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. "

Comments

There goes

[CaptainZapp]

Common carrier status.

Re:There goes

[houstonbofh]

So does this mean a small website could sue for extortion or sabotage if the network performance is poor? With this liability and the potential loss of common carrier status for the "paid off" pages, I would think the company lawyers would be nervous. But then again, it seems no company is looking ahead to potential liability anymore.

Re:There goes

[ipfwadm]

They didn't have common carrier status to begin with. Remember this? The Wikipedia article on common carrier also says that ISPs are not generally considered common carriers, and do not wish to be so. Unfortunately, it's a bit thin on the details aside from saying that common carrier status carries "obligations they would rather avoid".

Re:There goes

[arivanov]

It will be very difficult for the FCC to do anything here because as a result of the death of public peering points around 2000 all usual content suspects are directly connected to the BellSouth (and other tier 1 providers) networks and are in direct commercial agreement with them. As a result these are just normal customer/provider relations. It is not transit or anything originated by another carrier carried across BellSouth and dumped onto another carrier. So common carrier ideas will be very difficult to apply.
If the FCC did not close their eyes when the Tier1 effectively formed a cartel and killed all peering points around 2000 and if it did not allow babybells to grow back to mabell size it would not have happened. Now there is little that can be done besides restarting the MaBell breakup process

Re:There goes

[IAmTheDave]

So does this mean a small website could sue for extortion or sabotage if the network performance is poor?

I have to hope so. Also, those users who see poor performance on a website should sue as well, because users DO pay for the use of the lines. This is without a question extortion. Bell South says "they don't pay for the lines" as if no one at all pays for them. But you and I pay for the lines - so Bell South wants to be paid twice for the same slice of cake.

I hope this gets challenged in court and Bell South gets the spanking it deserves. This makes me so sick.

Re:There goes

[GoodNicsTken]

I don't think they are thinking this through. Right now they only see Access charges (what LD companies pay them) in decline, and VoIP is eating their lunch. With the FCC taking years to fix the problem they are trying to find an alternative.

I find it odd that the main arguement DSL used in early 2000 was the connection is not shared as it is with cable. Now as a subscriber, I can apparently pay for 1M service, but only get 500K unless the service provider is paying Bellsouth (and if this flys, every other telco) for the extra bandwidth?

When customers realize Bellsouth is not providing the service they are paying for, there's going to be some backlash. This is what happens when the stock market is running a company. Executives do stupid things to try and make their bouns.

Re:There goes

[jamieswith]

Incredibly good point... It would be like your phone company sending a bill to everyone that you call... If you are already supposed to be paying for the entire call, what right do they have to charge someone else for the same call? I'd be tempted as a consumer to try to sue BellSouth for at least part of the cost of my DSL, since apparently I'm not supposed to be paying the entire cost of my connection - apparently the content providers are paying some of it - sounds like a simple case of over-billing! 2 slices of the cake indeed.

Re:There goes

[rahlquist]

Yes bellsouth wants to charge you for both ends of that phone call. What else they want to do is force companies like VOIP providers to pay higher rates than say Google or Itunes and the VOIP provider has to pass that cost on to you. How much would bellsouth charge for such a thing, well probably something in EXCESS of what they charge the average schmuck for long distance service. Effectively making someone like Vonage charge their users more than BS has to charge its customers for the services.

So they completely plan on screwing the end user. But hey as long as they are loyal to their shareholders who gives a flip about you lousy customers, you cost too much using all of that bandwidth we are selling to you! This doesnt remind me anything of monopolistic business practices.

They aren't USING anything!

[XMilkProject]

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.

Ridiculous

[Kamidari]

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!

Greed

[Mnemia]

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".

Who Do Users Trust More?

[Kamel Jockey]

Their ISP, or a particular content provider, say Google. I see 2 potential outcomes here:

1. BS users will not notice any significant degradation in connections to websites like Google, Yahoo, or in using VoIP services or the like. In which case, these content providers will not pay extortion fees to BS. BS retaliates by blocking access to these sites and users leave BS as a result.
2. Content providers actively solicit BS customers away from BS. For example, a BS customer loads up Google and sees a message on the page like "Don't like the way this page loads? It's because your ISP, BS, stinks! Switch to ISP XYZ today!" Google is seen by many people as an entity which can "do no evil" and as a result it might be able to get away with such a move. A VoIP provider might put a pre-recorded message prior to each call which could say "Your ISP, BS is purposefully degrading the quality of this call. If you don't like this, switch to ISP XYZ today!"

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.

Sounds like the Mafia's movin' into Telco...

[Billosaur]

He suggested that Apple Computer might be asked to pay a nickel or a dime to insure the complete and rapid transmission of a song via the Internet, which is being used for more and more content-intensive purposes. He cited Yahoo Inc.'s plans to stream reality TV shows as an example.

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?

Re:Your ISP customers paid you, numbnuts...

[Spamalope]

I want my cake. BellSouth is benefiting from the services it's subscribers are accessing over the network. BellSouth uses this access to sell monthly network access subscriptions to my (and everyone else's) content. BellSouth is selling my content. Pay up bitch.

Will Bellsouth block access to those sites?

[cmoney]

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.

"It would be a shame if....

[feorlen]

... 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...

Here is a challenge to BellSouth customers...

[Noryungi]

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.

Re:Bell greed won't go away

[BrynM]

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).

The scheme would probably work like this:

1. Cap all traffic from everywhere at a certain rate or usage limit
2. Charge either provider or subscriber for a higher bandwidth cap on a site. A subscriber could have a list of sites they would like as "premium" - maybe even submit a bookmark list on a micropayment per address scheme. The provider would of course pay for their sites or even individual files to be "premium".
3. (obscene) Profit!!!

Think of it as a modified cable business model.

In other news...

[revery]

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.

Competition?

[RingDev]

And can I pay to have my competitor's service not accelerated?

-Rick

Turnabout....

[Deton8]

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?

Re:Your ISP customers paid you, numbnuts...

[ivan256]

Go check out espn360.com.

I'll wait...

Back? Good.

This is a perfect example of what is going to happen here. First, only a few stupid companies will pay Bell South (Even SCO got some takers). Then the content providers will start charging Bell South to allow users of the Bell South internet service to access their web sites. It's already started. The content providers know that they're in charge. There are so many ISPs out there that the ISP needs the content more than the content providers need any single ISP. Bell South will figure this out, or they will lose customers. Once again, the free market works.

And I bet you were only half serious.

Hughes Network Systems to the rescue! (EP1050117)

[BlueUnderwear]

The scheme would probably work like this:

1. Cap all traffic from everywhere at a certain rate or usage limit
2. Charge either provider or subscriber for a higher bandwidth cap on a site. A subscriber could have a list of sites they would like as "premium" - maybe even submit a bookmark list on a micropayment per address scheme. The provider would of course pay for their sites or even individual files to be "premium".
3. (obscene) Profit!!! Think of it as a modified cable business model.

You forgot:
4. Pay all your obscene profit (and then some...) back to HNS, as patent infringment fees. Just Read claim #12 of EP1050117:

12. A method for controlling the rate at which data is transferred between a source computer (140) and a plurality of requesting terminals (110) comprising the steps of:

• monitoring the rate at which data is transferred to each of the requesting terminals (110);
• determining account information for each requesting terminal (110);
• determining a level of service subsribed to by each of the requesting terminals (110) from the account information;
• comparing the rate at which data is transferred to each of the plurality of requesting terminals (110) and the level of service subsribed to by each of the requesting terminals (110);
• and controlling the rate at which data is transferred to each of the requesting terminals (110) based on the comparison

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 ;-)