Slashdot Mirror
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
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...
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...)
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".
...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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
... 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...
>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.
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)
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.
Your comment got rated funny, but this is no joke. Do you think bell south is going to offer service FASTER THEN THEY ALREADY OFFER if you pay up? Of course not - the shipping metaphor he keeps using breaks down. They aren't offering ground VS air service here. What he is doing is threatening to degrade service if you don't pay.
That's not pay for performance, it's blackmail.
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 +++
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
"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."
I dunno, there are three people in India for each man, woman, and child in the US. I think they can handle as many calls as we throw at them...