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Is Verizon a Network Hog?
pillageplunder wrote to mention a piece in BusinessWeek asking whether or not Verizon has the right to set aside bandwidth for its own projects. They're planning a television service, and have allocated a swath of their bandwidth (which could otherwise be used for net and phone traffic) to back this service. From the article: "Leading Net companies say that Verizon's actions could keep some rivals off the road. As consumers try to search Google, buy books on Amazon.com, or watch videos on Yahoo!, they'll all be trying to squeeze into the leftover lanes on Verizon's network. On Feb. 7 the Net companies plan to take their complaints about Verizon's plans to the Senate during a hearing on telecom reform."
... Like myself, others switch to another company. It's the only way they learn is to lose customers.
...asking whether or not Verizon has the right to set aside bandwidth for its own projects.
Verizon has the right to do whatever it wants with the bandwidth it pays for. If you don't like it, switch to another service. I'm sure they have a clause somewhere deep in their TOS that allows them to change the bandwidth available to their customers, otherwise they wouldn't be doing this. Anyone with conflicting info care to respond?
Isn't the IPTV which they're offering meant to be largely handled by their FIOS service? I understand at some point they have to connect to a larger pipe to serve that, but really, do you expect a company that serves so many users NOT to think of things like this beforehand?
I don't get it.
yahoo Finance: Notice the 5.92% return on assets and 22.19% return on equity.
I don't about you, but I think they're getting a real nice return. Unless, their management is comparing their returns to cocaine cartels, then they're doing pretty shitty.
I don't see this as THAT big of a deal. If Verizon is foolish enough to throttle their customers' bandwidth down noticeably, there are many other offerings in the ISP industry, and people will not put up with slow Internet, pretty video feeds or not.
So let them try.
Some people would say that we paid for it.
What if that mime really is trapped in a box?
Verizon's network. Verizon's decision. And when Google, Amazon, and eBay find their bottom lines impacted by Verizon's reduced network availability, Verizon will find their bottom lines affected.
Not unsurprisingly, people are already screaming for "big gubment" to step in...
There's a fundamental disconnect at Telco's with consumers. We think we pay our monthly DSL bill for 1.544Mbps down/ 384K up (depending on where you live). They think we're paying for a service that transfers packets, a byproduct of which involves our packets entering and leaving their network faster at some times than others. The reality is we share a single DSLAM with 250-500 of our neighbors that has a tiny little link to their core network, and at many times of the day, we cannot hope to achieve maximum throughput. Thus if they wish to saturate that link with video, they feel we have no say in the matter, as we're not actually paying for bandwidth.
In a better world, we'd of course shift our money from competitor to competitor, settling on the service that offers the best bang for the buck. Of course they know that in most parts of the country, there is only one competitor, and their service sucks in its own unique ways.
Now enter a big business friendly government. Let's not even say friendly, let's say that someone in the government has bent over and offered himself to the monopoly gods. As part of this relationship, the government uses the FCC to ensure that telco's and cable operators get their chance to make insane profits, while the rest of us bicker about Iraq, Intelligent Design, and whether the president has the authority to spy on citizens.
What am I paying my monthly ISP bill for if they "paid for it"? What exactly am I buying then, the right to access only the content they let me have?
And? Why would this be a reason to sue? If you don't like Verizon's idea, and it bothers you enough, then use a different provider. Also, who's to say that Verizon would have used the additional bandwidth to fuel their web services?
Yes, of course! Those other companies are especially concerned about Verizon customers, and are willing to spend their own money to sue on the behalf of customers that aren't even theirs and don't make them any money!. So let me ask you - when was the last time you saw a company act so noble and unselfish? Its very rare, of course.
So basically, Verizon has an idea that they think is cool and will possibly make them a lot of money. Their competitors freaked out because they aren't to the point where they can offer the same thing, so they go on the offense and sue.
Seems like there are three ways to make money in America: work, sue, or steal. I think people who file frivolous lawsuits should have to pay the defendants attorney fees, extra court costs for wasting time, and a percentage of what they originally asked for in compensation to the defendant. This "sue everyone for everything" crap is terrible.
PS: I dont think they ever expect to win this case, either. They just want the bad PR to be out there.
So what choices does Verizon have?
a) build a cool idea on their network.
b) pay Sprint or someone to run their video traffic. (rofl)
c) abandon an idea they feel will make decent money.
Look, if their customers don't like it, they will leave Verizon, and Verizon will have wasted a huge amount of money building this thing out and promoting it. Let the freakin market decide what is good or crap - dont freakin sue over every single thing you disagree with. It's disgusting...
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
Because I paid for it and that's not what I want them to do with it.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
Common Carrier Status
sig?
Imagine if the government said that all roads will now be reduced by one half of a lane for their 'special projects' (advertising opportunities). Now, we all pay tax to keep the road up, so we're essentially their customers. Now not only are we shorted half a lane and paying the same price, but the roadways just became more congested and much more dangerous. Its 'their' roadways, but we have en expectation of service.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Yes, as a matter of fact you are paying for what you got. You have a service agreement with company XYZ:
It says they will provide you with service ABC for the period of which you pay for it.
I seriously doubt any 'service company' like this would have a provision that says 'by paying your monthly fee for the service you are getting on a monthly basis, you immediately get to reap the benefit of our company running in the black.
Sorry, this is not communist russia... in communist russia (fill in the blank)
Companies exist to make money, to (possibly use that capitol to roll out new services) make even more money. Unless your Provider is a Co-Op or some such thing.
If your service agreement with the company you are with doesn't suit you, have fun elsewhere.
The only possible arguement against this position would be that through tax breaks etc given on the condition that the company was to deploy HSI with the money saved. If the consumer realizes no benefit from that tax break then it would be valid to cry foul...
But to just assume because you payed for the service you got, that you should get full access to anything they have is quite simply stupid.
Just try uncapping your cablemodem and see how far that gets you.
So, if you live in one of the areas where Verizon is the monopoly for access, should they at least have to pay for the lubricant?
On the other point you make of total deregulation, how many sets of wire/fibre should be strung on poles and trenched through peoples yards? I already have four rights of way trenched through the property I own. Now I have to let several other companies trench their infrastructure through my property? No way.
As was pointed out earlier, they are a "common carrier" which, according to this definition must "serve indifferently all potential users". Obviously this doesn't work if you are serving yourself preferentially.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it."
- H. L. Mencken
The "other options available", as far as DSL is concerned, all use the same basic lines. I'd love to go with somebody else but Verizon, but all the other providers just lease the line from Verizon. There is no competition.
That leaves cable or over-the-air. Not a lot of choices.
It's even worse when you have cable and want to switch to DSL. Verizon refuses to tell you what bandwidth you can get until you order a phone line from them. I.e. using their monopoly to force other services down your throat.
I've talked to competing cable providers - since I really don't like Adelphia - and have heard, verbatim: "That is Adelphia's territory". And it sure like heck feels like they piss on me to mark it.
There is no competition in the telco market. It's a smoke screen maintained by local monopolies. Unless the last mile becomes publicly owned, we'll never get real competition.
You are almost certainly not getting 2 MB/s (16Mb/s) unless you have VDSL and live within about 1kfoot of the central office or a remote terminal, and you're almost certainly not even getting 2Mb/s at all times of the day. The first hop in your path through their network is an aggregation step with your neighbors. Small DSLAMs have something like 40 customers on an OC-3, large DSLAMs have something like 500 customers on 4 OC-3s.
They don't promise you bandwidth, just service. You share your bandwidth with other customers and now, their whim.
Most likely, and I've been out of telecom for a year, they'll upgrade your DSLAM with a gigE connection, but enable priority queueing. What they're going to do is put video on a higher priority queue, thus your internet packets may be held up (or dropped during high traffic hours) in favor of ensuring video packets get through within so many milliseconds of arriving in the queue. You probably won't see a loss of bandwidth (except at peak hours), but if you play real time games, or run real time traffic (IP phone), you will experience additional round trip delays or maybe more lost packets.
Networks do need some real time capabilities, but letting Verizon/ATT proxy those is not the right thing to do. These companies do not work and play well with others. There are better ways of adding those services without allowing monopolies to grow their scope of control.
You could say that about public projects. You pay taxes for future projects, and you might have a say in that.
However, you paid Verizon for services that Verizon had already rendered. The contractual obligation they have, is to give you one month of ____ service (whatever it might be) in exchange for your payment. They provided the service, you provided the payment. After that, you can't say fuck-all about what they do with THEIR MONEY. It was your money before they gave you a service for which you handed your money over to them.
If you shoveled my walkway for snow, I paid you $20 for it, and you decided to go buy a videogame with that money, do I have any say in what game you should buy? I don't think so. Verizon earned that money. This isn't a tax you paid out of necessity.
The ONLY clout you have in this, is by transferring to another company.
Don't confuse government accountability for private accountability.
For FIOS, you do pay for the amount of bandwidth you want, so that bandwidth would be difficult for them to change.
Now for bandwidth out to the rest of the network, let's be real here... if everything was slow except for verizon services, then people would simply complain and move to comcast.
But the video service that Verizon is offering goes over fiber which has enough spare bandwidth that it won't even affect the IP network. I think it's a non-issue, but I'd love to hear the counter argument.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
That only really applies if they're looking at the traffic. I would argue that they do indeed have the right to reserve bandwidth for their own applications if and only if they are not a monopoly. If they're not a monopoly, customers can choose another provider. But if they control all the internet traffic in a certain area (i.e. the backbone), then I'd argue they're illegally using that power to gain an advantage in another market, which opens them up to huge antitrust liabilities. (IANAL)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This is the exact same issue (from the exact same source) as the interview with SBC Chairman Whitacre last fall. I covered the dispute in my blog last month. It doesn't seem to die.
The issue is clouded by fuzzy-headed thinking. Cable companies already do this. They "reserve bandwidth" (i.e. channels, frequencies, capacity) for their video content and only make a small amount of space available for Internet. The idea that ILECs would do the same when they roll out IPTV or other video-over-packet strategies, is so shockingly unremarkable as to not be news.
The only interesting issue here is whether VZ or SBC or others will restrict or degrade their existing Internet service in the process. I seriously doubt they will--the market would punish them for that. But if they were to, that would be interesting.
And I'll do what I want with it.
Excuse me while I dig up the storm drain in my front yard, and cut down the telephone poles in the front and back.
You see, the free market only applies when the market was established via free conditions. If the government intervened in some fashion to create a monopoly (Verizon, you get to be the telephone carrier for this area), then the government MUST intervene to keep the market sane; market failures CAN be created by government, and when they are they should be checked by the government.
Geographic monopolies are often established by the state. I have no idea why one would want a geographic monopoly to run rampant and unregulated.
Otherwise, it's MY land. I want a cut of all the profits that the phone/cable/electrical companies get by stringing their lines on MY land.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Of course they have the RIGHT. They own the cable. Bought it, installed it, paid for it, and maintain the equipment that lights it up.
The government subsidized a lot of the building. They also seized right of ways and property via immanent domain. They also granted them a monopoly on running lines in certain right of ways. They also provide them with a special immunity for prosecution for breaking certain laws on behalf of their customers. All of this was done under the agreement that they would act as a public service and provide equal rights to use their bandwidth to competitors and clients. Before you go off about their rights, remember that if they fail to live up to their half of the bargain, the people as represented by the government should do the same. They should be prosecuted for every bit of child porn and copyright infringement copied from router to router. Any lines in public right of ways should be ripped up and the rights to use them sold to a competitor. Money spent subsidizing the networks should be reclaimed from them and spent paying off the national debt. This is not a free market situation, so don't try to apply free market rules. They made a deal, they have to live up to it.
Well, to some extent there is no one to switch to. If I want DSL, Verizon is involved. If I want landline telephone, Verizon is involved. OK, dump landline and go cellular. Uh, from what my friends and roommates tell me, Verizon is the only service that works at my house. I don't want one I can't use... VOIP? I don't trust the only other broadband provider's connection is reliable enough to trust with my phone service. If my roommate can't play FFXI because the connection keeps dropping every few minutes, then I don't expect it to make a good phone line either.
It it even possible to boycott your regional BellCo without going Amish? Naw, I think Verizon has enough people like me screwed out of any possible alternative that they don't have to care. A lot of unhappy customers simply have nowhere else to go.
BTW, I'm considering changing to DSL instead of cablemodem because of the piss-poor service I currently have, I'm considering getting a Verizon cell phone (I don't currently have any cellphone), and I would like FIOS if it was available here. I currently have Verizon land-line and nothing else from them.
Verizon is a part of a regulated monopoly which is a common carrier. Look it up. It must carry traffic from anyone without any discrimination as to content. Else they would be liable for whatever travels within their networks.
Now they want to discriminate traffic to prioritize some traffic over other traffic. Once they do that, they are not a common carrier and should lose that protection against liability of what they carry (porn, XXX video, kiddie sex, gambling, games, terrorist plots, etc.). They want to retain their monopoly, the protection, the fat profits from the last mile and now even more.
They can make their new service work without prioritizing by putting in enough capacity to send all traffic through their network simultaneously (typically known as nonblocking) without any delays. You do that by adding up all the bandwidth of each user and making sure that the network can carry it all. Yes that is expensive, but it can be done. We paid for their network over the years and now they want to have us pay both money and time to move their stuff first. Let it stand with the same restrictions everyone else works under.
If they have a delay problem, then have them deal with it like the rest of us, put storage close to the outlet to buffer the traffic and send it faster to the buffer than it plays out. That way, the "video" plays without apparent delays and short delays are absorbed by the buffer. They could send a 360MB compressed 1 hour show (45 minutes without commercials) in 15 minutes (or less) to the set top box (or server for the block just outside) and after 3-4 minutes (long enough for the preshow act and titles and stuff to be viewed), they could have a bunch of packets delayed 10 minutes and still the user(s) never see any delay.
Heck they can make it even easier as popular shows or scheduled ones could be sent prior to being viewed (shows can't be real time, but outside of news and sports, that is rare) so the whole video is on the server before a viewer even starts watching. That's how many of my friends and relatives use Tivo and similar DVR services. It works, they like it that way and they are even willing to pay for that on an ongoing basis. Doing is this way also cuts down on the bandwidth usage as one program being sent can go to thousands of servers which then allow millions of customers to view them. That BW savings can then be used to send those real time shows in the typical manner to those servers for being sent over multiple "last mile" links. And the users requested that this service be prioritized on their links. Others who don't watch shows real time, can surf, download or upload without losing any of their paid for BW. And the network remains "dumb" and non discriminating.
I say to the regulators, force Verizon and any other such carrier to do it right. Its more expensive, but why should they be able to get away with a solution not available to any other providers, requires current users to accept additional delays, lost packets and lower bandwidth to bring out some cross subsidized service on the cheap? The cost of doing correctly will pay benefits in the long run and force them to use the network like anyone else would be required to do. They still have the advantage of locating the necessary stuff right next to the links. It also gives the rest of us the bandwidth when not needed for video. Bigger pipes helps everyone who wants to send or receive content.
Pete
PS: Alternatively, they could just bring fiber to the home. Then cable would not be able to match the aggragate capacity and every user could have 10Gb/s data links and still have thousands of 19.2Mb HDTV channel feeds, all simultaneously. And we would still have the inevitable complaint "ten thousand channels and nothing to watch!"
Keep in mind that a "free" market is one in which you have a number of choices for a given item that are equivalent replacements. Automobiles are a free market as their are many manufacturers and models that I can choose from that will fill my transportation needs. In this care, there's no "free" market.
What this is talking about isn't verizon's customers, but rather network traffic that has to go over Verizon's network. So, in essence it could cause an aggregate slow down of other network providers. Customers of those other networks might be pissed but there's nothing they can do about it save for switching to Verizon which is causing the problem in the first place.
That's not a free market.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Sure its their network, fine. But they are for the most part using the public's right of way. Or from easements across people's private property.
So, collectively we have a right to impose reasonable regulations on its use. Personally, I don't see any problem with Verizon managing how the bandwidth is used, to a point. Just as the cable companies allocate certain bandwidth for cable tv and internet respectively. I see no difference.
The part of verizon that is related to phone service is a common carrier. The ISP and the parts related to it are not. They are separate divisions, so be sure to know which one you are talking about when you claim verizon is a common carrier.
Considering that they are going to be rolling out a massive video on demand service, probably centralized, I would expect that they WOULD do something like carve out PVC's. This would be an anticompetitive move to ensure that no other outside provider (think google) could compete with VOL's VOD service due to lack of bandwidth.
I think that is the POINT of google being upset. It's not stupid, it's just a nasty anticompetitive thing to do.