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Will ISPs Spoil Online Video?
mrspin writes "last100 writes: "With an ever greater amount of video being consumed online, many Internet users are in for a shock. There's a dirty little secret in the broadband industry: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) don't have the capacity to deliver the bandwidth that they claim to offer. One way ISPs attempt to conceal this problem is to place a cap of say 1GB per-month per user, something which is common in the UK for many of the lower-cost broadband packages on the market. Considering that a mere three hours viewing of Joost (the new online video service from the founders of Skype) would all but use up this monthly allowance, it's clear that lots of Internet users aren't invited to the party. But what about those who (like me) pay more for 'unlimited' broadband access? There shouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong." The article then goes on to discuss the recent trend of bandwidth throttling based on techniques such as packet shaping which punishes p2p traffic whether it's legitimate or not."
The ISPs (Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, etc) see P2P as competition for services that they offer, either currently, or in the future. Why get video or other data for free (after having payed your ISP for access) when they can charge you for it, control what you get access to, and charge a premium for premium content? The ISPs by law can not examine what data is being transmitted without loosing common carrier status (at which point, they get a lot more government regulation). So they do the traffic shaping to get around the regulation issue while degrading any possible competition to their own premium services. This is what the whole net neutrality fight is really about. The ISPs want more money for selling you content. Claiming that they don't have enough bandwidth is just an excuse.
Here in the US, most of the services I've seen that offer unlimited bandwidth don't have a lower-cost option that offers limited bandwidth. If the market for un-throttled P2P bandwidth grows, perhaps the ISPs should offer tiered service. Personally, I don't mind the pay-as-you-go model. In short, I want a service that combines TV, radio, phone service, and internet access, and I want to only pay a $100/month fee. If this isn't enough to get the on-demand video I want, perhaps I'd consider that as a premium option, but frankly, $100/month seems like it should cover me for the kinds of realistic use that would be done in my house. Also, I sure-as-hell don't want to be locked into AT&T for all those services, and net neutrality in the form of non-discrimination against packets based on origin needs to be enforced.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Nobody has a problem paying for what they use. However, plans here in the US generally aren't sold as "x amount of data per month, then y amount of money for every z amount of data over x" but as "unlimited bandwidth until you stop paying us." Actually, I don't know of any broadband service (here broadband being defined as cable/dsl, since those two are the ones that a consumer is most likely to use) that advertises "x amount of data per month, then y amount of money for every z amount of data over x." The companies here in the states have severely screwed themselves. If they actually begin advertising "x amount of data per month, then y amount of money for every z amount of data over x," then there will be consumer outcry, because before they thought were getting "unlimited bandwidth." Even if they actually weren't, they thought they were. Of course, this leads to the whole net neutrality thing, but really the telcos here want to get more money out of the government (supposedly to build new lines, although they have received such money countless times before and nothing got built) and to legally have more control over what goes over their lines, with the obvious orwellian implications that may have.
When broadband became widely available, it worked for them to push speed and ignore the issue of traffic volume as only a small minority of subscribers were capable of using large amounts of bandwidth. Safe to advertise the unlimited abyss Internet service as it appeared that way for all intents and purposes to the subscribers.
The explosion of Internet video (and other rich content) has now provided the catalyst for the "average user" to generate significant data transfer volume, and it was never the case that they could actually provide unlimited access to everyone all the time. It was a statistical game really =).
What would interest me is what effect this is going to have on the cost of broadband in the near future. This is my living so I'm content paying more for a better quality connection; however, what kind of service can the "average user" realistically expect for $30/mo. or whatever. A marketing faux pas if they end up hurting their own business getting users used to the idea that unlimited data volume in and out of your home was actually something you can get cheaply.
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~AC
This problem pops up regularly on the web. I feel sorry for you people that actually encounter it IRL, because in Sweden, and I'm sure in many other countries aswell, this is not an issue.
24/1 or 21/3 Mbps DSL lines in Sweden go off for ~25/mo. If fiber is available 100/10 Mbps go for the same price. It's been this way for the last five years, and people have been playing online games, sharing files et.c. like crazy. I've never heard of anybody that had problems with their ISPs for too heavy traffic, not even with the cheaper plans.
And right now, the good old bastards at ComHem is digging to provide 4 Gbps bandwidth for every household in my neighborhood. Granted, the plan is supposed to include TV, internet and phone lines in it, but still.
What kind of crappy ISPs do you have that limit your internet access in this way? And why the hell do you accept it? Start rioting!