Slashdot Mirror
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."
I had the same thoughts.
I would be much more interested in hearing what the top ten Japanese or Korean ISPs have to say about U.S. broadband.
It's simple: You pay for 'unlimited' usage, and that means you get usage that is as unlimited as the resource permits.
And since that isn't really unlimited, there's a bit of a problem. You're paying for one thing, and they're providing something else. That's usually called "fraud" or "false advertising", and it tends to annoy people who want to actually know (and get) what they're paying for. That they probably put something like "unlimited doesn't mean what you think it does" in the fine print only matters from a legal "see, you can't sue us, nyah nyah" perspective, not a "this isn't what I paid for, you bastards" perspective.
i completely agree with you. the way i see it, the larger a government gets (in terms of the size of the population it governs) the less democratic it becomes, not only due to bureaucratic inefficiencies which are incurred as an organization increases in size, but also because of the logistical problems presented by trying to satisfy such a large population.
there's a huge political spectrum covering the vast American cultural landscape. that diversity is one of our strengths. however, being part of one large nation creates a single political hegemon which rules over this diverse cultural landscape. it's impossible to homogenize such a vast population spread over such a large geographical area, and even if it were possible, it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.
i think it would be preferable to adopt the European model, whereby "states" are actually states, but their political autonomy and cultural diversity do not prevent them from working together to achieve common interests through the European Union. you could still have federal-level initiatives, for things like FEMA, but they would be run as international agencies similar to UNICEF or the IPCC.
I agree that P2P is holding us back, and unfortunately current P2P systems aren't "smart" enough to prefer local connections over long distance ones (which might actually be a trivial fix, but I don't know enough about the inner workings of Bittorrent and others
Ah, but they already are, to a large extent, based on three principals:
1. (Almost) All P2P systems will prefer high bandwidth and/or low-latency peers. These tend to be the ones that are local.
2. I've seen plugins/mods to several popular clients including eMule and Vuze that do a version of this by IP address look up.
The real problem is that ISPs don't encourage this, for example, by never throttling local connections and/or excluding that bandwidth from any caps.
I don't want to start getting charged different rates per country, but might not be so offended by a bandwidth cap if it excluded local peers; particularly if the ISP actively facilitated taking advantage of this feature.
Disclaimer: I'm on what is considered a very good plan for Australia. Optus Cable, 20GB peak/40GB off-peak (off-peak is 12 midnight to 12 noon), 10Mbps down/256kbps up (though in practice it's really about 7Mbps down). After all my peak usage is used I get shaped to 64kbps down/up (and my extra off-peak becomes unavailable). If I use up all my off-peak it starts taking from my peak usage. No free sites - all traffic counts towards my usage no matter the source. I pay about AU$70/month for this service (which BTW is very reliable - my only real issue with it is the pitiful upload speed). It's a grandfathered plan - you can't get it anymore but I'm allowed to stay on it - the new plans are much less friendly (value for money for net access has been trending downwards in Australia over the last few years).
I find your definition of "application" strange - I would have thought "application" would refer to type of traffic, rather than source.
I want ISPs to prioritise traffic based on type, just I do at my end. I use cFosSpeed to prioritise real-time applications (VOIP) highest, things requiring low latency (e.g. web browsing) next, and things which aren't particularly time-dependent lowest (e.g. downloads, P2P).
Most of the time, P2P runs at full speed, because there's nothing else going on. But as soon as something else starts using the net, P2P slows down - and then quickly speeds up again as soon as the higher-priority activity stops.
I'd love ISPs to do the same thing, so my VOIP calls were at the highest priority end-to-end. ISPs should never prevent any type of traffic, but I'm very happy for them to reduce the performance of applications that are not significantly time-dependent so that significantly time-dependent traffic is preferred. I'll still get my downloads - it'll just take a little longer.
I'd also be in favour of per-megabyte charging, so long as it's at a reasonable rate (not $150/GB as Telstra charges for excess usage!), and that you can set a cap after which you get shaped to low speeds, at which point you have to go to a secure web site and set a new cap for that month only (or something along those lines).