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Who Pays for Rebuilding the Internet?
pcause writes "The Internet (physical as opposed to technical) was really not designed for applications that want to use maximum bandwidth all of the time, such as P2P and streaming video. Here in the US we've seen Comcast try to balance the demands of P2P traffic with other traffic and its backbone capacity. In the UK, a flame war has broken out between the BBC and ISPs about the same issue. So the question is who pays? Should the content owners who make the profits pay for the extra infrastructure, or should the consumer pay?"
Okay, I live in a somewhat crazy country (New Zealand) in which we have this deal where both parties pay an ISP for Internet services. The consumer of the product (e.g. people who view videos) pays their ISP for internet traffic (something like $b + $x per hour + $y per gigabyte, billed or prepaid at some interval, where b, x, y may be zero). The providers of the product (e.g. people who host videos on their server) are themselves consumers of Internet services, so also pay their ISP for internet traffic. It seems to generally be the case that each party pays for both upstream and downstream traffic.
The idea of this approach seems to be that the money given to the ISP goes towards paying other higher-level providers for traffic, and upgrading the network where/when necessary. If the ISP doesn't think they have enough money to support traffic, they should either bump up consumer prices, or alter their accounting system. Both consumers and providers of products are already paying the ISP for the traffic and infrastructure maintenance.
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The ISP world has changed significantly from "many years ago". P2P, streaming media and Itunes-like services mean folks leave their systems on and pull content 24/7. As stated, 2-4 is the only low point (and we are not a small, more a medium-sized ISP). Margins for small-medium sized ISPs are pretty thin. You're not going to have "loads" of spare bandwidth if you expect to maintain any profit at all. I live in a state where the majority of locations are served via satellite. It's not cheap to rent time on a sat btw.
Uh...the US government did build the internet.
Sorry, but I think "pay per use" solves all sorts of problems. Use more gas, oil, water, or electricity, and you pay more. Use less and you pay less. Simple. (And before someone starts the tangibleintangible argument, we're still faced with the fact that there's only so much electricity/water/bandwidth available at a certain place and point in time. They're all finite resources.)
And personally, I think that for most accounts the system should be biased towards paying more for "upstream" usage than downstream. In fact, most ISPs already state two bandwidth rates, with, say, 600Kbps up and 1.5Mbps down. I say charge accordingly. (Helps the ISPs with the P2P problem too. If upstream traffic costs more then you turn more people into leachers, which in turn drives more providers off the web.)
Secondly, if you have a home account you're ALREADY paying a monthly fee to get Ubuntu. It's not "free". And if you don't think you're going to get $3 worth of value from it, then you're probably better off not wasting the bandwidth in the first place.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
For the obligatory car analogy... If you bought a car using a 48 month loan (I've never financed a car, but I assume that may be a typical duration nowadays), by the time the loan is paid off, the value of the car is substantially reduced (perhaps down to your down payment depending on how many miles it was driven) and you paid both the principle and the interest over the primary useful life of the car.
Of course, ongoing maintenance (labor of repair and administration as well as cost of replacement parts) and operational costs such as power, cooling, insurance, also must be recovered. For example, it really does cost more to run 2N routers than to run N routers.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Does your contract state you have a dedicated amount of bandwidth? If so setup a process to pull network speed tests at a regular basis and then point out they're not fulfilling their contract.
If there is no dedicated bandwidth clause you might not have much recourse. One reason T1/multi T1/T3 + are more expensive are the dedicated bandwidth you get with them.
Your ATM theory sounds reasonable. A common way to offer DSL service as a non-telco ISP is to have a connection to the telco frame for your DSL pool, back to wherever your internet gateway is. It's not hard to oversell bandwidth this way.
In the Netherlands, we actually have the following system that works -really- well:
- The former monopolist was forced to rent the last mile of copper to the home for 10 Euro's per month to other company's. The 10 Euro is only required when the user does not use the phone service of the former monopolist, if you do use the phone service the rental is free for DSL connectivity;
- We have company's that deliver the infrastructure from the telco stations to the internet provider;
- The internet provider delivers the bandwidth to from that point to the internet exchange.
This adds up to an internet connection of 24mbit/1048kbit for about 50 dollars. But there is a fair use policy that prevents people from over-using their internet connectivity. But since the policy is actually *FAIR* it isn't any problem at all.
Bollocks! The US government has not paid for much of the internet infrastructure outside the USA, except perhaps for some undersea cables. It may surprise you but the world is MUCH bigger than America, and it comprises of lots of different countries each with their own governments. Have you looked at a map of the world recently? They have all paid for their own infrastructure and, together, it makes up the internet. Now if you had said the 'US government had funded the invention and development of DARPANET which eventually became the technical beginning of the internet' then I would have agreed with you.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
The problem is, companies like Time Warner/Road Runner, Charter, Comcast, and the DSL providers make so much profit off their networks that massive upgrades get paid off in an extremely short period of time.
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Knowing the costs involved the local Road Runner division, coupled with the number of accounts they hold, the proper analogy would be something like this:
Tell the customer it will take 48 months to recoupe the cost of this upgrade, regardless of the fact that it'll be paid off by half our subscribers next month, leaving the other half for pure profit.
2N routers does cost more than N routers, this is true. The problem is that they could manage 100N routers and fill them up with bandwidth and STILL make a fair profit.
You're completely ignorant if you think the cable/dsl providers aren't making a fortune. Even putting new fibre in the ground gets paid off when the first year in most cases, and once its there its just a matter of lighting it with the right bandwidth, think about the half million dollar router that gets implemented. If its only spread across 50k customers, thats $10/customer to pay it off. Thats less than 25% of a monthly bill in most areas. The UBR routers don't serve that many people of course, but they also don't cost half a million.
We ARE (the cable/dsl customers) already paying for the upgrades! We've been paying far more for service than we should have been for years. We've paid for the upgrades. The BBC pays for the bandwidth that is required to keep from filling up their own pipes. Our ISPs are not paying for the bandwidth required to serve their network, hence their pipes are full.
This is the way the Internet works. I pay for my pipe to the cloud. BBC, Yahoo, Google/YouTube, Microsoft, Apple, all of them, pay for their pipe to the cloud. I get my fair share of their pipe. If they want me to have more speed, they pay to make their pipe bigger, and assuming mine isn't overloaded, I get more. The Internet has always been a 'pay for your own pipe' type of network, the service providers would rather it be 'the other guy pays for the privledge of using the pipes I'm already charging my customers for' which is ridiculous to say the least. If the various countries of the world don't step up and enact network neutrality laws, I fear the Internet we know and love will not exist in the long term.
The problem is the cable and DSL providers have over sold their crappy bandwidth and don't want to pay for more. It has nothing to do with not having the money to pay for more, they are making an absolute fortune every month. If someone else wants to start another broadband provider in the area other than the massive initial investment that someone has to lay out, which wouldn't be a problem if the new provider could charge the same price as the monopilistic provider already in the area, the local monopoly can just drop their price. Go from $40 to $10, still turn a profit, although much smaller, and you've just made it a lot more difficult for the new guy to get funding. To the point that the funding won't want to risk it. Monopoly upheld, customers still get screwed.
The worst part is that my tax dollars funded half this crappy network which doesn't meet any of the things they said the funding would get me when begged congress gave them the money in the first place. Very frustrating
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