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Pay-to Play and the Tiered Internet
Crash24 writes "According to an article at The Nation, "industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received." " Tiered internet service may be inevitable folks. Brace yourself.
I can see this being attempted, no doubt. However I simply cannot see it being accepted by the public. You can't take away something that was free from the public without causing a revolution. I don't think these people have as firm a grasp on the concept of the internet that they think.
It bothers me that the government is having such a field day with all these search engines, blasting them about censoring for China. Yet that same government wants to completely try to contain the internet for the capital gain and exploitation of certain telecom companies?
The internet is the biggest creation of our time, I really hope people won't lie down and let this happen. Use your voice people, do something, I know I will.
Fractured Element
...and prepare yourself for finding ways to avoid the major providers. A few months back, I was messing around with finding ways to provide a wireless network within my community mostly for file sharing but also for finding ways to minimize our reliance on the pipes coming in (Comcast, SBC and 3 WiFi high speed providers) so we won't have to worry about it in the future.
Then it occurred to me that these minornets could very well be linked to one another -- microwave or other wireless connections. Sure, the latency goes up, but the reliance on the communications cartels (there is definitely a collusive conspiracy theory there!) is reduced greatly. You tie into the main Internet at a few points, set up your routing to get everyone into the main Internet in the fastest fashion, and you're set. It might be complicated initially but the software and hardware is out there to make it happen, IF NEEDED.
I really think that the whole idea of relying on the big boys' land lines might not be necessary. I was a endpoint on Fidonet, and got along just fine as technology progressed -- some people used X.25, some used landlines, some used ISDN lines, but we all got along. It was slow, but it worked, and it became better over time.
We have to thank the big providers for really being confused for so long as to how they can take advantage of the net. Now we have many ways to stay connected -- I connect to the web via my PDA (and my laptop) through my Samsung t809 with a Bluetooth connection. I'm using it right now, and I get 150kbps downloads -- more than enough. If I didn't have T-Mobile's great package, I know I have about 5 other wireless providers I could buy bandwidth from.
Give it time. Those who try to control you will not realize that there are those who know they can offer less control at a better price. Don't like the monopoly tiered service in your community? Go get a T1, and run a WiFi provider in your area. 3 of my neighbors pay me US$10 a month to get on my megapipe already. I could probably get another 20 of them if I really went out to try.
Tiered service MIGHT be what the average household wants, though. If the monopolies try it and no one comes in to offer a cheaper/less controlled service, the free market will have answered that question. I'd like to hear what the more authoritarian slashdotters here have to say about how the free market could fail the individual user in this case.
Just remember one thing -- if MegaCorp X is a monopoly provider of high speed bandwidth in your town, it isn't MegaCorp X's fault. Go blame the government who gave them the monopoly. If MegaCorp Y created their connections over previous monopoly status, don't ask MegaCorp Y to give you back what you gave them originally -- the right to be a monopoly. This is why I am against government licensing and regulations -- it creates these monopolies which come to affect us decades later.
It isn't the monopolies' fault that you let your local government give up your rights in exchange for bad service. In the old days, maybe it was OK -- it was either bad service or no service. Yet we see the slippery slope and how it affects us in the future, and we need to carefully think about the programs we're asking for today that might become bad monopoly services in the future.
People have long paid more money to make more long distance calls, that only makes sense. Why not for heavier internet usage? It makes sense that heavier users pay higher fees.
This only makes sense if you do not believe in competition between companies. Its competition now that allows many of us to make long distance phone calls for one flat low rate. Yes, this argument makes sense from a cost stand point to the company. But by allowing competition in these market places, we the comsumers reap more benefits.
Don't forget that!
There is nothing wrong with usage as it is now. If anything, it isn't in the favor of the consumer in the US given the fact that other users in non-US countries have access to better connections at a far lower price.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Screw AT&T and all the other so-called bandwidth providers if they think I'm going to fork over any more money then I am currently paying.
Ya see, here in the Great White (as in snow) North Canada, I pay a premium price for unlimited downloads. Regular and basic plans have capped monthly limits.
I just can't see how the US government or more importantly the rest of the planet would allow these modern day robber barrons to create this tiered system. That would be like my cable company charging me $10 a month because I watched 100 more reruns last month.
And speaking of my cable company, how would local telcos charge for this "extra" bandwidth? Their pipe isn't going to get any bigger so its not a quantity issue or are they simply going to be tollgates for "priority traffic". Which is probably the case which means its NOT a bandwidth issue, its a money grab.
I think its rather timely that the $200 Billion Broadband Scandel is being released.
http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm
$200 Billion Dollar Broadband Scandal, is a powerful critique that outlines a truly massive case of fraud. The Bell Companies (Verizon, SBC, Qwest, and BellSouth) used trickery and deceit to swindle the U.S. out of a promised 45mbps internet connection. They collected billions of dollars in regulatory fees, and now they are attempting to commoditize the Internet. Kushnick's book uses stunning detail to expose this treachery with accuracy and thoroughness.
You silly Murickans....
I'd be willing to pay more monthly for access to a real time network with guarantees about latency. I would not like to see my current service degrade so that this happens. This would require service providers set up networks to end corporations providing real time services such that latency could be managed end to end. The technology for this exists, but it's screwed up by carriers being hard to deal with.
But the bottom line is this: ATT/Verizon/etc. do not get to establish these contracts. Their job is to run the network. I want a group of 3rd party ISPs to each independently build their own real time networks and sell the services to customers who can chose amongst ISPs to get the best service. The ISPs will then give the carriers instructions about how the network is to be set up, and pay them for their troubles. The INTERFACE to customers, and to the network, must be public, non-proprietary and transparent, like IPv4 is. Customers must be able to monitor and ensure their contract is being upheld. No proprietary set top boxes or any premises equipment, period.
The guy who owns the wire must stop being the guy who provides the service. That model doesn't work. Further we need to see more REAL competition as much as we can. We can't ever see competition over wires, two or three wires does not a competitive market make. So reduce their role by force, and abstract it.
But no one pays extra to make hour-long local calls, if they like, and this procedure has worked very well for quite some time too. Everything, so to speak, is a "finite resource", but with the amount of unused bandwidth floating around there, and the low levels ISP's cap it at (Japan and many European cities see 20-100 Mbps as a matter of course), there's no excuse for this. I expect to pay for bandwidth at a flat rate, and I expect to use it. If all I wanted to do was occasionally look at webpages and check my email, I'd use the $8/month dialup ISP here. I pay $50 a month for broadband because -I expect to use it-.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Internet access has been marketed to the better part of the world for years as an infinite resource, full of promise, that can solve all of your problems, tie your shoes, start your car and julienne your fries. All this for a low, low rate of $xx.yy per month.
Why should I have to pay extra to download trial software packages and Linux distributions simply because my neighbour does not wish to do so? That's horrible. That's like saying that if my neighbour buys a car and doesn't use it as often as I use mine, I should have to pay more money. He can drive just as much as I do, I simply choose to do so more often, or to take different roads, or to take the longer way home. It costs me more gasoline, but one could argue that using my computer more often costs me more in electricity.
If we saw a lobby group advocating mass tolls on our roads so that we could tax those who drive more often (I'm not talking highways), there would be mass hysteria. Why is this any different?
This is where a lot of people will disagree. What you call "indiscriminate", most people will call "my right". Granted, all of the providers that I've ever been with "reserve the right" to modify their access agreements at any time. I guarantee you, however, that if my ISP imposes this garbage on me, I'll simply find another. And there will always be others.
Businesses, by the way, are not here to charge us a fair price. They are here to make money.
Green's Law of Debate: Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
Also dont forget encryption, If you can encrypt your stream then your ISP has no real clue what it is. I can foresee encryption becoming a major hurdle for this scheme.
The story of how the Baby Bells FuXx0r3d America is relevant to any discussion involving internet service provided by a telephone company.I honestly wouldn't put anything,/i> past the telcos & cable companies.
They've paid for their legislation & regulation and they'll keep paying up as long as it is cost effective to do so.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
At first I was angered by these companies trying to charge twice for internet connectivity, once for the connection and again each time you use it.
But now I'm having second thoughts. Perhaps this tiered market is a good idea. I'm thinking that I'll introduce tiered service levels for access to the easement on my property, and I think as a citizen I will request a new tiered system for corporate access to public property. Perhaps something like this would work:
Silver Level, for a minimal fee of say $100 USD per foot per year I'll allow telecom's to lay cable through my backyard.
Gold Level, I'll actually let the telecom's use their cable they laid in my backyard for a minimal licensing fee of 20% of all revenues related to any data which traverses the lines in my backyard.
Platinum Level, for a minimal fee of $10 per connection I'll allow the telecom company to make data connections from their cable in my backyard to cables in the neighbors backyards.
The tiered program for public property will be similar but will require that all revenue from the program is paid back to all tax paying citizens.
This is just my first rough draft, it will need much more refining, but you know I really should have more control over how my property is used and I should be allowed to participate in the capitalization of said property.
burnin
Once they exhaust every other avenue of revenue the last thing to get attacked is always service. If they are expected to increase profits 5% well the simpliest way is to reduce service 5%. It's what's happened with helath insurance and even food. Try to buy a pound of prepackaged name brand coffee. They are all less than a pound for a reason. Most prepackaged foods went through a similar contraction. Instead of 50 olives we load 49 and change it to weight rather than number. Petty? With high volume items or services it can be millions a year. A friend that worked at Universal was given a raise that was calculated to the half cent. When he complainted to accounting that it was rediculous they calmly explained given the number of employees over the course of a year it saved them tens of thousands of dollars. Reductions in service are unavoidable as execs turn to bean counters to find the next profit increase so they can justify their new raise. Who looses? The consumer.
First, Google's fiber doesn't do them any good in this situation unless they're also your ISP. Google might have a five inch water line running through your town but if you connect to it via a 1/2" water hose it's all irrelevant to you. If your ISP is Verizon or Comcast or whomever, and they throttle your traffic to Google, Google is going to be slow on your machine no matter how much fiber they have.
Certainly, there's the possibility that if Verizon throttles your connection and Comcast doesn't, you'll switch to Comcast. But if Yahoo pays Verizon not to throttle their data and Google doesn't, is the average user (ie a non-/. reading, doesn't know the difference between ram and hard drive space, still uses IE 5.0, etc) going to know to switch to Comcast or are they simply going to see that Yahoo is snappy and Google is slow, so use Yahoo? I suspect a bit of both will happen, and unless Verizon loses enough customers that they're losing more money than Yahoo is paying them, Verizon is still going to come out ahead.
(Names used here are just examples and not meant to indicate that one company is better than the other.)
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Still trying to think of a clever sig...
It sounds like a chicken and egg argument. The CEO of AT&T doesn't think that Google should benefit from using AT&T's pipes. But if there was no Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc, then nobody would want to use the pipes(or use it less). What the carriers don't realize is that consumers are paying these ISP's upwards of $50/month to get to Google and Amazon. AT&T should be thanking Google for giving consumers a reason to pay $50/month. Back when the internet sucked and you couldn't find anything, pre-google days, it was only worth $19.95 month and dial up was good enough. Now that we have P2P, Google, high quality streaming media, it's worth $40/month. You take away P2P and watch how many people drop back to dial-up.
I see a future where people don't have "free range" web access or email at home at all. You want the news? Subscribe to it. You want porn? Subscribe to it. Don't be surprised when email and web browsing becomes something you use at the office in a closed inTRAnet system.
Just because it's the most suicidal thing the phone companies could possibly do, that doesn't mean they aren't dumb enough to to it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If the telcos push this too hard I can't wait for GoogleNet. Pay for unlimited service, or enjoy the Internet, free of charge, witha google ad on the top of every page or some such.
I think I would likely be willing to pay $20-$25 a month for that... (assuming 1Mbps/384Kbps or some such)
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I read an article recently (which I think is relevant to the discussion) about why some hotels charge for internet service and why others give it away free.
http://www.slate.com/id/2135226/
It basically comes down to "what will the consumer pay." Some people will pay more than others for the exact same service. Either because they've got cash to burn, or because it is more valuable for them.
This is why
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It would take about 17 minutes for Google to add a notice to their pages for Verizon users telling them that their ISP is deliberately crippling their connection.
And even less time for them to figure out where you are based on your IP address, and show you very targeted ads to help you find a better provider!
While making money on the ads even.
Believe me, Google has very little to lose in this fight...
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX