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ISP Capping Is Becoming the New DRM
Crazzaper writes "There's a lot of controversy over ISP capping with Time Warner leading the charge. Tom's Hardware has an interesting article about how capping is the new form of DRM at the ISP level. The author draws some comparison to business practices by large cable operators and their efforts to protect cable TV programming. While this is understandable from the cable operator's perspective, the article points out how capping will affect popular services such as Steam for game content publishing and distribution, cloud-computing and online media services. Apparently this is also an effective way of going after casual piracy."
"Rather than have these ridiculous, confiscatory rates for so-called "unlimited" service (which will still be capped under some other excuse)... why don't the ISP's just provide metered service?"
Because the ones most screwed up would be the grand moms of the word. They would be charged a hundred times more per kilobyte than the pirates. The scale wouldn't be linear. It would be something like:
1GB cap -> 10$
10 GB cap -> 20$
50 GB cap -> 40$
100 GB cap ->60$
500 GB cap ->100$
At that point the grand mum would realize that she is paying 10$ per GB while the guy next door is paying 0.2$ per GB. At that point two things would happen. First, she would realize that she is not getting a good deal, and second, she would arrive at a nice arrangement with the guy next door where for 5 bucks she gets to connect to his access point.
The lesson to learn from this is that a byte is a byte and if you try to make the pricing steps too high, it won't work.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Well, my ISP sold me a 6Mb Down connection, the cost of which is charged by month. All day, every day of that month. So why should I not be able to fully utilize that 6Mb speed all day, every day of that month?
Their capacity issues are not my problem. I'm simply using what I have paid for. IF their network can't handle it, only sell 3Mb or 1Mb connections.
This sort of cap and overage shenanigans will not work in the future when EVERYTHING is online.Steam is a valid us of high transfers. So it Netflix, and OS upgrades.
I'm paying 44EUR for 1Mbps but no limit. (well, not at least any real limit. They just check the stats and say "Hmm, that poor pirating bastard has used 5GB of our precious bandwith this month." and press the button. No letter nor anything whatsoever.) This is madness. My ISP cut the phone lines where I live (is that even legal?) and the only wireless connection available is by that ISP! They simply forced my neighborhood into using their pricey and low quality connection. (1Mb max, 6 hour waiting line in the service phone and sometimes the connection just vanishes for a couple of days.) No mattter, I'm moving out in a few months. It's rare that someone moves because of their ISP...
If all the customers are using their connection in such a way then that is the capacity that is being demanded and that is the capacity that the infrastructure needs to be able to handle. If it can't handle it, then the answer is simple; upgrade the network. Now that's an exaggeration, but the truth that no one at the ISPs wants to deal with is that raising price to encourage people to use less is not a long term solution. Eventually there is just going to be too much data being moved around and they'll have to expand their capacity. This is going to cost money and no one wants to spend it, especially when it's easier (in the short term at least, but they're shooting their own foot) to just charge more and change their business model to an arbitrarily priced metered service with hard caps.
You're never going to convince the private sector that investing in more capacity is a good business move. Business can't look that far into the future. They see an easy way to make more money and that's what they will go for despite the fact that it's completely irresponsible and shortsighted.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
ISPs need to fess up about exactly how much bandwidth each customer will get
Yes, they do.
I wish ISPs would be more transparent in their pricing policies, bandwidth and contention ratios, because then the people around here who want 8GB unlimited traffic for $10 a month would get the abrupt reality check they seem to need.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I wonder if this is an attempt by the ISPs to end around net neutrality. They set these caps low, users won't pay. But certain third parties who make revenue sharing deals with the ISPs (think Hulu, YouTube, etc.) are exempted from the caps. Since users won't pay higher for uncapped data, it will drive users to the "free" services, creating more revenue for the ISP.
http://stopthecap.com/2009/04/10/why-is-time-warner-saying-costs-increasing-to-consumers-but-decreasing-to-stockholders/
Time Warner spent $150 million on network upgrades while receiving $4.1 Billion in revenue from their high speed data services. We're a long, long way off from getting our money's worth on services here in the states.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
I completely believe there is fine print. Regardless, they sold it as "unlimited". Yes, 6M is a peak throughput, but there was no restrictions on WHEN nor HOW LONG I use that 6M peak throughput.
I'm actually ok with caps as long as they're sane. 5GB per month is not sane. 1 Steam game can put you over that quite easily. Caps simply will not be viable in a future where everything moves over the connection; esp when it's the same ISP moving IPTV.
Metered would be ok with me as well. It would be interesting to see what happened if metered billing became the norm. I wonder if AdBlock would become a norm, and if there would be a movement back to more thin looking websites to save the bandwidth for the actual data rather than the look n feel.
My advice would be to get business class while you can, WITH a contract.
About a year ago Brighthouse royally pissed me off with their slow roll out of SDV (switched digital video), and their horrendous HDTV offering. My solution was to get DirectTV and keep BH only for Internet. The problem was that unless you purchased their "all in one" package (cable, phone, Internet), you couldn't get their highest speed tier (20/5). I was told if I wanted just Internet, at that speed tier, that I would have to get business class and pay extra. This really miffed me at first, but now I see it was a blessing in disguise...
Bottom line, I ended up paying ~20/mo MORE for DirectTV + BH biz class, but I got much better TV service.
Now it looks like I am also going to see the benefit of having a contract. I am locked into a 3 year contract, but I am guaranteed that I am not going to be paying $150+ for unlimited bandwidth since that is included in the biz class contract (which they can't just arbitrarily change). As it stands, I pay $75/mo and that gets me 20/5 unlimited bandwidth, static IP, and NO restrictions on services (IE: no blocked ports).
Something to think about,
-- Brian
-- http://anonet.org -- The internet the way it was meant to be. Check it out, you may be surprised.
Once solution is to have all the broadband customers install/use wireless routers that can interconnect as many as possible to a geo-local area ( your local neighbourhood ) virtual private network that shares the bandwidth load for bulk content distribution across multiple customer to ISP connections. If N users wish to fetch the same content, each person only need to download 1/N of the content, using neighbourhood network to swap the different parts. Think of it as a neighbourhood bittorrent.
This could be set up/managed as a web service, with the client P2N2P ( Peer to Neighbourhood to Peer ) software running on each users computer ( or running as a proxy service on the wireless routers ), via managed a multi platform subscription aggregation client such as Miro 2.0 Open internet TV.
The service could operate like this:
1) Via a website or web2.0 interface, people create content "channels" which are a list of URIs ( HTTP/FTP/TORRENT) of content with descriptions, just like podcasts.
2) The service would then fetch the content, on demand and store the content temporarily on its host/distribution site. The host service would do sharing via torrent, so uploading is not done by the Neighbourhood Peers.
3) The service would hold the content and distribute it to P2N2P clients so that the content can be recombined via a local Neighbourhood VPNs.
4) Each piece of content itself be encrypted at the URI source, so the service need not hold the keys, to deal with any concerns over end use privacy issues.
5) The subscription aggregation client could incorporate and distribute advertising as a means of paying for hosting the service.
Here at IBM, our company has just decided to stop reimbursing work-from-home employees for Internet access. Combined with this new data transfer capping trend, I fully anticipate having to explain to a customer why I can't take care of that server problem until next month because my daughter used up our bandwidth allocation on the Playhouse Disney web site. That's going to go over really well...
We should just run cat5 to all of our neighbors' houses, and sidestep the ISPs, doing the same for the internet that F/OSS has done for operating systems. Yes, someone has to have a good (ie, pricey) internet connection, but I'm willing to bet that a feed large enough for your block could be had for less than each individual connection is currently costing.
Doing it with wireless N routers instead would eliminate the cabling requirements, as well... admittedly, it increases the lag, but if the ISP suddenly starts losing customers a few blocks at a time, maybe the rates will drop on the lower-latency existing infrastructure.
Of course there are issues with this idea, but nothing is perfect. If you find this to be an untenable plan, come up with a better one (and share it with us).
Take the power away from the monopoly, and we start to see more/better competition in the marketplace.
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