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Australian ISPs Claim Net Neutrality Is an 'American Problem'
RATLSNAKE writes "The heads of some of the most popular Australian ISPs were all interviewed over at ZDNet about Net Neutrality. For once, they all seem to agree, and they say it's a problem with the US business model, or the lack thereof. They discuss why they don't think it's an issue in Australia. Simon Hackett, the managing director of Adelaide-based ISP Internode, had this to say: 'The [Net neutrality] problem isn't about running out of capacity. It's a business model that's about to explode due to stress. ... The idea that the entire population can subsidize a minority with an extremely high download quantity actually isn't necessarily the only way to live.' Of course, this also explains why we Australians do not have truly unlimited plans."
It would make sense to me that costs on the network would be regulated to cost-distance acquired for said packet.
We have a QoS specifically built for cost-per-route. After all, a cost to hit the local backbone is cheaper than going transatlantic and back.
Perhaps we ought to work more on better predicative routing, but that is a nice NP problem :(
Every Australian I've ever talked to seemed to completely hate their ISP.
From what I remember, isn't the Internet in Australia totally socialized?
Of course the government ISP wouldn't have a problem, they get to define "problem."
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The Australians claim it's only a US problem? The CRTC here in Canada would disagree.
> "Their problem is that unlike Australia, they [offer] truly unlimited plans."
Except that the following countries also provide unlimited plans: Canada, Japan, Korea, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Singapore ...
Wait... if I am not mistaken, it is faster to list the (quasi-industrialised) countries, which don't provide unlimited plans: Australia, New Zealand.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Unless the definition of unlimited changed neither does anyone else. At best, places get unmetered, and call it unlimited...
How can it be unlimited if you can want some and not have it?
Are you saying that if someone builds a maintenance-heavy canal from a perpetually filling freshwater lake, and charge people a fixed fee to draw "unlimited" water from it, then there would be a problem if a few select individuals decided to build fifteen bakeries and twenty-seven car washes next to it?
I'd even go as far as saying that downloading continuously at max capacity is somewhat immoral in itself, so long as you know that you are using far more than everyone else _and_ that it causes congestion problems. You are like the person founding a car wash next to the canal and saying that the contract stated unlimited access.
I think the ISPs have indeed gotten things wrong, with falling into the "unlimited" trap (inspired by the 'unlimited e-mail' concept?) that is impossible to follow up on, and so only a number of half-arsed and unclear stopgaps are implemented to avoid the inevitable. People should not really have a problem with a monthly download limit of even 100gb, with more expensive tiers above, so long as there isn't a "cash trap" on the other side (i.e. you get a fair warning when approaching). Unlimited download for private individuals is like a product looking for a customer.
you don't download the Internet. The Internet downloads you!
At least partly, they don't get it. They are right that it's a business model that we use. It's called "You get what you pay for." As long as that is the case, AND you realize what it is you are actually paying for, then how exactly is this business model about to 'explode'? In a free market competition defines the minimum quality of the products. The broadband companies need to be more clear I guess. When I sign the contract for broadband I am not getting 100% of my theoretical maximum bandwidth or minimum latency 100% of the time. That's just part of the clause. I understand that. I expect that. If you go into it expecting to get those things then you had better damn well be paying a hell of a lot more than I am, because that kind of level of service is just not part of the agreement in a day-to-day contract.
You know what, fuck all of what I just said. It overcomplicates the issue. It's simple: You pay for 'unlimited' usage, and that means you get usage that is as unlimited as the resource permits. It's the only way this sort of resource distribution should ever work. It's fair: if you want to take your share, then go out and take it. But don't sit there and cry that other people are doing what they are paying for. Don't try to get the government involved in something that they should stay the hell out of.
These Australians are wrong.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
australia is a huge country with less people per mile than most other nations, so the enconomies of scale don't apply.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Australian ISPs Claim Net Neutrality Is an 'American Problem'
What a bunch of self-serving assholes. They're no better than Comcastoff.
This is a problem for any nation that wants its citizens to have more than basic email and Web browsing, and doesn't want said citizens to have their services curtailed at the whim of anticompetitive monsters. Apparently, the U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on those, either.
At some point, more and more nations are going to have to put connectivity in the same class of service as electricity and fresh water, and start applying some meaningful quality-of-service standards to these bastards.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Free market in america? Constitutional rights? To be free as possible? No government blessed monopolies? Hahahaha. My ass.
Get off your high horse Mr Patriot and PRO-IP acts. Your country has not been a shining beacon of freedom or an example for anybody even remotely sane to follow for a decade.
and not live under an oppressive government ( or government blessed monopolies )
You got to be kidding! If a business is failing and a government gives it $700bn cash to stay afloat, how is that not a monopoly? I would rather have a government-run ISP than government-run banking and airlines.
Of course telus and the government cronies propping them up would say that.
They have worse business practices than the monopolies which spawned the sherman act!
They have a 100% monopoly on australian pipes, and they don't allow peering agreements like every sane nation has.
This means they charge by the bit for every australian ISP.
This results in internet service which is an utter joke. The statues on easter island get better access, and they are stones!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
However, they seem perfectly okay using that economic model for their medical care, retirement, welfare, etc.
Of course ISP's in Australia are going to say that.
The situation is very good for Australian ISP's, they can charge
extraordinary amounts for what is basically proxied traffic.
The Australian people are used to paying exorbitant prices for communication services,
a history of supporting subsidies to provide services to remote locations.
They dont blink an eyelid at the current prices, so ISP's are cutting hay while the sun shines.
The market is completely tied up, the results of uncompetitive behavior from Telstra.
Australia needs more independently controlled undersea cables,
so that the people of Australia can have regular prices like in Europe or Asia.
It is only an American problem because the Australian system is basically a cartel controlled system and incomparable.
BTW: A system the ISP's in the U.S. would like to have.
I'm getting seriously fed up of this. You are not paying even in the same ballpark of the actual cost of supplying your full connection's worth of bandwidth for an entire month. If you want to use that much bandwidth, buy a leased line. If you don't like that you get more kb/s than you can use all the time, move back to a 56kb/s modem.
Why on earth the US ISPs have tried telling you that you can just use as much bandwidth as you want, for so long, I'll never understand. Comcast's model of "this much, then we write to you, then we cut you off if you do it again" is absurd, doubly so given they don't provide any easy metering, but that doesn't change the reality of what you're paying for vs what you wish your money covered.
Why are we relating Net Neutrality to the current condition in the states (corporate greed) then saying it's not about capacity?
Never listen to Australians/New Zealanders when they start babbling about the internet and ISP policies. Their argument always boils down to this: We have crappy expensive internet service so therefore the rest of the world should too.
If they had their druthers everyone would be on dial-up with a download cap of 1 gig a month.
While the sluggish inefficiency of bureaucracy is a problem in terms of quality of service, it's even more of a problem in terms of cost.
Unless you tax the citizenry to heinous proportions, there is only a limited government budget to deal with. That budget should be allocated effectively into programs that, for whatever reason, cannot be provided effectively as anything but a government service. For the most part, this means programs that inherently must run net operating losses in order for the service to be at a price point where the public can take advantage of it (and services that are of great importance to the public). I would call these "minor" market failure points.
If the service is one capable of being profitable at a reasonable price point, then there is no reason to take money out of the pockets of taxpayers to run that system -- they will be able to pay someone else instead of the government, and thereby keep money in the economy rather than in the government coffers. And remember, so long as there is competition without antitrust violations, you DO have a say -- it's called voting with your pocketbook, I believe.
I don't see any reason an ISP would fall in the former rather than the latter category. Then again, I don't see any reason a lot of popular government programs do, either.
NOTE: There are of course other motivating factors (such as keeping dangerous powers out of the hands of the politically unaccountable) that tilt in favor of some services being provided by the government (e.g., military/police), but I just think people often forget the most important reason is that you are having to pay for these services either way. Perhaps you'd pay less per capita if you were just paying directly for the service rather than paying the government to employ bureaucrats to pay some independent contractors to provide the service.
Aha, you see? Another "REPUBLIKAN CRONY/SYCHOPHANT/STOOGE/ASSKISSING-BOOTLICKER/LACKEY" replies with his name calling. Love the results your "fine POLITIKAL LEADERS" in "KORPORATE AMERIKA" have yielded in the stockmarket, banking industry, and wallstreet... alongside your "war for freedom" (whose freedom? the majority stockholders of war profiteering entities like KBR, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Haliburton, & Raytheon, only?) This is not just a "bump in the road", you spinmaster with cheap tricks. It's ruination that is taking people's life savings and pensions and ripping them off (enron ring a bell here?), as well as impoverishing the entire middle class via outsourcing you soulless pitiful sad example of a human being (whose only 'savior' is the illusion he gets of being accepted & cared for via the thickness of his wallet which was built off ill gotten gains). You don't get it, do you? Money, and the illusion of making it "your god" is just that: A trap. It's not going to make your puny pencil between your legs bigger, and its only going to get you surrounded by more just LIKE you, attempting to weasel you out of your ill gotten gains. It's always that way with rats, and they're too stupid to see it, or care. They'd sell their children in Puerto Rico (casey case going on nowadays, big news), or pimp their wives out for a profit, no questions asked, & not a moments sleep lost over it. You & your kind? Despised and hated the world over, and it makes me sad to know that others worldwide think the same of you, but unfortunately, some put that cast on ALL U.S. Citizens.
You may want to look up "monopoly" in the dictionary.
A dictionary is a book that has sentences which describe what an individual word is. You can go to a library or bookstore (they have pages of paper with words written on them, which is the form a dictionary tends to come in). Or search the web for information (probably using Google, which is a good example of an actual monopoly).
When the government loans money to a business to keep it afloat, its usually called a "bail out." It has nothing to do with monopolies. There is an entirely different term for this type of situation.
Do the research, you'll find your answers.
Remember, I believe in you! :)
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Two reason for this one being their cheap bastard or their choice of internet wasn't their decision
It was forced on them cause their parents/room-mate. whom makes the decision choose an ISP because the ad was on TV alot or Telephone provider with a monpoly that offers bundled Voice/Data + Mobile on a single bill.
Most likely these people are on a lower income to afford good ISP plan or under-contract, out of contract and CBF churning to another ISP.
I pay $150 for 8mbit service. This pays for 80Gb Download Cap and unmetered/free content offered by my ISP. Unmetered content includes File mirror, Shoutcast local relays, Large Gaming Network, Mirroring large media content (Revision3 and other online media)
US ISP don't do currently is investing in their network. Building array of unmetered content/services or build dedicated gaming networks/communites for customers.
You got to be kidding! If a business is failing and a government gives it $700bn cash to stay afloat, how is that not a monopoly? I would rather have a government-run ISP than government-run banking and airlines.
I, as an American, am absolutely appalled at the 0.7 trillion dollar bailout. I don't think we should ever subsidize failing businesses. It makes the cost of failure pretty low (to the business owners, that is).
As if Americans these days know anything about freedom. While those of us who give a shit about freedom are getting buried under the masses of those who would happily sell their soul for a government that would micromanage their lives cradle to grave.
At any rate, I could see tiered usage, so long as it's neutral (no "long distance charge" if my packets happen to be routed off to East Jamunga, no special charge to carry access to certain domains, etc.), and as long as a high usage option is available. I would certainly prefer unlimited; I am a relatively heavy user, and I run a server. (Business class connection)
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Looking at the actual European model, I'd say that the federal model looks better. Besides the EU is gradually becoming a government. I doubt it'll stay where it is.
Net Neutrality: Geeks, gamers and techopundits demanding that they pay the same as everyone else for ten times the bandwidth and three times the quality. They are demanding to pay the same $19.95 as their grandma who only checks her email once a day.
The "One Price Fits All" model that we have necessitates a Lowest Common Denominator product. We should be sending market demands to networks that we want differentiation, but instead we're sending political demands to Congress to forbid differentiation.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I think the whole entire "Net Neutrality" argument is a scam. IMO it's about two things primarily:
First, I think it's about making a whole lot of money for, and giving corporate welfare/protectionism to large communications companies that have had plenty of the subsidies from the govt and taxpayers in the past - technology is making things they used to charge an arm and a leg for free, or practically free - look at VOIP for one - and every year the web and our networked society seems to progress more.
Second though, and more importantly, I think it is about control and censorship. The government and these large media conglomerates don't like that people can get any sort of unfiltered information they'd like from around the world in real time. They don't like the fact that people can get news up to the minute from anywhere on any subject that they are interested in that is likely less biased, more accurate, and less full of "agenda setting talking point spin" than they can from TV News* (which has really become absurd, it's Paris/Britney mixed with a health dose of paranoia-behavior-control). They don't like it that instead of having some fascist douche like Bill O'Reilly telling people "what the news means to them," people can either look it up on their own or find their own place full of smart people with diverse views to have conversations with (Slashdot being a perfect example).. They don't like how the net can be used as a tool for orgaqnization and mass communication by practically anybody.
When one of your main goals is control, and knowledge and information are pwoer - the internet is your enemy.
*Now everything I have stated as populist advantages to a free internet can also have their downsides, for example - not all news online is accurate, honest, agenda free - but compared to what you see on TV it is, especially if you are even halfway savvy consumer of media you can find it easily. Also, anything that can be used to spread information can also be used to disinform - but I don't think anything comes close to the amount of disinformation/one-sided information and societal control as network television does.
So these are the real drivers of anti-net neutrality: Money and control. All of this stuff about not having enough capacity, and how strained the internet is - those issues can be solved so many ways properly without creating a digital ghetto for non-corporate/big money websites.
Australians do not have truly unlimited plans as the over seas links are not that big I think that some do have Unlimited plan for in Australia Data.
Recent events indicate that net neutrality isn't the only "problem with the US business model, or the lack thereof". It seems that big business wants the profits privatized (as they should be) but any losses should be socialized.
There is plenty of blame to go around but the majority of the blame rests on the shoulders of big business. By the way, for the companies not incorporated in the US, there are some of the same problems. They are not quite as extreme as in the US but people not living in the US shouldn't feel smug, it could happen to you if you are not vigilant.
I love when the mythical middle class gets brought up. Strange how its always defined in such a way that it includes the largest voting block. I guess we have reached the stage of bread & circuses. The Visigoths will be coming soon.
Unless you tax the citizenry to heinous proportions, there is only a limited government budget to deal with.
I live in Sweden - we pay an exorbitant amount of tax - something like a 56% income tax, with a nice 25% sales tax and then a 400% tax on alcohol - and believe me when I say that the Swedish government still have a quite limited budget to deal with. We can't even afford to buy a single Stealth Bomber.
whenever conservatives talk about socialized services they seem to conflate problems of government corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and unpopular government with the socialized institution. but you're forgetting that public schools, law enforcement, fire departments, public libraries, roads, post offices, etc. are all socialized public infrastructure.
Good grief, you are using those as examples of socialism working? Lots of people have problems with police departments all over the place, and listing schools there is just short of insanity.
Roads are almost never in good repair, and when is the last you you saw a road crew where you thought "hey, that's just about the right number of people and they are all working diligently".
Public libraries and fire departments are probably at the top of that list as to things that generally work OK - but that's mostly because so few people pay attention to what they spend, you can't say for sure how truly inefficient they may be (especially libraries).
You do realize that in a lot of smaller communities the fire department is local volunteers right? That's not socialism.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Because their ISPs are a cabal of exploitative assholes.
They COULD easily have unlimited plans. They don't because people are willing to pay large sums of money for non-unlimited plans because it's the only thing available to them.
I raged when I read this article and couldn't finish it.
+++ATH0
Mr. Bright, you always that "BrIgHt"? Your attempts @ being clever, aren't very bright... they're QUITE 'dim' actually.
The porn industry will make sure there is enough bandwidth to peddle its smut. I for one welcome our ne porn overlords.
I'd even go as far as saying that downloading continuously at max capacity is somewhat immoral in itself, so long as you know that you are using far more than everyone else _and_ that it causes congestion problems.
Imagine if you could only reach websites hosted by your ISP. THAT is what the supporters of Net Neutrality are fighting to prevent. NN is not about what the ISP charges it's users. NN is about preventing ISPs from charging websites a fee to receive traffic. It would be a death of 1000 cuts for any website when every major ISP on the planet comes looking for a handout.
It's really disappointing that /. editors are posting misleading stories like this. They're making net neutrality supporters look like morons who don't understand simple supply and demand. I'm beginning to wonder which side /. is really on here.
I love Australia and New Zealand, but a consequence of pervasively metered internet service means that you must check what an AU/NZ hotel means by "internet access". As one of the bandwidth hogs who (for example) downloads podcasts and uploads pictures, I found that it was startlingly easy to hit some limits. Further, the limits can bite you.
When checking a hotel in a country like AU or NZ, be sure and ask:
For markets to work, both sellers and buyers must be sharp dealers when it comes to pricing. At least once I changed hotels when "unlimited internet" turned out to be "unlimited in the sense that there's no upper limit on how much we'll charge you." After that, I made sure to have a tediously detailed conversation about internet pricing when choosing hotels.
I think hotels *should* charge by the bit if they want to -- I just think that they'll have to get by without my patronage -- just like a hotel that wanted to charge extra for towels, by the liter for hot water and toilet flushing, and by the joule for electricity (including elevator rides!) would find me checking out quickly, or more likely, never staying there.
If you don't want this sort of regime, use your wallet to try to stop it -- hunt around, find hotels and service providers who say things like "No, we used to charge by the bit, but it turned out to be a source of bad feeling, and not worth the money".
It's not inevitable that we'll wind up with by-the-bit pricing -- but it's inevitable that bean-counters will try it. And, who knows? Maybe that is the way things should work. But right now, you have a choice.
... is all about how the various bits of the Internet are privately owned and unregulated. Today, we can use our broadband connections to access any sites we want. But this is based completely on the charity of the owners of those pieces. At any time, they reserve the right to knock any and all traffic off 'their' networks to accomodate their own product.
Meanwhile, in most of the rest of the world, the network operators contract with their customers to provide bandwidth as a service separate from any content that the ISP's might want to deliver. As a result, their networks must be run as businesses that are viable on their own. This leads to a system where usage must be charged for. There is nothing wrong with this system, so long as the charges are assessed uniformly, with no prejudice against one content provider over another.
I'd much rather have to pay for my bandwith in a network neutral world than be given it with the risk of having that 'gift' be taken back for the convenience of the network operators. If we can't get to that kind of system through open competition, perhaps we need the FCC to step in and split up the network operators from the content providers.
Have gnu, will travel.
Like so many others, this article starts from the false premise that Network Neutrality implies unlimited or unmetered access, and then goes on to point out that such a model wouldn't work.
Network neutrality doesn't mandate unlimited access. It doesn't even mandate high volume access. What it does require is that any limits be expressed in terms of unbiased metrics such as the instantaneous bandwidth provided, the packet rate allowed, the guaranteed latency, etc. Network neutrality does imply that my ISP must not discriminate based on other factors, such as that they've got a financial kickback arrangement with Movies R US.
From a network neutrality point of view, there's nothing wrong with my ISP offering a cheap plan with very strict limits, even as low as 100 MBytes per month or 1 MBit/second, as long as those limits are applied independent of which Web resources I'm connecting to, or which protocols I'm using to do it.
Now, if the protocol I choose, say Bittorrent, takes a higher speed connection to perform well, I'll probably want to pay for a faster connection, but then I should have a choice of using any of the protocols that leverage the better connection, and I should be able to connect at the higher rate to my choice of Internet sites. I've yet to hear why this sort of Network Neutrality is impractical, or why it isn't essential to supporting continued widespread innovation on the Internet.
I believe the net neutrality issue is a wool skin cover-up for the real issue: The money we as tax payers gave them to make an enormous network never went anywhere.
Now they want to charge us for pay-as-you go or charge the media companies again, the people that ALREADY pay for Internet access and server hosting. I truly believe this net neutrality bs wouldn't be an issue now if we had the bandwidth that was promised to us from the get-go when we paid these ass hats all that money.
And you say i have problems. You need professional help. Seriously.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Please explain to me , using simple words, how google is a monopoly and in what sector of business.
Good-bye
Agreed on 1 thing you pointed out: The biggest fear of those that have power? Is LOSING that power, period.
Thank you. I'd been searching for the words all morning.
Care to show us your license to practice psychiatry &/or psychology, or your PhD in those fields, since you see fit to psychoanalyze others?
Oh, you don't have one??
Well, one would assume that based on your "prognosis" Mr. "DoKtOr" (sidewalk-surgeon wannabe quack is more like it), that you might actually possess such accreditation &/or certification as well as experience... but? Well it just figures you don't!
Figures - another "republican fratboy MBA wannabe 'boss/superior'" who really is nothing more than a fake!
Yes /. readers - Clearly, we have yet another "republican blowhard" that knows nothing (another "PHB"), lol, that acts as if he does (but when the chips are down & someone who DOES know what is what points out that you don't & are just another "fake-it-till-you-make-it" exploiter/actor, @ best)
Your kind, greedy scumbags, exploits those who can "do", albeit, via underpaying them or making them desparate because they outsourced their jobs and they have families to feed.
Go away, w/ the "std. spinmaster fallback tactic" of calling anyone crazy that points out the b.s. that you & YOUR KIND (republicans & greedy scum worldwide) use as a "last resort".
Your type always talks about being "team players", when the truth is, you fuck the ENTIRE teams in your nations right the hell over, everytime.
Funniest part is, when the jig is up, rats like you start consuming one another on your "teams", pointing the fingers @ anyone that seems like a feasible fall guy ("Take 1 for the team (right straight up the anal orifice), won't you?", lol). Go away, your kind's day is done in the USA at least, finally. Too bad you freaks made such a f'ing mess of things that it will take more than a decade to set it normal again.
The republicans are in for it imo. & their day has come and gone (thank goodness)... wait until the whirlwind comes around for the wind you sow (especially since you're nothing but another 'blowhard' full of hot air wind)
The problem is that we, as Americans, would not like the consequences of having those particular businesses fail. (Or so we're being told.) That raises the questions of how much freedom those business should have in their actions, or whether or not they should be private at all.
>> The idea that the entire population can subsidize a minority with an extremely high download quantity
Its very dissapointing how even key decision-makers are at the top of big ISPs don't really understand (or are choosing to misinterpret) the whole notion of net neurtrality.
Its way more than just about punishing a few (p2p implied) high bandwidth users. Its about the whole ntion that ISPs even thinking they have a right to limit bandwidth to certain services.
Anyway even if the guy neext door is a major bandwidth user, why should it be acceptable that the ISP's push their incapability to handle it onto everyone else's plate? I know in practice thats cable works, but as a consumer who paid for cable on the basis of the high bandwidth advertised, the weakness of their architecture to deliver because of its shared-bandwidth design shouldn't be made to be my or any other consumers problem.
It's not called a monopoly, but a backup of the American financial system.
When the biggest banks of this country fail and you look in your wallet those plastic cards that you so loving hold will be useless. The mortage on your new house won't go through because hey where is the capital to do it? There isn't. We need these big financial giants to stay afloat.
I am all in support of bailouts with regulations. The deregulation of the financial industry caused this mess. It's time to put them back in their place. It appears most politicians agree with me.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought net neutrality had more to do with keeping isp's from bending over consumers with capitalistic greed. This article seems to focus more on the p2p debate, that is really a small portion of the argument. I mean traffic shaping of any kind falls into net neutrality, but I thought it had more to do with preventing a system where isp's profit monger by forcing websites to pay them money so that their clients, who already payed money to connect, can connect.
My main complaint about "public schools, law enforcement, fire departments, public libraries, roads, post offices, etc. are all socialized public infrastructure....." is that they are not pro-choice. They are anti-choice. They are a monopoly. While some of those activities like police can't be converted to a "multiple choice" plan, a lot of those things can be:
- Just as colleges compete with one another for students, so too can K-12 schools. If University of Phoenix is lousy (it is), go to Penn State instead. If Baltimore High is lousy, take your money and send your kids to Johns Hopkins High instead. Vote with your dollar.
- Libraries, like video rental stores, should operate as private business. Charge $1 per book rental and eliminate the need for taxes to prop them up. (In recent years, a lot of U.S. libraries have started doing exactly that; charging for new releases.)
- Post offices can be competitive. The U.S. Post Office should (and does) compete against other businesses like UPS and Federal Express so that citizens have CHOICE in where they spend their money.
- Likewise internet service providers should be competitive in nature. I don't have an Uncle Sam ISP Monopoly; I have multiple choices - Netscape, Verizon, Comcast, Dish, Directv, FiOS.
- I even have choice in my electrical providers. I choose GreenEnergy which is solar and wind power.
Government socialism is just another form of monopoly that takes-away people's freedom to choose for themselves where they will spend (or not spend) their dollars. It's no more desirable than the monopoly that Microsoft holds over Wintel PCs.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
And here's Australia's problem. So I guess the land down under isn't exactly paradise after all
So thought the entrenched telcos back in the day, and created a bunch of protocols like X.400 which added costs on every step. That effectively died because the "shared cost" internet protocols came out the winners.
It would make sense that the major ISPs, who also happen to be owned by the entrenched telcos, now start pusing for a differentiated payment scheme - the opposite of net neutrality - and your suggestion would just be the last stage in their apparent quest to warp the internet into what they originally wanted.
Let me ISP's go loose, Bruce
Let me ISP's go loose
They're of no further use, Bruce
So let me ISP's go loose.
Offer what you can support. Its as simple as that. If you can only offer 3 GB per month (per user), then say 'the cap is 3GB/month. After that it will cost you so much per gigabyte, pro-rated. Its really an alignment of the marketing people at the ISP against the real-world cost. Where I live (Canada) there are caps everywhere. Yes we are overcharged here, yes the phone companies have a monopoly on internet service. Still, there is no (or little) talk of net neutrality. Like the sub-prime mortgage disaster, its a made-in-America problem (and that too is a genuine problem, but not one that directly affects other countries, although it likely will indirectly).
Finite resource, infinite demand, something's gotta give.
Until someone finds a technical solution that truly allows everyone to have 'unlimited' internet, you have to find some way to ration it.
I'd rather be charged for what I use and not have to worry about ISPs sticking their noses into my data stream and killing traffic they don't like.
Here in oz, I'm on a $A60 plan that gets me 40G/month @ 20 megabits/sec. I don't find that restrictive, I'm not constantly worrying about how much bandwidth I use (as some of the hysterical postings above imply) and I'm not paying for the wankers who download 400G/month of movies they never find time to watch.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Republican candidate for the US Senate seat from Montana has put out a press release favoring network neutrality.
I'd like to know more about this.
Aren't backbone-speed routers still big-bucks items?
How much of the money for renting a pipe and for filling it up goes to
o making payments on the routers
o making payments on the DSLAMS/(whatever the cable acronym is)/edge routers
o paying off the fiber
o making a reasonable profit on the fiber
o making an excess profit on the fiber
?
To put it another way, what would have to be bought and installed in order for US ISPs to be able to support the backhaul for a zillion residential subscribers at Japan-level connection speeds?
I think hotels *should* charge by the bit if they want to -- I just think that they'll have to get by without my patronage -- just like a hotel that wanted to charge extra for towels, by the liter for hot water and toilet flushing, and by the joule for
electricity (including elevator rides!) would find me checking out quickly, or more likely, never staying there.
It would attract environmentalists.
If you don't want this sort of regime, use your wallet to try to stop it -- hunt around, find hotels and service providers who say things like "No, we used to charge by the bit, but it turned out to be a source of bad feeling, and not worth the money".
It is useless when a large enough portion does it. Then you have no choice at all save for regulation against it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Care to show us your license to practice psychiatry &/or psychology, or your PhD in those fields, since you see fit to psychoanalyze others?
Oh, you don't have one??
Quick to judge, and make assumptions with no facts at all. I hope you don't live that way in real life. It would be a setup for a miserable one if you do..
And this is /. i really don't need to prove anything here.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You have somehow managed to read this entire article, and argue four paragraphs against its thesis -- BACKWARDS. Because the premise the article starts from is exactly the opposite of what you just spent four paragraphs rebutting.
LOL all this coming from someone who lives in a country that's just nationalised half of it's finance industry. People from the USA calling out other people for being socialists are displaying the worst case of cognitive dissonance possible, actually delusional, is probably the more correct term..
Even at the hight of our "socialist experiment" in the '70s we didn't dare touch the banks.
Oh delusional yanks, it wouldn't be so bad if so many of you weren't so blindingly hypocritical.
... The idea that the entire population can subsidize a minority with an extremely high download quantity actually isn't necessarily the only way to live.' Of course, this also explains why we Australians do not have truly unlimited plans."
It is quite a popular one if you describe the US model as such.
Enough distaste with that model is what got rid of it, and what drives many to keep it that way.
It offers too much ability to abuse, with a long record of it in the US - Comcast being the prominent example.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
(despite there being signs of a crafted complaint, posting anyway)
Why on earth the US ISPs have tried telling you that you can just use as much bandwidth as you want, for so long, I'll never understand.
Because the demand is for a bulk pipe, not Compuserve, nor an overpriced Leased Line. They get away with it by being the only choice in many regions.
56k lines require the same limitations. That blows away your argument in that area completely.
Having it at 19.95 is one thing. Having the only choices be metered at $20-$70+ versus upwards of hundreds for a leased line is not a real choice at all. It is a sign of abuse of government by business.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
go with soul/tpg. they will rip you a new asshole. TPG was ontop here is aus, but got into bed with SOUL. reliability factor -1 bdsl with soul/tpg is a f**king joke. unlimited plan bs. 5/6 hours on the phone to a bunch of dud offshore techies... f**k that.
Stop helping Comcast become what you are now.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Net Neutrality already doesn't exist in Australia. You have a monthly cap, say $100 for a 25GB cap if you're on Bigpond Cable. Now, now apple has an agreement with Bigpond where itunes doesn't count against the cap (I'm guessing by paying Telstra). Bigpond movies, no cap. There is a list of affiliate sites, without the cap. Presumably these sites are paying telstra for the that right.
Bandwidth caps are the beginning of the tiered, non-neutrality internet. Here in Australia, its already a reality.
( or government blessed monopolies )
Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, and AT&T aren't? They're not bad as Telstra right now, but Comcast is heading dangerously close(with enough ability to get the others in line).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
JAPAN 1GPBS synchronous 56/month USD
that says it all about australia
and the stupid USA
and the even more stupid canada
THIS IS ENTIRELY GREED
the furthar you get from greed
the better the service and the more speed
and technology you get.
PERIOD
I think the point the poster was making is that if the government is bailing them out then there can be no competition. How can an upstart, with better ideas, compete in a market where billions in cash is thrown at failed business models. It's happened, but it's happened rarely. Google and Firefox are examples.
So if there is no competition due to government intervention then I'd agree that the government has created a monopoly of sorts.
Did you know that Telstra will drop the price you pay for your plan by ~$30 a month if you've finished your contract with them? I was paying $80 a month for my connection (the monopoly is even worse in Tasmania!) and rang Telstra's 'closing your account' department and said that I was preparing to leave for another ISP (hehe). Needless to say they promptly dropped the price of my connection to $50 a month and also dropped my phone bill by $10 a month.
This is utter scummery though. OBVIOUSLY they're charging way too much for their plans. If they can drop my connection by $30 and be still making a profit then I think they should be ruddy sued.
Telstra makes me red in the face with anger - as they do with the other 99% of the Australian population.
Sorry, but that is NOT on "what's considered a very good plan for Australia". You have a "very good plan for people who don't bother trying".
You get 10Mbps down.....I get 22Mbps.
You get 256kbps up......I get 1Mbps.
You get 20GB peak.......I get 40GB peak.
You get 40GB off-peak...I get 110GB off-peak.
So, you have half the downstream, a quarter of the upstream, half of the peak downloads, a quarter of the off-peak downloads...oh, and it's the SAME PRICE and I have had no downtime in over a year. Your grandfather deal that you're so lucky to be allowed to stay on is being undercut massively by deals on billboards and in whole page newspaper ads. You need to get out more.
For, all the folks who are talking about not paying enough....
In japan for about $55 US you can get 2Gbps (1Gbps up and 1Gbps down) service. They just upped the speed from 100Mbps to 1Gbps each way and lowered the price by $10 US ($65 to $55).
http://www.japantoday.com/category/technology/view/kddi-to-launch-1gbps-fiber-optic-service-in-oct
I would like to point you to
http://my.bigpond.com/internetplans/broadband/adsl/plansandoffers/default.jsp
That is Australia's controlling ISP's broadband plans, they are laughable at best. They are however the only ISP with a decent sized network in Australia, they can and do set their prices at whatever the hell they want because someone will pay it.
Well no its not. The real issue is that network providers are trying to take control and sell it. Control of a service they should not really own. They should only really provide it. The joke is that in australia, the government owned the network and the monopoly and (now) dogy telecommunications company (telstra). They then sold off their ownership (progressively in stages). So now it is run by an American. Since, the company's shares went down and only have returned to their original position (before Sol's leadership) recently. Telstra is on the same level as other large companies who have not maintained their network properly. By maintain i mean keep in line with supply and demand. They need to return to basic economics. Australia is different to America, the cost of supplying the internet *is* more expensive due to geographical variables (and presently limited cables out to the mainline internet). The issue is not the bandwidth it is about how a network flows. Network neutrality is about ensuring that my packet going to bob is the same as my packet going to Joan. That is, it is not *identical* in terms of *data* but in terms of fairness and consideration along the link. A given packet travelling to any location should not be prefered over any other packet, within reason (isp services (ftp + other services) data in australia is often quota free and are *considered differently..... isps should also be able to throttle ddos attacks to clients / their network from another).
i live in australia.
those iSP heads are absolutle idiots. Its not an American or australian thing... for fuck sake the internet is GLOBAL!
(shit really.. they say)
freedom of expression is a UNIVERSAL need... it allows for creativity, idea exchange, endless possibilities...
cutting that off, and charging for prioritisation, is just pure greed.
I hope the second an ISP introduces trying to charge You tube, that You tube just stops routing thier traffic, and half the user base of the ISP starts rinnging thier call centre...
ISP's LEARN... YOU ARE FACILITATERS... thats all... ALL YOU DO is maintain the transmission... what goes down the transmission is OURS.. your job is only to ensure that the comminication is completed successfully.. and with INTERGRITY. Thats it.
Wake up fools
I'd rather have a realistic cap than have some fucktard diddling with my packets
Yeah, I know what you mean, I'd rather be punched in the face than kicked in the balls, too.
Or the overseas connections aren't being throttled as much as the domestic ones...
Probably more of a combination though, as I've noticed that at least in Asian countries (Japan, S Korea, and many parts of China) the internet infrastructure seems to be more pervasive and better developed than much of the N. American offerings.
I'm Australian and I have a 40 gig on peak and 60 gig off peak cap. I don't even have a proper phone line because I have "naked broadband" and just use a voip system that our ISP set up. We get free phone calls to land lines and (my favorite part) they don't have a call center in India. I wouldn't go near Telstra or Optus with a ten foot pole. All of our little ISPs seem to be the better ones.
Australians do have truly unlimited plans, you just have to pay business rates. A$1500 for a 10 megabit fibre connection, plus installation of the fibre.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
In france, my ISP is named "FREE", it's around 20mbit ADSL (depends of your distance to the connection point)unlimited with phone (mostly 0â charge for domestic and a mojority of international call) and tv for â30/month.
Peak dowload is around 1,5mo/s, but i can have a comfortable mean of 1mo/s, so with a quick calculation, it means i can reach >~3,5 TERA octets/month if i let my computer on all the month with no extra-charge.
The upload is limited to 128ko/s though, it's not very practical to use your computer as a server.
It means that i will "never" be able to really use what the contract offer me, and i suppose that if i regulary download 3,5 Tera, i will have a "gentle" letter with a breach of contract for whatever reason they will be able to found.
I would rather prefer pay for a 8mbit/s / 8mbit/s symetrical connexion for 20â without the tv
They also agreed that electronic voting, televangelism, Enron, the housing crisis, the collapsing dollar, telemarketing, marketing the US republic as a democracy, military invasions of other countries, government bailouts, ongoing government handouts to billion-dollar industries, and the current US administration were also problems with the US business model...
1/ bandwith is dirty cheap in most countries slashdot readers live in (europe, usa, etc)
2/ see 1/
3/ repeat after me "dirty cheap". in other words, use the link at 100% up/down the whole month and they still wont go bankrupt. so much about misconceptions like you get what you pay for. NOPE. like with almost *everything* in life you pay MORE than what you get. That's how people make profit, and sometimes, insane profit.
Just for the record, i've ADSL in germany, 16mbit down/1mbit up, no limit, phone, mobile phone included for 40e/month
i've ADSL in france, 20mbit down/1mbit up, no limit, phone, TV, tons of services (static ip reverse dns), 29.9e/month
And its not a problem for the ISP. Their network status is actually online, and the 3 million users never go above 40% usage on the most used link (most links are around 2-5% usage). When a link gets to 50% they double the fiber. Bang, back to 25%. Cost ? low.
The only cost is to run new fibers. Usa is a large country, its quite costly. France and Germany? No problem, its already done for years.
The other reason, other than money is of course population control. CONTROL. Like other medias, TV, school, etc, everything is controlled.
But the internet is by design pretty hard to control.
I Shall remind the less educated out there, that school has been invented to control the population to begin with. And it works.
Not in a bad way (we're educated and we don't wanna kill everyone for profit), but not just in a good way either.