few parts of the Internet that are too stupid to realize we need them more than they need us" to be all that effective in getting people to sign up.
So, if they actually get providers to pay them for network traffic, does that mean that they will quit treating 'power downloaders' (that is, CUSTOMERS who PAID for unlimited Internet access) like freeloaders?
In America both users pay for the time they're on the call...
In countries where laws are written for people rather than for companies and for justice and fairness rather than for profit (including every European country and most Asian countries) the person making the call pays, and the recipient incurs no cost beyond electrical costs for recharging sooner than would otherwise be needed.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Okay, pretend I'm CNN. I have text, I have streaming video, I have message boards. I want my readers to be able to get to all my resources quickly, and have good bandwidth.
I'm trying to understand the service BellSouth is offering.
Maybe it would help if I consider what happens if I don't pay up? Are they going to throttle my connection? But am I not already paying for 500 GBps upstream? If I'm paying my ISP (which may well be BellSouth, knowing how big they and CNN both are), are they going to send me a second bill for the same 500 GBps? Are they just going to double my rates for the same service?
If so, wow, I wish them good luck with that. There is still a BIT of competition in the marketplace, for now, although I'm sure BellSouth's K Street division is working overtime on something.
On the other hand, maybe they'll invent some kind of artificial distinction in traffic. I'm paying for 500 GBps, sure, but I'm only paying for 1 customer to get it! If I want 300 million customers, well, that'll cost.
How do I tell I'm getting what I'm paying for? Or is it more like "NICE CUSTOMER BASE YOU GOT THERE. BE A SHAME IF ANYTHING *HAPPENED* TO IT."
Chris O
So much for a world where all websites are treated equally. I don't care what they say, money can buy happiness, and absolutely anything else you want. Including traffic priority. Seems to me that this has to be illegal though... perhaps discriminaton at an electronic level. Maybe if I change the background color of my site, I can get the ACLU involved *rubs chin in that evil geeky pondering way*
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I will not be getting DSL from you.
I did not get my cell service from you.
Great move bonehead. Next I will cancel every option on my land line.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Everyone call BellSouth's tech support EVERY time a download is slow (below the speed they paid for). They will be so mired in support calls that they will have to re-consider the policy.
About 10 years ago it was common for banks to charge their customers for using 3rd-party ATMs and for the 3rd-party ATM to charge for accessing another bank's account. If you used another bank's ATM, or a privately-operated ATM, you'd get charged twice for the privilege.
I always figured it made sense for the 3rd-party ATM to charge you for using it, since its maintenance and overhead wasn't subsidized by your own bank, but it seemed insane for your bank to charge you for using someone else's equipment that they didn't manage.
Evidently, California* lawmakers agreed with me and passed a law forbidding the practice. Now if you have an account at one bank and use another bank's ATM, you only get charged by the ATM's owner.
*I'm fairly certain it was a state law, but I could be mistaken.
"Yes, we just put out a new contract that allows our web-directory to be accessed faster on your network, for the benefit of your customers...
The entry fee is just 1 million dollars, and then just 10 cents for each connection and 1 cents per minute after that.
You have to take a contract for one year minimum, cannot cancel it unless ready to spend a fortune in telephone time and possibly an attorney, and we put you on a reconduction by default mode with a 18 month pre-cancel delay...
Ah yes, and Johnny, the one who was working as a contract lawyer with you for the last 10 years, remember him ? Yes ! Well, he just joined us... He says "Hi !"
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
What I would hope to see big content providers do, doubtful as it may be, is fight back. Block all IP blocks assigned to BellSouth. Or rather, redirect all requests from BellSouth customers to pages explaining that due to BellSouth's attempted extortion, their customers are unable to access those sites. Were Google and Apple to do that, it would be very interesting to see where the chips fell. Of them all, Google and Apple are the two who I think would have the balls to do it. Also, a DNSBL for email originating from BellSouth netblocks.
Cut the air off, and see who wants to purchase their crippled product.
Larry
[ranted, then went back and deleted original stuff]
This amounts to nothing more than extortion. Extortion of businesses, who should be charging appropriately for their services, and extortion of customers, for basically holding their internet usability by the neck.
In reading the article, Bell South is basically saying they can gaurantee end-to-end reliability and that content will get delivered reliably.. IF the content provider pays extra for the "better" connectivity. The problem is, they can't guarantee this. Things happen.
If this does come to pass, one would want a severe SLA applied against BellSouth. Ie, for every customer who doesn't get what they ordered from the content provider's site, due connectivity issues, then the Telcos, be it Bellsouth or any other wanting to adopt this scheme, should reimburse the content provider for damages(hours spent debugging, cost of lost timeliness of product, and % of time of connectivity fees, etc) incurred due to the inability to deliver content.
If you are going to charge extra for reliability, you damn well better deliver it!
As for content providers charging more for reliable delivery of content, this basically amounts to subscription fees. Ie, if you pay, I'll host the content to be delivered to you on a dedicated server with a capped number of customers. The server will be able to handle a 100% customer base level of access at the same time and will only be made available to paying customers.
Free/public/non-paying folks can use the general access servers, which may become overloaded from time to time. Etc.
If implemented by the content providers, this is nothing new. If implemented by the telcos and enforced on the content providers and/or the customers, then it is nothing short of extortion. People are already paying for reliable connectivity. There is no need to screw people over by increasing your customer to bandwidth ratio or introducing connectivity issues to make a normal connection look "more reliable".
Winged Power Photography
There is only one response worth the content provider's while - Death Penalty.
Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Apple, Edmunds and Akamai need to simply cut off traffic to all Bell South customers. Bell South's clientelle needs Google and Yahoo more than Google and Yahoo need them. Make the bastards come crawling back on their bellies as a lesson to others.
~ Theophilous Bolt
What we're looking at is of course the implementation of cheapo economics theory, I think called neoclassical economics, implemented by the mafia style rip-off industry called telecommunications. In other words, cheapo MBA's following a cheapo theory and the will and need to live of other people's efforts. They are in control of a resource, and have no other way to earn or increase their income except through this kind of extortion. Other ways are not accessible to them since their minds are small, but their pockets are big.
The proper way to deal with this is regulation which is up to the people in the end. They have positioned themselves to not charge "the people" directly, and so defense is difficult.
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
I believe what they are really talking about here is charging for DiffServ or some other kind of QoS scheme. Smith obviously doesn't have a clue, but his engineers aren't stupid. This is something that has been rolling out on private networks for some time now and I've believed for several years that this is the next evolution of the Internet. I'm always wrong about when things will happen, which is why I'm not rich. I thought this would have started around '02.
There are only two kinds of traffic on the Internet. Stuff that is important right now where retransmission is not feasable (voice, live video, gaming, etc.) and stuff that is not (web browsing, file transfers, email, etc.). The Internet was built with the second case in mind and the entire network is best-effort, i.e. we'll try like hell to get you your stuff as fast as we can, but we make no guarantees. If you go back to the roots of the Internet, this makes sense. There are some work-arounds for video, like buffering, but that doesn't work at all for voice.
This is not degrading everything else and paying a premium for other content. It just means that when important, time-sensitive data enters the network, it will take priority over other traffic. This is how real-time, quality, high-bandwidth video calls will happen. I'm talking about HDTV-level calls with high-quality sounds, not the blurry crap we have today. The answer is not "just add more bandwidth". That adds cost to everyone, whether you use the expanded service or not. Think of a world a decade from now, where your computer and television are really integrated, you purchase just-released movies off the Internet and watch them instantly, in real time on your 100" 1080p screen that you got from Best Buy for $300. How can you get there without either gobs and gobs of bandwidth that no one can afford, or some method to prioritize real time traffic so that this actually works?
Of course, their billing model is totally screwed up. Can you imagine if this catches on and you are Vonage, how many ISPs would you need to pay in order to prioritize your traffic? It's not scalable.
What will happen instead is the carriers will eventually build QoS/DiffServ peering relationships, just like they do today for all Internet data. They will bill one another for this service. They will pass these charges along to the consumer as tiered service. For example, I might pay an extra $5 a month for QoS to be enabled on my line so that I get the lowest latency connection possible for on-line gaming. I might pay another $5 for QoS for VoIP calls, or maybe $7 for both together. I will do so happily, because in return I get a Service Level Agreement that says my VoIP calls will work consistently, and when they don't I had someone to yell at who can help me or compensate me. This does not exist today, and is a huge competitive disadvantage for VoIP service providers.
Again, Smith's a moron who doesn't understand anything beyond next quarter's results, but the visionaries will get this. It's coming, there's only one way to build a billing infrastructure, and we'll all enjoy a better Internet because of it.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
We pay arround twice as much for net access than most of the rest of the world, and now Bell South ( and don't think the rest of the large pipe holders arn't looking at this idea like starving dogs looking at a pork chop ) want to charge content providers a fee witch will be most lickly be passed to us.
So... We pay too much and now we are going to pay more.
Another item for my "stupid sucky things that people allow to happen 'caus they are fat-n-lazy list"
I am. Lower your shields and power down your weapons, they are useless. Your biological and technological distinctivenes
I'd think the best way to solve this would be to blacklist any traffic from Bellsouth.
If Google refuses access to Bellsouth customers, with a page that says "We're sorry, but your ISP is trying to charge us to serve you, when you have already paid them", how many outraged calls to Bellsouth do you think that would generate?
How about if every website did it? What they're trying to do is get a few big sites to cave, like VOIP customers, streaming video providers, and watch everyone fall in line.
I think the providers should just smack them right upside the head by refusing them service. When their customers can't access the Internet, I'm thinking they'll get the message pretty quick. Customers phoning in and cancelling service seem to do that.
Canonical Anonymous Coward
Can a sig be more clever than it's creator?
Look, people are already paying for their bandwidth. Providers buy a DS3 or something with an SLA, which guarantees them a certain bitrate and uptime. They may be billed at 95th pct, or whatever, but the point is they already pay for their bandwidth. And, if they use more, they pay more, to their provider.
Consumers also pay for their bandwidth. BellSouth already does not guarantee service to residential customers. Is BellSouth going to start the Residential SLA? I don't think so. They are fishing for another junk fee to add to their residential DSL service.
Also, how are they going to know how to make a certain provider's content "unreliable?" Do DSL providers have the right to look inside your packets to see what you're doing? The answer is, yes, if you agree to it.
In general, the reason things like this happen is because consumers, especially in the US, have absolutely no spine to speak of. They refuse to tell a provider, "no," and then shop the competition. In some places, there is no competition.
Internet access is not a prerequisite to breathing. You do not need the Internet to survive, but the providers would have you believe otherwise. Of course, there are those who would be fine with this and pay 2x or 3x more for their iTunes, and there are those who won't like it, but will do it anyway because, as I said, they have no spine and can't fathom going 5 minutes without IMing their friends or surfing pr0n.
The real play here, however, is going to have to come from the content providers. Consumers won't say no, so it will have to be the content providers who do. The news outlets, google, yahoo, apple, and the p2p networks will have to immediately blacklist any ISP that pulls this stunt. By the rules of economic darwinism, the ISPs that don't do it will benefit, and those that do will perish, or at the very least suffer.
is routed?
Does that mean that any packets routed over BellSouth lines can't cross in or out of the Bell South system without paying a toll? (There goes the 'inter' in 'internet.')
This smacks of Balkanization as surely as if they'd put up border guards and tariff/toll booths. There will be a huge area of the country that suddenly goes 'dark' as these guys put up their system in place.
But BellSouth isn't a government and has no legal right to act as a government.
Their restriction of trade will cut off millions of customers &| suppliers from doing business together regardless of which state is involved.
The parties will be forced to resort to cable and we can predict an huge and total defection of their current subscriber base.
This will involve just about every level of government and every agency. (How would we ever have heard of hurricane Katrina and been able to mount any responses if the model of the world had shrunk down to a BellSouth and non-BellSouth world?)
This is tantamount to BellSouth tossing out their common carrier status.
Then the federal and state agencies involved would have to go elsewhere for their service while renogatiating their contracts (or more
likely abandoning them for their new carriers.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Sometimes, in plain English, "and" is not commutative. It has temporal features. "Eat your cake and have it too" is intended to mean "first eat and then have".
What does the word "too" mean in your re-wording of the phrase? Notice that you left it out of the summary: "first eat and then have [it too]" doesn't really work. I think 'too' means 'also,' as in: along with 'eating the cake' the other thing I want is to 'have it.' The word 'and' is not meant to indicate a sequence of events, but a concurrence.
Considered in this light, the phrase "He wants to have his cake and eat it too" is clear: he wants two things that are mutually exclusive, to both occur.
Imagine if web sites got the bellsouth.net IP addresses and just blocked them out algother, "we are blocking out bellsouth because it wants to charge more for less unreliable TCP"
Bellsouth are saying "we have enough customers that you need to pay us for decent QoS", so a response back, "if you want to be silly, go build your own web sites/apps" would be a test to see who would blink first.
Yep. Do the math.
.05 per song.
256000 bits per second * 2592000 seconds per month / 41943040 bits in a 5MB song *
That's about $791 worth song transmission fees on a 256K line. Yes, you need to subtract for transmission overhead and such, but it gives a general idea of how inflated the charges would be at even $0.05 per song.
Telcos should charge for bandwidth then let us use it as we see fit.
An ISP is usually classified as an "information service" and doesn't have the same obligations as a "telecomunications service," which can be a common or private carrier. The first classification is governed by Title I of the FCC Communications act where as common carriers are governed by Title II. So they can't lose common carrier status on the internet services they provide because they never had it; in fact, they never wanted it, and traditionally telecom companies have fought against having data access being classified as "common carrier."
How hard would it be for a provider to fight back:
Maybe good could put up a script...
if ($dom_addr contains $bs_domain or $ip_addr in $bs_networks)
{
echo "Bell South has recently begun blackmailing internet service providers (such as google) with decreased service unless we pay them fees";
echo "Until Bell South recants this practice, connections to our service will be currently blocked or limited to 50 concurrent users"; exit;
}
Does anyone know where I can get a list of all of BellSouth's netblocks?
Bell South, like the-corporation-formerly-known-as-SBC, thinks it has a user base and that it should charge content providers for access to the userbase.
BS and SBC want a closed-content system. There were closed-content systems in the past: GEnie, Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL. Users abandoned them for the open internet, where they could get any content they wanted. The number of households online skyrocketted.
If BS and SBC succeed in levying these fees, they may find users abandoning them, too. What user base will they sell to the content providers then? This plan is doomed.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
They dont need to give web browsing a bad experience, as its quite hard to do. You either limit monthly data yse (=very unhappy users) or throttle bandwidth (often too subtle to notice on a busy site).
What they can do is give VoIP packets a bad experience, and drop VPN packets on the floor altogeher. Want SSH? pay more. Want IPSec? Pay much more (in theory Comcast charge a premium for this BTW). But VoIP? you just slow down the packets. Bandwidth can be maintained, but suddely google talk and yahoo phone start working worse than bellsouth approved partners.
The other latency-sensitive market is gaming; I wonder how much they want off the X-live people for X-box players.
RICO? You have got to be kidding me. I understand the outrage and I agree - this is terrible.
But RICO does not apply here. Why? Because of this statement, "any act which is indictable...". While you may detest BS'es practices here, what they are doing is NOT illegal and certainly not indictable.
There are no criminal/legal implications here. Only business practices and possibly regulations are at stake.
I think the big backbone providers should de-peer with any BellSouth link for about 3 days. That would change their tune I bet. Pretty hard to keep customers when they are calling ticked off that they can't get to half the internet.
They need to be more than regulated. Utilities and services which are monopolistic by nature need to be consumer owned, not privately run for the profit motive. Our local electric utility is consumer owned. Lincoln Electric System's (NE) costs are far below the national average, and our outtages are among the lowest in the country. Wages and benefits levels of workers and management need voters approval. The LES managers are always planning for the future. Some customers, me included, voluntarily subscribed to $6/month for one year for building and running two 1.2 MW wind turbines to test their efficiency and costs.
Is community ownerhsip communistic? So what? We've seen what unbridled greed combined with a total lack of ethics and morals has done to our medical, insurance and other industries because government was "half-in" and "half-out". If there is ONE BIG REASON why the Conservative's popularity is declining it isn't because of Bush's handling of the war, nor is it because he wire-taps phone calls in which one end connects to known or suspected terrorists. It is because corporate greed, dishonesty and corruption has shaken the American people's belief in "free enterprise" system. Free enterprise requires that a majority of businesses are run ethically and morally and that can be done only by people who ARE ethical and moral. It has become obvious that American businesses are as corrupt as our Washington politicians, of BOTH parties. Did you lose your retirement within months of retiring and now have to work at Walmart to eat? Did Dick Lay tell you to buy Enron stock while he was selling it? Did business underfund their share of retirement accounts while putting deductions from your wages into them, only so your funds could be stolen because the company reniged when it came time to honor their agreements. Do you get tired of seeing sleezy executives rewared with million dollar salaries and bonuses for finding new ways to rip off the consumer? Example: Bell South claiming other ISP are "stealing" from them.
Having government "half-in" gives insurance companies, for example, a free hand in Uncle Sam's wallet via the "co-ordination of benefits" clause in all health insurance policies sold today. If I can afford and decide to buy insurance premiums from two different companies it should not matter one whit to either one. They are getting their premiums, they've accepted the risks. But no, they "co-ordinate" their payments so that combined, their total layout does not exceed the benefit of the one with the largest co-pay. A clear restraint of free trade and a violation of the Clayton-Sherman Anti-trust act.
But, politicians saw a way to create voter blocks for themselves by partially nationalizing medicine in the form of Medicare/Medicade and then later addng special interest groups to the list of beneficiaries. The special interest groups gets free, walk-in-off-the-street, no questions asked treatment. Even though I pay nearly $800/month for health insurance I am still denied access to certain services unless I pay for them myself. Do you have BPH? Sorry, BCBS doesn't pay for annual PSA tests. It's "regular or periodic" treatment, but the annual mammeograms my wife gets are not. I have to develop full blown prostate cancer before my insurance will begin to cover, even though preventive medicine is more economical. So, in addition to my health insurance premiums I also pay for doctors visits and medicine for BHP out of my own pocket. I wrote a letter to BCBS a couple of years ago stating that their policy excluded payment for treatment on the basis of sex, which is illegal. They said, "so sue us!", in effect giving me the middle finger.
"It sounds like they're wanting to double-charge for a single service. Kindof like if Walmart decided to charge me for the DVD, and also charge the movie producers for the right to have their DVD sold in Walmart's store"
Um, shops actually do this. Ever wonder why $hot_new_movie/game has an entire rack of copies, when a single pile would do? The publishers pay for shelf space.
Of course, the shops pay more for buying the copies to sell so money still flows to the publishers. Shops just take a bigger cut if they put more copies out, and a non-speciality store like walmart might not stock it at all if it doesn't get paid to do so.
There was (is) a wireless broadband movement, I sold thousand of converted routers for wifi wans back in 2001 and 2002 only to see the company that I was selling them to flop due to lack of new subscribers.
We all signed up for the uber-fast high speed connection and we handed our money to Cable and the Telephone industry. Now they will bend us over and do what they wish with us, but it's what we asked for.
Not all is lost, this presents a unique opportunity for companies like Level3 (LVLT) to jump in and start offering competing products. If another large backbone provider sweeps in and captures the business of companies like Real Networks and future IPTV without overcharging them for "polished" connections they'll keep the loyalty of these customers.
Why would anyone pay extra for "polished" product. If your product isn't production ready it shouldn't be shipped. Surely these content providers pay one hell of a bill already on their upstream content - why in the hell should they be charged for the downstream? Let corporate greed go on, just move your business to a better model - it's called innovation and it's how you get rid of these dinosaurs.
This is only true for own-country calls.
With international (GSM) roaming, call receiver usually pays an additional roaming charge. Not a small charge either - in fact high enough that the EU has (or is) investigated the charges.
For people living near country borders (even commuting across them - common in some parts of europe) this can be a big deal.
Get real BS, the way to gain back the market you are losing to VoIP is not by driving your current customers away, but by providing access that is improved (not hyped up to be).
Cheesy Movie Night
Telcos and Cablecos that own "tha pipes" are becoming more and more useless and irrelevant as we move forward in the 21st century. This is a last ditch effort to prolong their dying bussiness model. Nobody owns the airs, power to the people... Wireless is the way to go and will beat the crap out of everybody including the cellcos who are, let's not forget, charging quite alot for their "pipes" Here in Canada it doesn't seem that bad so far as Telcos and Cablecos are plunging in the Voip bandwagon early in the game. There are many ways to stay relevant in this ever changing world as a bussiness but screwing your customers is not one of them. This oppinion is partly whishfull thinking but hey... I could happend.
I don't think that Apple would even consider paying anyone to let customers download off of iTunes. They sell every iPod they make, and have sold almost a billion songs. 1 billion * 0.05 = 50 million dollars Apple would rather cut off BS users and lose a couple million songs, than allow this to continue and possibly lose even more money if every ISP goes this way.
if this really happens there is going to be some fast pron out there...
they have plenty of money to pony up and they will do it
ender_pete
I think this may be a "what the hell, let's give it a try" attempt at getting a eventual pay-per-byte system in place. If they come out making this sort of proposal now, and it gets shot down in a wave of debates, they can go to the state PUC's and say "well, we tried to get money in other ways, without asking for rate increases." This way they've justified themselves.
It's "the shadow of the Valley of Death." Sheesh!
I don't care if you don't go to church, but surely you've seen Pulp Fiction!
Well yes this is typical telco greed.
But...
underlying all this is the simple fact that joe blow residential customers
are not willing to pay a reasonable price for their internet service.
I run a small ISP and I can tell you that there's no way on earth that
anyone is making money at $25/mo regardless of how poor the service delivered.
And yet that's what the bulk of the population is willing to pay and not a cent more.
So what to do... oh yes ! Let's go get the remainder of the money from the
content providers... they have plenty of money.
Therefore one solution to this problem is for you all to pony up $80 or so
so for your internet connections.
What subnets does BellSouth own? I want to limit their use of my bandwidth unless they pay ME to use MY bandwidth to serve their customers. I create the content and I send it to their users. I will not pay them so that I can better server their customers. Rather, I will change my server such that BellSouth users are given a nice little message about their ISP, and have their bandwidth use capped. I hope others will join.
An alternative is to only place advertisements on pages requested by BellSouth users instead of capping their bandwidth. Use the advertising to pay off the ISP, and annoy users. Make sure to feature a prominent notice that they are only getting ads because they use BellSouth and BellSouth is attempting to extort the owner of the site.
This probably means nothing with my website since I don't need to install a hit counter to know that I am probably the most frequent visitor, but maybe some other people would have more of an impact.
Solution? blacklist Bellsouth subscribers pointing the m to a static page on your site stating that the immoral practices of their company forces you to block them and then list links to other providers for broadband.
Are you going to list providers located in every city where Bellsouth operates? Is there cable in every city where Bellsouth is the local telephone company?
Economically fake fees will never work outside of collusion.
Trouble is that Bellsouth has already colluded with municipal governments to be the only provider of the DSL physical layer in the city limits.
It makes you ask what the customer is paying for and whether they will continue to pay for it.
To play the devil's advocate, stuff like iTunes, online gaming, VOIP, etc are not cacheable content. If BS has a million users hitting up /., they're mostly hitting the BS's cache.
Did you think that logged-in Slashdot or, for that matter, any other site where most of the data depends on your cookie was cacheable?
Sorry that this is so offtopic. I was simply curious and thought I might ask here:
.* /your_isp_stinks.html [R,L]
Is this how I would block all of the customers from a specific ISP, if I ever wanted to? I'm not sure why I would, but you never do know...
RewriteEngine on
Rewritemap bssubnet txt:/stuff/bssubnets.txt
RewriteCond ${bssubnet:%{REMOTE_ADDR}} ^b$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{request_uri} !^/your_isp_stinks.html$ [NC]
RewriteRule
Also, does anyone know where I can find the list of all subnets that an ISP might have? Especially the business customers.
No. Fuck you.
1. Neighbourhood ISP - tier 1 providers will sell bandwidth to anyone, so put fibre into your home at the lowest possible plan a local tier 1 provider will offer. Set up a WiFi antenna in the unregulated 2.4 GHz band and boost it to the maximum allowable wattage to increase your range. Buy customer CPE units from a company like Radionet that will connect a home connection to the WiFi network and then sell them to individual homes in the neighbourhood. Advertise it as a neighbourhood ISP that has shared bandwidth and charge slightly more than an exact share of what it costs you to buy the bandwidth (more customers, lower costs for everyone). Make sure your first few customers are really happy so that word of mouth spreads around the neighbourhood and just add bandwidth as the customers come in. 2. Facilitator - consult on how to set up 1. above, creating an "ISP in a box" with a local tier 1 provider, equipment provider, etc. to make it extremely easy for anyone to create their own local ISP. Have Open Source software running webmail, preconfigured servers, etc.
I'll tolerate anything except intolerance.
Start here:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Transit_(Internet
and follow the links, especially peering and Tier 1.
Once you know the basics, browse/search the NANOG list to learn more:
http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/
Actually, most retail establishments charge for shelf space. That's why it's impossible to find anything except pedestrian / popular fare (be it music, movies or games) at most megastores. The indies have been completely squeezed out. It's why you hear a lot of squawk about a company's "distribution" strength in the biz press -- it means they have bought a lot of space (shelf space, cinema screens, etc.) in the "channel".
I've noticed that since the AT&T/SBC merger, my prepaid cheapie long distance has been acting like a garbled PCS phone frequently. Maybe it's just the Windows malware of the week congesting the net, but it's an errie coincidence.
In a related note... I'm planning to start charging Bell South for every packet of cell phone traffic that passes over my house. After all I work hard keeping those troublesome flocks of birds that could degrade their service out of the airspace, and don't even get me started on what aluminum foil hats are running me a month to keep those nasty green little aliens away. And if they don't pay I'm going to erect large CB aerials on my roof designed to block all radio waves flying overhead. After all Wi-Fi is tomorrow's dry cleaning service, and I should reap as much of the profit as anyone, and if you don't believe all of this then the terrorists have already won.
Unfortunately, the cable companies have already figured out what the step after that is. They jack the customer's prices up. They're so sorry they have to charge you extra, but that's because your package includes premium content channels. They're so sorry that ESPN happens to be in the same package as the Home & Garden network - really, if they could, they'd split those up so that people with zero interest in sports don't need to pay for the most expensive channels.
Seriously. Look at the 'channel packages' your local cable provider offers. Every one of them contains a number of diametrically opposed interest channels, so that people end up paying more for packages because of channels they'll never watch.
Just cancelled 2 cells and Bellsouth DSL, going to have brother and mom cancel too. This is the worst idea ever and I won't stand for it.
Nothing... http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/index.php?p=84 2 They are completely avoiding the issue so they don't have to look like bad guys. You can bet that if BS gets away with it they will jump on the bandwagon.
They're so sorry that ESPN happens to be in the same package as the Home & Garden network - really, if they could, they'd split those up so that people with zero interest in sports don't need to pay for the most expensive channels.
The more expensive channels are the more popular channels. You realize that they do that so the sports watchers subsidize the home and garden channels, and not the other way around, right?
Well, that and to make as much profit as possible...
The main reasons the general public does not want to pay $25 per month is that a) they are brainwashed into thinking this is the going rate and b) the content on the internet has been shrinking since the dot bomb.
One side effect of the dot.com bubble was the billions of investment capital that went into the development of internet content. That pool of capital was "burned" and has dried up. The reason this happened is because not a single penny of the BILLIONS the general public pays ever makes it back to those who provide internet content. Hense - webmasters are voting with their collective feet and looking for other forms of employment.
If you want customers you have to provide something they want. People will happily pay more than $25 per month. They typically already pay more than $25 per month for their local phone service, then often $25 per month for a long distance package and $50 per month for television service.
The money is there. The content isn't.
As an ISP if you were to blaze a new trail and actually pay those who provide the content your own customers want - then you might find that you won't need to pay very much and you'll have droves of customers.
The thing is you'll need to block that content from your upstream. I would look to free websites for church groups, boy scouts, girl guides... in fact every club you can think of... in return for their members signing up as your customers.
Comments?
Comes out the other end eventually.
... develop a path of least resistance (highest bandwidth) protocol on top of the existing protocols. If users want content, providers want to provide it, and carriers want to screw with it, simply route traffic through the fattest pipes and peer-to-peer to maintain (or improve) the bandwidth.
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,"
:-)
If'n yer gonna be pedantic, double check first
Who, me?
I am ashamed to be an American.
Never forget
I've heard that, but I don't buy it, and I've never seen hard data to support it. The less popular channels run commercials just as well as other channels do, and if they command lower rates, well, they also happen to have lower costs (e.g., Sears doesn't need to be paid off in order for This Old House to run, but by contrast, the NBA takes a nice meaty cut of any game that gets aired (er, cabled)).
Also, I don't think packaging can be called 'subsidizing'. 'Subsidizing' would be money from sports channel subscribers being used to support home & garden, without input from the non-sports viewers. The current system artificially raises home & garde user rates to the level of sports channel users. The home & garden people end up paying the max, which cannot be called a subsidy. I think the proper term would be 'fleecing'.
Ya, today we have non stop porn, viruses, spam, rampant phishing, crime, idiots, higher bills ( i paid less per month then i do now )... what a deal..
Before this 'wonderful internet' that you seem to think we have: we also had useable public forums ( that werent spam laden ), realtime communication, email, things such as archie to get 'whatever we wanted'.. Even the weather in many cities was a simple gopher away... And it wasnt hard at all to get on-line, if you were worthy enough. Dont forget there was a BBS in every corner of the civilized world. All it took was a dumb terminal and modem. Most of the time it didnt even cost you.
Mouseclicks to get you there? Well, you got me there i guess now that we have mice im all wet...
All kidding aside, i do agree there is more today then there was before, but there is far more garbage. As far as im concerned the garbage outweighs any of the 'advancements'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The less popular channels run commercials just as well as other channels do, and if they command lower rates, well, they also happen to have lower costs (e.g., Sears doesn't need to be paid off in order for This Old House to run, but by contrast
It has nothing to do with funding the channels, it has to do with funding the company's subscription fee for the channels. If they offered everything a-la-carte, the less popular channels may not get enough subscribers for your cable company to pay the flat fee required for them to carry the channel. By bundling them with the popular channels, the people who like the popular stuff are forced to pay for the less popular stuff.
The current system artificially raises home & garde user rates to the level of sports channel users.
Not so. Without the current system, the home and garden channel viewers would have to either pay the cost the channel charges to the station divided by the number of viewers in your area, or not have the channel available at all. Your average cost of the channel would actually go up for the less popular channels, and down for the more popular channels if they were all unbundled. That cost may even be higher when you add up all the channels you like that aren't very popular than the cost for the package is, because all those sports channel watchers wouldn't be part of the pool paying for you H&G channel anymore.
It's all irrelevant though, because the company is going to charge you just under you maximum monthly tolerance for cash outlay no matter how they structure it. You're going to get some subset of the channels you want for the most you're willing to pay whether you get the channels you don't want along with them or not.
Here is why this blows. They will not be removing my download cap even if they had the ability to push more down the pipe to my house, which they do not. In order to fairly charge the companies I connect to for better throughput to me they have to uncap me, otherwise they are intruding on the portion of the bandwidth that I already paid for. This is the only way I think this could ever make sense. This is not the case, though, what they will do is degrade the end-user's connections when they connect to companies that do not pay the blackmail. So what they are really doing is robbing me of pipe that I paid for and giving these companies who pay what they should already have.
Bellsouth is of course an opportunisitc, greedy company. They have been lowering rates for DSL sevice in the past few months, and it's my idea that they are doing this to get more users. By extorting content providers they are not actually getting 2 slices of the cake, they're just sneakily getting a higer price than they advertise. Of course this is bad for more technically minded users (who wouldn't think of using "content providers" to get lousy drm infested files), plenty more dumb users buying high bandwidth content.
It seems ironic to me that bellsouth is attacking content providers. This can only mean more traffic for their newsgroup servers, which are actually decent.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Verizon FIOS is available today, at my curb, at rates competitive to my Comcast service (while offering much more bandwidth). After hearing Verizon had this attitude recently, I decided that I won't be upgrading.
I went to Bell South's website to find some contact information and send my thoughts, and it tells me that my web browser must be upgraded to "Netscape Navigator" or "Internet Explorer". I'm not using an ancient browser either - the latest KDE Konqueror, powered by the first HTML engine to ever pass ACID2.
I use speedfactory.net for DSL. Their service has been awesome. They will let you run a server if you want and they have tech guys who understand what linux is. The cost is a bit more than BS and requires a BS dialtone, but they have been very responsive and treat their customers very well. They are trying to get BS to allow them to sell a naked DSL line, but I don't have much hope of that ever occuring. BS gets $30 per month for a service that I have no use for. Some people will say just get a cable modem. That would require that I deal with Comcast which is not an option. Comcast is one of the few companies that treats their customers worse than the phone companies. I would sooner gouge my eyes out with a spoon than give any money to Comcast.
>Every Slashdot poster should be using Google Toolbar Spell Check by now.
except those of us who learnt to read and write correctly in primary school.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Bellsouth can get lots of customers if they can make the service free. With the expenses paid by web sites, this just might happen.
The cable companies must follow. They can't support the business with the only customers being 42 nerds.
This changes everything. Eventually, the only fast sites will be high-revenue ones. The Internet might be more like TV in terms of polish, ads, and choices.
The content providers are not using the network for free. In order to get into the network, they must pay their ISP, who pays fees to the telco in the area. It all kind of circulates through the system. In short, this guy is so full of shit I can smell it on him from here in southern California.
This sig no verb.
I would think that any large internet search company would be capable of locating all the the ISP's in a given area in the US.
And what's the point of redirecting all BellSouth users to Google Local when Google Local returns "1 result: BellSouth"?
The content providers may not be paying for the lines, but I and their other customers are paying to use their lines. If they give preference to any one of them, they are in relative terms at least slowing down all those which are not given preference, and this affects its actual customers who are paying to use their lines.
I'm fine with the *client* buying QoS. I'd *love*, actually, to see ISPs sell classes of this service to residential users. Maybe you just have different packages with different QoS, maybe the ISP can look at the ToS bits in the IP packets, maybe they do some half-assed guesses based on port numbers used (where you get N megs of "high priority" QoS traffic per month, after which that traffic is treated as "regular priority").
This would not be a bad thing. This would simply allow more intelligent use of the network. If something is going to be dropped and retransmitted, you bet your butt I want it to be a packet from my mail or FTP stream, and not that packet that Quake is relying on to let me know about a rocket headed my way. It means that people can buy low-quality bulk surplus bandwidth. This is, at least in theory, a win-win situation, because allocating network resources more intelligently means less waste, and the ISP can split those savings with the customer (possibly simply in the form of improved bandwidth).
QoS based on the *remote* end paying is a completely different story. This is not a good thing. This is a *bad* thing.
For most people, there is a significant barrier to switching ISPs (be it technical diffficulty or contracts or changing an email address or whatever). The ISP can exploit this to do things like cut a deal with a slightly-less-than-good search engine to provide faster access than their superior competition. Since they enjoy a good deal of lock-in with the customer, they can squeeze the application providers for some money. This is exactly the sort of bullshit that permeates the cell market (and how I'd love to see the cell providers forcibly turned into simple ISPs, where people can stick whatever ring tones and applications they'd like on their phone, and just have incentive to minimize network traffic usage).
This Bell South scheme will tend to encourage existing web service players to become more powerful and makes it rough for challengers to them to do anything -- unlike providing QoS determined by the *local user's* package. I can understand why Bell South doesn't charge their customers for QoS -- it's technically intimidating to most users (and all they'll hear is "not unlimited") and it doesn't let them hide costs. However, it's damned frusterating that they don't. *I*'d love to have Comcast provide me with the option to do QoS based on my own ToS bits, myself.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
If I have a site, and pay their speed/access randsom for theirs users, next time someone else telco does ask for fees, I will have to pay everybody ?
This can't work !?!?
I concur that the cable companies might not be the bad guys here, even though I would have shot myself for saying so 10 years ago when they were just plain stupid. Dealing with Cox via a fiber connection, I have to say that I'm repeatedly surprised at how much they try to get it. No, they're not UUNET at its peak - not even close - but they're making progress in MPLS and really delivering some pretty reliable enterprise service. Yes, they still seem to do things I disagree with on the resi side, like screw with L2TP ("commercial service" my ass - anybody paying $55 a month should be able to RAS into work).
Working with them, they clearly do not have the culture of a RBOC (Qwest, BellSouth, SBC, etc.). RBOCs are a world of entitlement - it's way worse than union attitude. The ethics there are just awol - look at Qwest's restatements and "oops, we'll be firing our CEO now" issues per insider trading. That place was sick in 1985 and it hasn't gotten better with time. When corrupt behavior dominates at the top, the disease is throughout. Like people here say: Qwest, the next Worldcom.
If the telephone companies can extort the content providers, are the cable companies far behind?
Look at the culture and competitive position of the company. Sure, give cable providers market dominance and 20-30 years and they'll probably get FDH (fat, dumb & happy) like the RBOCs. But you gotta pick an ally to take them on. My dad used to always fly and rent cars from the "other guy" to keep the big boys honest - it's probably not a bad idea for broadband either.
Fee for your consumer eyeballs? Black hole the bastards!
*scoove*
And part of what would prevent it is greed and simple necessity -- the huge corporate provider would want to get at least something from the end user to cover the costs of support and infrastructure maintenance to their exchange networks.
Setting a flat rate of $0 gives up the monopoly advantage in areas where they could otherwise charge a higher rate since there's no competing broadband for users to switch to.
They might reduce prices to spur adoption, or offer a special "half priced" package ("Media Economy" service level), but beyond a certain point, one must expect the revenues lost by reducing the price too much will overwhelm what is had from the increase in demand (and increase in traffic volume to paid websites); they could attempt to project supply and demand curves, and find a better price to use, but not free.
The costs of offering DSL service totally for free, or including it with standard phone service must be phenomenal; they could expect to see a huge increase in their subscriber base.
If all providers offered service for free, they would have a lot more trouble competing for users too --- think of it "All free"; many people might just elect to get an account with each provider in their area capable of servicing their residence (assuming it wasn't a monopoly): the more the merrier right?
Actually, they would opt for the provider they felt they could get the best content with.
But beside the fact that they'd never give up for free something that people would be willing to pay for, and that cost them something to deliver. There's a problem related to the economies of scale and the content providers...
The advertising would simply not make up for the costs of being charged by the phone company to make not only their maintenance costs but increasing profit. The result is that these costs must get passed back to the end user in the form of a subscription fee for each content provider.
Not so free anymore, eh?
The next problem is no internet content provider is really mature enough and making an offering so good as to obviate the need for the rest of the internet.
The whole thing that makes the internet sell is not any one website, but all of them, even the small ones. Especially the small onse --- without them, it is little more than interactive television, anyway.
THe content providers constantly get the short end of the stick, they already have to pay their own bandwidth costs which are large and overpriced --- they get none of the subscription fees from the visitors' ISP, even though they are the party delivering the actual service, without the content providers, there would be no subscribers.
The medium is centered around the end-user asking for content, but in the end, without the content provider the user isn't asking for the service, the user doesn't have any reason to.
The fewer good, big content providers, the lesser the demand for internet service.
So the content providers as a whole have leverage against the ISPs. What they need to do next is form a union, or association with agreements to mutually blacklist any ISP attempting to solicit payments from any member for quality access to their site.
Unless you want to go dialup, you have no choice but to go through the phone or cable company. Oh sure, they partner with some local ISPs which you can use for extra $$$, but don't think the phone company doesn't get their cut. They won't be hurting either way.
The problem is that they don't have to allow competition, and they have a monopoly on the information/communication utilities.
The only potential fix could be wireless networks, but there aren't any in my area.
You're right. It's no wonder I got modded offtopic. Too many /. readers were still diapers when Telebit ruled the datacomm world.
Cheers.
My Heart Is A Flower
1) BellSouth attempts to extort Google.
2) Google tells BellSouth to go fuck itself.
3) BellSouth applies routing policies that harm performance for connections with Google.
4) For all IP addresses whose traffic with Google flows across BellSouth's network, Google inserts an extremely prominent explanation of why they're getting degraded performance, and links to local broadband ISPs that do not use BellSouth's backbone to route to Google.
5) Local ISPs that *do* use BellSouth's backbone become very upset.
6) The problem (either BellSouth's policy, or BellSouth itself) goes away.
Of course, if Google decided to do away with their "don't be evil" policy, it would look something like this:
1) BellSouth attempts to extort Google.
2) Google decides to make an example of BellSouth, and demands money only from BellSouth in exchange for the right to carry traffic from Google.
3) BellSouth tells Google to go fuck itself.
4) BellSouth applies routing policies that harm performance for connections with Google.
5) Google completely replaces all pages for users connecting through BellSouth's network with an explanation of what's going on, saying that BellSouth's discriminatory routing policies impose an additional load on their servers and networks and that they are blocking access to protect their network, unless BellSouth is willing to fund additional resources to compensate for the load. Google also includes localized links to other broadband ISPs.
6) Television news picks up the story.
7) Google says "they started it" and tearfully laments how they had to cut off some users for the good of the network.
8) Irate users demand that their ISPs do something about it.
9) Local ISPs take their business elsewhere.
10) BellSouth goes bankrupt.
11) Google buys BellSouth's backbone to prevent future problems of this nature.
12) Nobody ever fucks with Google again.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
I think the only reason people are OK with it is because that's the way it has always been. It was different enough from regular landline phone service that the providers could get away with the "pay both ways" model. It's interesting that at least one cell provider is now advertising "no cost for incoming calls"
I think that the caller paying for himself and the callee is the stupid idea.
Both people paying makes more sense, unless someone regulates the sh*t out of it. By that I mean fixed costs for sending calls to another provider. When I call someone, I do not want to worry whether I am calling landline or cell. It should not be my problem, and yet it is.
Both people paying for their sides of communication makes sense.
In fact this is what is currently the model for costs on the net. Both people pay for the bandwidth they use.
Bellsouth want to shift more of the cost onto the website providers, similar to the caller pays both model.
And hence it comes with the same stupidity that the cell phone caller pays model has.
It's interesting that at least one cell provider is now advertising "no cost for incoming calls"
You know, if bellsouth will be able to extort $10/month from websites that pass through it, they will be able to reduce their prices to consumers and advertise lower cost to use the same internet. Thus more people will end up using this whole extorion scheme.
OTOH, perhaps the internet connectivity should be paid only by websites, they are the ones generating the revenue. Maybe they should pay for both sides of traffic. What do you think. It works for cell phones, right!
badness 10000
Remember the core competancy of the Telcos is Billing.
Yes, Billing. not electronics, not wires, but Billing.
They return to thier roots here.
SB is trying to erect a new pricing umbrella.
The good thing about this is that it will create
new oppertunities to sell under the SB umbrella.
Products will arise to escape the dalays that SB
adds. The ironic thing is that it will do this
by increasing total traffic to increase speed
in the future SB degraded network.
Let the accellerator startups start their funding cycle...