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Net Neutrality Debate Crosses the Atlantic
smallfries writes "The network neutrality debate has raged on in the States for some time now. Now broadband providers in the UK have banded together to threaten the BBC, who plans to provide programming over 'their' networks. The BBC is being asked to cough up to pay for bandwidth charges, otherwise traffic shaping will be used to limit access to the iPlayer. 'As more consumers access and post video content on the internet - using sites such as YouTube - the ability of ISPs to cope with the amount of data being sent across their networks is coming under increasing strain, even without TV broadcasters moving on to the web. Analysts believe that ISPs will be forced to place stringent caps on consumers' internet use and raise prices to curb usage. Attempts have been made by players in the industry to form a united front against the BBC by asking the Internet Service Providers' Association to lead the campaign on the iPlayer issue. However, to date, no single voice for the industry has emerged. I thought that the monthly fee we pay already was to cover access ... but maybe it only covers the final mile and they need to be paid twice to cover the rest of the journey."
I'm going to hunt down the relevant addresses and start sending letters. The BBC pay for their bandwidth usage. I pay for mine. At what point are the ISPs getting short-changed in this equation?
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I do not understand the idea of random networks charging content providers for their bandwidth.
I already pay *my* ISP for my bandwidth.
Content providers already pay *their* ISPs for their bandwidth.
My ISP wants to charge the content providers for delivering their content?
So that means my intraweb tube becomes free for me, right?
The ISPs screwed themselves over. They let the consumer pay some amount for a specific amount of bandwidth. However, they can't actually guarantee that consumer that bandwidth anymore. For example, cable has various hubs, each with bandwidth that is split amongst its users (usually a town or city will share a number of hubs depending on its size). They told its users they'll get x amount of bandwidth, but they based that amount on the bad assumption that everyone won't be online at the same time. They severely underestimated how drawn to online content the world would be so now they're getting flooded with users and not enough bandwidth to handle it. Instead of blaming themselves, they'll blame the content providers and say thats why they can't handle the traffic anymore. The content providers are somehow unfairly causing too much traffic for them to handle. The problem is, the ISPs promised the world more than they could actually deliver and now they're trying to shift the cost onto someone else. Each side pays for its bandwidth (consumers & content providers), but now the ISPs are actually being burdened with upholding their side of the deal and somehow that's unfair.
The ISPs never should have promised the amount of bandwidth they're offering, and charging for, if they can't actually deliver it.
I pay, I pay $50 give or take every month to connect to the internet. I pay, I pay $24.99 every month to keep my site up so other people can look at it with their paid internet connection. Someone has to pay, but I guess the money I pay every month doesn't count toward that goal does it.
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I don't see what they're trying to charge for though. I pay for my bandwidth. The content providers pay for theirs. It sounds like the ISPs just can't actually provide what we actually were told we were paying for. They should expand their bandwidth to handle the traffic. Neither side is actually 'over-using' their bandwidth. Neither side should pay more just because they are actually using what they paid for.
Power plants band together to force GE into paying a surcharge on their light bulbs. Spokesperson for the electricity industry said "These bulbs will suck up a sizable portion of our power generation."
The problem is that ISP's everywhere have dug themselves in a PR hole, for some time now.
See, the move to "unlimited flat-rate internet access" was in a day and age when there wasn't that much to do on the 'net. The average user would read a few emails, maybe answer them too, but that's mostly time without any actual data transfer, and read a few web pages. Web pages which too meant a lot less graphics than today. And online games meant mostly MUDs and some cutesy java games on some website. (EQ and UO and AC did exist, but they accounted for maybe 1% of the internet subscribers.)
God knows AOL had plenty of subscribers who didn't complain, at a time when (at least in Europe) their ISDN service had 2000-4000ms ping to the second node in the traceroute, and bandwidth wasn't much better either.
So basically they sold you a service on the assumption that you wouldn't use much of it.
The drive to advertise higher and higher access speeds, again was mostly driven by marketting. Backbone speeds didn't increase proportionally, or in many cases at all. Again, the assumption was that you wouldn't actually use most of it. Sure, maybe the email with pic you send mom would upload faster, but then you wouldn't do much on the net for the rest of the day. Basically it's more like burst speed, than sustainable speed for everyone.
Unfortunately, what you pay for internet access doesn't even come close to paying for 24/7 usage of the whole bandwidth they advertised, and they know it.
Even more unfortunately, now the idea of unlimited unmetered access is so entrenched in everyone's mind, that it's a bit like an ISP game of chicken. Whoever is the first to not stay the course, and announces that they're reverting to pay per minute or pay per MB, has lost. But, like with the real game of chicken, if noone gives up, everyone loses a bit later.
Trying to go after the providers of such massive data streams is, basically, the band-aid. If they can't charge the users more, then, well, maybe they can try to charge BBC more. Or maybe they can stop BBC from making their users use more bandwidth altogether. Ditto for trying to demonize the users who actually use the bandwidth advertised: unpopular as it is, it's less of a seppuku maneuver than just admitting that the old model is breaking down and they're reverting to making you pay for how much you use.
To compound the problem, here's another thing they didn't count on: your using the upload bandwidth. The traditional model has been that some site publishes the content, and pays for that bandwidth, while you only download it and at most send a few emails and the HTTP requests/ TCP/IP handshake upstream. Basically the content providers would subsidize your broadband. Every 1 MB you download would be 1 MB that some web site paid for. Then the ISPs would divide that loot according to how much each pushed on the others' network.
Unfortunately nowadays more and more traffic is P2P or VOIP, between users which all are on such unmetered unlimited access plans. When you download 1MB via P2P, that's 1 MB that noone really paid for. That's not how that pricing model was supposed to work. It was supposed to be "free" for you, only because someone else paid for it. Or better said, it was never "free", it was just that someone else paid the tab.
With P2P, that model breaks down, because noone pays the tab. The ISP is left not only with a bunch of used download bandwidth that noone pays for, but actually ends up paying to the backbone for the upload part of it.
And again, it's a bit of a game of chicken: noone wants to be the first one who just announces that they're starting charging per MB uploaded.
Admittedly, the latter isn't "solved" by trying to extort BBC, but going after such sites looks like the easiest way out anyway. Maybe they can make them pay more for the bandwidth left after P2P and VOIP.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not very sympathetic to that approach, and that's putting it mildly. Just saying that, if you were wondering what's their problem, there you go. That's what it is.
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