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."

Comments

In Europe

[__NR_kill]

In particular in Belgium, there are just a few ISP's that do not have any capping. The major ISP's make BIG profit of the users who want to download lets say, more than the 40GB they offer. It's NOT a DRM, it's just another way to squeeze more money from their customers.

Why Not Just Metered Service?

[blcamp]

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?

This way, Grandma who just wants a couple of recipies every now and then, and occasionally looks at baby photos posted on thier adult children's Facebook accounts (and is not pulling down 10GB/month)... only pays a little bit.

And the Torrent operators pay for what they use.

Pay for what you consume. Fair for everyone.

Or is that too much common-sense for all involved?

Re:Why Not Just Metered Service?

[Akido37]

Pay for what you consume. Fair for everyone.

Or is that too much common-sense for all involved?

Because that's bullshit.

The ISPs' costs aren't based on how much you download, but on the bandwidth they provide. A better limit, and more fair for consumers, would be tiered service based on speed.

Re:Why Not Just Metered Service?

[sqrt(2)]

Because the cost to the ISP isn't based on how much I use. They have to maintain the infrastructure no matter how much it's being utilized. Their operating costs are the same whether their customers are using 50% of their bandwidth capacity or 99%. I shouldn't have to pay more because I use the resource that is available. If they are unable to deliver the service they are selling then they need to invest in upgrading their capacity. Bandwidth demand is only going to increase, gouging customers is not a solution to the problem.

Re:Why Not Just Metered Service?

[TheRaven64]

Unfortunately, you are entirely wrong. ISP have two sets of costs. One is for providing a connection. The other is for the amount of data you transfer off-network. It costs them the same amount to provide me with a 10Mb/s connection that I use to transfer 1GB/month or a 512Kb/s connection that I use to transfer 1GB/month. The fact that they provide me with any connection at all incurs fixed costs in terms of infrastructure. The amount of data I transfer incurs costs from their upstream providers (or, in the case of the really big ISPs, the traffic affects the networks that will peer with them for free).

This is why ISPs have been slowly moving from tiers based on different speeds to tiers based on usage amounts. The cheapest packages generally don't seem like good value, because the cost of providing the line is a fairly major part of them, and per-GB they are very expensive. The only reason that faster lines cost more is that they make the usage spikes bigger. If you go from 0 to 100% usage on a 512Kb/s line, it produces a much smaller spike than if you do the same on a 10MB/s line, and this makes it harder for the ISP to estimate their maximum total transfer and therefore the capacity they need for their upstream links. This is part of the reason why a lot of them have started providing different on-peak and off-peak caps.

Re:Why Not Just Metered Service?

[metamatic]

The amount of data I transfer incurs costs from their upstream providers (or, in the case of the really big ISPs, the traffic affects the networks that will peer with them for free).

And they are welcome to pass that cost on to me. I'll gladly pay the approx. 3 cents per GB.

Wait, they want to charge $1 per GB? Suddenly it seems less reasonable, yes?

the whole isp capping is a big scam

[ionix5891]

I run several huge sites (bigger than slashdot)

and we use 1200 to 1500 mbit outbound at anytime

our agreements with datacenter and carries mean we pay $US 4.5 a mbit @ 95th percentile during peak hours ONLY (thats 12:00 to 24:00GMT)

outgoing bandwidth offpeak time is FREE

incoming bandwdith is FREE

alot of large isps such as Comcast or UPC can peer for practically free with datacenters (who are heavily outbound) as these isps are heavily inbound

this whole bandwidth cap is a joke, and site operators already pay alot of the privilege and were talking about pricing per mbit per month here not per GB

Killing the Goose...

[agorist_apostle]

Let's see...people back in the 90s bitched about having rationed access, so companies got rid of it and went to unlimited use because their competition was. How long is it going to take a competitor to again figure out they can have all the business they can handle if they don't charge for volume?

I've been saying this since comcast instituted it.

[DragonTHC]

A throughput cap will only hurt consumers and legitimate transfer-intensive services like steam, netflix, xbox live, and hulu.

The large few ISPs like to say that it's 1% of their subscribers who aren't playing fair. That's just not the truth. They see a trend emerging and they're not happy about it.

You don't institute major policy change because of 1% of your users. You do it because in less than a year, it could be 15%-20% using as much as the 1% currently uses.

Why? Online content providers are now offering larger quality services and more transfer-intensive services. Comcast certainly didn't like that. They have to pay for traffic outside their own network.

It really is a scam. They sold me unlimited service and they have reneged on their part of the deal. They altered the contract. That should be illegal, but they did it.

Caps and metered service are both money-saving scams. They will not prevent the inevitable.

The only real solution is to increase network capacity.

Re:So who gets rationed?

[__aatmkh9910]

ISPs just need to upgrade their backhauls to accommodate more traffic, they are selling people bandwidth that doesn't exist and hoping people don't use it, ISPs need to fess up about exactly how much bandwidth each customer will get. Here in the US, at least where I live, Verizon is one of the only ISPs left that doesn't do any sort of throttling or capping, and I've seen more than a few people switch to them for that exact reason.

What scares me..

[rotide]

Caps are fine, at least in the sense that they ALWAYS existed under some vague asterisk following the word "unlimited".

But what's got me worried is the fact that when I started playing around on the internet, the most heavy web surfing was a few gifs and/or jpgs.

Now, we have full flash animations, games, interactive multimedia presentations. Not to mention embedded audio and video.

Downloads use to be smaller as well. Now with more bandwidth available, software gets bundled with more features and more multimedia. Game demos have gone from 10-20 meg up to 500meg to 2+ gig, easy.

Hell, I'm a legit user, I don't download music (anymore, I did when I was younger) and I don't pull pirated movies/software either. I don't run bittorrent except for the occasional WoW update (when I did play). But I've seen a large jump in bandwidth usage with my new Roku box for watching NetFlix on my tv. That's a lot of streaming video. Are they keeping tech like this in mind? Doubt it.

So, say the caps are aimed at the bandwidth of today, ok, fine. What happens "tomorrow" when demos START at 2gig+? What happens when the only video online starts at widescreen HD? Our bandwidth usage, for simple surfing, has been going up. It would be shortsighted to think it won't keep going up. If the companies with hard established caps don't keep growing your cap, you're going to eventually have to pay for the top tier.

Bandwidth usage inflates with time. I'm not holding my breath that the ISP's will generously increase caps over time.

End around net neutrality?

[MojoRilla]

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.

Re:So who gets rationed?

[TheRaven64]

Did you read the small print? I'd be very surprised if you are paying for 6Mb/s all day every day. Most likely, you are paying for a connection that supports peak throughput rates of 6Mb/s. It is possible to buy 6Mb/s connections, but they run to hundreds of dollars a month. If you think you can pay a few tens of dollars a month for a 6Mb/s connection that you can saturate 24/7 then I have a diamond ring to sell you.

The only thing I have a problem with is ISPs not advertising their caps clearly. When they started selling broadband connections, there wasn't enough interesting content for most people to use more than a tiny fraction of their capacity. Now there is a lot more, and people are starting to go over the invisible line that they drew with the maximum that an average user would need. If you really need a connection that you can saturate, then you buy a leased line, and pay for it. For the price of my (capped) 10Mb/s connection, I could buy something like a 256Kb/s connection which allowed me to saturate the link all of the time (it would more if I want an SLA that guaranteed a certain uptime it would cost more). This seems to be what you are suggesting ISPs offer instead, but for most users it would be much less valuable. Being able to download an ISO image in a few minutes, or watch streaming video, is a lot more useful than being able to constantly saturate a slower link.

Re:I've been saying this since comcast instituted

[Jason Levine]

They're not excited. They're terrified. With services like Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, and other legitimate online video sources, the draw of their cable TV services is weakened. Why pay the cable company $50 a month if all of your favorites TV shows are online? (Legally, again. Let's not consider pirated shows for the moment as that introduces different arguments.)

So they institute caps. Now you can download and watch a couple of HD movies from Hulu, but that could eat up your entire month's bandwidth allotment. So you're less likely to use online video and more likely to tune in on your TV. Cable wins. And if you decide to buck the system and view online videos? They charge you overage fees which coincidentally add up to approximately the cost of a cable subscription. Cable wins again.

And just to introduce a Network Neutrality wrinkle into the equation, I'm pretty sure that they'll exempt any online video services that they introduce. If Time Warner releases "RoadRunner Online" where you can watch your favorite shows on your computer, they'll keep that usage from counting toward your monthly bandwidth cap. The net result will be that ISP sponsored online video sources will be given an advantage (maybe they will thrive, maybe not) while other legal online video sources will be held back with every attempt made to get them to wither and die. All to protect the cable companies' bottom lines.