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Verizon Threatens Google's 'Free Lunch'
ILikeRed writes to tell us the Washington Post is reporting that Verizon is becoming much more vocal about internet firms using "their" lines to do business without paying extra. From the article: "The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers," Thorne told a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. "It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers." This, as lawmakers are approaching new legislation that could let telcos charge internet companies much more for the use of high speed connections.
Free lunch? It seems like it's neither free as in beer nor speech. As all /.ers know, there is no other kind of free. I'm sure Google's network bandwidth fees are neither free nor small and I know I pay for internet access. So who's getting what for free? Maybe the telecoms are using that little-knownrhetorical device called hyperbole. Or perhaps they are trying to say that companies like Google have found a moreprofitable use for bandwidth than they have and they would like apiece of the pie. A free piece of the pie.
Customer: I'm having trouble with my DSL connection. I paid for broadband access, but google.com took an hour to load and vonage.com took 3 days...
Verizon: I see that you don't have call waiting on your line. I'll go ahead and add that for you, ok? We're also running a promotion that adds no value to you but will extend your contract with us. Would you like to hear about it?
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
this should be interesting.. the day pass sponser threatens google on slashdot.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
Funny, I don't feel like a victim.
Full text to avoid selling your soul.
Verizon Executive Calls for End to Google's 'Free Lunch'
By Arshad Mohammed
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 7, 2006; Page D01
A Verizon Communications Inc. executive yesterday accused Google Inc. of freeloading for gaining access to people's homes using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build.
The comments by Damian T. Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, came as lawmakers prepared to debate legislation that could let phone and cable companies charge Internet firms additional fees for using their high-speed lines.
"The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers," Thorne told a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. "It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers."
Verizon is spending billions of dollars to construct a fiber-optic network around the country for delivering high-speed Internet and cable TV services. Executives at other telecom companies, such as AT&T Inc. chief executive Edward E. Whiteclitte Jr., have suggested that Google, Yahoo Inc. and other such Internet services should have to pay fees for preferred access to consumers over such lines.
While Thorne did not specify that practice, he emphasized the need for companies such as his to find ways to make money to justify their investments. "The only way we are going to attract the truly huge amounts of capital needed to build out these networks is to strike down governmental entry barriers and allow providers to realize profits," Thorne said yesterday.
Thorne described two obstacles to building such networks: the task of getting thousands of local franchise agreements to offer cable television; and what he called "Google utopianism," a concept he likened to "spiked Kool-Aid."
He spoke as Congress is considering whether to write provisions that advocates say would ensure consumers unfettered access to the Internet. The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing today on the issue, which is known as net neutrality.
Opponents have argued that there is no need for such laws because there have been few instances of network providers blocking Web sites; because their customers would not stand for such limitations; and because, as a general rule, regulation of the Internet should be avoided.
Thorne did not mention net neutrality by name in his talk, which largely involved an assessment of the 1996 telecom law and what he suggested were its lessons for the future.
"Will another set of restrictions -- the continental minefield of franchise agreements and the free-ridership of Google and its brethren -- choke off investment in broadband deployment?" he said.
Vinton G. Cerf, a vice president and "Chief Interweb Evangelist" at Google, said in an interview that his company is worried that if net neutrality protections are not enacted, the Internet's freedom could be compromised, limiting consumer choice, economic growth, technological innovation and U.S. global competitiveness.
"In the Internet world, both ends essentially pay for access to the Interweb system, and so the providers of access get compensated by the users at each end," said Cerf, who helped develop the Internet's basic communications protocol. "My big concern is that suddenly access providers want to step in the middle and create a toll road to limit customers' ability to get access to services of their choice even though they have paid for access to the network in the first place."
Google isn't getting any more of a "free lunch" than anybody else; all that makes them special is that the service they provide with the bandwidth they use is insanely popular and valuable.
Imagine for a moment that Verizon provides natural gas utilities instead of communications utilities. Google pays 'em for the gas they use to bake the big, juicy pies that everybody loves. Google makes a fortune from their pies. Is Verizon somehow due something extra because their gas was used to fire the oven?
All that Verizon can see are the nice, fat pies Google has cooling on the windowsill. This isn't about free lunch; this is about grabbing a piece of Google's pie for themselves--by crook or hook.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
- Do the Verizon customers who access Google's content pay for their network connections?
:)
- Does Google pay their network provider(s) for the access they're using?
- Does Verzion derive an economic benefit by having access to Google's services for it's paying customers?
Therefore:
- Does Verizon believe that they're not charging their customers enough for the services the customer uses?
It has not escaped my attention that I'm reading Slashdot on a free day pass paid sponsored by Verizon...
~
It might be my ignorance, or the article's over simplification, but isn't this the stupidest idea ever?
Do cinema chains charge customers for the movie or simply access to a dark room with chairs and the right to buy popcorn? Maybe they should point out the ridiculous and shocking situation where they have to pay for movies to show on their screens and how surely the film industry should be the ones paying to have their movies shown on these screens?
Again I could be looking at this the wrong way, but don't ISP customers pay for the service of having the ISP delivier the websites from wherever they want to their computer? Or are they simply paying for access to the phone network, and the companies are now expecting the people hosting websites to do the same? To me this sounds like telcos trying to charge people twice for the one transaction.
Ok, can someone explain to me what the problem is? Here's how I see it. You (whoever you are, oh smart /. reader) tell me where I got it wrong.
Google has a bunch of servers in a datacenter. That datacenter is hooked up to the Internet somehow, through some ISP, probably a big one (though clearly not Verizon or they wouldn't beaking off about it so much), because if it wasn't hooked up to _someone_ it'd just be a bunch of servers in isolation and Google would be worth nothing. So, Big ISP has run fiber to Google's datacenter(s), and charges Google a fee each month to carry their data. I mean, Google doesn't get free Internet access, do they? Big ISP collects their money, based either on a 95th percentile deal or a byte count deal, depending on the contract. Big ISP doesn't live in isolation either, or they'd be called AOL. So Big ISP probably has a peering agreement with other ISPs, like, say, Verizon. So Google's traffic goes out Big ISP and over to Verizon when a Verizon customer wants it, and some company hooked up to Verizon's backbone has their data go over to Big ISP when a customer at Big ISP wants it. I've just described peering in its most simple terms, haven't I? So, don't peering agreements work such that if more data goes from Big ISP to Verizon in a month, Big ISP gives Verizon money, and if more data goes the other way, Verizon gives Big ISP money. So if Google is such a massive bandwidth hog, they are not in fact getting a free lunch, because Big ISP has to give Verizon money to meet its commitments for the peering agreement, and Big ISP turns around and collects that money from Google in their monthly fee, and if Google is costing Big ISP more every month, then they (simple economics here) charge them more money. So, my question is, what the HELL is the problem? Isn't Verizon already getting paid for Google traffic?
The companies like Verizon are already paid for their pipes. This would be like me charging someone for hosting their server and then getting upset that they're making money off my bandwidth and wanting to charge them more.
I hope this doesn't become law, otherwise this is going to hurt the entire internet in more ways than one.
*I* as a subscriber am paying a fee to use the *network* to access anything that *I* want to! If that happens to be Google, then that's *my* choice!
I know some organizations essentially dodge bandwidth charges by running their own connection to major peer points.
The bbc certainly use that approach in the UK to keep their costs affordable.
However in that case, then they are doing part of the ISPs job so it seems fair.
If people can't get to Google quickly, they'll change ISPs. Google has a huge bandwidth bill as it is, connecting them to the customers of the ISPs. As much as certain ISPs would like, they can't force Google to pay their "bandwidth protection" fee because if they don't and Google becomes slow, the ISPs' customers will simply go elsewhere.
Verizon et al need to concentrate on making their own service better for their real customers, the end users, instead of trying to make a grab from a made-up privilege they might be able to give websites.
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
Haven't the telco's put enough in their pockets from all those years of raising fees for this "information superhighway". The moment telco's raise prices for companies like Google is the moment that I expect 100Mb/s broadband to my curb. Either that or I want to be reimbursed for all those years of them conning me.
There should be a "-1:Groupthink"
Verizon will be sorry when GoogleNet goes live! :P
Excellent analogy
and thus the rumors of google buying up dark fiber will rear their head again. maybe google will just obsolete the telcos, anyway. i'd pay google for fiber bandwidth, phone, and digital tv, and i'm sure i'm not alone.
If Verizon (and all the other telcos) want to give up those federal surcharges we must all endure, then they *may* have a case. Otherwise... quit yer whining!
Method of processing duck feet
Fuck you.
It would seem to me that big-wig companies would have a fairly hefty internet bill for the amount of sheer traffic that goes through their lines. It seems to me like this is similar to renting out a leased car. You are already paying your monthly fee to the dealer, but you take advantage of the situation and rent your car out to people for a fee. Then the dealer comes back saying you can't use their car for rentals.
To endulge in the time-honored Slashdot tradition of the stretched analogy, isn't this kind of like inventing a whole new end of the candle to burn? The consumers pay for their bandwidth, the content providers pay for theirs. Where is the freeloading?
Normally these ideas make me fume with rage at their sheer evilness. This is odd. I can't actually fathom the logic of this one.
Can somebody help me out so that I can move on to righteous hatred of Verizon?
As long as ALL the big telcos don't try it, Verizon may find out real fast what it's like to not get a dime out of the deal and look stupid doing it
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It's not like Google, Yahoo, et al are sending this data unsolicited.
The are replying to requests made by paying customers of Verizon.
And they're saying they need this to complete their FTTH buildout
in a profitable way?
Hey Verizon! Didn't you do an analysis to see if FTTH would be
profitable before you began such an ambitious program?
If you can't do it profitably, then don't do it. Don't be
disingenuous by saying that now you need Internet Portals to pony
up for some share of the buildout.
And hey, Vince Cerf! You of all people shouldn't be doing the
"imminent death of the Net predicted (film at 11)" bit. If Verizon
or others start providing "tiered access" to the Internet Portals,
paying customers will complain. Let market forces decide the
outcome.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
TANSTAAFL
Verizon are money grubbing PIGS.
Gentlemen! Set your routing tables to stun.
Verizon doesn't want to carry traffic? FINE, we can arrange that.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Why didn't I see it before? It makes so much sense. In the same vein, I think content providers should start charging the ISPs for distribution! It's because of the content that people even bother using their ISP's bandwidth. And the ISPs are charging people for this distribution while content providers get paid nothing!
Freeloaders!
Phillips start charging record companys for using the Compact Disk and making money by selling this containing media of little cost....
Also Marconi's family wanting to charge television companys for using his product to create additonal funds...
Anyone else agree?
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
OK, even going without the concept that google most certainly pays somebody for their own bandwidth: without the servers of google and other service providers, WTF would anyone use the internet for. If there was nothing to use, then WTF would anyone pay Verizon for internet service, etc.
I've heard of companies paying little regard to the customer, but the fact that Verizon is completely disregarding that many people are paying them for the service which provides access to google's service is rather insane. Verizon, if you smell something brown and stinky, perhaps it's about time to remove your head from where you've been sticking it the last while...
I'd be all for it, if Verizon wasn't charging me $45 per month for my DSL connection. You can't eat with two spoons, folks. Either you take money from me, or you take it from content providers. When you start doing both I'm terminating my subscription so you ain't getting a dime from me ever again.
"ILikeRed writes to tell us the Washington Post is reporting that Verizon is becoming much more vocal about internet firms using "their" lines to do business without paying extra."
So a telcom spends enormous sums of cash laying fiber, and you have the gall to imply they don't even own the backbone. What a bunch of socialists.
Vote for Pedro
A quote from the article states: "The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers." Nothing but cheap servers? I could have a bunch of cheap servers in my basement but not make any money unless I pay a large fee to install a bunch of T1/T3 lines and pay a large monthly fee for access to the network.
They just want to target google because they have a ton of money. The telcos should be happy websites like google exist because they increase demand for the average joe to buy a high speed broadband subscription for their home.
Let's have some metaphorical fun. Suppose you're a mushroom farmer. You sell your mushrooms wholesale for $1 a bushel and life is good; you're not rich but you get by. One day you notice that Mario Batali is using your mushrooms in his restaurant and on his show and making a bundle. He's selling dishes which prominently feature--no rely on--your mushrooms for far more than you thought they were worth. Do you think you have a case to extract a fee from Chef Batali? Is he getting a free lunch from your hard work or does the mushroom farmer just have business-model-envy? I encourage equally metaphorical and perhaps dubious responses.
Since this arrangment works both on the Google end and the Customer end, Verizon ends up getting paid twice for the google traffic.
However Verizon would like to be paid three times for the Google traffic. You can bet if they win that, then they'll start charging customers extra for "faster" access to google. Their accountants would be thrilled if they could charge 4 times for the same product.
Maybe Verizon should think again. The last thing they want is Google to fire up all the dark fiber and use it to connect the entire US for free.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Telcos have always been prime candidates for socialization. They're really pressing their luck pursuing this ridiculous idea.
Disclaimer: I used to work for a telco. A small one but a telco nevertheless.
Working for a telco is a unique experience. I learned a lot, and believe me, most of it was good. I've learned a lot, both technically and from a management POV. I had some opportunities that a small company could not afford. Even with all problems, it was a good time.
The basic problem with telcos is that they still think in terms of their cash cow service, that is voice. They still think in terms of how much the user will pay per transaction, or minute. They have a huge structure, a huge legacy that can't simply be buried or thrown out the window. They have fear of cannibalizing their own products. But worse, they don't get it, and that's not because they're not intelligent, or bad at what they do. They don't get it because most of the time, people are busy running what pays their wages, and that's the legacy services. There's little incentive inside the company to do something else, specially when it means that it could make a lot of people lose their jobs. There's little incentive for people that talks about cannibalizing revenue.
In the end, telcos are like big animals who are threatened by the changing environment. They may have a lot of power, but in the end, guess what? Evolution is inescapable. Verizon (and other big telcos) may even win this battle, and a few other ones. But in the long term, they can't win the war. Bandwidth is doomed to become cheaper and cheaper. People just want to communicate with each other, and Verizon can't control what people do. It's market at work.
I was really looking forwarward to having fiber roll out to my area (who knows when it will happen, but I can dream can't I).
Since Verizon is rolling out fiber, I thought hey, cool, I'll gladly shell out my money for that kind of speed.
I'll never touch it if they continue to push this issue. Not with a ten-foot pole.
Verizon isn't getting any of my money if this is the kind of *stuff* they are going to try push around.
The customer pays for the bandwidth. End of story. If they want to charge more, that is their right, but consumers can just shop somewhere else...
Last time I checked, many companies do business over the telephone lines every day! I was shocked, truly shocked to discover this. Imagine - commerce over phone lines. People actually call companies, give product numbers, credit card information, and other personal data.
:-)
I think that's unfair - I pay for the product, but these companies get a free lunch for using the phone line.
The nerve of some people!
It seems stupid that telcos aren't going against telemarketers who needlessly swamp their lines with solicitations; instead going against sites like Google. These sites pay for Internet access. The consumer pays for it. WhyTF should telcos be allowed to charge an Internet company for using its network conduits, and not the telephone conduits? Perhaps we should also all use payphones in our homes, in addition to paying the monthly bill, too?
There is more info about the legislation proposed to stop this sort of thing in the article Congress mulls Internet-freedom bill
This is killing me. A few months ago, someone wrote an extremely eloquent article (that was slashdotted) discussing this issue, and the way telco's were attempting to steer what metaphor was used for bandwidth so that it would seem most logical to charge premiums on the data that passed around the internet. Now, for the lift of me, I can't construct a search that turns it up.
The article predicted exactly this, and I wish I could find it =/
The best lack all convictions, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. -Yeats, The Second Coming
All the more reason to develop wireless access through municipalities. Why bother with the Telco's in the first place? It's been discussed before, but providing this type of service to residents could bypass those money-grubbing corporations. Also, whatever happened to all the fiber that Google supposedly owns? More at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/chester
Google should just stop serving Verizon.
Simple solution, Verizon thinks google is getting a service from THEM?
Google shuts them off and 24 hours later every verizon customer will think their internet connection is broken.
This has nothing to do with google/yahoo chewing up bandwith. The fiber companies are just mad other people are making more money.
If it was about eating up fiber, and thus creating the need for greater infrastructure:
They would not focus on two companies that pretty much provide a low bandwith, mostly text based, services.
They could focus on more bandwith intensive services, like maybe iTunes and other pay media services.
They would focus on file sharing networks that connect a bunch of $30 a month, or less, subscribers together that end up consuming disproportinatly large amounts of bandwith.
But instead they choose to pick on the guys consuming fairly little bandwith per use, but happen to be making a bundle of bones. At least they could come up with a less transparent argument.
are through collusion or law.
Because the first company that tries to implement internet tolls alone is going to be at a huge competitive disadvantage. So they'd all have to do it at once. But this kind of collusion is illegal.
But law isn't. :(
Okay they claim that providers high speed connections should be paying more, so then why does the telco (SBC in this case) sell DSL to end users at $90/mo for 6MBit! Yet the T1's they sell here are $600?
If the damn bandwidth is such an issue you would think they would sell DSL for a more reasonable rate. Obviously they've proven their oppositions case already by that example alone.
This crazy talk needs to be nipped in the butt and pronto, or we the consumer are going to get screwed.
What if Google is using ISP X (and paying for every penny of bandwidth) and customer Y is using ISP Y. The customer is separated from Google by a large distance, and the traffic goes through Verizon's backbone. How does Verizon get paid?
Attention everybody, the 90's have returned! Well, at least on Slashdot. It seems that somewhere between his regular schedule of WoW, sleep and junk food, CmdrTaco had an epiphany:
r e.html
[...]
http://commentgator.blogspot.com/2006/02/dont-sta
Borrowing the idea from Verizon, auto makers can decide to charge employers fees based on how many people drive to work.
.. you do drive to work ..correct? Also, no "free lunch" for employers who are successful because of car owners.
Or, do you have a well paying job? Surely the car manufacturer deserves a percentage slice of your salary, after all
Sound insane? Well this is the prevalent corp. "logic" today.
Sad, but true.
I think the model in other media is that the bandwidth suppliers pay the content suppliers, without whom the bandwidth would be worthless.
Both Google and the end user pays for the internet. Google pays for thier end for the bandwidth that they use and the size of pipes that they need to have and on the other end you have the consumer that pays for thier connection. Now Verizon should if it wants to get more money charge more for the bandwidth that it sells to the ISP's that connect directly to it and it's own customers but to pick on a compay that may be three or four hops away and expect them to pay is crazy. This would be like SBC charging for a phonecall that started in Mexico and the other end was Verizon's customer just becouse a portion of the phonecall's routing touched thier network.
Since they want to profit from a transaction that doesn't involve them, maybe they should start charging Amazon for every transaction that occurs over their pipes.
The situation is analogous to Verizon wanting to charge me or my pizza delivery service a fee for the pizza I just ordered, because I placed the order over a phone line provided by them. What part of "Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on", are they not understanding?
From what I read, most USians are under an effective baby bell (bell south, AT&T or verizon) monopoly and do not have the choice.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Verizon are freeloading on Google's (and Yahoo's, etc) content to sell Internet connections to their subscribers.
Now wasn't that easy?
(No, this isn't an Al Gore joke...)
The U.S. government originally invented the Internet. At taxpayer expense. Some of the Internet's infrastructure still runs on taxpayer-funded equipment. Verizon benefits from that invention and that infrastructure.
So, fellow taxpayers, should we charge Verizon to utilize -- and profit from -- that infrastructure?
"This, as lawmakers are approaching new legislation that could let telcos charge internet companies much more for the use of high speed connections."
!=
"The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing today on the issue, which is known as net neutrality."
For more details:
"Vinton G. Cerf, a vice president and "chief Internet evangelist" at Google, said in an interview that his company is worried that if net neutrality protections are not enacted, the Internet's freedom could be compromised, limiting consumer choice, economic growth, technological innovation and U.S. global competitiveness."
All the content providers have to do is charge a "Bandwidth Recovery Fee" to any provider who charges them a "Bandwidth Usage Fee".
For example, BellSouth and Verizon (the two biggies on this one so far) start charging Google for the "right" to provide content to their customers. In return, Google begins charging BellSouth and Verizon for the "right" for their users to access Google's service over Google's upstream bandwidth.
The end result is that Google breaks even (because they can charge a small amount per customer for a massive total income) or pulls ahead on the deal, and Verizon either stays at the same spot they're in now, or they start losing money - either through losing access to one of the premier search engines on the internet, causing customers to start leaving in droves, or because they pass the "Bandwidth Recovery Fee" onto their consumers, causing everyone's bills to inflate noticeably, also causing customers to leave in droves for cheaper access to the same content.
And while the above article mentions cable and telephone network providers, I've yet to hear Comcast, Cox, Charter, or Time-Warner start making noises in this direction. Mayhap the telcos need to look into cheaper ways to bring all the dark fiber out there online?
You thought that this sig was what you think that I thought you wanted me to think. I think.
You know - its an big old telco... That means stupid rules, red tape and the most ridiculous processes you can imagine...
Trust me - anyone who has worked for Bell Atlantic or VZ will be able to tell you that... Time reporting has to be done by friday morning (some orgs even wednesday evening) - yet you are responsible to accurately record your time till saturday.. Yeah - I'm not planning on having any outages on Friday, you know...
If you live in a world like that, that statement about Google almost makes sense. Inside the Verizon Reality Distortion Field(tm) of course...
For the outside world its a different story... Its like asking a mail order company for a share of the profits just cause they use your phone lines... Or if you sell your shares in company X you should have to pay part of the profits you made - after all you're using verizon lines...
Anyway - this is just the reaction of an old dinosour that's ready to collapse under its own weight. They throw money at FTTP - something that has a 40 year projected return on investment... Somehow they need to make money. And if they lobby for it and it goes through, they'll have another way to extort money...
Peter.
This is the problem of monopolies. Do you notice how Verizon suddenly forgot about all their damn customers that pay them $ 30 - 50 per month for internet access. I mean, they are the ones using their precious pipes. And they PAY for it. Furthermore, Google also pays to send data through the pipes. So you have pipes at each end of which there is a paying customer, Verizon is making billions off of them and at the same time they are bitching that their customers are cheating them.
But of course Verizon can pretend their customers do not exist because they are part of an oligopoly and their only "competitors" are the cable companies which are doing exactly the same thing.
Now imagine if this think happened in an actual competitive, free market industry. Imagine for example if GM starts complaining that all those people keep using "their trucks" for profit and try to extract payment from everyone that purchases a Chevy truck and uses it haul things for money. It would be ridiculous. It would laughable. And of course GM do not do that. In fact they would actually try very hard to get you to buy their truck and use it for profit without reimbursing them.
But of course GM are part of a competitive industry, while Verison are monopolists.
It is obvious now that a company that obtains a secure monopoly will use it to screw over their customers and everyone else. The big orgy of telecom mergers of the 90's should have never been allowed. But now that it has been allowed, the government or the courts should step in or bar monopolistic behaviour.
PS I hope Verizon do not succeed in making internet access more expensive (either in temrs of fees or adds) because then I will have to stop using their cell phone and they do have a pretty decent network.
If Google is having no bandwidth fees to use their network and just need "to ride on with nothing but cheap servers", Google sure is a lucky bunch.
I'd really like Verizon to explain to me how this abuse with not paying to the network providers can go on?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I find it interesting that SBC just lowered their 3Mbps/512Kbps price to $17.99 or some price like that. But that is pathetic compared to what others in the world can get today.
/. needs a couple more mod categories..
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Instead, I pay about $60 a month for much better TOS (static IP, servers within reason, etc.), though Verizon still provides the pipe.
See, my DSL connection to Verizon's CO get's shunted onto the ATM fabric and shows up as a PVC to my ISP. They in-turn pay Verizon big $$$ for the fat pipes to whereever.
Now, Verizon charges for both the ATM PVC I use and the fat pipe my ISP uses. They get paid coming and going.
Verizon is free to charge my ISP (Blarg! in case anyone cares) whatever they want for the fat pipes and the DSL PVCs that get resold to me, at least whatever the market will bear. In fact, they price things so that, compared to their ISP service, they get more money from the likes of me. Used to be, I had to pay Verizon directly for the PVC -- "Advanced Data Services" they called it, but they found out that it was easier to sell those in bulk and let the ISP nickel and dime them out (which put more $$$ in my ISP's hands as well as reducing my overall bill).
So, what's the problem here? Verizon can price their pipes at whatever level the market will bear.
I suspect the real issue is that Verizon does not realize that it is competing against itself: their ISP division has to compete with all the other ISPs for bandwidth on it's own network. So what? They get paid either way. But, from the Verizon ISP perspective, they cry foul that so much more money is made by selling bandwidth to and through third-party ISPs and not them -- one division loses while the other division gains.
Note to Verizon: if it is more profitable to lease bandwidth to ISPs than it is to be one, get out of the ISP business!
You could've hired me.
Come to think of it, Verizon is using my yard for free. They dug a hole in my property and put their crap there without compensating me. Maybe I should dig up their wire and demand to be compensated. If extortion is going to be allowed, I can assure everyone Verizon will lose.
70% of statistics are made up.
Networking Company: "Hey, you better start paying us for using our lines!"
Google: "But we already pay for using your lines!"
NC: "But we never anticipated you'd be using them for business! Pay more! Besides, you use too much bandwidth!"
Google: "We're paying you to use your bandwidth already!"
NC: "But we didn't think you'd use that much! Pay more or see yourselves offline!"
Is this the gist of it? The NC's are just getting greedy? I would think the cost of maintenance/upgrades were covered in the fees companies already pay?
They do this just because they can, don't they?
What about the premium I pay to verizon everyday to access their lines? Doesn't that go to these high fees along with all the taxes they take on my phone costs?
Speaking of phones, why does Google, or by extension my own online business, have to pay for "riding the lines" when Sears Roebuck, or indeed any business doesn't have to pay extra for phone line access? Or is that step 2?
In that event Business woruld break down. If each call, each hit cost a fee then almost all online businesses (save those run by Verizon) would shut down. It would be much like charging roads on a per-use basis. Kiss any small businesses goodbye.
One of the reasons that Credit Card Companies have not made great inroads with many small businesses is the fee. For companies of a sufficient size the store is billed for weach charge. For a small Mom n. Pop that is often all of their profit margin, that's why cash is so much better. The only companies that really love the cards are chain stores who make enough POS purchases to get into the free rate.
They can buy shares like anyone else.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That depends, does he intend to charge everyone outrageous prices for those mushrooms, or just the people who have that kind of money? Because honestly, if it's the latter, I doubt it would be considered acceptable practice.
Google provides services in the form of content that convince customers - both residential and commercial - to subscribe to high-speed internet connections from Verizon. And Google doesn't charge Verizon one cent!
Where is Verizon's unique content? If Verizon charged Google extra for transport, and Google decided to decline and simply not run on Verizon's networks, what would Verizon offer that would convince me to use their network over their (still-Google-carrying) competitors'?
This isn't about a "free lunch" or "free ride" or anything like that.
... but the REAL money is in controlling the bottleneck.
This is about Verizon realizing that providing the pipeline is a good, solid revenue stream
So, they attempt to frame the debate as "free lunch", but the reality is that they're looking for a way to get some of Google's revenues by building a bottleneck.
I feel like I must be missing something here. My company does a lot of work hosting and managing machines for other companies. For machines that utilize a lot of traffic, our ISP charges us more for the extra bandwidth. This makes sense, use more - pay for more. Same on the end-user side of things, the faster your connection the more the cost.
Here's where I am confused. There already seems to be graduated pricing. Home users pay more to get faster connections, and content providers pay more as their site gets more traffic so that their users will always have an optimal experience. Those that don't have enough bandwidth (for whatever reason) feel the pain as too many users hit their site - getting slashdotted is a perfect example. So, and I'm legitimately wondering, is this a case of the telco's feeling like they are not charging enough or, wanting to ride on the success of the successful companies. If it's the former, then I don't think there's anything other than competition and customer's desire (or lack thereof) to pay keeping them from charging more. If, however, it's the latter - well then everyone would be right to be outraged.
If someone could shed a little more light on this, it would be appreciated.
So a telcom spends enormous sums of cash laying fiber, and you have the gall to imply they don't even own the backbone. What a bunch of socialists.
After the AT&T split, the Baby Bells all "started" with huge existing infrastructures. Imagine starting a business with an existing monopoly in your geographic market, a high barrier to entry for potential competitors, and enormous working capital. Right from the beginning, they were able to reap the rewards of a monopoly that had previously been protected by the federal government. Nice windfall if you can get it.
Sure, they invested in fiber after that. But when you can leverage that head start, you are still benefitting from the initial head start provided by AT&T, which in turn was provided in large part by the taxpayers. The telecom structure has changed quite a bit since the breakup of AT&T, but when they portray themselves as fearless, innovative entrepreneurs, it doesn't ring true, particularly since they're so slow to respond to customer needs, and so incredibly bureaucratic. They'd like themselves to be these nimble, clever players, ushering in the new age of communications, but all they've really proven themselves good at is milking bandwith. Almost everything else they get their hands on turns to crap.
Maybe that's why there's so much eye-rolling when the O-level geniuses at Verizon, et. al. start talking about "their" infrastructure.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Seems to me that Verizon's getting Google's content, as well as all the other content on the internet, for free. They then charge their consumers for access to this content. Verizon should be paying content providers for the use of their content.
Obviously, I'm just joking to make a point. With a little thought, anything can be twisted to suit your purposes. For Verizon, that purpose is profit. I hope legislators see through it.
eom
Has it occurred to this dolt that if it weren't for services like Google, there would be no reason to use all that network capacity? Everybody already pays for net access. If it's not enough, then why is Verizon still in the business?
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I was about to purchase some of those verizon broadband anywhere cards for our sales reps laptops. Now that this hearing took place and Verizon says they will limit (or should be allowed to limit) services available on their lines, I have decided it would be a bad purchase. For once congress has done something for our company. I did not even have to pay an extorti... umm lobbyist.
What great service!
Is there anything to stop Verizon or any ISP for that matter from QoSing sites/applications/services into oblivion unless the right price is paid. This is already happening for P2P traffic.
Lets look at the opposite of this argument, and put Verizon under the light: While Amazon, Google and Ebay and thousands of other websites invest billions of dollars into thier effort, Verizon just rides the wave of their work. How about Google charging Verizon for the content that it provides instead? If Verizon or other 'hostile' ISPs want to provide it's subscribers with access to popular sites, it's gotta fork over the dough.
Perhaps once everything is settled, Verizon will come to it's senses and realize that the ISP & Content providers are a mutually beneficial relationship. One cannot live without another and if someone bites, the other will bite back.
You mean like this:
t ml
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2002/08/ride_sharing.h
that Google has been buying up dark fibre all over the place? Why exactly should Verizon be able to charge Google for what will amount to the last mile?
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
So, if the grossly oversimplified route of Google's traffic is Google -> Some Tier 1 -> Verizon -> Customer, I don't see (well, I do, but for the sake of argument...) why they're going after the content provider rather than the content provider's ISP. If Verizon isn't making enough money from its peering or transit agreeemnts with "Some Tier 1," then it should change them.
So we pay verizon to access content using Verizon's infrastructure. Google pays verizon to let us access content using Verizon's infrastructure. I always love those commercials about removing the middle man.
Best Iradio station ever and I listen 12 hr/day. No repeat work weeks! Can you imagine no dup songs for 5 days!!! This is what I would hate to lose. I pay my ISP, Gooogle pays their ISP so where is the problem here? Yes Atlantic Sound Factory pays also.... SO WHO IS NOT GETTING PAID? Well actually it is Me and Atlantic Sound Factory. Everyone else gets paid. So I have only one thing to say to Verizon ...WTF, are you talking about?
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
Since I control my company's DNS, I'm not sure that I want Verizon or AT&T to continue to have a free lunch on my LAN. I'm going to re-direct them to 127.0.0.1 so their internet traffic isn't getting a free ride on my network equipment. I'm sure there are other net admins that can do this as well. Maybe if we block 25% of their web hits, they might see how incredibly stupid this line of thinking is.
I'm waiting for Google to turn around and say Verizon is DDoSing their network because their customers keep going to Google.
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
I can understand the operators in one hand. But on the other hand, I say tough luck.
Lot of what enterpreuners do is to connect some resources that exist to something else to get the third thing.
There wouldn't be companies if somebody wouldn't make babies, roads, basic infastructure, people wouldn't go to school, sun wouldn't shine to farms etc. Let's face it, business takes lot of granted and builds top of ready things. In the process it creates somethng somebody else will use and so forth .
So what's the problem here? Google has a concept that works, and now it makes money building top of something somebody else has build before there was Google at all. Why should Google or Yahoo pay something that wasn't build for them, but despite?
They've figured(Yahoo and Google) how to make money on the web, operators haven't Why punish Google for that and reward telecoms for it? It is not their fault is somebody else does bad business and they don't.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows has the trouble seen me, even I sometimes wonder why I write these line
Obviously you havent seen it done well, and in the right way in various European and (ahem) Asian countries. Just make the backbone Socialist to maintain existence, and just allow people to do almost whatever off that backbone. Even Verizon could win on this one.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
in the near future: not able to withstand the HIGH costs of ISPs, Sergey, Larry and Eric would do runs to your place with your queried results And please dont mind the delays
Yes, we are mostly enserfed to a member of the telco cartel. So, FOSS folks, when do we develop a route around this? Will someone with the expertise propose something that won't force us to hock our cars?
Verizon doesn't want to just charge EXTRA.
They want to charge you (your business) based on a percentage
of your gross revenues. As ridiculous as this sounds,
this is exactly what they have been doing with applications
that run on their cell phones (BREW).
Worse than that, they also compete directly with these buisnesses
and usurp the applications that make the most money with
their own ones. So they want to find a way to control things
as neatly as they have done on the phone. If they don't like
the way your application/service/whatever behaves or they like
it TOO much then it disappears.
No one fears an open market as much as large corporations.
Verizon. The communication terrorist. Fnord!
To Whom It May Concern:
I am a Verizon residential DSL customer. I am writing to register my anger towards the comments John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, made on February 6, 2006 concerning Google's alleged freeloading for gaining access to people's homes using, in part, Verizon's network.
I am your customer. I pay my Internet bill with an expectation that you will allow me to transmit and receive IP packets to and from arbitrary Internet hosts without undue concern for the nature of those communications. Of the many services I receive by using the Internet, Google's services rank highly. Google is not your customer, you do not provide these services for Google's benefit. I am your customer and pay you to provide access to Google's (among other's) services for my benefit. If you feel that you are not being adequately compensated for providing me with those services, it is I, your customer to whom you should be turning to receive extra compensation not Google.
I pay for the services I receive from Google (and other Internet content providers) not by paying my DSL bill to Verizon, but by subscribing to premium content and by viewing additional advertising content paid for by other parties. Google then uses their income from these transactions to pay for their Internet Service Providers to transmit and deliver IP packets on their behalf in order to provide their services. The Internet communications network economy functions by ISPs cooperating in order to share each other's networks in order to provide worldwide connectivity services to their customers. If you want to get paid from both ends of the table I suggest you provide end-to-end connectivity from each of your customers to each of the services your customer is interested in at a rate that is competitive with the multi-AS Internet infrastructure.
I am not just paying for the infrastructure required for me to communicate with your corporate network. I would not pay for that service. I am paying for the fact that your corporate network, which is connected to my home via DSL, is well connected to the Internet at large and provides me with a gateway to the content I desire.
I find it discouraging that I, as a customer, have a better understanding of the functioning of your business model than does your own senior vice president John Thorne. I suggest you remember who your customers are and are not.
Thank you,
John Jones
xyz@verizon.net
And
xyz@gmail.com
e-mail addresses changed to protect my inbox.
Google should start directing non-Verizon ISP ads to any Verizon customer that uses the Google service.
I know that ISPs are not technically classified as common carriers, but does this have anything to do with the premise that ISPs may not discriminate against traffic without becoming responsible for any illegal activity that takes place over their networks? That is, it would seem that if ISPs begin discriminating against certain packets (e.g. Google), they would be opening themselves up to huge liability. Am I completely off base with this, because I can't imagine any TelCos would be considering such a move if that were the case.
So Google isnt paying for its network connectivity? Cool. Where do you sign up?
.. just wait.. its gonna get a lot worse.
Last i heard you had to pay to get a connection, so its not a 'free lunch'.. Sour grapes perhaps, but no free bandwidth.
God help us once deregulation takes place. Think your phone bill is high now? Think your internet is high? Do you like having choice in content? Welp.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Isn't there an analogy to the road transport system here? For example, if Company A builds a private transport infrastructure asset (ie. a road, tunnel or bridge), surely Company A has the right to charge a fee for those who want to use the asset.
In the Google/Verizon situation, isn't it the case that the telcos built the asset, but Google (and others) are freeloading off that asset in the same way that a trucking company that used a private road and didn't pay the fees would be free loading off the owner of the road?
If those who choose to build infrastructure cannot turn a profit from their activities, how do infrastructure assets get built? Do we rely on governments?
I'm not making claims as to whether or not the arrangement is right or wrong, just that there is a well know analogy to other industries.
This is a term I coined (although I doubt I was the first) to describe the situation when firm A charges customer B a different price than customer C for exactly, or essentially, the same service or product. As computational power grows and tracking ability increases, we consumers will probably see more and more differential pricing. Early examples of DP are pharmaceuticals and movies. In both of these cases, generally there are very large upfront development costs followed by very low production and distribution costs. In this situation, DP is highly likely to occur. Drug costs in most other countries are lower than in the US because of a variety of reasons, but one of them is simply that drug companies can get away with it, and it is worth it for them to do so. You can even sell advanced medicines in some very poor countries so long as the distribution/production cost is low and the re-importation can be controlled through political channels.
...oh...wait...you want to regulate that?
Now, I would say that the current tussle over internet access costs is similar: With a huge upfront development cost, the large ISPs will attempt to figure out ways to change Google as much as they can, even compared to another company or several companies who might use the same amout of service. Of course, Google is a giant customer, so they have their own leverage, and the outcome will likely be a different one for them than it s for you (US consumer) buying your medication. Let freedom ring!
Hm. And I thought we're paying the ISP to access Google...
Anyway, I'm pretty sure all the money that Google makes is from the added value that it gives to your bandwidth, not from the bandwidth itself.
Verizon's argument holds no water. It's like the utility trying to charge you additionally for the water just because you make a furtune off your farm.
It's assumption is, the added value is really small to nonexistent.
If it really believes so, Verizon should try to make its own search engine and compete. Trying to distort money from bandwidth use only shows the world your hypocrisy.
Perhaps the Google counter-strike is already underway? GoogleNet?
2 4259
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/17/12
Without services like Google the internet would not be popular with users. Fewer users of the internet would mean fewer consumers purchasing from on-line retailers. This spiral would ultimately lead to lost revenue to the verizon's of the world because fewer businesses and DSL customers would pay to access the internet.
Sounds to me like Verizon wants to turn the internet into their personal version of Compuserve. I for one do not want to go back to the bad old days.
A local toll road owner is watching this case closely. He wants to search all vehicles on his road and surcharge those carrying any cargo deemed valuable or time-sensitive.
Verizon could easily route through a friendly provider that isnt blacklisted.
If they all try it, then not even all the dark fiber in the hands of Those Who Do Evil (aka Google) will be given back such favor. However it'd be better to not blacklist them- just make Google suck through a 300 baud straw to any destination, or drop, depending on provider in a manner that isnt a form of collusion.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The way I see it, Verizon and AT&T wouldn't have too compelling of a product if there were no websites. How effective would they be at selling internet connections if there was nothing on the other end?
Therefore, I think Verizon and AT&T are actually getting a off selling Google, MS, Yahoo, etcs. content without properly compensating them. I think Verizon and AT&T owe each and every website that has been visited from their network proper compensation!
-BKuhl
Perhaps Verizon should look at their business practices first. First the basically laughed at the TCA of 1996 but not opening fully their network as they other ilecs squeezed the 1st generation DSL providers out of business, their $15 per month DSL service that they lose money on and no competitor can match because that's around what they pay for dry copper, and their FIOS service for which they are losing a fortune on to try and force their competition to price match and drive themselves out of business (cable and DSL).
So the appearance is that they are intentionally driving their revenue down in a blatant anti-competive move. Then they blame an entity that's got nothing to do with it, Google, for their poor performance. That's the old game called misdirection. In some circles it's call lying.
The Telcos provide a service, for which they should be able to charge as much, or as little, as they like. Google can either choose to buy their service, and pay accordingly, or choose not to.
Why is this such an issue?
Verizon and the other Telco's don't seem to understand that the "lines" they speak of aren't theirs at all. Those lines were run using emminent domain and railroad right-of-way.
If this was a true free market, they could raise their rates and a new company would come along, lay some new wire, and sell service cheaper.
Unfortunately, its not a free market. The barrier to entry is impossibly high. No one could come along and rewire Manhattan. So we are stuck with the Telcos who seem to think they should be allowed to flex their Monopoly muscles without any oversight.
They're not saying that Google isn't paying for their own access to the Intertron (tm). Look at the wording they keep using. They are saying that Google is using Verizon's pipes to pump content to Verizon's customers and for that, they should pay a premium. Verizon is talking about customers as if they are nothing more than a resource to be mined, processed, and gerrymandered like anything else that modern industry consumes.
From TFA~
"While Thorne did not specify that practice, he emphasized the need for companies such as his to find ways to make money to justify their investments. "The only way we are going to attract the truly huge amounts of capital needed to build out these networks is to strike down governmental entry barriers and allow providers to realize profits," Thorne said yesterday."
They are NOT going bankrupt off of their investments. They make money. What they are trying to do is MAKE MORE MONEY. If they think that it is unreasonable to spend the "huge amounts of capital", they should not whine when cities like Philadelphia attempt to roll out municpal WiFi. Afterall, that's just one less cost for them to have to eat, right? Actually, this seems to me like a legitimate case for eminent domain (but I'd prefer to see the Gooberment wait until Verizon stops constructing their network before appropriating it). Many of us consider network connectivity to be a utility akin to water, electricity or roadways for daily function. If Verizon wants to play the "gimmie gimmie" game with the Information Superhighway, they should pause to consider how many RL Superhighways are privately owned in this US of A.
Pardon me if I remember incorrectly, but don't Bell and its children owe their very existance to one of the largest federal subsidies ever given?
The American people gave you a lemonade stand and an orchard of free lemons and you have the nerve to bitch about all the damn thirsty people. Idiots.
Dear Verizon Communications,
It has come to my notice that you as a company are dissatisfied, and are complaining that content providers are unfairly stepping on the toes of bandwidth providers without sharing the profits. It has also come to my attention that you as a company are seeking ways of extircating fees from these content providers in order for them to use your network.
I would like to remind you that the bandwidth that these content providers use is being paid for. No, it's not being paid for by the likes of Google, Microsoft, or any other content provider, for that matter, but by your subscribers. That's right, subscribers. You know, those people who send you a check for $39.95 every month in exchange for their 256K downstream, 128K upstream that they use in order to get from their computer to the content provider's services. These hard working, paying customers are sending you their hard-earned money to ensure that that you give them access to the sites and the content that they want.
If you decide to cut back access for subscribers to reach the content on the public Internet that they want you will find yourself losing subscribers. Should you try to enforce disconnect fees on these subscribers, or try to enforce any other end-of-contract requirements, you will undoubtedly find yourself in court from a number of subscribers who would challenge such fees due to your failure to provide services. It could even reach the level of class-action status, which would make your position even worse.
Do consider what you're thinking about doing. Your services are already being paid for. If you don't like the profitability of the enterprise then you should get out of it, not look for ways to extort money out of others.
Sincerely,
TWX
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I mean really? Who's getting the free lunch? I wonder how much Verizon will pay for being listed in search results?
I have already quizzed my local congressman as to why I can't (a) separate landline phone service from DSL [guess who my provider is] and (b) get the local area code on a service such as Vonage. While I await the reply I sent him this. It serves as my comment on here too.
2 27257
Further to my recent letter about the Verizon/Vonage VoIP vacuum that is Muskegon, I am now presented with this:
Verizon wants to start charging Google and other major web sites for using their bandwidth!
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/07/2
FACT 1
------
A) Google's local service provider already gets a fat load of money from Google for their bandwidth.
B) I already pay $80 per month (see previous letter as to why it's 80 and not 30) for my internet service.
FACT 2
------
If this becomes law, what is to stop cable companies from turning around and charging HBO, Fox and ABC for the TV "bandwidth", rather than paying them for the content they provide! This in turn would put a massive hole in TV networks' accounting which would be made up with? More advertising, and less quality programming.
As the lines between internet, phone and TV
become more and more blurry, [snip/] this could set a precedent that would completely turn the TV industry upside down!
This is a ridiculous situation and needs some federal legislation to ensure it will never happen. If only to protect local [snip] service providers [/snip] and to protect the consumers.
What is Verizon doing with all their assets if they are ripping me off for $50 extra a month and also wanting to flip the directional switch on the entire information/entertainment industry?
Hey Verizon, SCO just called, they want their desperation back.
I hope you have a backup plan in case you get blackballed and Verizon does run through after they restore your "unauthorized changes" that affected your customers.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
"We're spending a fortune toning and maintaining our bodies that our wives intend to ride on with nothing but cheap lingerie," Thorne told a conference of overpaid executives. "Our wives are enjoying a free sex that should, by any rational account, be the free sex for us."
Did it ever occur to anyone that this is effectively what landlords do? Once a shop or restaurant starts to prosper they jack up the rent.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I get the motivation (greed), just not the logic. If I talk business on the phone, do I owe Verizon a piece of the action? As long as Google pays their bandwidth bills, how can this be legitimized?
Voice Over IP is cutting into Verizon's and SBC's revenue from phone products. SBC already has to deal with cell phones taking away the standard landline but long distance and business voice accounts have always been their real cash cow. Losing that is what I think is really eating them, especially when you add video conferencing on top of it.
If more businesses start following the adoption of private VOIP networks like Department of Defense is doing, the telcos know they're screwed but since they can't stop the DoD, they're flexing their monopolistic leverage to blackmail content providers instead.
I'm just speculating, I could totally be on crack.
- tokengeekgrrl
I am pretty sure Google has to pay for Internet costs like everyone else. If Verizon doesn't like people using their lines, they should depeer. I'm tired of them whining. They are a regulated monopoly!
If Verizon or anyone else thinks that Google is enjoying a free lunch with nothing but cheap servers then I recommend they set up a few cheap servers and enjoy the lunch, too. But, we all know it doesn't work like that. Google is in an entirely different business than Verizon.
Verizon just wants to horn in and steal Google's lunch.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
that's not mud.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
As I see this, it sounds likes the equivalent of a city or state charging businesses that rely on customers using public roads.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
So do the Telcos deserve a percentage of all revenue from all business done over phone lines now? Can I not make a multi-million dollar business deal over the phone without Verizon 'deserving' more for the service for using 'their' lines to do it? After all, the only difference between that and a call from Grandma is the meaningful content of the signal being transfered over the copper... If the copper is being paid for, who is Verizon to dictate what that signal can contain, wheater it be a call to the family, a business deal, or a DSL signal? I don't think they'll be able to do that. Hopefully.
wow! i for the first time i fell i wasted my time reading a thread (even if by vertu, it means wasting your time in a somewhat constructive way by reading slashdot) you know, usualy there is some sort of debate or something. so far its all the samething. Verizon Sucks, Google still has to pay. (totaly agree) now we just need someone to let Verizon know about it. lol.
And tell all your friends to do the same.
If enough people switched to someone else (or threatened to), verizon would have to back down.
Let's say you are a powerful media industry association which controls the flow of money and property within your industry. All providers creating content must go through you in order to reach the outside world.
Let's say a company, let's call it Orange, makes a media machine called the iSeed which is initially scorned by certain geek web sites, but suddenly becomes the darling of the music consumer world. By selling the iSeed, which runs on content created by this association's media producers, Orange is making fistfulls of money.
As it turns out, Orange has opened up a new market for people to purchase industry content, and they are moving towards their billionth sale, but you, the industry association mogul feel that you are not maximizing your profits. Is it ethical to charge more for the latest drivel just because your payola scams have it playing on every teenie-bopper radio station and TV show, causing it to be temporarily popular?
The CB App. What's your 20?
Pure genius! Think of all of the money being made by stock brokers, stock exchanges etc. - surely Verizon will want a slice of that pie, too. Then there's all of the on-line shopping sites, eBay, gambling etc. etc.
1. Extort money from customers for using your bandwidth.
2. ???
3. Profit!
It would seem that step 2 is "Lose your customers."
I just got Verizon's FIOS service installed last week. It was free! (unlike the cable's 50$ to drop off a box). Do you realize what they had to do to get the fiber line to my house? They was probably about 40-80 man house of work that was done. They dug up all my neighbors front yards to run the cable. Now for REAL 5/2 Mbps I am paying less then cable modem. This bussiness model will only work if they are able to provide voice, internet, and television over this line. I am guessing that Verizon is fearing that VOIP and some kinda TV over IP will kill all this expensive effort in the last mile of fiber installation. Perhaps there is a law against Verizon offering discounts if you subsrcibe to multiple services? Yes, I am defending the corprate evil! But they ran fiber to my door for free!!!
Verizon gets paid by both those hosting sites and those accessing sites.
But they want to get more money for no actual effort on their part.
Their justification is that Google is getting a 'free pass' on their pipes.
The RIAA member companies get paid when customers buy iTunes music.
But they want to get paid more for no actual effort on their part.
Their justification is that Apple are selling iPods on the back of the RIAA content.
Gary's New Laws of Business:
* If your customers are happy and you're making a solid profit, look for ways to screw them to the wall so that they can leave you in droves.
* If your products are selling well and you've got nothing in the pipeline, rework the pricing structure to screw your customers over so that they can leave you in droves.
* Make everything look as though you're hard done by, and call your customers 'freeloaders', 'scum', 'thieves', 'pirates' and any other names you can think of.
* Lobby your government to make everything you do nice and legal, where previously it was unethical, illegal, immoral, bad for business and just plain dumb.
I await my honorary economics degree.
That's a great idea. I'm going to start charging all the phone companies for the money they make on the calls that are made to my house. That last 50 ft of wire is mine, as is the handset, and of course if not for me, the call wouldn't have been made in the first place.
I don't see how restricting access to verizon.com on my LAN equipment is any different than them trying to restrict google on their equipment. My dept pays for the T1 plus all the wiring plus all the routers, switches, hubs and maintenance. Verizon owns a section of the infrastructure outside my control, but my company owns from the road to the PC. Maybe I'll see if they want to pay per hit from my company's T1.
Plus I'll recommend any Verizon cell phones be transferred to T-mobile or another provider.
The only way to stop this idiocy is to hurt the company in the pocketbook. If they think they can make $X million by charging content providers, it's our duty as consumers to make sure that it costs them $X*2 million in business.
If they are able to make that additional cash from Google & MS, soon won't be enough. Next they are going to start charging everyone, not just the big boys. And that my friend, hurts my company's bottom line for each web site we host. Don't think for a minute that they will be satisfied until everyone pays them the extortion fees.
So bottom line, I can lay out a business case for restricting access to verizon.com plus transferring all cell phones because their business practices will eventually have a negative impact on the company. No unauthorized changes here, all by the book.
Telecoms used to be the most profitable companies on Earth.
Now it's (again) energy companies.
The telcos are jealous. They can't modulate supply and induce demand the way the energy companies can to maximize profit on a day-to-day basis. They can just run a line and charge you a lease rate, and if they try to raise that rate they run into the city, county, state, and federal regulators.
But, hell, that's what they get for being a monopoly in every neighborhood.
They reaped it, they can sow it. I'm not crying for them.
Read the article--he compared "Google utopianism" to "spiked Kool-Aid". I would think he'd get along just fine here on /.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
I don't work for them, I'm just a very happy customer.
I said it before in another post last week. Google is not getting this for free, they are paying somebody. Ultimately, somebody is getting money for the use of the pipes.
If Verizon wants to fuck around like this, then somebody is going to have to pull the common carrier act on the telcos again.
This sig no verb.
I don't doubt that Verizon wants to (and may well succeed) at shutting down the internet to all who won't pay them high fees. I don't doubt that they'll try to use the passage of new laws to do it, as well. But maybe some good will come out of it.
As we all know, the internet was first a US government project. Then the web was supposed to let anyone publish. Then the ISPs bottlenecked that down, letting anyone read, but few publish.
I could imagine where this move by Verizon drives the cost of the internet up high enough that people start developing their own networks using anything from IR crosslinks to phone lines to radio dishes (and of course, when available, the original internet). But in the process, it could make the internet "free" as in speech again.
I base this on the note that when a monopoly seizes control of something, it usually drives people to alternatives.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
They must not be as intelligent as one would assume, of course being a profitable company, the amount they sell their connections for to companies like google is of course MORE then they have spent developing those networks, of which in the end they are still in control and will continue to profit off....
:P
Now they are geetting greedy as somsone above posted, at other people with ideas of how to make more money of that bandwidth, and want some of THEIR lunch.
*BUT* if they push a company like google in a corner, where they tell them they have to pay an outrageous cost, I could see google setting up its own lines, via means of laying them and probably more likely, purchasing them from other backbones and teleco's.
Then at that point, Verizon etc will be charging the XtimesCurrent Markup, and google will charge a rate similar to now (which is already of course proven to be profitable, or else verizon etc wouldn't be in business) and google will blow them out of the water. (ok ok, maybe such a scenario while possible isn't probable, but id' like to see it happen)
In any case, what if verizon's the only company to hop on this bandwagon. Google will just NOT use verizon. And im SURE verizon wouldn't just limit it to google but everyone. Just like they pulled with cogent, and 10% of the web couldnt route to eachother becuase of them pulling public peering for that day. Worst case scenario for them: Everyone decieds just to cut them out of the peering, everyone keeps going on with eachother in a happy world, and all verizon customers get BURNED and then switch to other isps, verizon bites the dust.(Another improbable situation, but hey were talkin')
Now, someone reply to this so I don't feel like I wasted the last 3 minutes....
I ntoe that every month I send my DLS provider a ton of money while I send nothing to google that provides me with valuable services. I think that SBC might find that if Google disabled all search from SBC customers that SBC customers might be very upset. Perhaps SCB should be paying google.
Quoth the Thorne,
"It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers."
I always wondered what "Gimme your lunch money" sounded like when the bully was all growed up.
Take care,
Mark
There is a solution...
Your ISP charging you based on what you access outside their IP network? Any Cox Cable user who does a trace to any website in the USA will find fully half the IP hops are Cox addresses which are connected by ATM over fiber on their own network or on ATM carriage between by third parties Cox has business deals with. Money changes hands, contracts are signed, etc. My traffic almost never goes across Bell South, Verizon, or any other ILEC backhauls. Most is, to my knowledge, Level3.
Should Cox charge me for going to Google because Google refuses to pay blood money?
This is essentially saying, pay us or you will be denied visitation by customers in our IP/ATM system. It says to the customers, either your favorite sites can pay us more money or you will lose access to them.
That seems like a blatant violation of the telecom laws and regulations, not to mention anti-trust laws and RICO.
Given that the current prez has damn near ensured a leftist Democrat president being elected in 2008, they might want to think again about this obsession before they get well and truly schtupped by what will most certainly be a totally hostile to big business backlash driven administration after those elections. Since nothing government does is without pork and hidden ulterior motives and covert sneakings, a backlash driven wave of regulation is going to screw us users too.
Ma Bell isn't dead, not even on life support, and seems determined to hold the place in our hearts and minds held more often these days by Microsoft, Worldcom, and Halliburton. Way to go phone companies! Seize defeat from the jaws of victory. Go you!
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
An awesome excuse to use one of my favorite catch phrases...
Fuck Bobby Flay.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled telco analogies.
Okay. I read the fucking article, and I get the point. The big telcos want more money to "justify their investments" in their networks; Investments that, by all accounts, they should have started making decades ago in order to meet future bandwidth demands in anticipation of a growing telecommunications industry, be it for phones alone, the internet, or both. That is, on the surface, it would appear that they're trying to save face and make it look like meshing the POTS with a private fiber network is big shit. There's some truth in this, since fiber optic networking technologies have been largely neglected and ignored due to terminating costs and the cost of laying the lines in the first place, and laying down a big fiber network to run side by side with the POTS is a pretty big undertaking. It sure as hell ain't cheap, either, but you definitely get what you pay for. Verizon's fiber network will be extremely fast, and one would be inclined to believe that in order to gain access to such a network, you'd have to pay a little extra, right?
This is where the logic begins to break down. I would completely understand if they said outright that if you wanted to use the fiber network instead of the POTS alone, you'd have to pay extra. Why? Massive bandwidth and connection speeds, and a massive initial investment to make it happen. The POTS is fine, but if you want that extra boost, you've gotta go fiber. That would kind of suck, yeah, but considering the cost, doesn't it make sense that at least in the beginning people should pay top dollar to take advantage of that network? That isn't the case here, though. Their logic is that any business that requires a large amount of bandwidth, regardless of where it comes from, should have to pay extra for it. Their logic is to place new caps of the amount of bandwidth alotted to businesses and individuals in order to create an artificial demand for their product by restricting access to it. This way, they get more money, period. That's the part that I don't like.
I don't neccessarily like Google, but I'll definitely take their side here. Google is hardly getting a "free lunch". Google is hardly running "cheap servers". Google is huge shit, and they have got to be paying millions and millions of dollars a year in America alone to keep their shit online at the speeds and with the bandwidth they require. What that asshole from Verizon said was basically that, "Google doesn't seem important, and they're hogging up all this bandwidth, so we should have the right to arbitrarily charge them extra for the services they're already paying mega-fuck-tons of money for just because we want to." Furthermore, they and others allude to Google's possible and highly plausible future plans for a 'free' internet that will take advantage of the POTS, and see this as a means to an end in order to make sure every customer is paid for, regardless of who fronts the money. Nobody should have to pay extra for a resource or service just because they found a better way to use it. That's like saying because you wipe your ass with both sides of the toilet paper, you should pay twice as much for a roll.
This really makes me wonder just how much Google is making these pigs sweat. Sure, I hate 'em all, Google included, but it seems that they -REALLY- don't like Google. I can see why, too. They're creatively taking advantage of the big telcos' services in order to create alternative services to those provided by the telcos themselves. There's a bit of an ethical faux pas right there, but that's also motive. To add to that, Google's got thousands of miles of fiber under it's belt to boot, and that fiber could be used to place these alternative services on Google's own network, which would allow them to directly compete with the telcos. (Maybe Google's top brass are counting on people jumping ship from the teired telcos because of them, and onto Google's network... Crafty, huh?) That doesn't mean that the telcos have to shove the matter up everyone's ass, though. That just means that they need to play
They are trying to slip legislation not to get money from Google but to stop Voip which is making them into dinosaurs.
Same ploys as SCO.
They are dying and will do anything.
...they'll lose me as a customer.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
First of all $40-$60 for high speed internet is ridiculous. Once they specifically stop me from downloading from google, I will measure it and sue them. A class action suit for false advertising. I pay for a 384-1.5/1.5-6.0 connection to the internet (not verizon net) and if I can prove that they are specifically limiting my connection, I want a refund. Cap me at 100 kbps from google? 100/6.0 = 1/60 * $60 = $1 a month service fee. Now give me 1 dollar a month internet and you can cap my speed all you want.
oops! too late! http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-231.html Now will warehouses have to pay more to get the trucks full of goods to the consumer sites?
maybe I won't be upgrading to FIOS. The county commission just approved the request for Verizon to offer television services for a portion of the county.
r elease.vtml?id=93233
http://newscenter.verizon.com/proactive/newsroom/
I'm going to go ahead and forward this article to all the county commissioners. Verizon will have some explaining to do when they ask public "right of way" for the rest of the county. Too bad this article didn't come sooner when they dug up my front yard and cut my Adelphia coax.
The internet is just like a long distance phone provider/company. Verizon owes the customer the same level of quality, whether they choose Verizon or AT&T/MCI/Sprint for long distance service, Verizon was granted "right-of-way" to provide a service. If they don't provide that service then the franchise should be revoked.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
All Google has to do is use someone else's lines, or as some posts have said, block folks where traffic would come over the verizon network. Let supply and demand balance it out. If verizon starts getting screaming customers, they'll back off.
There is more than one way to get internet in many areas...
I use a web hosting company for my web pages. If my pages become wildly popular then I have to pay more - for the bandwidth I use. My web hosting company provides bandwidth that they are basically reselling. They buy bandwidth from their pipeline providers. MCI, Sprint, Verizon etc. Therefore when someone visits my web page, Verizon, etc gets paid. So, I assume Google has an internet connection and that they pay someone for bandwidth. Their home pages are not so different from anyone elses in that respect. So I think the Telco's already make a bundle off of Google. No one is providing bandwidth to Google for free! In the end, Google could provide their own backbone/pipe. Simply buy Verizon.
therefore it's already being paid for by the Verizon customers. How hard is this to understand?....
Hey, now just hold on a second! --Many of those conversations are no doubt, business related. That mans deals are being made at this very moment. Money is being made! Billions and billions of dollars worth!
Hey! No fair! We, (the telcos) invested a huge amount in order to facilitate all those profitable conversations! By rights, WE should be the ones making all that money!
We want our cut!
And, by-golly, we'll use all the broken logic at our disposal to make it so!
-FL
Guess it just depends on how you word it, huh?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Have you ever calculated what we in the U.S. have actually paid for internet access in the last twenty years? I don't mean "per month". I mean, draw back, and think.
Let's go for this year. Lemme see. Guess 20 million, figure from nowhere, with broadband. Just at home. Costs 45 a month on average. 45 X 12. 540 a year, for 20 million homes. 10,800,000,000 a year. Just one year. And it's probably a lot higher; please bear with me here. I'm just making a point.
Ten billion, eleven billion. How much for the last twenty, in toto, business and residential, have we paid? Twenty? Thirty? Forty billion bucks? Keep the idea of the magnitude in mind as I add tens of billions in free money granted by federal and state and municipal governments, in tax breaks, in granted monopoly access to customers, in deregulation calulated to permit the telcos to bring fiber to the door.
HOW MUCH HAVE THEY SUCKED US FOR? A hundred billion? How about the lost opportunity costs because we've crap bandwidth for maximum profit?
And now we'll have two-three companies left after all the merging, in an easy-to-maintain price fixing circle.
Let's call it a hundred billion they've charged, with much more to come. And we've got what for connections? For how much each? How much will it take to pound home the point that the way we've gone about it has failed our people, our economy?
It would have been cheaper for the Federal government to have laid fiber to the home in an Apollo type project over the last 20 years. Private businesses are too fast, too well financed, for any sort of meaningful regulation. They pull simple stunts like placing their best lobbyist, Powell, at the head of the FCC under Bush, where he granted them their wettest wishes. He'll of course go back to work for them after he's done and become a squillionaire for his loyal efforts.
Sigh.
and then there's this: http://muniwireless.com/community/1023 Oy.
...the "Sharper Image" effect
the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers
I don't know how Google got that deal, but I want to sign up too! I currently pay a bit more than $400 per month for connectivity for my 3 servers. My home connection only costs $60 per month, but my 3 commercial servers average $133 - and that's for fractional T-1. If Google is getting their pipes for free, I want the same deal.
What's that? Google pays a shitload of money for their bandwidth? Oh. So what's the dumbass from Verizon gibbering about?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It's just too bad the Bells didn't use this argument, otherwise, there would still be a monopolistic AT&T taking 50% of every phone sex call ever made. Their argument is cry-baby material because they know that they only offer a bit-pump service. They have no investment in producing content. They should stick to their core competency-- moving bits. If they attempt to impose fees on customers, in markets where there is choice, Cable will wipe the floor with them.
If Google offers fiber I'll switch. I've been waiting for fiber for a long LONG time now, I want at least 100mb, but I think we could do better than this, we should be able to do 500mb connection by now, just because we are Americans and to prove we can. Google, please bring us internet 2.0, we have been waiting.
I suppose that it was bound to happen - with google making so much money. The personal equivalent would be them charging more money for a phone call when I complete a commodity trade on a profit. Why don't they just ask for a share of profits from companies based on how dependent those companies are on Verizon's networks. They should start concentrating on innovating like Google to generate profits. If they're coming up with ideas like this, they may have run out of ideas. Short Verizon stock!
So according to Verizon's logic if I make a deal while talking on the telephone that makes me some money I should pay them something extra? I thought taxation was the pervue of the government(s).
How about if I lose money, will they give me a refund?
the telcos have received hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks and free right of ways in order to be in the public interest, going back a hundred years and change. If they can't make money from that, then perhaps they should be nationalized and their clueless shareholders told to go pound sand for keeping lamers in management for so long. Or seized in eminent domain and put up for auction. If they can seize some poor schmoos house to put a stripmall up, they can seize a verizon or a southern bell in order to get a working professional world class internet structure built, instead of a half baked business with second world infrastructure being run by functional business illiterates. If you can't make money from a monopoly or a near monopoily, combined with tax breaks, for decades and now generations, you fail it.
Isn't just about the whole modern American business model about building bottlenecks? Not the first, but today's shining example is that Microsoft has positioned itself as the bottleneck in buying a PC. (the PC "tax"?) (single highest profit part, only part unfettered by competition) The whole patent system has been perverted to where it's no longer used by business (and run by the government) to foster innovation, and everything about creating bottlenecks and tollbooths. Look at the number of things we pay for, like music/movies, etc that are changing from pay-to-obtain to monthly intravenous money drips.
This has very little to do with bandwidth, and much more to do with Google's stock price, and Verizon's envy. (Google's market cap is greater than IBM's.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Anyone have a handy list of all of Verizon's netblocks so web sites can ban them (or set up an extra charge system) if they so chose?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
There are open designs for wireless networks out there, things like http://ronja.twibright.com/
So start building a wireless grid and prepare to negotiate with an uplink provider.
How does this proposal work with their status as a common carrier?
If they can control content in this way, they should loose that status with respect to the service provided.
Of course - this does require sanity on the part of the regulator, which in my corner of the world seems sadly lacking.
Power companies have also finally awoken to the fact that Google has been getting a free ride on the power they are supplying to customers. "We've invested billions of dollars in the world's most stable electrical grid system. Without us, Google's dead."
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
I've been on Adelphia and their incrementally-increasing price scale for several years. (In addition they have absurdly restrictive TOS.) It's been Adelphia or dial-up, until a month or 2 ago. DSL is finally available to me. From Verizon.
So the Verizon page qualifies me, and up until recently they offered me 768/128 for $15/mo for the first year, if I pay up-front. Good deal to me, 1/2 the rated speed of my cable, for 1/3 the price. (Actually, last I knew the cable was $45/mo. I haven't looked at a bill for a while, and I know the whole thing has gone up, but don't know the pieces.) Unfortunately they say nothing about month 13 and onward. For $180/yr I'd jump, and I'd tweak cron jobs to "emerge -atuvDNf" (It's that "f".) at night, and move my big bandwidth needs into the wee hours when they don't make me wait. But at the moment, I have no idea what the long-term price is, and I haven't been able to find anything on their web site. Today I navigated their phone trees, and found NOTHING in their list of options that gave me a place to find my answer, nor was their a way to talk to a real person.
Besides I took a look, and Verizon's TOS look no better than Adelphia's.
My big issue is getting DynDNS.org Mailhop Relay to deliver mail directly to me, and skip the silly pop box. Technically it's "running a server" and technically it's against TOS for both providers. But in fact it uses less of their resources than the approved method, and if correctly set up is no vulnerability or traffic issue.
Evil vs Evil
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
In return, maybe Google should charge Verizon a fee for returning any results that mention or link to Verizon. After all, Google built the plumbing for search, and Verizon is simply riding on their coattails. It would only be fair.
I though, that we paid for Internet infrastructue with line charges and in the case of some of us data download charges.
Same with content providers like Google.
Silly me.
Verizon and friends must have been operating the 'Net for free for the last 10 years?
Sounds like Verizon and anyone else with that mentatily simply wants more offshoring and to eventually hand the virtual US control of the 'Net to someone else.
I can't see why Google or any other company would not move their servers offshore to places where the Telcos's arent being totally unrealistic and excessively greedy.
Alternatively I suspect all it would take is for one Telco not to pursue such greedy and short sighted policies and that Telco would win a shit load of business at the expense of the silly buggers who think that Verizons idea is smart.
Sites pay for their connection, users pay for their connection. . . what the fuck are they whining about? If they want to jack up their rates for a given bandwith, then they can go ahead and do so - and watch the free market kick them in the asses as people go to other providers.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Verizon: Give us money
Google: No
Verizon: Fine, we will block your traffic
Google: Your lose
I really don't understand what they expect to get out of it. They aren't going to win. Google is the defacto search engine now and quickly closing ranks on just about every other service. If I've failed to grasp the concept of the internet this last decade and half please someone correct me, but it works because it's all networked together. Start breaking that up and it's no longer a network.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
Why let things get that far? Demand access to what we've already paid for. Build your own infrastructure regardless. The more you have the more robust the country is. Centralization is obsolete and dangerous.
Those Bell assholes and the cable companies are sitting on a public network built by monopoly protection grants. They are in that position again because they made a bunch of promisses they never kept. If they want to get cute, drop the monopoly protection and let companies like Google have access to the public servitude and bandwith needed to route around their damage. That would show them who's boss and make them compete for customers. The telco monopolies stopped working decades ago, if indeed they ever did work.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
and if verizion doesn't think they get a good return on investment at 12.99 a month for DSL (which is a fire sale price, and they sure as hell don't get ROI on that), then they need to raise their rates. you can believe they won't be charging 12.99 or anything like that on their direct fiber line, and the CPE to terminate that line in the home is not going to be wholesaleing to them at $20 a pop, either. more like $400 wholesale to Very Zoned, and they will get their cut reselling it to John Doe, believe that.
the users want the bandwidth so they can get the content they want. if Very Zoned can't understand that, then they won't have customers any more. they can advertise their private network all they want, one that doesn't connect to The Connected Internet, and they can choke on it.
Ivan is just plain goofy on this.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Verizon et al make their living by providing bandwidth to users, not to Google.
However, Google makes that bandwidth usable; something Verizon et al do not do.
I say, if they are really that anxious to make more money, then all they have to do is out-Google Google. Hmmm, not an easy task, that. Much easier to just charge Google. So, let's see; they charge users for providing bandwaidth and then they charge providers for bandwidth; they are charging twice for the same bandwidth. Greedy shits, aren't they?
Isn't this going to turn the internet into what AOL used to be? Where you could surf AOL content free. But if you went outside that you started to have to pay more?
And didn't Verizon gets grants and such to lay fiber everywhere?
"Businesses have had this free ride for too long - striking lucrative business deals over the phone using our infrastructure, selling products via phone orders, and otherwise exploiting our services. It's only fair that we should get a share of that."
This space available.
It would be "evil" by what appears to be Google's consistently applied definition of evil, namely, decreasing users' access to information, or polluting it with noise. (The China thing, I believe, was reasoned as "We're adding access. Not as much as we'd like, but still.")
They're far more likely to simply set up their own wide pipe and set up in open competition to the telcos. Destroy the enemy by providing a better service.
I was always of the impression that the customers paid the ISP, the ISP paid the NSP, the NSP paid their provider, and so on and so forth all the way through the backbone providers up to the line owners (well, more or less anyway). It's always been that way, sort of a trickle-up effect.
To say Google and the like are getting a "free lunch" is untruthful, to say the least.
Me too. I'm on Speakeasy. I'm three hops to google, and nothing I traceroute seems to go through Verizon.
The cake is a pie
In a completely unrelated matter verizons profits dropped 45% last quarter. 1.66 billion profit just isn't enough these days.
Anybody care to explain?
Dear Verizon Customer,
We are sorry to inform you that you will no longer be able to access Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, and other high-bandwidth commercial sites through your Verizon internet connection. Due to the loads that these services place on Verizon's network system, Verizon has instituted a new policy which states that high-bandwidth commercial web sites must compensate Verizon for their usage of our network. The companies listed above, and others, have elected not to do so. Therefore, we have no choice but to discontinue the availability of these and other web sites on your internet connection.
We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
Sincerely,
Verizon Customer Service
------------------
Dear Verizon,
Pbbbbbtttthhhppp.
Sincerely,
A Valued Soon-To-Be Ex-Verizon Customer.
One share of Google... $367.92 One share of Verizon... $31.50 Using FUD to get gobs of free publicity about potential future profit... PRICELESS!
This doesn't change the fact that verizon has their head jammed up their ass on this, but it does explain where they get the belief that is the way things should work.
Just my chain of thoughts on the matter:
Oh man, only on Slashdot does this kind of illustration (an apt illustration, mind you) get like twelve levels of comments. Good thing I have mush room on my screen so I could read the whole thing!
Ok, now that I've ranted, I've gotta tell you what a fun guy you are, Anonymous Coward. I will spore you and move on, but the morel of the story is that if you start talking mushrooms you had better be ready for someone to truffle with you!
--
I'll be here all week. Tip your waitresses!
blah blah blah
Catalogs: USPS
Telemarketers: Phone Service
Nearly Every Consumer Product: The Trucking Industry
Trucking Industry: Oil Industry
Educated Workers: Schools
We could play this game forever, Verizon can suck a dick.
The logical conclusion is that they are doing a bait and switch - attracting customers with an underpriced access plan and then hiking the price of getting full access.
I'm really getting sick of this "me too" stuff that's coming down from the telcos. I've got $5 that they're afraid that things like VOIP which can be run on other distribution systems (aside from telco lines) is gonna put them out of business. This just seems more of the same, almost like their trying to skim a little off the top of all the success Google gets. You don't see power companies doing this, it's pretty much the same thing.
And of course, this proposal of Verizon's is gonna end up getting costs passed onto consumers, someway or another.
Insert Sig Here
Suppose, you are an idiot. Now suppose your a major Telcom ISP provider, but I repeat myself...
(Apologies to Mark Twain)
Because there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
This sig is false.
I looked into them a while back. Their prices just aren't anywhere near competitive to local Sprint DSL (who fortunately hasn't done anything ridiculously stupid like this. Just normal stupid like a 4-hour statewide outage every month or two... sheesh.)
Unfortunately, paying twice as much for less than half the pipe isn't worth it just for that.
It strikes me that the telcos keep having this fantasy about owning the pipes AND the content on the pipes so that they can control the whole enchilada, much the way MS has managed to do so with their OS/application control. But the difference is that MS managed to leave the gate with that advantage and the telcos are trying to get to that point playing catch-up.
AFAIK "dumb pipes" will always be necessary -- the richer the application, the more data it needs, and the laws of physics as I understand them (a key disclaimer!) precludes the practicality of meaningful amounts of data riding over wireless networks (which by and large the dumb pipes guys still run anyway -- Verizon, Sprint, etc).
Since the dumb pipes guys seem to have a lock on most every technology that can realistically deliver any quantity of data now and as far into the future as my crystal ball goes, why not just be satisfied with the money made from controlling that segment? Is it just pure unadulterated greed?
Google has the content, and the means to index it. It owns the technology to make this happen. Verizon, on the other hand, has the right to run their phone lines through lots and lots of privately owned and government owned land that isn't theirs. Even the tech that makes it possible to have the internet does not belong to Verizon; there are many other ways of connecting to Google, and Verizon can easily be replaced.
In other words, Google has something to offer, and Verizon is mostly just an administrator of something that belongs to the public. The tech that makes it possible to have the internet does not belong to Verizon; there are many other ways of connecting to Google, and Verizon can easily be replaced.
If Google goes away we're back to the days where Yahoo ruled, and it takes months to index the internet, and millions of man-hours. Unless you want bad results, of course. The other crawlers can give you those.
The point is that I think maybe I'm sick of Verizon not having to pay google to use its service. Do they really deserve a free lunch from Google?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
The last hop before Google's network, from my SBC DSL, is 151.164.251.10, resolving to asn1169-google.eqabva.sbcglobal.net. They are already paying SBC for connectivity, among other ISP's.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
What's happening folks is that the telco's are using the fact that the Bush administration has 6 evil bastards in the FCC, they are attacking everything now.
The ARRL/Hams, Spectrum, telcos, TV.. It's not managed by engineers anymore, it's managed by facist politics. The cops and firefighters just learned this from the new federal budget. The children are fscked, not a bright future.
The Bush Administration wants to wiretap every thing, and at the same time they want to control the information flow with propaganda and filtering.
This horse crap is all interrelated.
Public Access TV Public Educational Government is under attack also.
deadline to write the fcc is February 13 2006 - http://www.alliancecm.org/
It's just the last non-corporate, honest, truthful signal in the spectrum being destroyed.
These fascist bastards are destroying the whole god damn world.
It's coming down to the have's and have not's.
Our Constitution is gone.
Hell I got twenty more years to live, then who gives a shit.
Glad I don't have kids.
Scorch the fucking planet, and rid us of these fucking vermin.
Same thing here. I would love to jump to Speakeasy but they just can't come near beating Verizon's price for the same speed. I know it's not their fought but I just can't justify the extra money
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
When you put it like that, it makes me wonder if those Enron execs decided to go into the telecom business.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Okay explain something to me. How is Google using their lines? Someone hops on their pc and connects to the web and opens a page served by a google server. The server sends pages to the user. This sounds like the user using the lines, not google. Google doesn't just sit there and send data to random ip's over Verizon's lines. The user is paying verizon for the use of their lines, whether they go to google or yahoo or wherever. How does Verizon figure that google is using their lines?
In other news, the Water Company today demanded that Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other soft drink companies pay them a percentage of their profits. "They take our product and use it to make a great deal of money. It isn't fair that we don't benefit." said company spokesman Joe Whiner. Across town, the Electric Company complained that it does not benefit sufficiently from the activities of aluminum smelters, who use large amounts of electricity to make large profits. The Electric Company is demanding a share of the income from aluminum above and beyond the cost of the electricity.
Camping 50ft from a high powered antena? If its that bad, then I'd suspect your phone or other signal obstruction. But then I live in the south SF bay area so I guess I'm not really one to talk about signal strength. BTW: Wise man say; "get to close to high power antena... and glow or fry you will."
That parasites like Verizon & the other telcos who have been feeding at the public trough in the form of tax breaks, write-offs, and siezing private property for "rights of way" for decades have the nerve to call ANYONE else's behavior looking for a free lunch.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
You present a good analogy, but I think there's another ways to look at this. First of all, think of an online retailer such as Amazon. Say you buy a bunch of books (i.e. over $50 worth, or whatever the minimum is to get free shipping). Because of all the business Amazon does with companies like UPS and FedEx, they get bulk shipping discounts, in which case it becomes feasible for them to offer you free shipping (in 3-7 business days), they pay very little (per customer) to ship things to you and they get the added benefit of edging out the smaller retailers by cutting their customers' costs. Now, say you want those packages delivered tomorrow. In this case, while Amazon can get you a discount for the aforementioned reasons, they're certainly not going to give that to you for free, because that cuts more drastically into their bottom line, you end up essentially paying FedEx or UPS directly for your instant gratifcation.
Now, lets say you enjoy shopping online so much, that you decide to bypass the retailer's shipping fee by becoming part of a high speed FedEx route (purely hypothetical, of course). Now, Fedex guarantees that anything sent to you via FedEx will get to you at a rate of 7Mbps^H^H^H^H^H 1 business day. Now you (and you're massive budget) get totally hooked on Amazon, and you start using it like a library, spending thousands of dollars and having the packages pipelined to you overnight. Fedex, seeing you and others like you giving so much money to online retailers, gets jealous and decides that not only do the receivers have to pay to get in this pipeline, but so do the shippers. Now, Amazon certainly doesn't want to lose your business, because your package habit is bringing them lots of money; on the other hand, they don't want to lose money out of their bottom line to fedex. What happens? Amazon raises their prices, pays the pipeliner and passes the wonderful overhead of instant gratifcation right on to you, the consumer. But wait...aren't you already paying for instant gratification? Isn't that why you subscribed to the Fedex pipeline in the first place? In other words Fedex, by attempting to tap into Amazon's revenue stream, instead just reached deeper into your pockets. It's a classic macro economics problem....extra cost on the providers end is always passed on to the consumer, in whole or in part. And, in fact, the reverse is also true. We had a problem on a freshman econ midterm that basically asked what percentage of sales tax is payed by the consumer, and what part by the provider, the answer came out to exactly half was paid by each, because essentially the provider loses a certain chunk of sales because the extra 6-8% drives away potential sales.
I guess what I'm saying is that verizon's already siphoning off a chunk of google's revenues. Hell, if it weren't for google, which, in effect, brought the power of the internet to the masses (and yes, so did yahoo, etc.), a much larger chunk of the US population wouldn't even be interested in paying for consumer broadband - which is, i'm sure, becoming a much larger part of Verizon's revenue stream.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
I'd argue that it's done well in the U.S. already. I can have a letter delivered to someone almost 6,000 miles away for the exhorbitant fee of 39 cents, and I can count the number of times I've had USPS mail (including envelopes and packages) lost or misdirected in the past 40 years or so on the fingers of one hand and still have fingers left over.
:-)
The DMVs will tend to be more location-dependent, but my local offices in central Florida have always been very easy to deal with. I did, however, have an under-21 friend a number of years ago that actually had the balls to get a replacement driver's license in his older brother's name at a Virginia Beach DMV office and got away with it. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't actually seen him do it, and I'd hate to be his brother if he got pulled over.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
If telcos can't make money out of the bandwidth charges/guaranteed service levels involved then tough shit - change your contract.
All this bandwidth goes somewhere - to customers who are paying for it.
Sounds like somebody just wants to double-dip and charge for the same bandwidth TWICE.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
"So Verizon has deliberately underpriced their service, and now they're looking to subsidize themselves by declaring that everybody else using the Internet owes them money."
That's a lot of B.S. Verizon isn't that stupid; they understand their utilization and what people use.
No, they're simply looking for more revenue streams. And if they can make a couple billion more by threating Google, Yahoo, and Amazon, then why not threaten?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
30 seconds. Including waiting for the pages to load. (cable rocks. I have no land line.)
Executives at other telecom companies, such as AT&T Inc. chief executive Edward E. Whitacre Jr., have suggested that Google, Yahoo Inc. and other such Internet services should have to pay fees for preferred access to consumers over such lines.
Doesn't he have this a little backwards? It's the consumers that are accessing the Internet services. I realize the lines blur a little but without the Internet users (ie. us) there is no reason for Google or Yahoo or Slashdot to exist.
Be evil, be very evil.
Google should counter with charging Verizon for adding value to their customers!!!
If there was no Google/Yahoo/etc. there would be no internet. How can you use the internet if you can't find what you are looking for??? Subscriptions would plumet. As a matter of fact while we are at it maybe Gooogle could black hole France and all its newspaper sites.
Doesn't common carrier status still exist?
The minute they start 'bitpooling' traffic to specific hosts, they should lose their common carrier status. End of story. It's already been said a hundred times in this particular discussion that it's like the telco's trying to charge for the same thing again...it's typical telco ideology.
Even when I was a phone guy (a few years ago), I remembered that we billed by the minute to our clients, but were charged by the second. We handled 1-800 traffic on the same page...even taking the campus that makes outgoing 1-800 numbers and putting them on a different T-1 where we were given a 'payphone' tarrif for handling the traffic a different way (that paid for the T-1 and associated linecard).
If they're saying that their current infastructure can't handle this and they need the money for 'capital improvement,' I find this very blurry. When we installed a digital phone (D-Term for you NEC phreaks), we billed that specific department *up front* the cost of: the D-Term phone ($100), 1/16th of a line card ($1200 for a line card), then charged them an additional n dollars a month because of the limited upgradability of a D-Term (you couldn't assign the LENS to a spot in a different cabinet if you wanted the ability to pick up that line or see that specific status, and since the cards take up analog line space, blah blah blah). If a small college can have the insight to do this in 2000, why couldn't a major telco do it in 2006?
Maybe they're seeing this from a different way:
What happens when all of our subscribers already are subscribing to a high-speed package and we're getting the maximum amount of market saturation that we can allow? We've already laid off enough of our workforce that we can't really afford that to take one too many hits, and we (middle management/execs) don't want to lose our jobs or take a pay cut, so, let's bill them for something again! Cha-Ching!
Freakin Greedy Bastards, anyway.
I disable sigs...do you?
Depends where you're at to be sure but more often then not it's long lines and angry customers / staff. But the USPS is a good example - been around a long time and pretty damn reliable. Still, I'd hate the idea of people going "Telco".
...from the demon spawn of a company that existed as a government-protected monopoly most of its corporate life. Being the insatiable pigs they are, they not only want to eat from the trough, they want to eat the trough, too.
The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. -- Will Rogers
I am on a Verizon fiber Internet (FIOS) service. This is what traceroute to Google looks like from my side:
... hops.
traceroute to www.google.com (66.102.7.147), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 0.966 ms 0.986 ms 0.980 ms
2 L5000.FTTP-03.PTLDOR.verizon-gni.net (71.245.97.1) 5.401 ms 4.808 ms 6.009 ms
3 P2-1.LCR-01.PTLDOR.verizon-gni.net (130.81.32.156) 5.140 ms 5.450 ms 5.820 ms
4 so-6-0-0-0.PEER-RTR1.SJC80.verizon-gni.net (130.81.17.133) 29.300 ms 31.672 ms 30.724 ms
5 so-6-1-0-0.gar2.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.79.54.1) 28.852 ms 40.849 ms 35.692 ms
6 ae-22-52.car2.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.68.123.48) 32.510 ms ae-12-53.car2.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.68.123.80) 30.30 0 ms ae-12-55.car2.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.68.123.144) 28.855 ms
7 4.79.42.254 (4.79.42.254) 29.640 ms 29.758 ms unknown.Level3.net (209.247.202.218) 29.921 ms
8 66.249.94.227 (66.249.94.227) 30.211 ms 216.239.47.146 (216.239.47.146) 35.863 ms 34.250 ms
9 216.239.49.142 (216.239.49.142) 33.698 ms 33.776 ms 216.239.49.146 (216.239.49.146) 34.859 ms
10 66.102.7.147 (66.102.7.147) 31.259 ms 29.311 ms 30.283 ms
Not all that good. Verizon should be paying Google to peer with them.
Comcast on the other hand is much worse. They are in competition with Verizon and think that more hops means better service to the customer. With us you get more
traceroute to www.google.com (64.233.161.99), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 c-24-20-142-117.hsd1.or.comcast.net (24.20.142.117) 2.617 ms 2.664 ms 2.886 ms
2 * * *
3 68.87.219.133 (68.87.219.133) 26.454 ms 31.650 ms 33.212 ms
4 68.87.216.49 (68.87.216.49) 34.742 ms 37.772 ms 40.525 ms
5 68.87.216.29 (68.87.216.29) 44.156 ms 49.472 ms 55.187 ms
6 12.119.199.21 (12.119.199.21) 60.021 ms 62.400 ms 69.163 ms
7 12.123.44.150 (12.123.44.150) 72.673 ms 76.058 ms 78.470 ms
8 12.122.84.37 (12.122.84.37) 16.749 ms 18.746 ms 19.864 ms
9 att-gw.sea.sprint.net (192.205.32.174) 22.942 ms 23.584 ms 18.205 ms
10 sl-bb20-tac-6-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.8.61) 27.672 ms 31.712 ms 34.730 ms
11 sl-bb23-tac-11-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.17.174) 35.246 ms 38.528 ms 43.706 ms
12 sl-bb22-sj-9-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.20.8) 64.023 ms 64.608 ms 65.639 ms
13 sl-bb25-sj-12-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.3.210) 67.465 ms 69.990 ms 70.980 ms
14 sl-st20-sj-12-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.20.63) 75.647 ms 79.377 ms 78.890 ms
15 sl-googl1-4-0.sprintlink.net (144.223.242.66) 124.142 ms 109.289 ms 96.300 ms
16 72.14.236.3 (72.14.236.3) 117.764 ms 121.834 ms 122.435 ms
17 216.239.46.45 (216.239.46.45) 123.431 ms 66.249.95.247 (66.249.95.247) 125.590 ms 129.033 ms
18 66.249.95.247 (66.249.95.247) 122.436 ms 125.494 ms 127.827 ms
19 66.249.94.232 (66.249.94.232) 155.248 ms 158.072 ms 159.191 ms
20 66.249.95.122 (66.249.95.122) 153.621 ms 72.14.238.234 (72.14.238.234) 154.355 ms 155.866 ms
21 72.1
I am with speakeasy too, and I am 4 hops to google
start charging Verizon for the bandwidth of my brain that they use every time they broadcast a bad TV comercial into my eyes without my permission or a TOS contract!
Ok fun aside; I pay my provider, and they pay theres and so on and so on. Google pays their provider and so on and so on.
Children, can we say "Corporate Greed" or how about "Unfair Trade Practices" or the best of all "Corporate Raketeering".
Verizon rep: "It would be a shame if your customers should develop packet loss problems."
Google rep: "Are you threating your own customers?!"
Verizon rep:"No! no! Your customers!"
Google rep:"Yes they will be soon with our new wireless network."
Google rep: "By the way; See you in court."
On a side note: No verizon phone for me. I "was" thinking about it; but i'll find another.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
I currently got 100mbit flatrate for under 18 dollars in Umeå, Sweden.
This is not because of some goverment controlled backbone, but because of a smart local energy company. What they have done and similar companies in other cities is to lay down fiber everywhere in the city. Basicly laying down fiber everytime they dig to do some water/heating/electricity maintainance and in a few years with minimal 'extra' work they got a city-wide network that they sell internet access to.
So you got a lot of cities with highspeed 'intranets' around Sweden. The companies provides access to the citynet and pay for all access outside the network. Basicly all network traffic inside the city is free, they just provide ip addresses, DNS and stuff like that, besides peering outside the network.
The national companies on the other hand want a national backbone so they either buy fiber from some of the big phone companies, buy access from the railroad company or simply create their own fiber network. But they only need to connect the citywide networks keeping the reduntant digging inside the cities (which I guess is much more expensive) down.
Meanwhile, I and most of the city enjoy high-speed internet for a low cost. The few areas that aren't connected are the ones were the last few meters are missing, house owners not wanting to pay to have someone dig and install internet in the neighbourhood.
All this was accelerated by the University getting 10mbit internet into all apartments for students 10 years ago and have since 'forced' all apartments to become connected to be attractive to young people.
I really don't get what Verizon are trying to do here. Google already pays for Internet connection. If Google is connected through Verizon, they are already paying Verizon, so there's no problem. If Google is connected through a different ISP, Verizon should be negotiating costs for their network connection to that other ISP, and Google should have nothing to do with it.
If I run a web server on my computer, will I have to pay my ISP for my connection, and also every other ISP for letting my customers use their own connections, that they have already paid for, to access my server?
How about if i do "traceroute www.google.com"? Should I have to pay the owner of every computer on that list, for letting my traffic pass through it?
Not only is Google probably paying fees for their own access (as others have noted earlier), but Verizon wouldn't be able to consider charging for Internet service, expanded service, or much else if the Government and education hadn't created the 'net in the first place. And if any of the Verizon or Bell companies got government money to make even some of their improvements, I want that money paid back when they start charging for expanded service (read "limited service for those that won't pay the ransom").
Does anyone but me think it is time that we should declare the 'net a public utility, subject to the same rules as the water and power companies?
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
Already happening. Toll roads charge more for trucks and commercial vehicles than for passenger cars, because the commercial vehicles are making money from the transport.
Another example of differential pricing: Some software companies require businesses to purchase a more expensive license than individuals and non-profit organisations, even if the business is only using the product on one computer.
Gee, if it's "their" line, why do *I* get a bill for it? Sad to say, I think they'll be allowed to get away with it until there is a administration more willing to look out for the consumer interest than one intent on reading our email. (Yeah, monkey-boi, I'm talkin' about YOU.)
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
It's also SBC/AT&T pressing this issue. You don't hear the cable companies pressing this issue, because in most places (in the USA), they already provide the best internet connections available to the end consumer. They already have bandwidth, etc provisioned for VoIP, movies, games and the rest.
It was interesting to note, that it was mentioned during the Senate committee meeting that Verizon has spent exactly $250,000,000 since the 1996 Telecom Act to upgrade its infrastructure (it was also noted, that Verizon and the other Bells promised at that time to have us all 45 mbit MINIMUM symetrical DSL lines into the home by 2005, and were given tax-free government-funded taxpayer dollars to do it with).
Assuming Verizon has 1 million paying customers for DSL at an average price of $45 per month:
$450,000,000
Multiply that by 12 months (this is not taking into account any paychecks, taxes, fees, etc Verizon has to pay).
Now, tell me again how they aren't making hand-over-foot profits while still not keeping their promises NOR paying back the tax-free loans the government gave them (using OUR taxpayer money)?
Maybe they should try improving their infrastructure even more before they go traipsing about trying to provide VoIP and video on demand.
As it was said during the hearing, "There is plenty of bandwidth out there, if you turn on your dark fiber instead of letting it gather dust." - a reference to the telcos laying alot of fiber line willy-nilly about the countryside, but only lighting up a small fraction of it.
Senator Stevens wasn't very pleased to learn that we are 16th in the world for broadband. He was also not happy about the fact that other nations have 100 mbit access and in some cases gigabit symetrical access to the home, while we are piddling around with 45-100 mbit asymertrical tops for home users and small businesses (fiber lines, and 100 mbit is exorbitantly expensive, unless you are a small business who can pass the buck onto your paying customers). He made note of how a certain telco ISP had blocked their customers from signing up with 3rd party VoIP, by not allowing traffic to go to that company's site from their network. He was proud of the fact that under certain laws passed within the last few years, it is ILLEGAL for telcos to do that. He also implied that for telcos to drop competing VoIP services into a low QOS queue would also be to their detriment if Congress catches wind of it, due to 911 emergency issues, etc.
I will reserve judgement until I see what kind of law Congress passes in this situation, but from what I witnessed today, the telcos are not making a very strong argument in their favor, and Google and the rest of the bunch are.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Verizon (and others) are clearly using the power-company's electricity to carry out their business. And they are basically getting a free lunch here! Clearly the power-company is entitled to receive their cut of Verizons profits, right?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Cheers,
Matt
This is the end of open information.
The internet will revert back to days where Compuserve and AOL each had their own internet (aka intranet).
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Eminent Domain! Eminent Domain!
I'm already paying too much for broadband! If 'they' want to increase the cost of my lil' pipe by whacking Google, et. al., then let the gov't have at 'em!
I mean, after all, if the city can bulldoze my house to build a shopping mall, certainly the feds can take back the 'net to "...promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of [unlimited broadband internet access] to ourselves and our posterity..."
Nope, I didn't read TFA, but I'm sure I know what Verizon THINKS they want...
I'll tell you folks roughly the same thing I told the CPUC at the public hearings about the SBC-AT&T merger:
Telecom and Internet is a part of our national infrastructure, just as surely as are our roads, the air we breathe, and the radio frequency spectrum. Do we let the construction companies that build and maintain the roads OWN the sections to which they've contributed their efforts? Do we let the corporations who lease segments of RF spectrum own them outright? Do we allow the contractors who build our NASA spacecraft and military equipment continue to own what they've built?
No, we don't; those roads, those radiowaves, those spacecraft and tanks and jets, being part of the common infrastructure and used for the common good, belong to all of us.
So why is it that we've allowed telecom companies, beginning with AT&T, to own the sections of common infrastructure which they've constructed? Shouldn't that infrastructure also be recognized as a commonly shared resource, one owned by all of us?
It's my contention that a grievous mistake was made more than thirty years ago, when AT&T was deemed a monopoly and partitioned. It was indeed a "monopoly", because the infrastructure which they helped create was a monolithic and commonly shared resource, exactly in the same fashion as is our system of roads.
The mistake that was made was allowing that resource to be privately owned in the first place. In partitioning AT&T, that shared resource was still privately owned but now by multiple corporations rather than one. What should have happened all those years ago is that AT&T should have been required to become some form of non-profit and truly public entity, perhaps a government agency or contractor - in the same vein as defense contractors - or a non-profit corporation with public oversight. It should not have been sectioned-up, along with our shared electronic resource.
I suspect the logic behind that mistake extends back even further in our history, to the time of the railroads. Rather than recognizing that the railroads would become part of the common infrastructure and funding their construction with that understanding and with public funds, we left it to greedy ambitious entrepreneurs to do it, and retain control of what they had built. We repeated that mistake again with the telegraph system, and yet again with the first telephones. As a nation, we should never have allowed this to happen.
Fast forward back to here and now, and this looming threat of these corporations - which still own the pieces of this national infrastructure - setting up the equivalent of toll booths at all the major intersections and deciding who has to pay and how much. The immediate problem isn't the root problem, it's a mere symptom of the much older problem.
We had the chance - multiple chances - decades ago to make the correct decision about the long-term ownership of our shared national telecom roadways. We made grievous errors then, in our capitalistic zeal; I see little likelihood those errors in judgement will be corrected now. They will be further compounded, unless we the true owners of that infrastructure finally revolt and take back the deed.
Mark
Many of these citynets in sweden are in fact financed by the public through grants from the local government or national government. Who do you think owns this energycompany - Umeå Energi? Yes, the local municipality.
Also you have the major backbone owners, telia (previously 100% state owned, now 66%), banverket (government railway), vattenfall (government owned power co), sunet (swedish university network, also government owned).
The government has a major role in the avaliability of broadband in sweden.
The idea of citynets, funded by the public and open to enterprises to deliver on, is a sound idea IMO. Much like roads; the public funds the roads, then everyone uses these roads (private persons, companies etc) to deliver their goods and services. Then these roads are build to suit the traffic. Internet-roads should be no different; the public should fund these roads and make them as big as needed; then the market and citizens use these roads as needed and without limits!!
Dear Verizon,
It has come to our attention that your internet access subscribers are utilizing bandwidth purchased by Google, Inc. for the operation of our servers and services in order to access those services.
This is simply unacceptable. Verizon shall be liable for all bandwidth costs incurred by Google, Inc. in providing services that are accessed by Verizon subscribers.
Enclosed please find your monthly invoice for services provided to your internet access subscribers.
Please note that this first invoice contains charges retroactive to September, 1998 when Google, Inc. was founded.
Please remit payment immediately to ensure continued and uninterrupted access to our services for your subscribers.
Sincerely,
Google, Inc.
Would you believe that the site on which Arthur Guinness chose to build his brewery came with the right to abstract water from Dublin's mains supply, at a low flat rate?
Presumably whoever made that agreement was expecting the construction of housing tenements or something like that. Whoops.
The city got very upset when they realised what was going on. Far too much of the city's water supply was getting turned into Guinness. The brewery was indeed getting a free lunch here. It took a long struggle, both legal and on one occasion violent, before the brewery were able to secure their water supply from the city's attempts to correct their earlier error.
It eventually became clear that the conversion of Dublin's water supply into Guinness wasn't actually upsetting anybody; quite the contrary :-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Obviously some bean counter trying to get a promotion at Verizon
But this is not about "free lunches" this is about Verizon saying "We can't make money on the net, Google is, we hate them, lets kill them ASAP". If it wasn't for sites like Google fewer people would be on the Internet, which would mean less cash for Verizon. They are just too dumb to see it.
It desperation and/or jealousy from a bunch of spoilt brats !!.
Art Makers Just an excuse to show photos of naked women !!
the telcos can even attempt to justify this.
I pay to connect to the internet on my ADSL AND I pay for my hosted server to be connected to the internet. The reason I pay both these companies is so I can make a connection between my home PC and my server.
Now my internet provider and my server host can charge me for access, because they have to pay the big-boys for those big-pipes - if they couldn't provide net access, then I'd have no reason for paying them.
Way I see it is that money pours in from both sides of the net connection and a bit is skimmed off at each level until it meets in the middle.
Perfectly good model - it works.
It has come to my attention that, pursuant to the Telecom Act of 1996 (the "Act"), that you have been receiving tax-free, interest free government loans to improve residential and commercial Internet infrastructure. These loans are funded with taxpayer money, and as such, as a taxpayer, I believe I am entitled to a share of the profits derived from such loans. Verizon has been receiving a "free lunch" at the expense of my hard-earned tax dollars, and it must be put to an end. Using "Verizon Logic," it is easy to come to this conclusion.
Since I do not know how much of my tax dollars have been used to subsidize your profits over the last 10 years, I will simply be suing you for all of my taxes for that period of time. I will give you this one-time opportunity to settle out of court. The terms of this settlement are that you must provide Internet access infrastructure that DOESN'T SUCK. I know this seems like an impossible goal to meet, so in lieu of having to provide Internet access that DOESN'T SUCK, you may pay me a one-time sum of (pinky to face) one hundred billion dollars.
Thank you for your time
Verizon can blow my balls.
I think Verizon protesteth too much. After all, they and other line owners/operators get a free lunch in the form of utility right-of-way zoning and adjustments.
Additionally, this would artificially cap any competitive market forces behind the more efficient use/leverage of said, existing utility priviledges.
Gimme gimme gimme. When are some companies going to realize that you don't win the race simply by getting on the horse? It's a race right up to the finish, and getting to the finish on the horse and with the skills you've already got is what makes or breaks successful product and service development/delivery in a market-driven economy.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
Hello,
;)
I live in EU and enjoy internet access with 30euro/month - 20 MB/s - no transfer limit + free VoIP / IPTV / binary usenet....
I always wondered why US has such bad broadband services: you pay (much?) more, for (much?) less bandwith, must not go over some transfer limit if you don't want to pay extra....
And now those ISPs, admitedly the worst in the Whole Wide World, want to charge internet services who access "their" lines...which lines you and the content provider are already paying for ?????
Seroulsy i hope i missed something here and there's more to it...perhaps google has peered into those ISPs networks without any agreement and thus are getting bandwitdh for free
But i can't understand this move, in all fairness that's google who should be asking fees to ISPs if they wan't access to google's services, afterall bandwith alone is worthless, only the content that go through has some value to the consumer...it's like having a uber-leet-terabit connection to nowhere...
PS: BTW the transfer caps are, for me, the worst in all that, it reminds me of the days when you had to pay for every minutes spent on the internet => say you need to find something on the net, but after a whole afternoon you fail, you're alredy pissed to have lost half a day of your precious time BUT you ALSO lost precious minutes of connection....i can't imagine having to stay under some transfer limit, today i can download a dvd one day, find out it's crap and throw it away in the evening without any remorse...
Following Verizon's lead, I confidently expect to see electricity suppliers charging hundreds of times more for power that is used by life-critical or business-critical machinery such as intensive care equipment and corporate servers.
By the same token, electricity that is wasted - for instance by powering lights when no one is present - should be provided free of charge. As should broadband connections while they are idle, which may well be more than 95 percent of the time. Hey, this may not work out so badly after all!
Seriously, Verizon's proposal flouts basic economics and amounts to commercial blackmail. If it refuses to supply bandwidth at the going price, someone else should be ready to step up and do so. If there is not enough competition for this to happen, it is up to government to open up the market so there is competition.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
google should buy verizon or at least ... then they can ...
a nice chuck of it
use the lines for free since they are
generating revenue for verizon whilst
being shareholders they will get a nice
chunk of change from verions profits that google
help generate
rinse, repeat!
I may be fully wrong here, but as far as I can see I pay my ISP so I can retrieve data off of any server on the 'Net that makes it's content available. It's not Google that pushes it's content on the web, it's us, the customers that retrieve it & thereby cause the trafic.
Besides, as far as I know any company *allready* pays to have a certain bandwidth available to them (just like ordinary customers do).
ISP's do *nothing more* than to provide the road to travel on.
Should, on a real-life road (apart from the difference in weight), a truck carrying gold pay more for the usage of that road than a truck carrying garbage ?
Should the postal-office be payed more to deliver an envelope containing company-contracts than to deliver a same envelope containing a holliday-card ?
No, this looks to me like the opposite of the "we are *so* used" blurb that is used by those ISP's : ISP's that want to be payed handsomely for the bandwidth, and than next to it want to have a free ride (it does not cost them anything more) on the back of (eventually !) money-generating trafic.
My two cents.
I get the feeling that Google's free ISP will be ad infested. Probably every single page will have some sort of HTTP header with "Ads brought to you by Google" or something like that. Everything that's free comes with a price...
OK, What exactly are they wanting to bill. They gotta have a billing plan, right?
Right now, they bill peers (other networks) based on traffic, users based on rate plan flavor-of-the-month (by amount of traffic, by bandwitdth or by flat rate, etc.)
What exactly are they wanting to bill now? can anyone describe how in the world they will calculate a bill? it sounds like they want to give a bill to high-traffic sites, but how will they calculate it? It seriously sounds like they are wanting to sell users (like some twisted resource) to these sites. Last time I heard, I'm not for sale. In fact, If they are "selling" me to big sites, they owe me a cut. And I'm gonna demand a contract that pays very well...after all, I'm a valuable player...er...user. I can generate traffic at the Pro level.
Either that, or it takes on the feel of "protection money": "...you've a mighty fine web site...be a shame if your connection started slowing down...."
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
scene of corporate greed out of control> [fade into smoke filled board room] [sniveling lackey wrings hands while sidling up to throne at head of table] "Lord Ivan, I know the path to swelling our company coffers beyond the ken of mortal men!" "SPEAK LACKEY! If you value your tongue!" "First we will cut labor costs by inducing thousands of middle managers to leave the company with separation packages that will leave them subject to long term unemployment!" "Yessss...." "Then we will do away with the pensions of those that remain!" "Ahhhhh...." "Finally we will charge the 'freeloaders', like Google and Yahoo, for using the networks that you, in your wisdom, bade thy serfs build!" "HA! Bwah-ha-ha-ha! I like it! Ready the accountants! Let loose the dogs of war!" [fade out of boardroom] /scene of corporate greed out of control>
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
In other news, Verizon was charged access fees by 10,000 companies because Verizon's users were accessing content on those 10,000 companies' sites.
Fifty cents per gigabyte transfer?
It's 2006! You can get a decent server with a full 100Mbit connection and 1500GB of transfer every month for anywhere from $100-150. You're getting royally screwed!
Not to fanboy for big G, but I dont think the internet would be nearly as widespread if Google hadn't made it so accessable. I mean, Google is a fucking verb. And its all my non-geek friends know.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Verizon is just trying to take back the income that VoIP stole from them. (and still is) You can't have that incrediable bulk if someone is siphoning your cash flow.
Blackholing the traffic from verizon seems like a good idea on the front but you know they do have a lot of customers who would be out of service with Google for a period of time that could be crippling. I know as a software developer, I depend on google to help answer difficult questions. I know there are other trades where new problems come up everyday and a tool such as Google is one of the best tools in your posession for finding a solution.
I understand that it appears Verizon is trying to "double-dip" the chip but at the same time, if google blocks verizon traffic, there are many side effects that are really unwanted that will affect the end users far more than the corporation itself.
The other factor here is that blocking traffic would just be a way of attempting to take things into their own hands when they should probably be going through the process that the government has set up to handle such disputes. Take this example: If somebody steals something from you, then you go shoot them in the chest, who gets arrested? (Notice that I didn't ask who you think should get arrested, I asked who actually would get arrested)
Im tired of compagnies always trying to make profit over each little bit they can find. For me its as stupid as if the government were to charges car compagnies for making profit for selling car that travel through their road. When will the revolution happen... When will humanity stop running after money and start running for its self improvment my two cent
... for their internet connections just like everyone else.
The whole idea of the internet is everyone pays their provider to be connected into the "cloud", which is some combination of public peering points, private peering points, and peering agreements directly between providers. If Verizone thinks Google is getting a free ride, maybe Verizon should have a talk with Google's access providers about it. And what about all the other customers of those same providers?
Clearly, Verizon is just not wanting to play fair with peering. They want to raise the revenues and profits, but are afraid to raise the prices on their own end. Maybe other providers should start fussing about Verizon customer's getting a free ride.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It's a simple demonstration of why Verizon shouldn't try to charge everyone for going through them. Why? Because we'll go around you. Same thing with SBC. Freeloaders? Uh, those freeloaders are what makes your service worthwhile. MS thought they could win against the internet. AOL used to say they'd never provide internet email addresses. Google isn't the internet, except to a lot of people, it is. Whenever someone says "the internet is down" we laugh. We also jump to fix whatever went wrong, and quick.
Maybe we know why Google has been buying fiber. Do the telcos really want Google to start competing directly? I'd bet on Google. They consistently get it, and remember that unlike any telco, Google's customers generally like them.
The nice thing is Google probably doesn't have to do a thing, because the first ISP/Telco to cut off or degrade their service would also probably be the last. Whoever decides they don't need Google will probably change their mind pretty quickly. The sentinels will be the tech support staff who have to explain that Google is dead to you. Once their call centers melt down completely, C?Os will start getting calls from people they care about, saying things like "If I had to choose, I'd leave you for Google in a heartbeat." Perhaps an allegory is in order here.
OCP President (To Dick):
"You're fired!"
Robocop:
"Thank you!" (Blasts Dick out window.)"
If they do not like network neutrality, just start blackhole'n packets from their network.
Let their customers know that accessing your network ain't gonna happen.
(What? You are outraged, yet are unwilling to blackhole 'em on your network? Well, when they *DO* start charging, go pay up.)
Ok, so I pay for my connection to the internet to Verizon. (Well ok, I don't but I pay my cable company. We'll assume for this scenario that I have DSL) Google pays for their connection. (No way do they get that much bandwidth for free) Now Verizon wants google to pay them an additional fee?!? For what, so I (as a Verizon customer) can access google.com? This sounds like extortion to me.
What's next? Will every site on the internet have to pay extortion fees to all major Telcos and Cable providers to have their content available on their network? This would kill the internet as we know it.
I for one hope google starts their own ISP. mmmmm.... fiber connection to google... mmmm.....
Do you get it now?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
http://muniwireless.com/community/1023
What on earth makes you think "Capping" telco higher-ups is even remotely a good idea, or a likely result of market economics?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
If Google did that, I suspect Verizon would have them so tied up in extortion lawsuits... that I can't think of a good metaphor. Just because you're a benevolent 900-pound gorilla doesn't mean you're any less a bully pushing your weight around.
And if you doubt that the definition of extortion could stretch that far, just look at the cases where abortion clincs tried to sue pro-life groups under the RICO act. If you're a business threat and you display any sign of obstructing the other person's business, you'd best be wary of RICO.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
What do they mean that they "pay"?????? I pay for those lines every month!!! Rarely do these articles mention that they ARE ALREADY GETTING PAID FOR THIS STUFF!!! Typical phone company cr*ppy customer service - they forget that me, the customer, is PAYING for a service: namely, unfiltered internet access. Could a customer sue if they started degrading the QOS for Google and others they can't extort money from? What am I thinking? They've alredy probably slipped something into the TOS that I "agreed" to that allows them to do it.
Anyone that uses Verizon should be concerned at this since essentially this is censorship and extortion. This is censoring the Verizon customer's ability to access content that they have paid to access. The Internet would not be much of what it is today without a couple key sites, Google being one of them. If Verizon is successful in this then the "free" Internet that we know will be gone since the free trade of information will be impeded by who your backbone provider deems worthy.
Maybe Google should do as others have said and both reset Verizon's page rank to 0 and place an administrative link to the search term Verizon explaining the Verizon plan. In addition, maybe they should send out a press release with the contact numbers for Verizon customers to call and stating that for a single day all Verizon customer will not be allowed to access the Google site but will be directed to a page giving instructions of where to direct thier complaints concerning Verizon's decision to impede thier ability to access Google's site.
Just my thoughts.
I cannot believe this is still getting any press.....anywhere. I can't believe this guy isn't being laughed at every time he opens his mouth. I can't believe he's still working.
What the hell is wrong with the people in this country? Did they lace the water with something that turns the average american into a complete and total F'ing moron? How could any company get away with saying things like this and still make money?
It boggles the mind.
Verizon is off my rather small list of companies I will purchase from. It should be off everyone's.
I wonder how Verizon would respond if Google replied with a 503/404 error to all IPs owned by Verizon.
I would sign on with an ISP if I couldn't reach Google with it.
-- yawn. --
"Common carrier services" are services regulated under title II of the telecommunications act. The term is indistinguishable from "telecommunication services" and specifically excludes "information services" such as Internet access. Read in re: Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service:
Now, OTOH:
Verizon, being both a telecom and an ISP, offers both common carrier services (raw capacity) and information services (Internet access). So whether they can do what they say depends, I think, on where they do it.
But, "common carrier status" isn't something you choose, AFAICT. In fact it seems most companies try to avoid being a common carrier to avoid being subject to regulation. Rather, it's a description for what you do. If you provide telecommunications services, you have to abide by the regulations applicable for doing so.
After reading the article, it's not rocket science to figure out what's going on here. Verizon has been spoiled by the cell phone model, where service providers get a piece of the pie on all the content users download. Now they want the same deal across the board - they want complete control of all the content their customers have access to so that they can nickle and dime them for content, just like they do in the cell phone market.
My advice to Verizon - if expanding your network is not profitable, then stop. Duh.
So, going with this "free lunch" topic... Would this also mean that if I pay for Unlimited Long Distance, and I happen to call Uncle Jimbo for hours on end per night, will they start contacting Uncle Jimbo about how he is getting a free ride and he needs to pay for using their phone line?
I think you're overstating Google's power a tad here. Sure Verizon will lose customers, but in the end it's a lot easier to switch search engines than it is to switch ISPs. Rule #1: Never underestimate the laziness of the average American.
Don't forget, that would mean no Gmail, no Google News, no Froogle. I think no Gmail would be a big deal, I know a TON of non-technical people that use gmail as their main email provider.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Of all companies out there that have monopolized the
internet, don't forget the big one in Redmond who
takes peoples' money and gives just a little in return.
Microsoft and all of the other big companies with
huge 'Net presence should also ante' up if GOOGLE is
forced to pay as well.
What's good for the goose.....
This is so typical. I, the customer that pays their saleries, want google on my service. But wait, google is making money from my usage of the service so, screw the customer by blocking the service or even doubling the cost of the service because now, I have to pay google so they can pay the provider that I am already paying for. Any provider that pulls this stunt needs to be boycotted by the costomers at all costs.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
The internet will revert back to days where Compuserve and AOL each had their own internet (aka intranet).
Nope, it'll never happen. It's like the cold war. Each side has too many nukes to lob at each other, and nobody will actually make the first strike.
Look at it like this: Google and other online providers are building this huge host of services. If any telco/ISP actually tries to charge them for running services over their wire, then Google simply stops running services over their wire, blocking off that section of the network entirely. Suddenly telco/ISP's customers can't access their Gmail, can't do their google searches, etc, etc. Customers bitch furiously, and start leaving ISP in droves, to competing ISP that isn't trying to be such a bastard. ISP repents and Google provides service to that segment of the network again.
No ISP is actually going to try to charge these major service providers because the end result is simply that these service providers simply cut them off. The ISP has little or no content that people actually want to use. They'd love to be in the content game, but they have proven, time and again, that they suck at it. Customers want the same content that their friends get. If my ISP does something that impacts my access to the content I want, then I'm damn well going to switch ISPs, yeah?
Google is standing up to the freakin' government to not have to release their search stats, you think they aren't going to shoot the finger to any of these ISP who tells them to buck up for use of their line? The mere fact that Google *will* cut off an ISP is enough to keep that ISP from pulling the trigger on this sort of nonsense, at least until the ISP thinks that it really can replace all the content on teh interweb.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
How much does it cost for a wired phone in your home/apartment/office? Call it about $20/month. (I know it is more in many places, but stay with me...)
Now, a broadband connection, depending on overall throughput, may cost $100/month.
Still with me?
OK - How many voice conversations can be supported over that broadband connection? More than 5? More than 10? More than 100? Anything over 5 means the provider is losing money. If someone cancels their wired phone and uses a broadband connection, the provider loses that revenue. Now, a single customer might not be too bad, the company may be providing the high-speed connection. However, it is still less revenue than there would have been.
Now, we throw in a company that sets up in your neighborhood and offers you VoIP services over their broadband connection, so you don't need to keep your wired phone. If 10 people in the neighborhood do that, then the telecomm is 'losing' money. They have less revenue than before, and less profits, they have 1 new customer paying $100 for the broadband connection, but have lost 10 people paying $20, for a "loss" of $100.
Take it to the extreme, and have someone like Google provide phone service to anyone with an Internet connection. Imagine every person in the US cancels their regular phone service to use Google's service. The telecomms go bankrupt, or they have to increase the price of broadband by orders of magnitude. Yes, the company's may be bloated. Yes, tax dollars may have paid for the telecomm to run fiber. However, this was done so services could be fairly offered to everyone. Could my town of 800 have afforded to run fiber 30 miles to the nearest city? No. However, they can pay enough for service that it is profitable to maintain and manage that connection. It is the same with roads. Some roads use federal or state dollars to get paved. They may only connect 30 or 40 people, but that's the way things are. If we didn't do it this way, there would be extensive roads around cities, connected only by the Interstates. OK, I'm kind of off-topic now...
Anyway, the current market prices are because the revenue stream assumes that there will be wired home users paying more than their bandwidth is worth, as compared to a broadband Internet connection. If they lose those customers, it means that the cost for Internet bandwidth will rise - dramatically. So, they would rather have a company providing those services pay more, rather than having the cost pass on to all of their users.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
"The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers,"
:-)
Don't they know that the total cost of ownership of a linux server is magnitudes higher than that of a Windows server?
The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.
to the content roviders who make people want to purchase their isp services?
after all, they'd be hypocrites if they take away someone else's untethical "free lunch" while still chewing on their own unethical "free lunch," right?
fair is fair, right?
greed and envy.
I pay for an internet portal. I used to use QWest, but have gone to Comcast. Either eay, I am paying $45 to access the internet.
Google is paying for their internet access as well. They are using something along the lines of T3, DS3, or OC3 connection(s) which also cost money. Both Telco and Cable companies are using the lines for dual access, one for POTS lines and DSL the other for Cable TV and Internet.
I don't pay for Cable TV as I have satellite, but I don't/can't use Satellite Internet. I don't have a POTS line because I have VoIP, and I don't use DSL.
I know the telco is worried about their $$, but they should provide internet service and VoIP and skip the POTS crap. Even if someone doesn't use the DSL connection, it wouldn't hurt the Telco to charge the $30 a month for VoIP just like they do for POTS. They simply wouldn't give you a DSL Modem, only a VoIP modem.
Either that, or cable providers who offer internet need to support highter bandwidth, like the DS3 and OC3 and higher...then we could cut Verizon and QWest (etc) out of the internet portal picture...
They complain about a free lunch, but as far as I can tell, everyone is paying for their access and usage of the phone lines...just because VoIP and other services directly come into conflict with what Verizon and QWest provide, shouldn't make any difference...the internet is one large marketplace... If they limit or restrict access, then they will be engaging in unfair business practices, or forcing alternatives to their service, which will further bomb their bottom line.
--E--
Well, there was coverage of a Congressional hearing on CSPAN last night over this very issue, with a panel including Lawrence Lessing, an Internet 2 guy, an economist, and some industry spokesperson from a group with a typical name like "Freedom and Progress Foundation". Basically Larry and the Internet 2 guy were really trying to make the case that the existing policy of neutrality was the entire reason that the internet is as successful as it is today, and that "access tiering" which would restrict competition should not be allowed.
:(
Unfortunately I can't find any record of this on CSPAN, and all the TV schedules just read "Congress" "Congress" "Congress" with no details.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
If this works out for verizon, it's going to kill Google. Who's next after this? Apple?
I write sig's like I know what I'm talking about.
i think this is an argument in response to the news a couple of weeks ago about google and internet companies complaing and threatining litigation against big Telcos over the use of access pipes to homes for verizon TV services (a bandwidth hog) and not leaving enough bandwidth for other data traffic(i.e. internet). So my point is, nothing is going to happen, its just a little bickering amongst bed fellows(neither would be as profitable without the other)
This is an interesting issue in DC at the moment. The house is ready to move already on this issue, and will give the telcos everything they want (and the cable guys get what they want too). The senate is moving more slowly, luckily. The main concern seems to be ultimately do property rights of network owners trump the economic growth of the edge entities. Common carriage isn't the issue here because the Internet is not common carriage (as a term of art) but neutral to the content that travels on it (as a design element). This point was rather well made by Vint Cerf at the hearings. The other really interesting speaker was Internet2 CEO Gary Bachula - his statement that effectively undercut the "network management" argument was "we have most cheaply solved the packet prioritization issues by simply increasing the bandwidth, rather than prioritizing packets" - the fact that the network owners are trying to prioritize packets at greater expense than simply increasing the overall available bandwidth to everone is exactly the point: the creation of scarcity is the key to profit. It is in the network owner's interests to compete on price on the bottom end of the "bandwidth spectrum" to gain customers then charge content providers to access "their" customers. Competing with each other on increasingly fast bandwidth is as profitable for network owners as the digital camera market is for manufacturers - namely not at all. What we will see in the absence of real net neutrality rules is increasingly long broadband contracts with very low teaser rates (AT&T now offers 12.95 for the first three months) then an increase in monopolistic rent extraction from content providers. We'll end up seeing something that looks like Google's adwords strategy which is "we'll let anyone get priority access to our customers, but it will go to the highest bidder" The only problem with that is that it's bad for the economy when it applies to all possible content rather than the subsection of content that's sold through one of many redundant marketplaces.
Telcos are regional companies in the US. what they are controlling is access to "their" customers (that means us). It wouldn't matter if Qwest didn't play this game, because they don't compete against AT&T.
This really does look like a case of "Greedy SOB" Telco, and apparently, Verizon is either unable or unwilling to realize that there's a difference between being a Service Provider and a Content Provider.
...ie, the SERVICE. The consumer already knows to go wander whereever they want for content (including Slashdot!)
... aka "Voodoo Economics".
There's already been many studies that show that what most consumers want from an ISP is simple access
Its the customer...holder of the pursestrings...who decides who gets paid for what. For Verizon to try to force their agenda upon their paying customers is a Supply Side push
-hh
"The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers" One thing no one has mentioned is, isn't Google the one that is investing millions into serious research and development, coming up with new innovative services and ideas? And isn't Verizon the one who is just chugging along, not really doing much that I've noticed, charging the same old fees for the same old boring service which is quite literally the modern equivelant of the post office? And another thing-- if Verizon did actually implement a policy which resulted in degraded service for Google, or for that matter any website, including some tiny personal website that some dude out of Arizona was running, do you reckon Verizon customers might have a basis for a class-action? That's basically fraud, you know-- taking your 50 bucks a month, promising you something in exchange (service to the internet), and then refusing to deliver it to you, or delivering it in damaged condition not agreed upon.
Octal Bit? I only WISH I had had access when I was
a kid to the stuff they're smoking now.
Bit - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit
In short... Bit is Binary digIT. It may have one of
two values - hence the "Binary" part of the acronym.
Those values, in the base two system are:
(get ready for it)
1 ond 0
By convention, you only get eight of these critters per byte. There have been some exceptions - Univac for a while had 9-bit "bytes" - which were conveniently represented as three octal valus - as opposed to the 2 4-bit hexadecimal values we more commonly see today. But, unless you've got a quantum compooter, there are no octal bits.
Is this ringing a bell?
Now click your ruby slippers together three times and go back home.
Sheesh.
I'm sorry, what was rule #1 again?
What if we all stopped using Telco...or at least everyone that could stopped using it?
What if we all went to a cable provider? WHat if we all moved to VoIP from Vonage over our cable connections?
What could Verizon possibly do about it? The Cable company isn't TELCO but still provides IP...and they give you better bandwidth...
We can shut this all down in a hurry if we quit paying Verizon.
--E--
Sure money comes from the goverment but there isn't a 'goverment owned' or 'goverment controlled' backbone in the way of how the roads are owned. There isn't a single govermental backbone.
I'm fairly sure Marx would have agreed with your view of utlimate amoral capitolism. Of course, for some reason he also believed that comunism would not suffer the same amoral failings. Interesting how one man can be so right and so wrong at the same time, no?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln