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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."
Since Verizon's recent purchase of MCI, they have more bandwidth, both lit and unlit, than they know what to do with. Making the whole point of squeezing anything totally a non issue.
Why shouldn't they be able to do what they want with it?
Let's play devil's advocate. It is their network, why shouldn't they be able to do with it what they want? I mean we hear the I own the software I should be able to do anything I want with it all the time. How is this any different?
... 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?
As long as verizon keeps on delievering the 2 MB/s connection bandwidth to me , I donot care about their reservations. But if they cut it to promote their products, its then illegal.
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
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.
It's simply a matter of competition. If Comcast or another local cable provider can provide better bandwidth for a similar price, then go with the competitor.
I'm supposed to get 768/128 throughput. I actually get more like 640/100 with my Verizon DSL. If Verizon can't maintain something close to this even with their pipe-grab, then I would simply switch to broadband from 1 or 2 of the other options available.
If it's a matter of shared phone lines and other DSL providers being choked out too, then that's a good reason to go with cable or over-air altogether.
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.
Is it just me or does this article appear to be confusing two issues?
(1) Pay-to-play - ISP's charging content providers so that traffic to and from their site is not delayed (Internetwork traffic)
(2) QoS - ISPs doing QoS to reserve bandwidth for specific applications they themselves offer their own customers (Intranetwork traffic)
- Tony
It's Verizon's network and if they want to provide a television service, then let them! They can allocate their bandwidth to their own services however they see fit. Now, if they were singling out certain competitors and preventing them from using a part of their network, that would be different. They aren't doing that. If there isn't enough bandwidth on Verizon's network, then the traffic will flow through other networks. And if there is a bottleneck because those networks aren't big enough, then there is space for another company to come in an fill the void.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
As far as I can tell, they're the only player lighting up the last mile, and the majority of their video bandwidth will be on segments wholly devoted to their own network. I regularly use 50Mb/sec, but since it's withing my house and on my LAN, I don't think anybody has a right to complain.
I'd like to say that more of the laid fiber is lit, but most of it is just plain dark. So long as we're only using a small fraction of the capacity of the medium already in place, what does it matter how much they use? They pay for it, they light it up, they can use it. If there's more demand, light up some more fiber.
I can't hear you now. Someone's using all my bandwidth!
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.
As much as I am a proponent for the Good Of All Mankind, I am confused by the idea of a mandate that says Verizon must use their bandwidth in this way or that way. I understand that Verizon (MCI) owns a lot of Internet backbone, but the Internet is a public entity. Verizon is not. The money they spent to build those fiber highways did not come from public coffers (unless I don't know about some kind of subsidy program).
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...
It's their fiber, why can't they allocate it as they wish?
There seems to be a confusion in TFA about whether this applies to any backbones managed by Verizon versus the optical fiber that Verizon is supplying to people's homes via their FiOS service.
Regarding the backbones, as long as they are meeting their contractual commitments, why should anybody else have any say over how they allocate any additional bandwidth they may have.
Regarding fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), they are planning on allocating it as follows using three wavelengths (according to John Dix at Network World):
In the FTTH case, historically the Telcos have been required to provide fair access to their wires (thus you're not required to use Qwest as your ISP if you have Qwest DSL, for example), I would expect that the fair access rules would apply to FTTH.
The surest way to delay getting fiber bandwidth to your home or internet infrastructure is by taking away the incentives (read: profit) for the corporations involved. Verizon is currently making major investements in having a large share of the next generation networks, their competition is being caught flat-footed and behind the curve and will probably try to make legal challenges to slow their growth.
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.
I don't believe this is about the long-haul backbones, this is probably about the local POP / loop, and the POP connection to the regional backbone. If a Verizon FIOS "hub" has a total of 1G bandwidth, and verizon is taking 800M of it, then all the other internet traffic can only use 200M split over who-knows-how-many end users. Furthermore, the POP to POP links may be allocated the same way. VOL will probably end up doing some massive video on demand system that will suck down most of the total bandwidth.
This would put any video on demand service that Google may (will) have at a severe disadvantage.
Even if a gob more dark fiber is available for all these pipes, it costs serious amounts of money to light them up. Obviously if VOL can "reserve" a big portion of bandwidth on the existing links to the point where they can offer all their value-add services, they don't have an incentive to light up more fiber.
Ummm, no. In short, no. Also, no. :-)
Seriously, capacity is not some monolithic thing that you "have enough of" or "have too much of". Capacity is from a place to a place across a set of resources. VZ can have plenty of capacity from NY to VA but not enough peering to AS3356 (level3). Or They might have plenty of cross-country capacity until a train derails in Colorado causing a 3-4 day outage of the middle path and congesting some other paths. It all depends and the devel is in the detail.
Even using generous estimates of multicast efficiencies, video over packet (or IPTV) is going to consume a *lot* of resources. ~20-25Mb/s per channel. Right now, virtually no one has "enough capacity" for that.
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.
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!"
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.
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.
Of course it's "their" pipe. Under "my" land.
Let's see if we can apply some property rights here...
Verizon (or ANYONE) is not entitled, authorized, or any such thing to dig in MY property. Whether to lay copper, fibre, or dead bodies.
The GOVERNMENT gives the right to do so. But there are some rules. Rules that I (we) impose. If the government has allowed such action (more accurately, has FORCED it), we am entitled to some benefit:
Specifically, access to the property or service at reasonable rates, with reasonable sharing.
Of course "reasonable rates" are debatable; as is "reasonable sharing".
It's not "their" pipe -- it's "our" pipe.
When cable was rolled out, it was rolled out on the understanding that cable TV was to be provided. Was an alternate TV network contemplated when the fibre was rolled out? If it was, then ok; if not, we need a PUBLIC debate.
Nothing against Verizon (or any other public utility), but that IS the rule. And if anyone gives me a hard time about, I'll backhoe my property. Sue me already.
As a final observation: Let's get into this century, already. I don't see the sewage removal provider making a play for Gas delivery. I don't see the Gas provider (delivery only) making a play for water delivery. They kind of stick to their own turf.
But the "data" services are coallescing. Voice, TV, Internet -- its all data. Reasonably, we expect that NEW pipes would treat it the same. If you close your eyes really tight, and pull back 20 years, then, yeah, its different. Which gave rise to "Cable TV" as separate from "Phone".
Now I expect a single bundle of fibre to a home and I expect it to carry ALL the data equally. A separate "bandwidth" supplier distinct from purposing.
As an example: if you have a home heated by a Gas furnace, and a Gas BBQ, and a Gas stove, would you really expect two or three different bills? Of course not, a single bill each month suffices.
I want a single "data" bill every month, that combines "TV", "Phone", "Internet", "VOD" carrier fees. I may have a separate accounting for "VOD movies", "POTS integration", "HBO access".
I advocate complete separation of the cost of maintaining the "plumbing" and "delivering" the data from the data itself. The Gas company here (Enbridge) can do, so I expect the fibre suppliers to be able to do it as well.
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Alright, fine -- Internet service might not be a public utility right at this moment. However, in a very short time -- maybe 5 years, or 10 at the max -- Internet access is going to be pretty much required to function as a citizen. People who "can't afford it" have no excuse, you know, because of free access at public libraries and/or free city-wide WiFi.
In five years, which will be more important: Internet service or POTS service? Hell, which is more important now? I say Internet!
Even if Internet service isn't a public utility, it damn well should be!
Except that it's not that simple! Between telecom monopolies and content monopolies, some customers may very well be forced to use Verizon. Your solution works very well in a free market, but the particular market under discussion is approximately as far away from a free market as it can possibly get.
You know, I consider myself to be libertarian, and support the least-interference solution wherever possible. This, however, is an issue of the tragedy of the commons (which, by the way, most Libertarians ought to read, since they don't seem to understand the concept). It needs to be protected, and the only effective way to do that is -- unfortunately -- government regulation.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I agree.
As a large bandwidth customer, while nowhere near the levels of Verizon, I am constantly playing the game of deciding what is needed where. I have multiple GigE connections and many servers. I float things around to (hopefully) ensure that I don't run out of bandwidth in any particular spot.
I have places, where I have "essential" services, which I want to leave extra bandwidth available. Those are for my own purposes.
Just on my own scale, I put mail, DNS, and some other internal use machines on a higher priority than say a free hosting server.
Why can't Verizon allocate X for Internet, Y for phone calls, and Z for 'internal' use? Who's freakin' business is it on how they allocate their services. If X suffers because Y and Z get prefered treatment, it's their own business which will be hurt. Customers will get frustrated at slow speeds and high latency, and go somewhere else. Likewise, if they were forced to make X use all available bandwidth, obviously Y and Z will be hurt. Verizon without the ability to pass phone traffic would be interesting. How do you explain to a whole bunch of residential phone customers that they can't make phone calls (frequent all circuits busy tone), because the Internet traffic sucked it all up.
The article references Verizon's new fiber that they've spent a freaking fortune installing. Now that they've put it in, are they under some sort of obligation to allow that to be used for whatever they are told? That really screws with any sort of plans they may have. Ok, so they're going to offer television over IP. Great. Why should they be required to sublet that to me for my latest/greatest ISP venture, or dedicate it to Internet bandwidth. It's their lines. They installed them for a reason.
I know Tier 1 providers frequently sublet fiber as they have it available. It's not like Verizon will hold onto a bunch of dark fiber just for the sake of telling another provider to go screw themselves. Well, it may happen, but they're in the business of making money.
The whole "who gets priority" thing is kind of silly. Providers have been doing it for years anyways. It may not be obvious, but it happens. Here's an example. Like I said, we use lots of bandwidth, and we're frequently checking on how things look. If we aren't, one of our roughly 2 million daily viewers is. People like to complain, and I guarantee at least a few of those 2 million viewers can run a traceroute. If things are slow through a city, either we'll already know about it, or a viewer will complain. A few times, a provider has made the mistake of lowering our quality of service. Someone else was given the prefered routes, and we were left with the crap. A few phone calls to high places in the company, and we can see things start working better and we suddenly get calls from high ranking people in the company apologizing that the mistake ever happened. Sometimes they'll play it off as a simple mistake, but in the end, it's all the same. They changed something (QOS), we complained, they changed it back.
I guarantee, we'll get the prefered routes, over someone with a T1 or even a 10Mb cross connect. It's all in who pays more. Obviously, if we have equipment on the provider in question, we'll always appear faster than someone on another provider, especially across a bad peering. Are we "paying" for this service? Sure. We pay out the ass to have equipment in a facility and bandwidth to support them. Are you as a home DSL/cablemodem customer going to have the same influence with a provider that we have? No freakin' way. On the other hand, we only deal with Tier 1 providers, so you won't be dealing with them directly. Even as a Verizon DSL/cablemodem customer, you aren't talking to the Tier 1 part of the company.
With all that said, we're not Verizon customers. We have been on occasion for lesser services (backup DSL for offices, and the like), but not for our main services. They don't offer the killer deals that others do.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.