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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.
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 ?
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."
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.
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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Absolutely
Content providers should co-operatively BAN all traffic from any ISP or carrier who intends to extort rampantly excessive fees and/or threaten to QoS traffic to/from content providers.
As a carrier, if you don't carry the content, they why would anybody purchase bandwidth (transit/whatever) from you.
Remember people: CONTENT IS KING.
Seriously, how many customers would you have (er, keep) if you could not get traffic from (for example):
- akamai
- BBC
- slashdot
- youtube
- google
- ebay
- e
t rade - cnn
How hard would it be for the people running- the top 5 search engines
- the top 5 news sites
- the top 5 video/photo sites
- the top 5 financial/share trading sites
- the top 5 e-commerce sites
to band together and implement the appropriate blockages?People would be laughing at you (yes YOU the Carrier with the overinflated sense of your own importance) for YEARS to come.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Exactly what companies do you think are going to start massively laying wire? The phone companies (the what, two that are left)? Already have. Maybe cable companies? Already have. The... ummm... newspaper industry? Cereal manufacturers? Who do you think is going to jump in the ring and change the world?
The government has nothing to do with the high barrier to entry to the telecommunications market. In fact, aside from the bureaucracy of having to get the permission of basically every local government you want to lay wire for, I don't believe that there ARE any laws restricting competition. It is simply ungodly expensive to lay wire and purchase all the devices necessary to connect those wires, and it's economically inefficient to run two or three or 15 pieces of wire to the same places when only one gets used at a time.
That these new entrants would have no interest in serving rural customers if not forced to is certainly something to consider. So is whether or not these people all scrambling to run wire in your scenario would bother to connect with each other and under what terms. Ultimately these are issues that will require government intervention.
You should acquaint yourself with the term Natural Monopoly and its implications. These issues are complicated, particularly if you go back in history to the time when things were just starting out. There really isn't an answer that is both simple and good. It may be that there is no good answer at all.
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."
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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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