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
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
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
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!
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
...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!
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?
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.
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
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
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!
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!
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.
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.
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
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
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!
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
>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.
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?
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.
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 +++
No, this is just another point in making telecos look bad.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=842
Why are the cable companies not doing this? Simple; it allows them to crush the telecos.
In my area, we've got 2 cable companies, and 2 telecos. You sign up for DSL/phone service? 2-4 weeks install time, 1 year minimum contract, you often pay per-minute local long distance charges, you pay for your equipment, and your telephone bill is guaranteed to be ~10% high than what you expect. You need customer service? They'll charge you if the tech steps inside your house. They'll charge you if the tech finds nothing wrong outside your house. And it'll take the tech a minimum of 2 weeks to get there.
You sign up for Cable/phone service? 1 week install time, max. Often next day service. I believe they even have a "20$ off your first bill if we don't install in 3 days" policy. No contract. Free equipment. Telephone service? All you can eat. Internet service? All you can eat. Before they will allow you to agree to service, they say, "Your first bill will be $X. All bills after that will be $Y. This rate is guaranteed till 2008. Do you accept?". Guess what; your bill will be exactly that price.
Need tech support? 3 days at the latest. Generally same day, if you call in the morning. Most techs will give you their personal cell number, and one tech is assigned to your property; if you ever need service again, you'll get the same tech.
And charge you for repairs? Hahahaha. Doesn't matter if its inside, or outside. We we're having connection problems. What does the cable company do? Run a new wire from the pole (~100 feet). Bury it for us. Run it into the house. Replace all the in house wiring (yes, inside the walls, thank god for straight shots, so they could snake it round). How much did this cost us? 0. It took 4 contractors to get the job done, too. That was a _job well done_ that deserved a tip (one of the few times I've tipped someone not out of politeness, but out of, "Holy shit, that guy did an amazing job.")
If you watch TV in my area, you see commercial after commercial where the cable companies tear into the telecos. They make fun of contracts. They make fun of shoddy service. They make fun of all these crazy random fees. Soon they'll make fun of this QoS stuff.
Having been on both sides of the fence, I have to admit they are pretty much dead on.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
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.
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."
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.
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.
Look at what this could mean: Right now, the whole beauty of the internet is the egalitarian nature of it. I, being just one fellow in a world of billions, can start a site -- any site I choose to really -- and have it seen by the world. If there is a commercial element to my site (ads or products) I then have the potential to compete with some of the biggest names out there. Blogs compete with newspapers worth billions of dollars. Small eCommerce shops compete with retailers who tower over them. You really can say that never has an opportunity existed.
This is what makes me nervous about this new idea. Wouldn't the AMZNs & NY Times of the world back this for no other reason as they have the money to pay for this while Joe Upstart doesn't. Wouldn't that put everyone back in their place? Wouldn't that undo so much of what has happened over the last 10 years? That seems to be the largest threat that the Internet has seen.
I am very doubtful it will happen, however. I have already read some comments that the FCC has made to the effect that this may violate some of the provisions that were put in place during many of the telcomm mergers. I have also read a few newspaper columnists already start to hit on this which could translate into politicians seeing this as something adverse to their constituents.
In a certain sense, I feel like this is something that has to be decided. Ever since VOIP started to go mainstream, I wondered when the bandwidth providers would start to get pissy that people were actually using what they were selling.
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?
"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...
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.
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.
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.