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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.
There are companies fighting this, trying to get policies put forth requiring network neutrality. According to the article, both Google and Amazon are against it, along with other special interest groups. I'm willing to bet that Microsoft would oppose it as well, since they're getting more and more into internet applications. Same goes for Apple.
Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T may be powerful, but they're going to have a hell of a fight if they're going up against Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon.
Maybe it's time to create the Othernet where the rest of the world is networked.
I'm quite surprised that out of so many competitions, like GPS, satellite, Space program etc., which cost huge amount of money, no country is yet to create another internet.
On the other hand, if all service providers band together, we might finally see the feasibility of micropayment, so that a penny is charged to your broadband bill every time you access Slashdot.
Uncensored Google results requested and delivered by email
Is this possible proposed policy to establish equity? If so, I'm okay with that. I've often wondered that for the same $30/month as my neighbor I can download five of the latest linux distributions, sample 20 or 30 trial software packages (large).
What would bother me, and bother me greatly, would be if they established pricing baselines the cheapest of which match what people pay today. In other words, a money-grab.
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.
There also could be additional benefits (assuming this is a fair and balanced idea) -- that being a more moderated approach to internet usage. I don't doubt a significant slice of internet bandwidth is absorbed by indiscriminate downloading and uploading, and streaming. I know I don't think twice about downloading Photoshop Elements to trial for a couple days (~300MB) just because I can. I'm also just as likely to stream my music to whereever I am in the country from my server at my home, again, just because I can. How many others approach the internet in the same way? I'm guessing "many".
If users used the internet as a finite resource (which it is, by the way) the usability of the internet would improve almost immediately and expansion costs and needs would attenuate (my opinion). All of this would help keep costs and increased charges down (again, assuming businesses are here to charge us a fair price).
But, based on everything else I see in business, this may not pass the smell test. Sigh
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
Guess I'm over my slashdot article limit...
Seriously, we in Europe have finally gotten rid of the Pay Per Minute system with cable/adsl. You that have had it for so long, want to move to Pay Per View? You're not evolving, you're degenerating...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Way back in the day (think Compuserve), this is how things used to be. However, eventually competition forced providers to offer flat-rate service because that's what the market demanded. How is this any different? Any provider that abandons flat-rate pricing risks losing customers in droves.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
...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.
If spam could be eliminated look at how much bandwidth would be saved. When my ISP (BellSouth) stops all the spam entering their network, then they can talk to me about how they need to prioritize my traffic because of limited capacity.
I hope this isn't the platinium quality service ...
Well, except for the fact that MSFT, Google, Apple, and Amazon need the telcos more than the telcos need them. By a wide margin -- and especially true for Google and Amazon (and eBay).
If this is successful, it will be the single largest "limiting" factor in the online world. What if this was the case 10 years ago? We wouldn't have the plethora of online stores we currently have, that's for sure. Or blogs. Or online games. Or P2P for that matter. Or VOIP. NONE of these "cool" technologies would have ever gotten out of the starting gate.
I could go on an on about how bad of an idea it is but I fear I am just wasting my breath. Until internet access is treated as a utility, this nonsense will continue to go on unchecked.
Ok, the industry goons look at the current model and say "we could make more money if we installed limits."
But wouldn't everyone have to do the same thing on the same day in order to make this work? If my cablemodem suddenly had these idiotic limits put on it I'd move to another service that very day.
How in the world could the industry get paying customers on a less capable model than what we already have? And how could they eliminate every single other alternative?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It seems to me that there are plenty of contenders out there vying for the home broadband market, and with upcoming wireless standards more contenders will emerge. We're not going to be stuck choosing between cable and DSL. Unless the main providers can create an illegal cartel (and evade government prosecution for doing so), I can't see that tiered service will ever harm us.
I'm sure that there are light users out there who would love $8/month tiered service for the 8 megs of transfer they might use in a month. But for the rest of us, I bet we'll always be able to switch providers to an untiered service the moment our current provider offers an unattractive tiered plan. Bandwidth is only going to get cheaper and more of a commodity, even at the local level.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
My wife is in the Real Estate industry and I am in the Banking industry. Both have, in recent years, been the target of legal action for price fixing, which, as I understand it is fixing the price of a product or service in agreement with another individual or business, which is illegal. The general rule provides that a vendor may not in combination with another vendor agree to set a certain price thereby creating a fixed price within a certain market. The original article appears to be down, of course, but the summary sounds a lot like price fixing to me.
if i get a dial up modem, or a cable modem, or a t1, i have different levels of service
if you are saying they are going to offer me less bandwidth for the same $, then we have a problem, but i'm sure a competitor has something to say about that
but if you are saying if i pay them 2x$ what i am already paying for a significantly bigger pipe, i don't exactly see what the problem is.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... that was when Internet connections were subject to the per-minute charges levied by the local phone loop owners.
Am I missing something, or does this just smack of wanting to roll back time?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The cat is out of the bag and competition will keep it that way.
Saying that they will charge per e-mail or download is as unrealistic as the electric company charging you per piece of toast, or load of laundry that you wash. What they can charge you on is the bandwidth that you use. Similar to how the electric company can charge per kilowatt hour... Also... They could only ever charge you for what you downloaded. Can you imagine how pissed you would be to find out that all the responses to incoming zombie requests to you computer racked up a $400 "Internet" bill. Even then, people will not be happy with the idea that they have to pay $15.00 extra dollars this month because a Microsoft error led to a giant ass patch they HAD to download.
It will not happen, the die has been cast and you can't repurpose this airplane as a clown's scooter.
This business model is exactly what killed it, everyone split shortly after the changes were made. You can expect people to not happily go along with it this time either.
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
[i]"Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"[/i]
Two thoughts here.
Why should L3 allow at&t's backbone to route traffic across their pipes or vice versa? Are they idiots or would they seriously rather have no interconnects and have the internet break down to multiple WAN's?
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Google or Yahoo! or basically any other web site out there pay for their bandwidth and on top of this, the consumers pay for essentially the same thing on the other end. Basically they're double dipping and still complaining that they aren't making enough.
$sys$droids
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....
But how can it even be legal for Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T to agree to discontinue free service, or reduce output (where "output" is service to the customer, in this case)? Seriously, IANAL, how can this be legal?
The idea of competition is that, when Verizon does something stupid that punishes customers, I can go somewhere else. It's a real problem if all the gatekeepers can legally get together and decide to give us all the shaft. And not even to try to hide their cooperation against consumers?! Messed up.
I'm probably going to get it for responding to "egg troll", but anyway...
Yeah, they own the pipes, but they are already charging people for the data being sent across it. If you make a long distance phone call, lets say, to your grandmother, would it be fair for the phone company to charge both you and grandma for the call? What about if they charge you for placing the call, and then charged grandma extra if she wants the sound of her voice at normal volume, instead of restricted to 10% volume?
Content providers pay a huge amount in connectivity already (I've worked for some, and have seen the bills) and my internet access at home isn't what I'd call cheap either (~$50/month). The backbone providers get their money from the connection providers that the content providers and users, like you and I, buy bandwidth from. So, they are already being paid for the traffic going across their pipes by the parties involved in the transfer.
I don't know about you, but I personally would prefer not to be double billed.
My karma is in a nose dive
In reality, the sweet spot is still the standard service. If I ever find myself needed an extra two or three Mbps of downstream transfer, it seems appropriate for me to pay an extra $10/month -- I'd obviously cease to be a typical "browsing and emailing" user.
The problem with the proposed schemes is that they want to meter *applications*, not bandwidth and usage. This is just wrong for any application. But it especially burns for email given the spam problem. I just installed an authentication filter for a client with a business class Cox cable account. He was getting 65000+ emails per day per domain for 20 domains, eating 3MB download bandwidth (they were just getting appended to a rotating log file since he couldn't even begin to try to find the legit mail in all the crap). All but 20 emails per day per domain are forgeries (and now get rejected in SMTP envelope thanks to the filter). Imagine the ISP charging per email SYN packet. Talk about unjust. Most of the 20 are still spam, but at least those spammers will say who they are (and so are closer to a "cold call").
...there is a well known mechanism already in place for them to oppose it in a straightforward way. It's called the 'market'. If they want our business, why don't they pay for our connections to them?
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
I have been online for over 20 years now, starting out with BBSs and compuserve at around $9 per hour for 300 baud and $20 per hour for 1200 baud for non prime time connection (30 and 120 characters per second for those of you accustomed to megabits). Slowly things have changed first the rates dropped, then fixed rate plans were offered, then we had AOL with their 1,000, 5,000,... 50,000 hours per month for free. For the last decade we have enjoyed an all you can eat for one low price buffet online. The problem with the all you can eat buffet model is it assumes that some people will eat very little, some will eat a lot and most will be somewhere in the middle. The problem for the internet is peoples appitie for bandwith is increasing, the average dsl user is transfering far more information than the average dsl user did 5 or 10 years ago. At one time the files were mp3s at about a meg or two each, then it was movies in various compressed forms at about a gig each, now with faster dsl, cable modems, etc. we are seeing people exchaning entire television series on a whim. This means price of the buffet must either go up, hurting the little old lady that only uses it for emailing the grand kids, and the occasional video clip. Or things must be switched to an a la cart menu where lite eaters can order just the basic "salad" and the real pigs can order 12 racks of ribs, 5 pounds of king crab, a full cheese cake, and 24 mugs of beer to wash it down.
Ike
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.
Wireless will be so cheap that we'll just make our own wireless freenet. People won't even need to understand why. "Just put this thing on your roof, and you can have free Internet for life." "Sure, OK!"
How is this a 5, Insightful? The point is being missed completely. It's not about metered access it's about metered access to specific applications. It's about telling someone they need to pay more to reliably to get point X. Who cares about metered bandwidth if that's what they want. It is the fact that they are trying to make the internet into private internets where you have to pay to play to access services.
The telcos may own the pipes, but the internet is more a series of protocols than the infrastructure that supports them.
... maybe the internet has to be destroyed in order to save it.
If the worst case happens and the telcos "destroy" the internet, why couldn't everybody with a wifi card get together over a metropolitan area and create an internet-like ad-hoc wireless network? It would be a little more complex because the nodes would be constantly moving around (so the routing tables would be hard to handle), but in principle it could work, and there would be no "pipe" for anyone to "own". Maybe this afternoon I will do some cocktail napkin calculations to see if this could work, but if anyone has a reference to something similar I'd like to hear about it.
Co-operatives could get together and arrange for microwave links between cities (or, they could buy some of the "dark fiber" that we keep hearing about).
No central servers, no routers, no single points of failure, no central logging facilities, no closed ports
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
if they should go tiered, I think they should lose their 'common carrier' status, and be liable for any and all illegal activities that occur on their networks.
The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"
This line struck out to me, as well.
Google, Yahoo and Vonage aren't using their pipes. The telco's own customers - the ones who pay that ratty bill every month - are the ones using the bandwidth. It isn't as if content providers are pushing the stuff down the pipes. The insidious aspect of this is that the telcos understand this and are clearly misrepresenting the situation.
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
What happens if Google, Amazon, eBay, Apple etc decide to blacklist a telco? Bellsouth limits access to them so they respond by blocking all views coming form that network, and launching a media campaigh letting you know that you need to switch to another network to access them. I think I can tell you who would win that one. I persaonlly care little who provides my access, I care only about the content that I'm after. If I can't get it on one network, I'll go to another.
ESPN successfully broght pressure on Cox in a similar manner. Cox didn't want to pay as much as ESPN wanted and so threatened to take ESPN off the channel listings. ESPN in turn let all Cox customers know what was going on. Cox customers got mad and said they'd switch to sat service if this happened, ESPN is still on Cox.
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.
This is an easy problem to solve. If the telcos want to provide tiered access to their lines, let them. But if they base their service on the content of the traffic, they're no longer a common carrier, are they? So take away their common carrier status, leaving them liable for all the traffic that traverses their network. I don't see any reason to allow them to have their cake and eat it too. But I think they should get to decide which side of the fence they would like to operate on.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
The article makes use of the ATT/SBC quote of "Why should I let them use my pipes?"
Well, when someone like Google pays their hosting bills, they're paying for access to that pipe. Isn't that why we PAY hosting bills? What did I miss?
If you don't want to sell access on your backbone, then don't. The Internet and its open access system made ATT/SBC its money, as well as many other companies. Do they seriously intend to turn it around and shut down the system that made them rich? Do they intend to create a private online service, like AOL? If that could work, then why are people concerned about AOLs future?
I hope all of this talk is just people over reacting, but some how, I suspect it's more than that.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
"mesh routing"?
Sustainability and energy independence essay
1) As far as bandwidth, that's a non-starting issue. Since the dawn of the internet, the cost of access has been based on 1) the speed of the pipe and b) the quality of service. As anyone who's ever crammed 150 users through a 1.5/128k ADSL line knows, the bandwidth is a livable issue in most cases; reliability is not. Today, reliability feels less of an issue than previous so we're really focused on price of access here.
Sure, everything is flat-rate today on the consuming ending however that does not translate to the providing end. Looking at that, the pipe providers adopted a socialist pricing model to lure users to the system. For every 10 people that used 10% of their bandwidth a month, there was 1 pulling 1000% of the average. This worked well when most internet use was dynamic/static text/email/IM based.
With the advent of mp3s and now rich media, everyone is pulling more bandwidth and the social model falls apart at the current pricing levels since the providers have to pay for their bandwidth usage.
The solution is to meter bandwidth and charge for the use, much like every other product or service in your life. There are no gas stations (that I'm aware of) that charge you a flat-fee to fill up your tank nor any cellular company that provides flat-rate service for your calls. Everything is measured per use.
In the beginning days of the internet, there was enough capital investment to create an overcapacity; this was done to spur innovation and keep the barriers of entry low. Someone brought up the CompuServe example; the prices of CS were so high, that only those who NEEDED the services would pay. CS was a toll-booth that charged you access fees to hit the pre-Internet. You had to have a reason to go from point A to point B and that reason had to justify the charge.
With the advent of flat-fee, the road was a non-issue and people began erecting destinations in cyberspace... the rest is common knowledge.
Now we are at a point where internet bandwidth is a huge commodity yet the pricing model has not adapted. Personally, I'm all in favor of micropayments and the rest until the point at which everything runs over the internet and you pay a fee for essential a "data spigot". Until then, we must change the fact that my mother, who sends 40 emails a month, and myself, who hosts torrents and downloads massive amounts of photographs, pay the same fee for access.
On a philosophical point, I would say that 1) if you cannot measure something, you simply have not yet developed the technology to measure it and 2) once you can measure something, the Old Way (tm) of approximate pricing is obsolete. Previously, there has not been a huge movement to quantify traffic based on absolute use because it was enough to play the averages. Now that we can measure and different entities consumer different quantities of resource, we have to measure and charge equivalently else we drift away from the free market toward corporate socialism, which is not A Good Thing (tm).
2) The sticky issue is common carrier status. In order to classify traffic, companies must inspect it. Once they inspect traffic, they bring new liability for having interacted with the information. They can easily use broad metrics, like overall quantity of data transmitted as packets are being counted and routed yet using specific packet inspection technologies is a different animal. The solution is some class of router that examines just the headers, but then anything masquerading is going to pass through. So the plan to charge for access is valid and good yet the idea to charge based on the type of data is a bit tougher.
Overall what we are seeing here is the consolidation of two (maybe more) distinctly separate industries, that of content creation and content distribution. Previously, the telephone companies could care less what went over the wire and the content companies could care less about QOS concerns (beyond a dialtone and/or cable color bars).
Now that everything is so int
The big technology companies (such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Apple, etc..) will erect alternate backbones and most likely will cover metropolitan areas with wifi. Expect major wars between the tech and data carriers if this were to occur.
Information will always get cheaper. it is inevitable.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
This is just like the mobile companies. One byte of email information costs x, but one byte of jpeg information costs y. etc. Complete nonsense. Just vote with your feet when they try it.
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.
As soon as its legal manufactures will be more then glad to sell us turn key and cheep hardware.
You say who will we talk to? I for one will be talking to google. and the rest will follow.
Until then who do I ask to offer Google access put up an antenna in my yard, I am on top of the hill, in exchange for Internet access.
While your listing the things that succeded due to internet freedom, don't forget about the things that failed because of ISP/Telco trickery.
*Video confencing still has not taken off. Not because of general bandwidth limitations, but because of upload caps.
*Telecommuting is limited due to blocks, throttleing, or "accidental" outages on ports necessary for telecommuters. (Those of us that do telecommute often pay dramatically more to not have artifical barriers.)
I'm sure others could add to the list. It is the video confrencing that pisses me off. The upload speeds are always so much lower than the download speeds in just about every package that you need a package with way more download speed than necessary just to get sub par upload speeds.
I telecommute, and work on projects that very often require team coding. As in two people sitting together looking at the same screen. Screen sharing works, and we are very productive, but sometimes it would be a whole lot easier if I could see the other coders finger pointing at the screen, or piece of paper.
And, before the trolls come out and tell me I should just move closer to my work, and go into the office, keep in mind. My clients and I are saving money, reducing infrastucture costs, saving air quality, while at the same time improving my quality of life as well as that of my family. I think it is good for me, my son, and society that I get to keep my child home with me most of the time instead of shipping him off to spend more time with a daycare provider than he does with his family. I also have no desire to move myself and my family next to an industrial complex.
TFA is from "The Nation", which has a particular slant ... antiBigCorporation, TheSkyIsFallingBecauseWalMartIsTakingOver. Which has some merit, but can occasionally (and in this case definitely) be overly alarmist.
TFA furthermore makes references to white papers, but the link takes you NOT to primary source white papers, but to "democracticmedia.org", which links to "white papers" that are ... kept on the same site.
In other words: No primary source material. No proof other than innuendo and hype.
Now: would Verizon actually profit from a tiered system? Well -- it already does. Business-class DSL offers twice the bandwidth of Consumer-class DSL. Would they love to charge even more for a higher-differentiated tier system? Sure. Anyone surprised?
But now, the article would have us believe that in addition to a price tier for bandwidth, the telcoms are going to have a price tier for total usage (presumably per month, which is a type of bandwidth in a way). NONSENSE. It's unprofitable for the simple reasons that
(a) keeping the meter running on each little packet is a waste of their servers,
(b) customers are going to be very ticked when either they are "cut off" when they reach their limit or else are charged extra every month for overage (do you keep your cell phone plan if you get charged for extra minutes every month?),
(c) customers are going to be really ticked when little Johnny plays WoW for 36 hours straight and runs up a $130 bill.
As a result, sub-providers will spring up: people who pay Platinum for unlimited access -- and you know that telcos will have to have that top level available -- and then allow subscribers to tap in for a flat fee.
There is simply no way that a use-limited tiering system will prevent itself from collapsing.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
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
...where each platform/service has exclusive content, and people who want multiple providers' exclusive content have to buy multiple machines/subscribe to multiple services.
I wonder how many people here on Slashdot have an Xbox and a PS2 (and maybe a GameCube), just for this reason...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Internet usage IS already metered on some (most?) ISPs.
For example, my "Pro" broadband package includes 30GB of combined transfer in a month. If I exceed that, I'm billed for each MB of overage. If I don't come close to using that for a few months in a row, I'll get the "Standard" package, with a 15GB cap, and pay less.
Well... I've been thinking about stockpiling all this bandwidth; I guess it's time to start storing it away for a rainy pay-to-play kinda day. :)
I'll be changing my nick to packet_pincher
It's not any better in other countries; they'll just screw you over in different ways. Pick your poison.
Canada and France restrict "free speech" to what they consider to be politically correct.
The UK puts cameras everywhere they can get away with, and makes sure that all of the real arms in the country are either in the hands of their police or people who are already criminals so that they'll always be in control.
And Australia does it all as soon as another country gives them the idea.
Don't know about Ireland, but I'm sure they've got some sort of civil rights problem as well.
Let's do what we can to push for community-based fiber and wireless projects.
It's critical that we are represented fairly when it comes to making use of the spectrum to be given up when analog tv broadcasting shuts down. Think of spectrum as our atmosphere to breathe and speak electronically.
Don't let them sell our "air" to the monopolies.
No, it's more like David, Goliath's brother, and an amy of pitbull laywers vrs Goliath.
Afterall, with M$, Amazon, Google, all pulling for net neutrality? I would hope it would would stand out a little better.
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Do it to the first one who adopts the policy as soon as they do. If they do it all at once, pick the most egregious violator or rotate.
Better than blocking them would be to return a stub web page that explains exactly why customers of a given network don't have access to those sites, as well as the phone number to that network's customer support number. ;)
What the carriers don't realize is that consumers are paying these ISP's upwards of $50/month to get to Google and Amazon.
The carriers realize it perfectly. They're just selling their line of BS to the politicians and public. Make no mistake, it's not about "paying for the pipes", it's about gaining control over content and making money hand over fist off it.
In other words, they want to turn the internet into AOL.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Switch! There's plenty of independant ISPs out there that have NO intention of charging for crap like that. The telcos can't control bandwidth when the bandwidth isn't purchased from them. So why don't we just buy bandwidth from non ILECs....in otherwords, buy from OTHER places. SCR can service almost all of CA and we will never pull this kind of crap. Nor will our upstream providers. The customer pays us for the bandwidth, the sites they go to pay for THEIR bandwidth. I don't see the problem. I'm making my money and I'm not a greedy @#$%@#$%.
There are over 5000 Independant ISPs in this nation, pick one and switch. Most charge the same as the ILECs and they don't even route their support overseas if you need help. Plus, they'll actually be happy to help instead of feel like support is a burden they shouldn't have to bare.
If more people did this, the more honest companies out there would quickly start seizing control and the ILECs would lose even more power because the independants don't have the $ to do anything but bend over and take it. Help us help you by using our services so we can afford to invest in R&D and/or new tech to avoid this kind of crap in the future.
Sure, there are some equipment costs, but if these types of connections are used on just the primary backbones that still would provide a LOT of bandwidth.
Look at it this way. Is your Internet access slowing down steadily as more people go online? Not likely. If we were using all available capacity it would be. Requests would get queued up and delayed.
If Hong Kong can offer 1 Gbps Internet access for $215/mo and Japan can offer 100 Mbps access for around $40/mo or less, I certainly think Verizon could manage to NOT need to change teired rates on 3Mbps lines.
So, instead ... WE will be the "other provider." And because we are a CLEC, we are very enthusiastic about taking customers away from Verizon and Qworst.
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.
Generally, Google can be said to do great things because they find information that isn't currently being used and then utilize that information at a huge scale. That produces some amazing results. Everyone wins (except for maybe their competitors).
This is a question of policy, not a technical advancement. Some users are being subsidized by other users. Yes, that's you with the P2P client. Probably many Slashdotters are being subsidized by other users today, which is probably why the idea isn't popular here.
However, in terms of efficiency for the industry, it's a good thing. You want to not force people to pay for what they aren't themselves using. My parents barely use the Internet at all -- why should they be forced to pay for the dozens of gigs a month the kid down the block is pulling down? You want to encourage people not to waste bandwidth -- this will help promote network-friendly software and behavior.
Plus, if the tiers get fine-grained enough, they'd be great for techies. Right now, there is a very, very rough-grained tiering currently happening at most ISPs. You have "business class" and "home class". Unfortunately, most techies wind up uncomfortably best fit by "business class" service. They'd like to have multiple static IP addresses, they don't want any ports to be blocked in or out, they don't really give a damn about the ISP's webmail, and so forth. They don't need technical support, and don't really want to subsidize the cost of having some minimum-wage worker repeat -- for the thousandth time -- his troubleshooting flowchart to Joe Sixpack.
The problem is, "business class" service is expensive. Bob Techie isn't actually much more expensive to service than a typical residential user, but he currently gets lumped in with businesses in terms of what he values.
Second, I'm hoping against hope that maybe some ISPs will start offering QoS as part of their tiered packages. That would be *fantastic*. It's in everyone's interest to provide a little extra information that lets routers handle their data more efficiently. If I get, say, 100MB of high-priority data (ToS bit set in the IP header for minimize latency, a la ssh, ftp control, and so forth) a month with my tier, I can get really good performance on the things that I care about -- like, say, playing network games with extremely low latency or sshing into another machine. I don't really care, in comparison, how long it takes my mailserver to shove some mail out. I'm perfectly happy to mark that as "low priority" (or rather, just use software that already does so). P2P software doesn't need high priority, and is there to soak up any available excess bandwidth, and should definitely be low priority.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.