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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?
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
The sooner everything uses encryption, the sooner this type of idiocy will be impossible.
Encrypt every protocol. If it's a legacy protocol, pass it over an encrypted tunnel. Governments can't censor and corporations can't selectively extort when to them all bits are just bits.
Bandwidth is a commodity. Encrypt, and these people will have to treat it like one rather than abusing their monopoly/cartel positions to implement artificial restrictions and surcharges.
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 article doesn't go into much detail, but from what I've read the deal goes something like this.
BBC to ISP/IPP == Hi I have an idea for a website/web based product let's hash out the details.
ISP == oh yeah, great send that money right over here. We're the internet we can do anything.
ISP/IPP actually looks over the details... wait.. we'll be needing more money if you want that service we just agreed to.
That's not right, if a company cannot keep it's part of the bargain they should not have made the deal in the first place.
This reminds me of an ISP I dealt with a few years ago when DSL was just gaining popularity. My predecessor made a deal that we would get free unlimited bandwidth for the school I worked at, in exchange for free classes for some of their employees. After I took over we went from about 3GB a month to close to 25GB. The ISP called and wanted to renegotiate. I said no, unlimited is what the contract says, unlimited is what I'm getting. You may be able to limit the speed at which I download, but you can't limit the amount of time I'm hitting that at 100%.
They did so, and I started removing their employees from the classes. Sometimes in the middle of the class.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
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.
...perhaps the ISP's should complain to Sky/Virgin since many people are now viewing Sky news reports through the
website portal rather than through the TV channel.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
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.
There is something i am clearly missing here and I hope one of you kind sirs could enlighten me on:
The content provider (youtube/bbc) pay for UPSTREAM bandwidth with their ISP. This covers the costs of users coming to the site and downloading data.
Then the users pay for DOWNSTREAM bandwidth with their ISP. This covers the cost of the isp downloading data from the content provider's isp.
Is someone getting money from two directions there AND wanting more ? Even if there is no overlap of payments for costs, etc, based on the above two lines it seems like everyone's getting paid for providing the bandwidth ? Or is it the question of ISPs saying "yes, you pay for bandwidth (upstream or downstream) but you are using too much of it and we'd like to charge you more for some of the services which use up too much of the bandwidth you paid for ?
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.
It's not a united front against the BBC, although I'm sure they'd like to portray it that way.
It's a united front against their users who want to pay for "unlimited access" and actually receive same.
This is monopolistic behaviour. From the Reg (talking to Lord Currie, chairman of OFCOM):
They'd better stop trying to strong-arm the BBC into paying for service, anyone who disagrees with these attacks on the free market should give OFCOM a ring. I've contacted them before, aside from being very informative/helpful, the number of complaints has an effect on whether they think they should intervene (assuming the complaint is valid of course).
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
Then it sounds like a warning to the BBC: "If you make this service live, then we will have to charge you more." Simple economics?
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."
But consumers as well as companies already pay for the bandwidth they use. If the ISP's feel they are not adequately compensated, they can charge their customers more.
The BBC isn't trying to get anything for free here, they pay for their internet connection and their consumers pay for there's as well, the ISP shouldn't expect anything beyond that. Threatening to throttle traffic from a particular site unless the owners pay up amounts to nothing more than extortion and it's a shame that the greedy ISP owners who think differently won't get treated to the same punishment that Vinnie the Protection Racket Thug would get for the same crime.
Of course someone has to pay, but the problem is that internet companies have been effectively lying about what you're paying for. They say "Unlimited usage for $X", when really they meant 'As much usage as we think the average Joe will use for $X', and when the average Joe starts using a WHOLE lot more bandwidth than the ISP budgeted for, suddenly their $X doesn't cover the usage anymore, so it becomes non profitable.
In Australia we've always paid a lot for our internet in comparison to you lot, but by the same token there's always been a clear statement of how much bandwidth you're buying. Xgig costs $X a month... simple... use it for whatever you like, streaming video, porn, emails, whatever, you've paid for Xgig of bandwidth.
It's when it's the vague 'unlimited' claim that the ISPs get worried. You really should be moving towards plans where you pay for a certain amount of bandwidth, then everyone is happy.
It's us vs 'them' people, and there are more of us than there are of 'them' so let's vote to take what 'they' have got! Because 'they' aren't us and no one will ever vote to take what you have*!
*Civil liberties and privacy excepted.
Now we are in an era of "inter-BBS" where the ISPs charge you but also let you browse the others "BBS". Since ISPs offer to host websites I'm considering them as the modern BBS. Now the problem is that some users are becoming competitors to these ISPs by providing services and thus are a new breed of "BBS" and they are making money instead of the ISP having full control. But who are managing the wires outside? The ISPs. So do we give all the rights to the ISPs or do we now declare that the Internet's hardware be owned by governments so that all of the citizens pay for the services?
Like the others have said someone has to pay the bill. If the users start to make more money than the ISPs then they should make sure parts of their earnings go into the development of the Internet right? Which is partly why the ISPs are currently bitching about all this.
I strongly believe the governments should invest and build the physical foundations and rent it to the users. Henceforth the Internet would be a service made by the people for the people.
I agree that this would go against the anarchistic Internet many of us wants but for upload and download speeds and efficiency of resources this would be great. I'm of course assuming that bureaucracy will not kill the whole process.
Anyway, if you really want privacy there will always be Tor networks and the old school BBS right?
If it's such a freaking concern to the ISPs of the world why don't they just come up with a few colo (coloation) agreements for those companies that they claim are using too much bandwidth. They ISPs are complaining that youtube et al are using too much bandwidth and I would like us to remember that according to This article Windows Update is using quite a bit of bandwidth itself. One has to wonder why MS isn't being targeted by the ISPs.
load "$",8,1
Welcome to the Internet's version of Moore's law. Your contract with the ISP is just as extensive as the ISP's contracts with each other, and with the content providers. As economics of the situation changes, those contracts come under pressure of being broken. Once broken, liability ensues. The issue at hand is the bottleneck of an individual ISP, when all their costumer contracts say one thing, and then all these services blindly increase the amount of possible throughput to these individuals. If you want to be able to access these new programs, someone has to pay.
Yes. Someone has to pay, thank you for stating the all elusive fact in this discussion. I mean, who would have thought someone would have to pay for usage. /sarcasm
... Are ... Calling ... Them
Now tell me, when you call someone with your phone, does the other party have to pay? No. They don't. You are calling them. Let me slow it down a bit:
You
So therefore, you pay for the phone call. Oh yes, there are special mechanisms which can ask permission to get the receiver to accept the cost, but that is a special case.
This case is exactly the same: the end user is requesting a service (making a call) and someone is answering the call. Why should they have to pay for it as well when we already are.
This issue, as it has been stated many times before, is about ISP's double dipping, not that someone has to pay for services.
Comparing this issue to the case with "Free To Air" television is a ridiculous comparison. Nothing is ever free, and free to air television uses advertising as it's revenue stream. ISP's have paying customers already as their revenue stream. Apples and Oranges. The theory goes that advertising should only creep in if a base cost is not being met. In preference to advertising, if that means that ISP costs go up to end users then so be it - and if some customers don't want to accept the extra prices they might have to accept advertising in their connection.
I think what you're interested in is that _you_ don't want to pay for the cost of the service _you_ are requesting. Think about it for a while.
then we will have to charge you more." Simple economics?
The problem with your economics is that they're not charging the BBC at all right now because they have absolutely no business relationship with them.
The situation these carriers want is no different than if you had a phone on the AT&T cell network and Verizon billed you (at whatever rate they wanted since you don't have a contract with them setting one, let's say $5000 a minute) for calling a friend on the Verizon network, after all you were "using" their network. Oh and by the way, your friend still had to pay his phone bill for the minutes he used to talk to you.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
As people have mentioned, right now the ISP's are essentially double dipping. The content providers pay for upstream, and the consumers pay for the same except downstream. So basically they want to triple dip? Have both parties pay for the same bandwidth and also collect a portion of revenues? Seems like some kind of con job to me.
As far as caps and shaping etc, look at South Korea. There are literally millions of people uploading and downloading gigabytes individually every single day to "web drives" such as fileguri, oudisk, and ed2k services like pruna. They do massive video conferencing, online banking, video on demand, streaming radio. They can do this because the infrastructure can support it. They also have dmb, which is basically h264 video streamed over terrestial or satellite to portable devices. On top of this they're also rolling out massive wifi/wimax/wibro capabilities. I can't speak for europe, but as far as the US goes, where has all the taxes, both directly taken from billing and indirectly through government subsidies gone? Where is the fiber to the curb that's been promised for years going on decades?
Frauds.
Yes, providers will have to raise prices or impose stringent caps.
This is what happens when people start trying to use a hugely oversold service.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
But that's the point of my post, if the ISPs charge based on bandwidth then where is the problem? They've budgeted for you using your allowance, who cares what you download? A new service that streams tv comes along and you find yourself always reaching your bandwidth cap... so you pay more and increase your bandwidth limit, or, you just don't watch as much.
You get the content you want at the price you're prepared to pay... where's the problem?
I know it's flamebait, but I'll bite.
Yes I guess I am a prick. I expect to receive the goods and or services for which I have and continue to pay for.
$75,000 worth of free education, with up to another $25K is not nearly enough to pay for such spectacular service.
15 times through both the Sun Solaris admin, and Cisco CCNP programs with 5 more yet to be named students is not enough to pay. I should certainly think of the poor ISP that doesn't make enough money. I should certainly think of their operating costs. I should certainly think that when I don't get what I pay for; the other guy must certainly be right.
FUCK YOU... that felt good. Let me say it again, FUCK YOU
For what it's worth, I'm no longer at that school. Poor business decisions caused it to go bankrupt.
Poor business decisions like trading seats for goods and or services with companies who expect to be able to renegotiate.
And I'm a jerk, for allowing my students access to the internet so they could do various research on the net. (that made up the majority of the extra bandwidth, could not have possibly been my addiction to the distro of the month club circa 2002), for allowing remote access for students, so they can access network shares from home, for creating labs that could both access and be accessed from anywhere on the web. I'm a prick for giving the students what they paid for and more without asking for more money from them (yes we did hike the prices a bit after, but we didn't go to current students and ask for more.)
Oh, anonymous coward. I guess you "got" me. Get me fired from a job I don't have anymore. Where I was underpaid, and certainly over appreciated. Next time though, why not post as yourself instead of hiding behind the mask of anonymity.
and if you want to get me fired from my current job... good luck.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
Without wanting to defend them, I think the issue is similar to that of banks.
If everyone went to the bank and asked to empty their account, the bank couldn't do it.
Similarly, ISPs have entered into contracts on the basis that most people won't actually use all the bandwidth they've paid for. That assumption is (theoretically*) factored into the price the customer pays.
If customers all start using rich-media web tools (like BBC video), then the ISPs will struggle to deliver. This will mean they'll have to invest in more infrastructure, and raise prices (for apparently, the same service). They're wanting to companies like the BBC, rather than customers, who are accustomed to paying the lower rate.
Customers will ultimately have to pay, whether it's by increased ISP fees, subscriptions to rich media sites, or by watching adverts.
This has nothing to do with TV companys get a "free ride" and everything to do with slimey telco's over subscribing their network, and then lieing about it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The ISPs don't want a comparison with television content, then the content providers would want paid in order for the ISPs to carry the content on their networks. Look at cable tv for an example, even the networks with more commercials then content charge the cable companies for carrying them on their network, even though they are currently broadcast for free.
Well, it's actually quite simple.
EVERY ISP will "overbook" their bandwidth, and bet on users NOT using it to the fullest all the time, hence being able to get away with it.
Do you honestly believe an ISP expected you, as a "home user", to use up your full bandwidth 24/7 a couple of years ago when they started offering "cheap, unlimited broadband" ?
Hell no, they expected you, on average, to use up about as much as they priced the "cheap package" for, because (they believed) there wouldn't be that much data you could get over the internet that might possibly be interested in on a daily basis.
The problem is that nowadays, people are more likely to use up more bandwidth for longer periods of time... be it a torrent download, internet TV/radio or just old regular (but large) downloads.
So now, the people who "run" the show find they can no longer get away with their overbooking... and instead of "getting more bandwidth" themselves, are going after the people who are likely to generate that increased bandwidth demand.
Pure, simple, unadulterated greed and lack of forethought. That's what's going on. Nothing else.
Know what the flipside is ?
You, the consumer, ACTUALLY paying for what the bandwith you use up is worth, at the ISP side... plus their cut, of course, you can't expect an ISP to run on charity, or do you ?.
In most cases, this would translate in heavily increased rates compared to those you're used to now.
Or, you know, we can always go back to the "pay for traffic" model. That would work just fine... but then again, nobody would take it.
Of course, there's always the alternative of ISPs actually getting a lot more cheap broadband, but that requires infrastructure and indvestment, and in any profit-driven economy, this is not all that good for bussiness, especially when the current model "works just fine" (for them).
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
DivX uses the Advanced Simple profile (which would fall in the first of the above list). And yet MPEG-4 can be expanded to use sprites/panorama, animated textures, 2-D animated meshes, 3d-Meshes, natural sound... and you thought DivX was state-of-the-art. <nelson>ha hah!</nelson>
This is a simple matter of greed.
AT&T is more greedy than a beta wolf.
This so-called "net neutrality" is bad business.
it's nothing but greed. There is no other way to describe it. Unless you like "double-dipping"
These few network owners want to charge a premium for allowing commercial traffic on "their" networks.
Everyone pays a subscription fee for accessing the internet. They pay based upon how much bandwidth or throughput they use.
Network owners have peering agreements to share network access. These peering agreements are all based in the same facility and some times in the same room.
Net Neutrality: treating every packet as equal.
What they want: denying or delaying packets whose owners don't pay the ransom.
They're using their grammar skills there.
So it's just a simple matter of which side is greedy and which is not? So Google is for Net Neutrality out of the kindness of their heart...not because they don't want the increased costs for themselves? Oh I see. Some companies are greedy and others are not. That is why companies increase prices or decrease limit supply. It's simply about greed. That settles everything. Right....
Creative Demolition
If the infrastructure cannot handle what they are selling, then they should not be selling it. It's very similar to renting out space in an apartment building by the pound, but selling more pounds of space than the building can take - because not everyone is going to be there are once, right? And then you force the people using the building to pay for upgrading it so that it can handle what they paid for.
Everything is subjective.
Look how many governments are banning incandescent bulbs: Australia, The Netherlands, California, Ontario, etc.
An outright ban bothers me.
-Stu
Fortunately it seems unlikely they'll be able to make this stick. Nowadays, at last, there's some degree of choice of broadband providers for most people in the UK. In fact, usually more choices for ISP than there are television companies. So who needs who most ? If my ISP won't do BBC, it's not likely I'll be dropping the BBC for some other station. I'll be dropping the ISP.
Now tell me, when you call someone with your phone, does the other party have to pay? No. They don't.
May I assume that you don't use a cell phone in the US? Because there, even when you receive a call, it's a race to see which runs out first, the battery, or your credit.
What?
The whole point is that the infrastructure *could* handle what they were selling, because people weren't using all their bandwidth. Since this is no longer the case, prices will go up and it'll seem like the average customer will pay more for the same bandwidth/speed. However, the truth is that the average customer will actually be using *more* bandwidth (because of rich web-media, more customers will max out their plan)
They're trying to get companies like the BBC to pay them, so that they don't have to increase upfront charges to their customers. I don't know, they must expect customers to be hostile to price increases...
Are you retarded or what? You make a simple problem complicated. The problem is simply that ISPs are saying that we have "unlimited" connections, because it sounds better in their advertising, while in reality we do not. Now they demand extra money if we would like to use all the bandwidth in our "unlimited" connections. That shows that they haven't been honest with us, and should be sued for false advertising.
The ISPs have nobody else to blame but themselves.
I just described the chicken and the egg problem, did I?
Well, if it's THAT simple, why do ISPs seem to have such a problem comprehending it?
Let's call ISPs the chickens and content (from content providers, of course) the eggs, alright? I chose this arrangement because a customer relies on the ISP to give them content, much like a henkeeper relies on the chicken to give them eggs.
You see, when a chicken quits putting out eggs, or begins doing so more slowly, the henkeeper quits caring for that chicken as it is no longer profitable (read: it becomes a waste of time) to do so. They replace that chicken with one which will produce eggs.
To paraphrase what I just said, when an ISP quits giving access to content, or begins doing so more slowly, the customer quits caring for that ISP as it becomes a waste of time to do so. They replace that ISP with one shich will provide access to content.
You're right, chicken and egg; except that, in this case, if the chickens all died, the eggs would find another way to be made.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Problem is it doesn't work that way now, you do have a business relationship with them viz-a-viz your current provider. If I recall correctly, AT&T would have a contract with Verizon in your stead to cover access to their network for you. As a benefit both companies ensure that their customers are happy because they can contact one another, not to mention that united states federal regulations (iirc, this is certainly true for landline providers, don't know about wireless providers) require each company to sell each other commodity capacity on their networks. The internet currently works the same way, with peering points providing major backbone interchange capacity... it seems what they want to do is move from company-company agreements to user-company agreements, which of course burdens the user more for the same or worse service they had before... it's essentially passing the communications buck (both figuratively and literally).
I think it would be fantastic for a website or group of websites (of adequate size) to put their foot down and cut off any ISP who QOSes them and asks for money. I think at that point if the site was used enough the ISPs home subscribers would either raise a big enough stink or just switch away.
It would really need the right situation but it could set a new precedent and make ISPs realize that their service is useless if the sites their uses use do not preform well.
If the Government had stayed out of the cable/phone company issue, a monopoly would have happened anyway.
Or do you intend upon arguing that several different companies would have laid their own fiber networks across an entire city?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
And it costs. To keep prices competitive ISP's have got into the habit of charging reasonable, low flat-rate fees. Consumers like this and everyone was happy. But the way they achieved this was not by charging consumers what it would cost to use the allotted bandwidth constantly, because most users don't typically. This way they could provide service for more users less expensively.
Of course the trouble is now that broadband has become increasingly common and bandwidth use is continuously rising I suspect ISP's don't know what to do to keep from saturating their networks (and incurring the added cost). So they are looking for a way out and I guess changing the pricing model for the consumer is probably not a very appealing idea. Not that I think this is anything other then sleazy, but I do see that the problems is a little more complicated then ISP's trying to get paid 3 ways.
We need cheaper, higher bandwidth infrastructure. Because of the shifts in technology this problem isn't going to go away (as it is, it's going to get much worse) and ISP's will fail trying to shift costs in this manner. So who will absorb the cost? Are you willing to pay 2 or 3 times the price for what feels like the same level of service? Most people I know wouldn't. In fact they'd probably scream bloody murder. But that's where the funny accounting is. The BBC is on a commercial pipe. They are, ironically, already paying for the bandwidth their using, it's the end user who's been getting the break. Which makes this a backhanded way to get us to pay. Because if the BBC doesn't cough up the money your service is what would theoretically be effected, ISP's are simply shifting the culpability to the upstream provider. What a funny world.
Quack, quack.
Here's a better analogy. A certain toll road is a convenient way to transport goods between points A and B. UPS carries goods for hundreds of clients, but Amazon.com has recently increased their shipment of product through UPS in a way that leads UPS to send many more trucks across the toll road.
The toll road's owner, in an effort to remain price-competitive with other routes, has been neglecting upgrading toll road capacity in favor of keeping prices low. Now, because their roads are choked with UPS trucks, and because raising toll amounts will lead to loss of traffic to other routes, the toll road owner demands that Amazon.com directly subsidize their shipment traffic across the toll road.
There are a few possible solutions. First, Amazon.com could pay the subsidies. Second, Amazon.com could ensure their traffic doesn't cross that toll road. (E.g. air freight.) Third, the toll road could take out a loan or two to build up its capacity, and pay off the loan by raising rates.
The first option would mean the BBC would pay subsidies to individual broadband providers. The second option would require the BBC to find another way to push their content to potential customers. (I.e. move into video on cell phones and the like.) The third option would mean raising rates charged to customers, at least until the loan is paid off.
In a way, this is the result competition working too well. Broadband providers are so desperate to avoid raising prices for their end consumer, they're trying to find other ways to subsidize their costs. Obviously, in many cases, there isn't much current competition. (Let's see...I can choose between DSL and cable, both of whom have monopolies for their respective site access physical layer.) However, they're probably trying to prevent the ISP market from opening up to offer a new kind of competition. (Oops...I forgot I could also choose to connect my computer to the Internet via a phone...)
If new avenues of competition open up, then their lack of investment in infrastructure will be their downfall. Going back to the toll road analogy, someone would see the opportunity to make money in an alternate transportation system, and our jammed toll road will have to deal with another avenue of competition.
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Exactly. I wondeer how Megapass makes money off of me. I've got the Megapass Lite package (their cheapest) with about 10Mb/s download and have a full-time torrent+MythTV server that brings down 100s of GB per month. The torrent upload (capped out by me at 40KB/s) is almost always maxed out, as well. I've never gotten a complaint or phone call (over three years, now).
Put identity in the browser.
Great idea.
Sprint, for example, already does this if you don't have their data plan for their cell phones. Sure you can still access the network, at a rate of about ten cents per KILOBYTE. Ten k is a dollar. A hundred k is ten dollars. A megabyte is a hundred dollars.
You willing to pay ten cents per kilobyte with 30-100 spam messages coming into your email box every few hours?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
So here is what people need to realize, that the "Internet" is only as good as the computers connected to it. Why would you want to connect to a network - easy, the content you can access. Same as for the office, for the home, and for the internet. You connect to a network to access content. You can create a network, like many a community wifi-based networks have built, but unless you connect to something with content, no one else will want to connect to your network.
So the issue with network neturality is that the provider of content has to exist, otherwise, the client of the content (consumers, etc) will never connect. Content (news, video, shopping, anything served up) is why people connect to the network (internet). By charging consumers to connect to this network, a provider should be able to cover their costs, plus make a profit. There are different levels of providers of IP, and based on what level you're connecting at (10 mpbs mostly pull is going to cost you while an OC-48 can peer with most providers for free) will decide your price per meg.
These peering agreements are what make the internet work. If the servers of Ebay are connected to AT&T, and you have Earthlink as your DSL provider, you rely on the peering agreement between AT&T and Earthlink. Now Ebay could be charged for their internet connection, and they do pay at some level, but AT&T likes their traffic out to the internet (mostly push), due to their ability to pull from the internet for their customers (mostly pull). Peering agreements are two way agreements, so a good ISP is going to balance their push customers (slashdot, cnn, yahoo) with their pull customers (home internet connections, corporate networks).
Now to charge a premium for a certain customer to get access to specific content at a faster speed than otherwise available becomes a very tricky issue. Who would charge this fee, and who would count that fee on their corporate balance sheet? Would it be the ISP for the server, the back haul provider, or the ISP for the user? What about the peering points which allow for the internet to work? These are setup as non-profits and do not charge for exchanging traffic (but look at the levels of traffic the SeattleIX handles http://www.seattleix.net/agg.htm)
When will everyone else "get it"?
The fantasy is that you are paying for 10Mbit on your cable connection so therefore you should get 10Mbit 24/7. The reality is that you weren't sold dedicated bandwidth and are sharing perhaps a max of around 100Mbit with your community.
The fantasy is that you are paying for an Internet connection so therefore anything that is possible you should be able to do. The reality is what you are paying is carefully crafted not to support the service but to build market share. Other services are involved on the same wires (DSL + telephone service or Cable TV + Cable Internet) and they are sharing in the cost of the infrastructure.
The fantasy is that they telecom companies were paid to develop video on demand to compete with the cable companies. The reality is they took the money and figured out in about 1995 that there was no market at the price they would have to charge. Yes, they kept taking the money and this was probably wrong. But we, as in the states and consumer regulatory agencies, gave it to them. All they did then was take what was given to them.
Could it have been done differently? Sure, we could have scrapped the entire concept of an independent telephone company in the 1980's and had the government nationalize it. Along with the cable TV systems just in case they became valuable. That would have pretty much ended most investment in infrastructure in the US just as it has everywhere else. The infrastructure gets investment money when the state sells off the nationalized asset, just like Australia and I am sure a few other places.
The reality is that today we have a system that is vastly underbuilt to handle video on demand and other services. Currently we have absurdly low prices in some markets (DSL for $14.95) and absurdly high in others. Pricing at the low end of the scale isn't going to allow for much build-up but it sure does build market share. How do we get fiber to each home? I certainly don't know but it is certain that it is going to take a massive rebuild of the entire system - neither the cable infrastructure or the telecom copper plant is going to handle it. Both are going to require gigabit capacity to the neighborhood node and there isn't anything that does that yet.
Yes, its a problem. But endlessly ranting on and on about how you aren't getting what you think you paid for doesn't help. You aren't paying for what you would like, you are paying for what the ISP can deliver today. And you aren't paying as much as you probably are going to be - unless the ISPs get to charge the content providers at the other end. That is the only way broadband is going to remain at a "building market share" price.
Here in NZ we have a similar, but significantly different issue.
We have an incumbent bandwidth provider with a Govt-sanctioned monopoly. Add in overseas shareholders & the focus for the last 10 years has been on profit over investment. We have pathetic internet connections - average users are on plain ADSL, with a real downstream speed of 2-3Mbs. Recently they had to cancel a connection plan as they had oversubscribed it so badly that they were hardly able to provide speeds faster than dialup.
Recently, to "reduce costs" the telco pulled peering with the major IPXs in NZ, and now charge boatloads for ISPs to buy an ATM connection back to their network. Yes, ATM.
It all boils down to a lack of investment to maximise profits. ISPs in NZ & the UK have been underinvesting and oversubscribing to make the most of what they have. When they finally wake up & realise that they can't provide the service they said they can, they panic & start looking elsewhere to get the money they need to pay for the upgrades they should've done/started years ago.
In NZ, the money is coming from other ISPs, Govt & raping the customer. In the UK, ISPs want it from large content providers.
Let them limit the content...BBC, don't pay the charges. If enough of the BBC is compromised, then the customers will start complaining. That would hurt more than any complaining any of us on /. can do.
There is a simple solution for the ISPs. Don't sell more bandwidth than you have the capacity to provide
Nope.
If traffic can't be managed through packet shaping, they'll just meter your bits per month. Sure, you can have that nice fat 10mbit down, 5mbit up pipe. Just be sure not to go over your monthly quota unless you want to pay an extra fee at the end of the month. Kinda like going over your cell phone minutes.
If and when this happens, I can guarantee you will see a utility provided by Microsoft to help you manage your bit quota. Also, expect such a feature to be available in home routers to block all traffic should you reach your quota so as to not get a nasty bill at the end of the month.
This will happen IMHO, so be prepared!
Life is not for the lazy.
And you'll be the first to complain when the bandwidth crunch happens and you're not getting the service you expect.
Seriously, does *anybody* think that TV over the Internet is a good idea? It's just not designed for hundreds of millions of people to be constantly sucking megabits per second with real time contraints.
Square peg, round hole.
We already have boxes which work perfectly for what most people are going to use it for (digital TV), and even USB plugs for it, so why try to do it over the 'net? It's madness.
No sig today...
Is there a complete list of ISP's who are asking for this? I want to avoid giving any money to the net-mafia.
Maybe the eggs would be made by lizards instead. Or snakes.
This would be why CDIC exists (in Canada). I recall there being an US equivalent too; never dealt with other banks so I have no idea if that applies.
But basically - yes, banks don't have enough money for everybody to withdraw. If that happens, the bank basically has to fold. At which point the insurance kicks in. The thing is - the bank has to cease business when this happens (i.e. repercussions that make them want to avoid this happening). ISPs? They complain and charge more.
But why would anyone buy Internet connection from a company which limits access to high bandwith services? Soon as they try, there is going to be other ISPs stealing the market by selling free access. This is the market economy. They can try to set up cartel, but as economic history shows, cartels don't hold. Getting the regulators messing this will only cause harm in the short and long run.
And suppose some service providers really strain the network more than others. If the invisible hand of the market so desires, why not provide two kinds of services: cheap "Internet light" for those, who don't want to pay for infrastructure for high traffic services, and a more expensive "Internet heavy" with no restrictions. That makes pefects sense, if it turns out that there is demand for such a diversity.
Beware of socialism on the Internet. We did magnificently in creating the anarchistic Internet with non-legally binding co-operation with all parties, keep it that way. And remember, "the Internet treats cencorship [and other restrictions] like a broken network: it routes around it".
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
Maybe to cover the costs, they should do what they do with TV and have an Internet Licence. So everyone in the UK with an Internet connection pays the BBC's bandwidth bills, even if they never use their content.
Here's how I'd play hardball if I was the BBC, or Google, or anyone like that:
I would look up the IP blocks which belong to whoever is threatening me.
I would then redirect any connection from those IP ranges to a page explaining what their ISP is trying to do, and have phone numbers available for each customer's ISP.
This might even work better for the BBC than for Google, because Google is an Internet business -- every customer they cut off is money lost. The BBC, however, does do traditional broadcasting, so they can afford to kill off some customers and make them turn on their old-fashioned cable TV.
Anyway: "Contracts get re-negotiated all the time..." Bullshit. This isn't a case of renegotiating a contract. It's a case of some ISPs trying to bully the BBC into creating a contract where none currently exists. If it was the BBC's own ISP that wanted to charge them more, then yes, that makes sense, and the BBC can then decide if they want to play, or if they want to find another ISP. But if it's some random ISP across the country, I'd say "Fuck you, you just lost your customers."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Right now, most ISPs do packet shaping or outright blocking of some kind. Even if they don't, they have the capability to.
Most also oversell ludicrously. It's great for me that my bandwidth is subsidized by people who barely know what a website is, but that distinction is fading as more people discover YouTube.
And many already have a policy of, if you use "too much" bandwidth, we'll charge extra, or we'll start throttling you. Who decides what is "too much"? How do I know if I'm using too much? They don't say.
Anyway, if this happens, it means two things: First, they actually will build the infrastructure they're supposed to. And second, price competition (or regulation) will eventually drive out those nasty overages, and bandwidth will be at least as cheap as it is now, if not cheaper.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This sounds more like a simple case of greed rather than a lack of capability or bandwidth at ISP's. The BBC offered ISP peering for their content long before they launched the new video player. Take a look at the BBC peering page. Any UK ISP can pick up BBC content directly from the BBC at their favorite peering point.
There are actually really good car analogies, but this isn't one of them.
If car manufacturers start making big profits selling cars, others will decide to get into the car manufacturer business, and eventually they'll have to start upping their volume instead of charging millions of dollars per car, due to that competition. Both of these -- more car manufacturers, and more volume per manufacturer -- cause more demand for steel.
So at least temporarily, steel will cost more, until the same thing happens to the steel plants (more people get into manufacturing steel, and they start putting out more volume).
That's what the ISPs might like you to think -- that it's a fair price, because there's so much more demand now, and the price will settle once the new infrastructure (and new competitors) are in place. But there's more going on there -- they are trying to charge for something they have no business charging for in the first place, never mind how much they're trying to charge.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
> If everyone went to the bank and asked to empty their account, the bank couldn't do it.
It's not like it...
It the bank would have told you that everyone can empty their account at the same time, than it would be same.
Let alone the bank would have some problems but the main strain would be on the money printing facility(content provider).
The ISP's LIE to ordinary folks all the time(about available bandwidth), and sometimes don't even bother stating the truth in the contract itself. They are getting what they asked for.
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.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It occurs to me that, if anything, the ISPs should be paying the BBC. They should cough up for the privilege of being able to provide BBC services to their customers, in the same way that Virgin were recently asked to pay for the privilege of being able to provide Sky channels to their customers. They wouldn't like the alternative: try explaining to your customers why they can't get the BBC website, while Mr Jones next door using a rival ISP can, and see how long they're still your customers.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The BBC is a monopoly with unique rights to collect licence fees from UK citizens for owning a television set, and the state picks up the licence collection costs. This mad state of affairs is supposed to keep the BBC independent of political interference: to some extent it actually does too, hooray. In some places where logic has a firmer grip, it would be hard to argue that an institution that gets its income by fiat has the moral highground over a collection of ISP companies that have to make a living. Here, in a country where the head of the state is also head of the national religion, we can take this sort of thing in our stride.
However, many of us here who may not give two hoots for the Royal Family or God in any form cherish the BBC. It is a beloved organization - part of the national psyche along with Hornby railway sets, Meccano, Lord Reith, Flanders and Swan, the Home Service, Wimbledon, Airfix, Old English Spangles, Aertex, Proper Sausages with breadcrumbs in, and the Promenade Concerts. In many ways it is not perfect, but we see it for the aspiration that it embodies as much as what it now is, nation shall speak peace unto nation, and all that sort of thing. It sets the standard that our other TV channels have to match or not get watched. It has chosen to set a standard for web pages too, and though that is not part of its charter, it seems right that it does.
Listen well, IPS's. We like our BBC. You touch it, you touch us. Beware.
One of the features of this little spat is that iPlayer is designed (actually, bought in from Verisign...) as a P2P application, so most of the data shifted will not originate from the BBC in the first place. So this is really an attempt by ISPs to charge the BBC for data that is actually moving between ISP's end users.
t al_cost_discouraging/) revealed that consumers are very resistant to broadband price hikes, it does seem like the ISPs have dug themselves a hole that can only get deeper.
Interestingly, both Tiscali and BT (cited as participants in this by El Reg) have their own video-over-IP services (Homechoice http://www.homechoice.co.uk/ rebranded as Tiscali TV and BT Vision http://www.bt.com/vision) and it's probably not a surprise they'd like to disadvantage the BBC in that marketplace.
I tend to the view that iPlayer is a broken means of distributing TV-on-demand, but it's broken partly because the ISPs don't seem interested in developing better mechanisms. It's certainly not going to get fixed by ISPs whingeing that consumers want what they've been sold at the cost they were promised. But since a recent survey (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/08/line_ren
I have to wonder if ISP provided content (I'll use AT&T as an example since I only vaguely know the British ones), such as IPTV, will be charged in the same way. If the ISP provides this service without charging back (an internal charge back), then they are asking other service providers to subsidize those services.
Naw, they'd never do that.
Screw this. This is the BIGGEST bullshit ever. It`s pure profit maximizing nothing more. You can call it traffic shaping or whatever its still bullshit. It means that you have a lot of time on your hand and you are greedy as f@ck and you figure oo, lets introduce a new "fee" so you can get more money, and you bullshit ppl to make them believe its for optimizing their connection whereas again it`s just bullshit. You are getting PAID by your customers/subscribers ALREADY. that includes ME and BBC and EVERYONE that accessing your network. Besides who the hell you think would use the net plain without any content??????? You think ppl pay you because they love the fact that they`re able to send/receive packets? (normal ppl don`t care, they pay you to access sites like BBC if you charge them extra you may lose them because they may just cancel their contract with you and turn on their telly instead. then you are fskd... :) So just SFTU build a better network, offer more bandwidth then you may charge more for the extra BW and stop crying you whores. I`m sick of this shit in the US already not to mention this kind of cr@p generally wont be tolerated in the EU (ppl are NOT that stupid y`know, its harder to bullshit/brainwash ppl in there)
by WiZ
Let's hope for lizards; otherwise, we'll NEVER get web content on a plane.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
Uh, no. It's all about finding new ways to generate revenue. As my boss explained to me: "We gotta do this too! It's [extorting Google] a great way to generate new revenue!"
As I explained to my boss: "AT&T is *saying* they *want* to do it. They're not doing it yet. And we're not exactly $telco or $cableco, so if we try to do it first, *all* our customers will just up and quit."
Somehow, generating new revenue this way is no longer a priority where I work.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
It is? Why don't you just get one of the "incoming calls free" plans proffered by verizon and, I think, T-mobile? Or one of the huge-number-of-minutes plans?
Nobody who does even a modicum of research* is in that position in this country, and haven't been for about a decade.
*I.e. not just going out and buying a $600 phone/toy computer because it looks cool or one of the Steves told you it was some kind of revolution.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This may force the real issue of network neutrality to surface. That is: The ability of the network operators to tip the content market to favor their own services over those of competition.
Smart move boys, going after a government entity. At least here in the USA, the broadband people have tread very lightly around public entities providing services. The battle here seems to be public vs private network infrastructure. If the BBC (or the British gov't on its behalf) steps up and slaps down the vertical monopolies, it might set a precedent that our municipal networks can follow.
Have gnu, will travel.
Telco/CableCo broadband providers are allowed to increase or decrease their rates for providing a broadband utility service, but the content is none of their business/responsibility. Telco/CableCo broadband providers charging for premium, standard, poor content is much the same as theft of content property value. The content providers already have a business model which includes paying for bandwidth. The bandwidth providers have the right to increase rates for bandwidth provided.
Telco/CableCo broadband providers are, by most home users in the USA, customers pay for access to a set expectation of bandwidth, most common are 56Kb/s and three variation (sort of) ADSL bandwidth (LessUp+MoreDown). Much like a utility the product flows at the same cost-per-volume much like water, gas, electricity. Just like any other utility you should not be expecting to get tap, pure, and flavored water (because you will not), high or low energy gas ain't gonna happen from the same gas pipe, as best I understand electrons are electrons (all the same) for electricity. Cost-per-volume is the only honest practice for a utility with infrastructure cost distributed across the community for the to be provided fairly to all citizens.
Telco/CableCo broadband providers are, by most business/government users in the USA, contracted to provide a set bandwidth with a guaranteed quality and availability of service (premium/additional cost and penalties) not a this or that content filter depending on maybes, ifs, and scams.
At home (in most of the USA) the quality and availability of service (there is no competition) is totally dependent upon what the telcos/cablecos want to provide, and what may cause a class action legal complaint from the residential customers.
The USA ranks about 22nd in telecommunications services globally and with corporate lobbyist/politicians always in office, I suspect the USA will continue to decline as a world leader.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The thing is, ISPs have been making a living for far too long by overselling their bandwidth. If they'd quit that, this wouldn't really be a problem. If they'd have tiered service plans, this wouldn't really be a problem.
They almost do. If you own a computer that is used to receive contents which is simultaneously streamed and broadcast over the air, you need a TV license.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There's a bit of subtlety to these discussions because "peering" has some technical meanings in addition to financial ones, but normally the two are aligned - either Company A and Company B think they'll both benefit from accepting each other's traffic (so they'll split the cost of an interconnection, or meet at an exchange point where they're both paying for their own pipe into the exchange, but won't charge each other money for the bandwidth), or else at least one of them doesn't think that, in which case that one will say "you can connect to me for $X for a pipe of size Y". Usually peering happens if both companies are carriers of similar size, or sometimes if they have synergistic market niches (e.g. one is an access provider with lots of eyeballs trying to get content to attract more access customers, and the other is a content provider with lots of content, and their political power is balanced.) The details are also somewhat different in Europe, where distances are much shorter and everybody uses a couple of major exchange points in London and Amsterdam, than they are in the US, where distances are much longer, with a couple dozen major long-haul carriers interconnecting in 5-10 cities (mostly on both coasts.)
If Carrier A doesn't think Company B can deliver as much benefit as they're getting, they won't build a pipe to B unless B pays them. B can pay Carrier C for service, and if A and C are peers, then A will accept BGP routes to B servers on their peering pipe with C. But if B convinces C to do free peering, A generally won't accept B's BGP routes on their Carrier C peering pipe; they may only accept it from Carrier D that B decided they did have to pay. Sometimes this leads to users who can't reach the whole Internet - we've seen that occasionally in the US when one of the very-low-priced marginally-Tier-1 carriers has trouble with former peers and doesn't want to pay for transit.
Normally it would be surprising that the BBC gets free peering from carriers (assuming it's free as opposed to paid-for peering) rather than having to pay transit to all of them, but perhaps the politics are such that access providers think the Beeb is important enough to their customer base that they're willing to give away the connections. For instance, a small DSL reseller needs to have connectivity to Google, so they may give Google a direct connection), but a large semi-monopoly cable-modem company doesn't need to have connectivity to Obscure Video Content Inc., so they're not going to give them a free pipe.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm not going to get into this whole debate on network neutrality, especially in Europe, as I get paid money for my opinions on this subject. But I will talk about the BBC's network. The geeks behind the Beeb's network are a pretty good bunch, who promote all kinds of technology and FLOSS projects on a limited budget.
The BBC have a number of well designed hosting centres to spread around their network usage, and a reasonable number of interconnections to help distribute their traffic for cheap. From their two AS numbers, 2818 and 31459, they have IPv4, v6, and multicast versions of their feeds. They have built out a fairly comprehensive distribution network using their own leased lines, multiple 10Gig Ethernet connections to both carriers and popular peering points around Europe and North America.
Any ISP selling broadband should be present at places like the AmsIX or LoNAP, where they can get a peering with the BBC for no charge. This means not paying for transit charges for the content. The BBC even has multicast streams available, for ISPs clued enough to actually make use of it (which is very few, unfortunately. BT is almost violently opposed to the idea, calling it a direct threat to the monarchy at times).
Any ISP, especially those in Britain, who will have a large number of viewers could set up private peerings at quite a few of the internet hotels spread all over the UK. There must be at least 25 locations where the BBC has internet peering capability. All the major ISPs in Britain like BT and NTL already have private peerings with the BBC.
The BBC only pays for their own interfaces on their own equipment, it is up to the ISPs to add their own capacity on their own kit, not exactly a cheap proposition. 10 GigE interfaces on 6500s or RX16s aren't playthings.
Therein lies the rub. This band of borderline criminal ISPs have tried to create an illegal conspiracy to force the Beeb to pay not only for their equipment upgrades, but also to pay for all the traffic from the BBCs network into their own. BT wants to charge for traffic in both directions, rather than the peak of whichever flow is highest. Ofcom should slap this down, but they are currently fighting the battle to stay relevant and have dropped all other cases before them.
There are moves afoot within the Tory party to destroy OfCom, because even with their very limited powers they've managed to keep BT slightly more honest than an all out unregulated lawless monopoly. Graft and corruption aren't limited to the U.S. political scene.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
"If everyone went to the bank and asked to empty their account, the bank couldn't do it."
Yes. And this has a name: bussiness gambling. You are free to gamble your profits about your clients' pattern usage (usually within some legal boundaries: banks certainly can't affront to cash out all their deposits but they are legally bound to retain a minimum cash). If you win, you win, but if you mistake your provisions... you are doomed and out of the game; you just can't take your money when you win, and then whine when you loose.
"Customers will ultimately have to pay, whether it's by increased ISP fees, subscriptions to rich media sites, or by watching adverts."
Maybe. But as I already said in a different post, advertising selling Ferraries ten dollars each is still false advertising and a fraud; how is it that ISPs are allowed to do it?
Oh, I know, but the usage these days seems to be that way... stupid, but I was trying to use the term more people are using... it hurt me to do it, and now I won't do so any more :P
You're a charmer aren't you?
How am I making a simple problem complicated? I'm making your murky crud of an unsustainable business model (unlimited internet was never going to be long term sustainable), simple by making it what it should be... you pay for what you use.
Simple
Not complicated
Simple.
And it works fine.
Not everybody wants to be tied to a contract. The concept is absurd from the get go. Yet people will do anything to have a cell phone. A true case of a "sucker born every minute". I don't know if there is any other country on the planet with this scam in place.
What?
Then, the ISPs shouldn't say that it is unlimited. Problem solved.
If ISPs think things are bad now, just wait for HD to become popular. In fact, they are missing a trick here: most people have a computer monitor capable of 720p, but (in the UK at least) most people only have an SDTV.
A 45 minute 720p TV shows comes out to about 1.5GB. 1080p is even more fun.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Uh.. don't get a contract then. There're at least 3 different companies offering cheap pre-paid phones that you can buy at Wal-Mart.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Completely, 100% agreed... we had that situation in Australia too, but it was slightly different... some ISPs called their plans 'unlimited' while also stating that you had, say, a 20Gig usage cap (speeds were throttled after that, hence they could claim you could keep using it as much as you like)... it was ridiculous... you can't call something that has a cap unlimited. So I believe they were forced to stop using the term unlimited for plans that really weren't.
The US just has to move to that way of working I'm afraid.
And with those you pay to receive calls, right?
What?
There are quite a few options with those. I think there may be a "incoming calls free" version of at least one of the prepaid as well. It's been about 9 months since I last investigate the prepaid option. Frankly, I can't see much reason not to go prepaid. Unless you require a mini-camera or mp3 player in your phone.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!