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In EU, Google Accused of YouTube "Free Ride"
An anonymous reader passes along a Financial Times piece that covers a push by EU telecoms to get Google to pay them directly — years after US ISPs began rattling that sword, to little effect thus far. "Some of Europe's leading telecoms groups are squaring up for a fight with Google over what they claim is the free ride enjoyed by the technology company's YouTube video-sharing service. Telefónica, France Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom all said Google should start paying them for carrying bandwidth-hungry content such as YouTube video over their networks.... Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes' because the internet search and advertising company pays the network operators little or nothing for carrying its content. Rick Whitt, a senior policy director at Google in Washington ... said Google was spending large amounts on its own data networks to carry its traffic to the point where it is handed over to telecoms companies round the world." Note that FT.com operates on a "first few per month free" paywall basis.
Google had to, sooner or later, start fighting such a fight. Interesting is that European, and not Asian or American, ISPs are engaging it. Who wins this fight ? It could have a big impact upon how the internet looks in a few years.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Google bought some bandwidth to be able to send site content to users. Those users bought some bandwidth to be able to receive it. What's the problem?
Yes, those poor telecoms that gives their users free access to the internet must be paid back by Google. How does Google dares to provide content and expect the charity telecoms to be the only ones that pay for those bills. I'm outraged.
Wait a minute....
Then why my telecom is sending me a monthly fee?
Dear telecomns, in case you have not noticed: you are 'dumb pipes' and always were. Get over it, stop whining and start providing the bandwidth you advertise.
Google should just tell those telecom companies to block YouTube from their networks if they think it's taking up too much bandwidth. Let's see who suffers.
The European Telecom operators should know that we, Internet subscribers, pay for our connection top Euros to be able to access sites like Google, Gmail or Youtube. Google is offering most of their services for free to their users and we, as clients of the Telecom companies, are already paying.
At least, Spain's Telefonica CEO demonstates he's just a parasite that doesn't know about what he's talking except getting more money from Google and their clients. If you understand the Spanish talked by a almost drunk man, you'll get the point watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVADWAxOZtg
Like, the customers? If I'm paying for 10GB of data at 10Mbps each month, and the ISP is oversubscribed to uselessness, that's not Google's vault, that's the ISP's false advertising at work.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Note to telecoms: You were, are, and always will be, dumb pipes. Stop complaining, it used to be that you guys made respectable money selling dumb pipes to people who needed them. Of course, that was back before you became a bunch of bloated gasbags intent on squeezing every last packet out of the internet.
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
Dear Mr. NuttyProf,
we have noticed you've been having a personal web site since 1993. With the statistics you graciously provide publicly we gather, that your site gets accessed several dozen times per month. Since we provide the channels bringing your content to our customers, we'd like to request you to review the attached contract and initiate a monthly fee of $14.95 in order for us to continue to serve your needs in the high quality you have come to expect of us....
Sincerely,
AnyOfTheLargeISPs
It's not like these telecoms customers are paying them for access to the Internet, so they need to get their revenue from somewhere. Oh, wait...
This is not cable TV, you can't "unbundle premium channels", stop clinging to your ancient business models and come up with a good one.
What I don't think they've fully thought out is the end-game. Possible options:
1) Google pays them. Google then starts getting invoices from every ISP around, from the little mom-and-pops to the tier-1s demanding a cut of the pie.
2) Google cuts them off so that the above doesn't happen. These ISPs customers start screaming "Why am I paying you for access to the Internet, when you aren't providing it?" and they start switching to other providers that aren't pulling this.
Come on, telcoms! You're already charging users for access to the Internet, and the businesses they visit for access to the Internet. How many more times do you need to get paid?
They seem to think they're in a position of power because they control the "eyeballs", but those eyeballs will go to another provider if you don't provide access to the services they want.
Indeed. The bit that really got me was:
Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes'
That is really all that they are, or at least should be. They are not content providers, they are merely facilitators.
which is totally what she said
All this bitching, be it in the US or the EU, is just about the telecoms wanting to double-dip. All bandwidth is paid for, one way or another. In the case of extremely large connections, like connections between Tier-1 ISPs, the cost is shared between the two ISPs. When they peer, it is an agreement where they say "You pay the costs of your equipment and lines, we'll pay the costs of ours, and we don't charge each other anything to trade data." At every level down from there, it is paid by a smaller consumer. If you are a smaller ISP, you pay the bigger ones for access to their networks. Individuals, businesses, etc then pay those ISPs for access to their network. All the bandwidth is being paid for.
They just want to double charge. They want to tell Google that they should have to pay because Google's data goes over their network.
Of course, if push came to shove, I'd bank on Google winning. Dumbass ISP X says "Ok, we are throttling Google traffic and/or blocking Youtube." Google says "Ok, we are blacklisting all your IPs and showing your users a page that explains what dicks you are and what you need to change for us to restore access." My bet? Consumers get furious at their ISP and either force a change, or simply switch to a new one.
Providing bandwidth for their users to do what they want? Is that the purpose of ISP?
Or is there any other purpose? Like laying down ground rules, like the Ten Commandments:
1. Thou Shalt Not View Video Online
2. Thou Shalt Not Use Too Much Bandwidth
3. Thou Shalt Pay Through Thy Nose
4. Thou Shalt Obey Everything
5. Thou Shalt Hath No Right
6. Thou Shalt Be Grateful
7. Thou Shalt Giveth Us All Thy Money
8. Thou Shalt Sacrifice Thy First Child For Us
9. Thou Shalt Let Us Screw You
10. Thou Shalt Not Complaint
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
A dumb pipe is precisely what you are, and should continue being.
Those YouTube megabytes are being requested by end users. It is they who are getting the "ride" - and it is usually not free. Google/YouTube is just making content available on demand - as is just about every other data supplier on the net except spammers. The only people getting a free ride are spammers, because they are using a "push" mode. Before they stop or slow my YouTube, which I want, let them do something about spam.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
It's more like fast food chains suing car manufacturers because drive-throughs attract a lot of customers.
On one hand we have content providers like Murdoch saying Google should pay them for the content Google is providing access to.
And on the other hand we have telcos saying Google should pay them because they're providing access to Google's content.
It's the fate of any success story; Google has money, they want it for themselves, and they think it's easier to get Google's than to earn their own.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Yeah, yeah, you're all saying "this is crazy, I've already paid for my bandwidth"...and you're all correct, but: /. passim : FCC in USA, filtering in Australia...)
As we've seen here recently, common sense or 'fairness' seems to have little to do with ISP regulation and/or behaviour.
(See
Here in Europe, many countries tax blank media and playback devices [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy] in order to 'compensate' artists for 'lost' revenue.
How long before Europe's telcos, (most of whom have strong lobbying power), actually get something like this either legislated, or get Google to cough up some money just by threatening to get it legislated?
They're already trying to grab some of Google's ad revenue:
"French President Nicolas Sarkozy is mulling a recommendation to impose a tax on Internet ad revenues in France. The proposal is aimed at helping the French culture industries survive the new digital age. But critics say it is absurd, unworkable and will do little more than prop up failing business models."
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,670837,00.html]
The ISPs have it all backwards, presumably with full knowledge of the real problem. The customer pays for a connection to the internet. The customer then uses it to access popular services, like Youtube or Facebook or any other of this months fad.
Many ISP has vastly oversold their capacity to their customers and engaged in price fights that has made internet access well below what they should cost. They know its going to be a cold day in hell before the customers agree on a big price hike this late in the game so they try to wring money out of the popular services the customers use their bandwidth on.
Since the ISPs sell access to the internet they have nothing, absolutely nothing they can demand from services on the internet. They made this mess by charging to little for all to much bandwidth, well, sucks to be wrong dont it?
HTTP/1.1 400
....any ISP that thinks Google isn't playing fair should just not allow connections to the Google Empire for their customers.
Then we'll see how long it takes for the free-market to self correct. I give it about 30 days, most of that time being required for the ISP to staff up their disconnections department.
Before using that analogy remember that some toll roads already charge you more if you have a bigger vehicle and people seem to think that is ok.
- Raynet --> .
That's what they should be, they are ISPs...
Maybe their concern is that it'll become obvious to everyone that they're dumb pipes, and that they're dumb pipes whose business model, pricing infrastructure can't cope with piping all that well.
Duh. STFU and just stop peering with them if you don't want the traffic. Of course then your customers won't get anything back when they request pages from Google. Good luck with that. Maybe they'll feel better when you pass along all your network cost savings to them. Right.
Bullshit PR aside, the facts are plain: Your continuing to peer with Google is proof you believe you derive positive economic value by serving Google's content. Given this reality, maybe now you can explain carefully why Google owes you something?
And when you're done answering that question, how about this one: Why is it that with TV distribution it's the cable providers paying the content providers, not vice versa as you'd propose Google do? Why shouldn't you be owing them money, for turning your dumb pipes into something people will pay $50 a month for?
This is journalism? Does the Financial Times just run press releases now?
Not really, it's more like the highway operators charging motorists tolls, and then trying to get the destination cities/towns/villages to pay as well.
I heard those comments months ago in Spain from Cesar Alierta, CEO of Telefonica. He sounded flamboyant and depreciative, almost threatening his own clients to cut the pipes if Google would not share their benefits with them.
TELEFONICA is been called TIMOFONICA ( scam-o-fonica) by spaniards for years for their greedy approach to the business, with all the benefits they made during the .com bubble era and the consistent poor service, and high prices they delivered during the 90's when they where an almost monopolistic ISP in Spain. Now that they are been side-tracked by new business models that make benefits out of offering 'gratis' services they are suddenly surprised for not been able of making loads of money by barely making their job, and they are simply jealous.
Let me tell you something: we are all ready to show then our middle finger.
But, wouldnt the hotel have to borrow money to pay back the rich man, thus going into debt again?
I notice that all on the companies mentioned are ex-state-owned companies. Basically they're the old monopoly telecoms who got to lay the telephone lines in the past using taxpayer's money and later got privatised, keeping ownership of all that infrastructure.
Even though in most (maybe all) of the countries where those companies are based laws were passed forcing them to provide access through their lines to any company wanting to work as an ISP (a boon to competition and why Internet access is faster an cheaper in most of Europe than in the US) they are still meaningful because they own the last-mile infrastructure and get paid by ISPs that use those lines to provide Internet access.
They still retain many of the bad habits from their days as a state own monopoly (big, fat and uncompetitive) and have only remained in their positions because of the huge barriers to entry in the landline telecoms infrastructure business.
Given that I would say that these big, fat behmots are worried about high-bandwith Internet services because they have in fact not updated the infrastructure:
- Until now they were relying in advances in xDSL technology to provide ever increasing speeds on top of the existing POTS copper lines. This improving of xDSL technologies is now slowing down while at the same time government have suddenly discoverd it's fashionable to rant about the need for universal high-speed Internet access to "liberate Europe's creative energies" and "Create the jobs of the future". This means that a critical mass is building that would lower the barriers to entry (or make it a better investment) to lay fiber-to-the-home.
Once other companies have replaced enough of the installed base of last-mile POTS copper wires with fiber these guys (who never had to face any real competition in the landline telecoms business) will likelly shrink to nothingness.
This is why they're trying to hold the tide.
I agree that they are dumb pipes, however, that got me thinking about the arrangement I have with my cable company. What's the difference between the data (content) I am receiving over my net connection, and the data (content) I am receiving as my television service? I don't mean the bits and bytes here, I mean the actual content. My cable company would like to call themselves a 'content' provider, but they aren't making those television programs, they are simply passing them to me through a pipe. That being said, why should that part of my service be any different from my internet?
This is sticky because I realize that the actual content providers GET PAID to have their shows broadcast/provided. Does that mean that the internet is upside down? Should the local ISP's actually be paying Google for their content?
They were dumb pipes even before... Imagine how it would be if they were not, you are talking on the phone with a friend and one of you mentions Pizza, suddenly a local Pizza delivery place is connected in to the conversation and asks if you would like to order a Pizza (You and your friend were actually just talking about how the Pizza made you both sick recently)
Or even more chilling, one of you mentions some thing that, taken out of the context of your conversation, seems dangerous or illegal - and the phone call is dropped. You were planning an attack in World of Warcraft or one of the Battle Simulators and click, no phone call anymore.
No Telcos have *always* been dumb pipes.