FCC Approving Pay-As-You-Go Internet Plans

An anonymous reader writes "As details emerge about the Federal Communications Commission's controversial proposal for regulating Internet providers, a provision that would allow companies to bill customers for how much they surf the Web is drawing special scrutiny. Analysts say pay-as-you-go Internet access could put the brakes on the burgeoning online video industry, handing a victory to cable and satellite TV providers. Public interest groups say that trend will lead to a widening gap in Internet use in which the wealthiest would have the greatest access."

Comments

The U.S. Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

So where is any of this authorized by the Constitution? Article I, Section I states "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." Among the granted powers is not control of methods of communication, and certainly there is no justification for delegating legislative powers. One definition of tyranny could be the removal of legal protections.

Please keep in mind this is not an argument about the proper role of government. The states can create their own communications commissions and be operating within the Constitution.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[TheL0ser]

Whenever you have to ask where something is in the Constitution, the answer is "Interstate Commerce". Even when it shouldn't be or isn't. Especially when it shouldn't be or isn't.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[kenj0418]

[The Congress shall have the power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, among the several States, and with the Indian tribes

Article I, Section 8.

The interstate commerce clause is frequently misused - but telecom and the Internet seems to clearly be interstate commerce.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[cosm]

Isn't not allowing them to bill via pay-as-you-go regulation as well? I am not a free-market idealist, I understand that it is not a perfect laissez faire system, but if ISPs started switching to this model, what is to stop an ISP from just doing things as SOP (flat-rate) and making hand over fist when all the streamers, gamers, downloaders jump ship of the ISPs bilking them from the new model?

Unless they all collude and the FTC (with the actual teeth) doesn't step in, or if it is decided that it isn't colluding by the govt. if they all go to this model, well, either way its pretty gay. I think the fact of the matter is big-business (telcos,media) has the politicians too in-debted via contributions for any argument to matter. It will just be a continual decline in the quality of service we as consumers receive, as the rest of the world surpasses us here in the US. Their might be another veil on it, but we can never divorce the pig as long as corporations can donate money to politicos like they currently do.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Sonny Yatsen]

@Anonymous Coward

Actually, states can't create their own communications commissions and still be operating within the Constitution. As Kenji said, this is clearly an interstate commerce issue, which is a power that was explicitly given by the Constitution to Congress, not the states. In any case, do you think it is conducive to commerce at all to have to contend with 50 separate communications commissions all having conflicting regulations about how interstate communications can be undertaken?

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

The Interstate Commerce Clause ("To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes") was only intended to keep the states from entering trade wars, not to dictate how, where, who, when trade will occur.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[jgagnon]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It used to just be patched by them but politics has allowed it to be fully paved several layers deep.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[gatzby3jr]

I think it's important to note what's been pointed out many times here on slashdot.

In many, many areas there isn't another ISP to jump ship to - there is only one, or dialup.

That's not much of a choice in my book.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Pharmboy]

Technically, the companies should be able to charge whatever they want, and the playing field should be a level one with multiple choices so the consumer can choose which company it wants to get service from. Theoretically, this is how capitalism is supposed to work, and if it was left alone to work, it would do just fine. But then the FCC and Congress has to fuck up and get involved and consumer choice goes tits up in regulated monopolies.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[blair1q]

I'm looking at it and it says "to regulate commerce", not "to regulate trade wars". If one of the reasons was to prevent trade wars, then it succeeds, sometimes. If another was to ensure the equitable distribution of federally-funded trade protections and infrastructure improvements, then it succeeds, sometimes.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Lanteran]

First of all, I believe that the FCC is an independent agency that falls under the executive branch. Second of all, article 1 gives two clauses as a basis for extending legislative power: The Necessary and Proper clause:

The Congress shall have Power - To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

and the Commerce Clause:

[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.

. The two basically provide a (legally if not logically) solid defense against unconstitutional takedowns in the supreme court, plus the fact that the supreme court hasn't been all too active in judicial review of late. Also, as a side note, the constitution is not an exclusive document. There are implied as well as enumerated powers, in addition to ones granted by law and tradition.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[langelgjm]

what is to stop an ISP from just doing things as SOP (flat-rate) and making hand over fist when all the streamers, gamers, downloaders jump ship of the ISPs bilking them from the new model?

Nothing, except that most of those people won't actually be able to jump ship, since, if they're lucky, they'll be choosing between two providers who both have pay-as-you-go plans. Your idea assumes people can easily switch to a new provider, which when it comes to high speed internet in the U.S. isn't generally the case.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[jgagnon]

What about the ISPs of ISPs? Will T1's get usage costs, too? Where does it end? Can the owners of the trunk lines charge for usage? Will the government start taxing Internet usage?

The scary part is that usage costs can trickle upstream very easy. You pay your ISP for usage and then they have to pay their upstream for usage, etc., etc., etc. How many times can the same data be charged for? This could easily cascade into an Internet meltdown. Especially if you consider other countries might be charged for their traffic to and from the US and the the rest of the world gets in on the game.

It's a doom and gloom scenario, but one that is very much possible.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[interval1066]

This isn't about the Constitution, this is about why lobbyists need to severely regulated, or done away with altogether. If voters went to the capital and claimed to be lobbyists they'd be laughed out the door and probably thrown in jail (or just jailed). Yet we allow corps, wealthy non-profits, and anyone else with cash to by-pass the voting process and influence lawmakers??? What the hell???

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[mcgrew]

In most cases I'd agree with you (e.g., anti-marijuana laws), but you don't think the internet has anything to with interstate commerce? Never heard of eBay or Amazon?

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[jfengel]

Article I section 8 goes on to say:

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

It's called the "Elastic Clause" for a reason... you can use it to justify practically anything. From there it's a matter of what "necessary" and "proper" really mean, which is arbitrarily difficult, but it should suffice to shut down the "but it ain't in the Constitution" meme.

(If, of course, that meme were actually applied rationally, rather than intermittently trotted out for powers of government you disagree with and conveniently ignored for those you like. In the absence of a rational argument, evidence is pointless, and the meme can continue indefinitely.)

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[KarrdeSW]

The convention which wrote the US constitution was convened over several months and produced a document of only 4543 words. Many clauses had hours or entire days of debate dedicated to them. The idea that any particular clause was "only" intended for one thing is absurd (maybe for any particular delegate it served only one purpose. Furthermore, if a clause is only intended to prevent one or two things, usually it just prohibits said things explicitly (ie - "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."). If your interpretation was right, they likely would have just prohibited trade barriers among the states.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Talderas]

I think you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. It isn't the ISPs that are pushing for it, even though they will benefit...

It's the MIAA and RIAA that are pushing for it. They're banking on making it expensive to pirate media in order to diminish how often it happens!

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

If I inherited a family store that was founded in the 18th century and had been successful in large part because of a policy on a brass plaque at the entrance which stated "All those not gay shall receive services gratis", then I would probably consider rewording it to prevent being sued because the term 'gay' has such a different meaning now from when the plaque was first installed.

The same concept is true with the Constitution, but even more so. We cannot simply read the words to understand the meaning of this contract. We must look at what the parties in the contract considered to be the meaning. Reviewing things like the Federalist Papers, the Constitutional Convention, and the respective state conventions reveals that there is no sound basis for the argument that the Constitution grants the Federal Government the power you claim.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[jmorris42]

> The Necessary and Proper clause:

Sorry, you lose. Not only at Constitutional Law but at parsing English.

Material in the headings is mostly syntatic sugar anyway. Progs love to grab snatches of text out of context to read the Constitution as allowing them to do whatever the heck they want. But if you actually READ the thing it says something quite different. Your ilk reads it as saying the Feds can do ANYTHING "Necessary and Proper" by taking those three words and standing them on their own. To one who can actually read it says they can pass any law that is "necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers..." We read the whole sentence in context with the whole document. In other words they can pass laws to execute the enumerated powers, not anything they think proper. Were the headings removed and only the enumerated lists left the prose would suffer and the courts wouldn't have some helpful text explaining the reasoning behind the powers to imply further limits, but the legitimate powers granted would be pretty much identical.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[mcgrew]

I'm looking at it and it says "to regulate commerce", not "to regulate trade wars".

Trade wars are about commerce.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[blair1q]

Really? I thought they were about Babe Ruth and a musical.

My issue wasn't with trade wars being commerce. It was with only trade wars being commerce.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[novalis112]

The interstate commerce clause is frequently misused - but telecom and the Internet seems to clearly be interstate commerce.

Telecommunications does not equal commerce. Nor does the Internet (a subset of telecommunications) equal commerce.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The interstate commerce clause is frequently misused - but telecom and the Internet seems to clearly be interstate commerce.

When I do business with an ISP it's not interstate commerce - its local. I'm paying for them to take my traffic and then hand it off to someone else who hands it off ad infinitum.
The ISP may be doing interstate business with their backbone providers, it may even be another division within the same company. But the business between me and the ISP is purely local.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[DrgnDancer]

The regulated monopolies came mostly from the local governments that you "Limited Government" types love so much in preference to the Feds. A lot of the rest are because no telecoms want to pay to lay cable in places with lowish population densities unless they get guaranteed pay-back. Cox in Southern Louisiana was so bad that, after trying to get someone, anyone, to come in and compete with them, the local governments for a lot of little hick towns (and Lafayette, which is a mid sized, semi-hick, city) are at the forefront of fiber to the home efforts. I left Lafayette before they finished the build out, but you could already start to see the effects when I was leaving. Cox, which was notorious for poor service, lack of community participation, and reluctance to upgrade its network was suddenly improving in every area trying desperately to convince people that there was no need to switch to LUS (Lafayette Utility Service) Fiber.

Since there isn't, and can't be in most cases, any competition in most localities for broadband, we're pretty much stuck hoping the Feds will protect us.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that last-mile installation has historically been so expensive compared to what people are prepared to pay that you get a significant barrier to entry in any area that already has any service. This leads to natural monopoly, and consumer choice is boned from the get-go.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[jmorris42]

> It's the MIAA and RIAA that are pushing for it.

They might be pushing for it. But they have been pissed since the Internet appeared. What changed is Netflix and Hulu appeared. Pirates were always in the nethogs category; annoying but a managable problem. Now they face the prospect of EVERYONE becoming a nethog and blowing up the oversubscription model that has defined consumer Internet since it began. Every BD Player and most DVD players these days have an ethernet jack on em. Most higher end television sets are Internet enabled now. Something must give. We can argue about what needs to change but keeping things as they were isn't an option anymore.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[DesScorp]

"Necessary and Proper" doesn't void the rest of the Constitution, even though the Democratic Party thinks it does (along with the Commerce Clause).

Congress can do anything it wants - Rep. Pete Stark

Morons like Stark are why we have a written Constitution in the first place.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[falsified]

The government's meddling in business is what has kept this from occurring ten years ago, champ. Note that this is the FCC considering a RULE CHANGE. If the FCC had never been around to create such a rule, we would have already seen this happen.

Having said that, I'm very, very, very cautiously optimistic that this will only have a short-term effect. Streaming HD (in my case, via Netflix) has gone from a "that would be cool" to something I do almost every day within three years, and despite my /. account, I'm not a bleeding edge type. The difference between "normal internet user" and "person who streams a shitload of video" is blurring and is probably going to disappear within the next 18 months. And people just aren't going to pay $200/month for internet unless there's a massive speed increase, and even then, probably not.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[jimrthy]

This mis-interpretation is pretty much exactly how that clause has made the Constitution completely meaningless.

It was a harmless little addendum that pretty much everyone considered perfectly safe. The point was to keep trade "regular" among the States. So that, for example, Virginia isn't allowed to attach extra tariffs to goods passing through from New York.

Now everyone thinks it means "Congress can do anything it wants.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[falsified]

No, but your paying for it does. Unless you only use an ISP based in your state to access DNS servers in your state to access websites hosted in your state. And even then, it's not likely (my first jump via tracert goes to Illinois, and I live in Wisconsin).

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[falsified]

And actually, even then I fell for a red herring. Your ISP must only provide access to servers based in your state. Goodbye, backbone.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[novalis112]

Hmm. You make a good point. I'm still not *entirely* convinced, but your logic is sound enough given the amount of effort I feel like putting into evaluating it right now, i.e., not much ;)

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Pharmboy]

Oh, ok, so it's the Libertarian's fault that your internet connection isn't great?

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[jtownatpunk.net]

Then don't live in the boonies if you want the infrastructure benefits of an urban area. My grandpa spent thousands on a huge satellite dish and receiver system back in the 80s and never bitched about the cost because he felt the high cost of bringing in all those television channels was far outweighed by the benefits of living in a beautiful, rural area. If you're gonna live in the sticks, paying more for services and having less choice is reality.

But even that doesn't hold so much any more. The cable company wired his area back in the 90s and he's been on a cablemodem for 5 years. There's also a wireless provider that's been there for years (some sort of 802.x system), satellite for over a decade (from as many as 3 B2C providers at one time, in addition to the B2B providers), and, most recently, 3G service from several cellular carriers.

Honestly, with consumer grade two-way satellite available at a starting price of $50/month from multiple providers, there are very, very few areas in the US that only have a single source of entartube access.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[jdcope]

I think you're looking at this from the wrong perspective. It isn't the ISPs that are pushing for it, even though they will benefit...

It's the MIAA and RIAA that are pushing for it. They're banking on making it expensive to pirate media in order to diminish how often it happens!

I think this would encourage piracy. If a person has to pay as they go, wouldn't it be cheaper to download a single compressed file, maybe even of lower quality, instead of streaming with commercials & all the other crap?

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Lanteran]

'taking those three words and standing them on their own'... what are you smoking? I quoted the clause afterwards. The other person's post contains the rest of my arguments, and then a little.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Yoda's Mum]

Why should people in low population density areas be able to expect the same quality of service as those who live in high density areas without fronting up the additional costs caused by where they choose to live?

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[spazdor]

If anything, this will be an incentive for ISPs to start trying to build out their networks and actually make an effort to deliver as many bytes as possible, since suddenly extra network capacity becomes extra earning potential, rather than something they just have to maintain in order to keep people from leaving.

The actual per-byte price will have to be competitive if they don't want to lose all their customers - but imagine if Comcast's engineers started looking at things like Netflix as a sales opportunity rather than a nuisance to their infrastructure!

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[spazdor]

Yeah; peering agreements between providers are definitely commerce.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[spazdor]

but if ISPs started switching to this model, what is to stop an ISP from just doing things as SOP (flat-rate) and making hand over fist when all the streamers, gamers, downloaders jump ship of the ISPs bilking them from the new model?.

Well, then that ISP would find that it has to buy enough bandwidth to service a lot of streamers, gamers and downloaders, but it wouldn't be able to offset that bandwidth cost by charging Grandma $45 a month for 10 or 15 SMTP and POP3 transactions. All those grandmas would be quite happy sticking with their (now much cheaper) ISPs, and you won't have their subscription money to help subsidize the hungrier customers.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Rockoon]

I hear this a lot, but it doesnt seem to jive with my observations.

I am observing regulations that prevent entry into the market. If it was too expensive to enter the market, why the regulation?

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sig makes you sound like a cunt.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[robot256]

The problem is what will happen in monopoly broadband markets. If there is no competition, they can still jack up the per MB rates so they get the same amount of revenue, or even higher until the network congestion is reduced because it costs so much to use. There is no infrastructure improvement incentive there, and no market forces to lower the price.

Maybe the FCC should limit the use of per-MB pricing to areas where there is actual competition and to no-cancellation-fee service. This would include most mobile services but exclude fixed installations in places where per-MB pricing would do more harm than good. It might even give an incentive for companies and governments to revoke some monopolies.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[TheoMurpse]

The Interstate Commerce Clause ("To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes") was only intended to keep the states from entering trade wars, not to dictate how, where, who, when trade will occur.

Woah, citation needed. I never heard, in all my years of being a lawyer and law student before that, that the CC was created exclusively to prevent trade wars!

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, living in the sticks has nothing to do with it. I live in berkeley, just north of frikkin silicon valley itself and I can see Google from my backyard. Guess how many broadband internet options I have? One, shitcast. My dad gets a better internet deal living in the Sierras.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he was criticizing the misapplication of regulation. Regulation by the same government that has made IP competition illegal in some areas. Hardly an indictment of free market. And what does libertarianism have to do with local versus federal regulation? It's all still the government.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Miamicanes]

> Honestly, with consumer grade two-way satellite available at a starting price of $50/month from multiple providers, there are very, very few areas in the US that only have a single source of entartube access.

Satellite internet at any price is broadband for the damned and desperate. Even if cash were infinite, FAP didn't exist, and Hughes didn't take profound liberties with the definition of "tcp/ip", the speed of light and time it takes a radio signal to make a round trip through the Clarke belt would make it suck for most uses anyway.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Bigjeff5]

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3.

Cheers!

(This is a bad example to use for Congress/El Presidente abusing the Commerce clause. This is exactly the sort of situation it was intended for - interstate commerce. Now, exactly how Congress chooses to regulate it is an entirely different yet just as polarizing story.)

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Bigjeff5]

More than likely it went down something like this:

Founding Father A: No way man, commerce should be the States' business!

Founding Father B: I totally agree dude, but what if the states don't agree? What if they start trade wars and shit? That's bad news man, and we have no way to fix it! The Congress needs to be able put a stop to that man!

Founding Father A: Oh dude, you're right! I didn't think about that! How we make Congress the arbitrators of trade disputes?

Founding Father B: Alright dude, that sounds perfect!

Founding Father C: But what if something happens that we didn't think of though? Like, what if a State gets sneaky? Or what if a company gets so big it actually operates in more than one state? One state could get nasty and try to take all the business, and there isn't anything the other states can do!

Founding Fathers A & B: Oh shit, you're right man.

Founding Father A: Ok, so how's this? We already decided Congress should regulate international commerce right? Well, why shouldn't they regulate interstate commerce too?

Founding Fathers B & C: Brilliant! Next!

I'm certain that's how they talked back then too, I swear it.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Bigjeff5]

It isn't obvious? I mean, the clause clearly states "to prevent trade wars".

Oh wait, no it doesn't. My bad.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Pharmboy]

Try reading his comment, in particular the " that you "Limited Government" types love so much " part whereby he tries to lump me into some group, as if he has a clue. Then comment, preferably after you log in.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Frenchman113]

People don't choose where to live; they're born where they live. Even to the extent that people move, perhaps once in their lifetime, they almost certainly don't do it based on the availability of Internet access. You could just as easily ask why rural locations ought have sanitation, electrification, or any other utility. The great thing about society is that we as a people believe there are certain things which everybody should be able to enjoy, even if it requires a transfer of wealth to accomplish it. Whether or not you think Internet service is one of these is up to you, but don't try pretend that the only fair way resources can be distributed is every man for himself.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Shadow99_1]

I love that line 'Choose to live'... I live in a small town outside a big one not because I choose to live there, but it's the only place I can afford to live. The costs in the city are higher than my wage allows for. Moving to a higher 'density' area is frankly a overly expensive and downright stupid move. And in our current era information is power. I know I have to constantly keep my skills up our I'd be out a job...

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument is overly simplistic. From all the hours of discussion in those conventions specific resolutions were drawn, and they were drawn with an agreement that they have certain meanings.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[zach_the_lizard]

I have heard it claimed that "regulate" meant "to make regular" in ye olden days, not "control or supervise." That would be more in line with the intent to prevent internal tariffs and trade wars (which occurred before the passage of the Constitution).

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[hairyfeet]

I hate to break the news to ya friend, but the plan is already in the works and being tested as we speak. How do I know? Because I'm in one of the "test markets" for what I've been told WILL end up rolled out nationwide. Here is what you get: If you take cable and Internet it is $65 for 36GB, for the bundle with VoIP it is $106 and again you get 36GB for home, and if you buy the $150 "business package" which is the same damned thing as the other except for the cap you get a whole 76GB. After that it is $1.50 a GB!

Oh and let me tell you for some of the other "fun" you get. Use Vonage? You're fucked, it counts while THEIR VoIP don't. Use Linux or Mac OSX? You're fucked, as Windows Updates come from a local WSUS server and don't count, Linux and OSX does. Want to watch anything other than Youtube and Netflix? You're fucked, because everything else counts while Youtube and Netflix from what I've been told is gonna pull an Akamai and pay for the privilege of being allowed to set up local servers, everyone else? piss off if you don't bring a checkbook. And of course THEIR video on demand services? don't count.

So for all those "corporation yay!" and "free market rules!" types? Enjoy your future, which is the short bus on the Internet while the rest of the world gets 100Mb pipes and looks at us like a backwater. From what I've been told once this rolls out nationwide the others WILL follow suit, except maybe for Verizon FIOS, which if you've looked at the map they are pretty much cherry picking certain large cities and the rest of us are boned. And I'm sure I'll get the "vote with your dollars!" fanboys, to which I ask this question: How EXACTLY am I supposed to "vote with my dollars" when my choices are 1.-Get fucked by the cableco, 2.-Get fucked by AT&T by paying higher than the cableco for service on WWII era lines that max out at 200Kb for DSL and which they've made clear they will NOT be upgrading, or 3.-go WISP which has barely 300Kb and restrictions nastier than the cableco?

Sadly I think the only solution now is to just seize the last mile away from the duopolies and open up competition. We should tell them "You want a monopoly? Fine we'll give you a decade for every area you wire up with 50MB no limit FIOS, 2 decades for 100Mb, and the same 2 decades for those that don't have Internet service you wire with the 50MB plan. Otherwise STFU since we have given you a couple of decades to get your shit together and all you've done is gouge while letting the lines rot in any place you haven't decided is worth cherry picking. Maybe it is different in LA and NYC, but here in the flyover states we are getting screwed and from what I've been told it is to be nationwide by late Q3 at the latest. expect to see a big "heavy users are teh pirates!" campaign to make those that actually want decent service look like scum. Assholes.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[hairyfeet]

Well at least in my area the ISPs have learned the "fuck you with a contract" phone trick, and they learned it well. Want Internet? That is a two year contract for X dollars. Want to walk away any time you like, or when they start screwing you hard? Well that will be X+30%-45% and of course if you sign the contract and they screw you later the termination penalty more than makes up for the X+ they would have had you pay. Thanks to the duopoly it is already nearly $100 for DSL and the same for cable and that is with the contract and then tack on another $40 if you want to be able to escape. The FCC is a little late in trying to keep the poor from losing access because in my area the poor already can't afford it. I'm sure by the time this BS gets rammed through the middle class won't be able to either.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Renraku]

In order to provide you with better service, we are moving you from the Unlimited(tm)* plan over to our metered service. Our metered service will charge a dollar per gigabyte. A gigabyte can hold ten full length movies** or six hundred thousand songs***. We feel that this is fair pricing and if you want to use any more bandwidth you're free to go to dialup or start your own service provider.

*Unlimited means 250GB/month
** In 100x100 resolution @5fps
*** In MIDI format

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[DrgnDancer]

No, it's not anyone's "fault." It's a result of measures that, like everything else in this world, aren't perfect. My point wasn't that regulated monopolies suck, they don't always. The same local governments that "screwed up" granting those monopolies in Louisiana are also working to try and fix the situation, quite successfully in some cases. Though you probably wouldn't like their solution which is moving from a regulated monopoly to a government backed utility.

There is no perfect solution. The market can't or won't "fix it" in every situation. Federal regulation, local regulation, market forces, none of them exist in a vacuum and all of them have their places. Sometimes people rely to much on one or the other, and stuff gets screwy. When enough people feel like enough stuff is screwy then they start leaning on one of the other forces to fix it. Your original post seemed to imply that somehow Federal regulation and the current regulated monopoly situation in most areas were somehow one and the same. They're not, local governments create the monopolies; and for a great number of people, probably a majority of people, those monopolies are better or on par with the alternative.

Which is usually either nothing, or a government utility. Because big telecoms don't like to spend a fortune running cable to every home in a low population density area unless they can feel comfortable with a guaranteed ROI.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two loopholes, though. The first is to realise that all commerce is interstate, even if it isn't, because it affects an interstate market. If you buy a widget from someone in your state, then you are increasing the demand for widgets, which will lead to a rise in prices in that state, which causes widgets to be imported from across state lines... so there is no such thing as a non-interstate transaction. The second is to use the power of federal spending, or lack thereof, to force states to impose what congress can't do themselves. Congress wants to pass a law that says X, but such a law can only be imposed at a state level - so instead they pass a law saying that only states with a law that does X passed may be eligable for federal funding of education/transport/other. States then have little option but to comply, or else face disasterous financial consequences.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see where you're coming from, but it's really the general welfare clause that Congress has taken for that license.

The copyright and patent clauses also drive, albeit sometimes indirectly, misintreprations and misapplications of the commerce clause, as well as being in blatant contradiction to the 1st and other amendments. You'll notice this issue has come up in the form of an argument on behalf of an industry which is effectively a vendor and gatekeeper of access to IP, posing as a communications service. It's not really packet passing they're selling; cable companies have always acted like they were selling something other than the service of delivering a signal, as if they also necessarily had some license on the signal content. Bandwidth really ain't the issue here. fraudulently maximizing profits is. Unfortunately this attitude has also begin to infect telcos, with the advent of digital TV, but the cable industry is still by far the biggest offender.

Plus, you're still subjected to unsolicited advertising after you've paid for the service. Where are the spam lawsuits so beloved by the "community"? Something doesn't add up.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[falsified]

If it got as bad as I hypothesized, $200/month internet, I'd have to seriously consider switching back to dialup.

And in areas with true monopolies (in reality, I think the majority of the USA sees one single cable provider and several slow DSL providers) I think there would be enough people put off by that price that it would become economically feasible for a second or third competitor to enter the marketplace, or for those DSL providers to mature a bit and start offering cable-style speeds at more realistic prices.

In the end, I really think most cable companies will resist the temptation to charge per byte so that they can ensure they continue having a monopoly.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[cheekyjohnson]

in reality, I think the majority of the USA sees one single cable provider and several slow DSL providers

Really? I'm seeing one single cable provider (Comcast) and zero DSL providers.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[DragonWriter]

This mis-interpretation is pretty much exactly how that clause has made the Constitution completely meaningless.

It was a harmless little addendum that pretty much everyone considered perfectly safe. The point was to keep trade "regular" among the States. So that, for example, Virginia isn't allowed to attach extra tariffs to goods passing through from New York.

No, that's covered by a separate provision of Article I, Section 10: "No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress."

The Commerce Clause was not intended to be a superfluous redundancy, it was, in fact, intended to give Congress a general power to regulate interstate and international trade beyond simply prohibiting states from imposing tariffs and the like.

There are certainly things that have been attempted to be justified with it that have little nexus with interstate or international commerce (some of which have been struck down on that basis), and certainly there may be arguments that--Constitutional or not--some uses of it have been undesirable, but that's a different issue.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[bill_mcgonigle]

what is to stop an ISP from just doing things as SOP (flat-rate) and making hand over fist when all the streamers, gamers, downloaders jump ship of the ISPs bilking them from the new model?

Well, the right answer is 'competition' but the States and Localities have granted monopolies to these corporations. In turn, the Public Utilities Commissions are supposed to get to set all those rates. But they're often corrupt.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[blair1q]

Regulate meant then what it does now: to keep things from going out of control, to normalize*. The uses of the commerce clause that keep the states from being too different in their trade practices when dealing with each other and with foreign entities are exactly what the commerce clause was for. The FCC has a reduced jurisdiction over cable because, unlike broadcasting, cable TV communications don't emanate across state lines (you can see pussy on cable in St. Louis Missouri not because you have to request the link but because your neighbor in East St. Louis Illinois isn't having that pussy broadcast into his TV too, and the FCC's usual rules about broadcasting pussy can't be applied). Unless you're a multistate corporation like Comcast or Cox, and then you're back in federal territory.

* - there's a slightly tighter meaning to the phrase "well-regulated" as used in the 2nd Amendment, since that idiom was more of a synonym for "fit for a purpose" and didn't invoke the sense of "controlled." Not so much the words "to regulate" as used in the Commerce Clause.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[blair1q]

The Constitution is based on the real experiences of the founders, not strawman arguments.

However, your point, despite the logical fallacy, is correct. Words and phrases can change meaning over time. This word included. Just not in the way it's used in this context. See below. So your point, while correct, is irrelevant.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[Alamais]

tl;cd (couldn't download).

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[jimrthy]

You're totally correct about my example. That was horrible. It was supposed to be more a matter of "everyone use the same kind of electrical outlets." I'm not having any luck finding it now, but I remember something in the Federalist Papers about how this clause is so meek and inoffensive that it was one of the only bits no one objected to.

Whether that memory's correct or not really doesn't matter much. Supreme Court Justices pretty much ignored it for around 100 years, then decided that it and the "necessary and proper" phrase were the only parts of the Constitution that had any meaning in the modern world.

Presidents have been packing the Court with Justices who love Big Government ever since John Marshall.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[DragonWriter]

It was supposed to be more a matter of "everyone use the same kind of electrical outlets." I'm not having any luck finding it now, but I remember something in the Federalist Papers about how this clause is so meek and inoffensive that it was one of the only bits no one objected to.

You should be especially suspicious when the campaign ads for a political proposition characterize some element of that proposition as meek, inoffensive, and/or non-controversial.

And you should recognize that the Federalist Papers were the centerpiece of a high-stakes 18th century political advertising campaign.

Re:The U.S. Constitution

[jimrthy]

And you should recognize that the Federalist Papers were the centerpiece of a high-stakes 18th century political advertising campaign.

Or maybe the marketing campaign for a coup d'etat.

Bandwidth huh?

[TaoPhoenix]

TFA = about 20k
Web 2.0 crap plus ads= 1.6 megs
or some such

Lynx Lives Again!

Re:Bandwidth huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It helps to use a browser that doesn't support things like Crappy Stupid Sh... i mean Cascade Style Sheets too.

NETSCAPE 2 FTW

EAT YOUR HEART OUT "fast Javascript browser" hipster fanboys!

Re:Bandwidth huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had my slashdot account still....
Not lynx, we need satellite fed nntp/usenet again, we need tin :)
Let us run our own spool and upload articles as we post on a (gasp) modem
A single sat channel is 6 Mb, 6Mb down for an nntp feed should get most groups
I would be fine and more than happy if http went away and we went back to the old days of gopher nntp
and encrypt the hell out of everything

Bad idea for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

With people being oblivious to the "as they go" part, that's not in the consumer's interest. Besides, you don't really want students to worry "Oh I'd really like to read about integrals, but don't like to pay extra for going to the Wikipedia article, or watch a course on youtube".

Re:Bad idea for consumers

[c_jonescc]

Why are they trying to charge base on how much total data I transfer? It doesn't save them money if the pipes are 'empty'. The expense should be based on how fast I want my bits.

I remember the days when I'd have to let a 1 min video buffer for 30s before I could watch it. Why not do that for super cheap, then let people pay more for 5Mbs, and even more for 50Mbps?

What compelling argument is there that it matters at all how much I am able to download in one month at 1Mbps or even 56k? I understand that not every person in the region can max out a 20Mbps line at the same time, but surely at lower speed that all changes....

Re:Bad idea for consumers

[Bigjeff5]

It doesn't save them money if the pipes are 'empty'.

You obviously don't understand how the internet works.

Since the rest of your post is based on this entirely erroneous assumption (it does, in fact, cost telco's a lot of money to send data across other people's pipes, it's only free if it is 100% within their own network, which is rare) I completely ignored it.

Re:Bad idea for consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, constructive of you!

Pay as you type

[Anonymous Coward]

How about pay as you type for forum responses?

Then maybe you won't get the posts like:

FIRST POST! Woo!

Re:Pay as you type

[AltairDusk]

Sadly I think that would affect the productive posts more than things like the "FIRST POST OMG!!!" trend as well-thought and useful posts tend to be longer. It could also result in the horror of every forum post on the web looking like a teen's text messages. (Imagine how each slashdot comment you read would look in 'txtspeak')

A la carte cables

[Sonny Yatsen]

It's funny how cable companies all want us to pay as we go for internet access, yet still insist on pushing bundlings of hundreds of TV channels on us if we want to use cable TV.

Re:A la carte cables

[The MAZZTer]

Ah, but you can only watch one channel at a time!

Re:A la carte cables

[AltairDusk]

It would be nice if they weren't trying to force a phone service I don't want down my throat either. When cable + internet + phone is cheaper than cable + internet with the same provider something is very wrong...

Re:A la carte cables

[chemicaldave]

Ah, but you can only watch one channel at a time!

Untrue. I can watch as many channels as I have TVs.

Re:A la carte cables

[cob666]

What is even more interesting about this is that some cable companies are using the internet as their distribution channel and they are converting their phone services to VOIP.

If the plans offer a reasonable limit on downloads then I don't see a problem with tiered service with an additional cost per GB (as long as the additional costs are reasonable which I highly doubt) then I don't see any problems with this. I know I'm being naive but it would be nice to pay less per month when I'm not using the internet a lot. But this raises other issues about installed software that thinks nothing of phoning home every time you run an application to see if there is a newer version and automatically downloading patches and updates.

Re:A la carte cables

[commodore64_love]

I'm certainly no fan of Comsucks, but in their defense: The bundling deals are a requirement of NBC, Disney, and other channel owners. Comcast HAS to buy the bundle rather than individual channels, therefore they'd gain nothing sell you just MSNBC which also comes with CNBC, Bravo, Syfy, Telemundo.

As for internet:

I don't see how pay-as-you-go would save any customer any money. You can already get DSL for as cheap as $15 and Dialup as cheap as $7. If all you need is email access plus some web browsing, then buy one of those plans. It's not like cellphones where pay-as-you-go saves cash.

Re:A la carte cables

[Martin Blank]

Sometimes more, with picture-in-picture and an analog connection for the low channels.

Re:A la carte cables

[bluefoxlucid]

The thing with "hundreds of channels" in broadcast is you have ONE PIPE. Six thousand people are a matter of six thousand runs of cable off the nearest hub. The hub gets one stream to it.

With unicast IP traffic, however, you have 300 people accessing the same YouTube video. You cache the YouTube video so you don't have to pay your upstream provider. Then you down-link the same video 300 times to the hub, and out once to each user from there. Unless you're a Tier 1 telco, you're leasing the local lines, and overloading them.

The biggest problem here is, of course, "unlimited" internet worked great at the 128k level. With 50 megs of downstream every fucking second, though, economy of scale fails. This wasn't a problem because you generally got as much as continuous 128k/s overall...

... then we decided to replace broadcast television with unicast IP streaming.

Re:A la carte cables

[Sonny Yatsen]

I know that media companies require the bundling of channels by cable companies. My question is why I can't simply choose to buy a bundle (for example, the NBC bundle you listed) instead of being forced to buy the 700 other channels the cable company offers. Those 700 other channels aren't required to be bundled with the NBC bundle.

Re:A la carte cables

[noidentity]

It's funny how cable companies all want us to pay as we go for internet access, yet still insist on pushing bundlings of hundreds of TV channels on us if we want to use cable TV.

I guess my cable company doesn't offer that yet, because they laughed when I asked for 31-bit IP access, not the extended content available on the full 32-bit IP range.

Re:A la carte cables

[poetmatt]

or if you know what you're doing, you can watch probably 4-6 channels per TV.

Re:A la carte cables

[blair1q]

But you need a cable tuner for each of them. A box or a card. So they sell you service on a per-TV basis, too.

Re:A la carte cables

[jd]

Sensible answer: Since the reciever doesn't send a request for a specific channel, and can record one channel when you watch another, you must logically be getting every channel (including those you can't watch because they're scrambled). A sufficiently powerful digital box could grab all the feeds in parallel.

Max Headroom answer: If you compressed all the data sufficiently, you might very well be able to watch all the channels simultaneously. The brain's I/O bandwidth is probably greater than Comcast's.

Silly Answer: Since 3D television works on the idea of one eye recieving one channel and the other eye recieving a different channel, you could watch two channels at the same time.

Re:A la carte cables

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

It might not save us money, but we might be able to get the channels we actually want for the same amount of money.

Re:A la carte cables

[Talderas]

If that were the case.....

I'd get the phone line. Then attach a machine to the phone line that responds with annoyingly loud modem noise. I would then not care if my number is published and actively get that number on every telemarketer list possible.

Re:A la carte cables

[vlm]

Since the reciever doesn't send a request for a specific channel

Not in the era of SDV switched digital video, where the channels are dynamically remapped based on what yer neighbors are watching.

Not much different from how movies on demand work, except that with SDV, multiple boxes can watch a stream.

Re:A la carte cables

[vlm]

My question is why I can't simply choose to buy a bundle (for example, the NBC bundle you listed) instead of being forced to buy the 700 other channels the cable company offers. Those 700 other channels aren't required to be bundled with the NBC bundle.

Depending on whom you talk to, and how you define things, 95% of television is owned by about three multinational holding corporations. You can spend hours surfing wikipedia, or just take my word for it.

The most you could possibly hope for is a small handful of bundles, which isn't really worth the immense billing hassle.

Most of the small potatoes more or less round down to zero cost anyway. The dynamic range of cost is similar to the range of athlete salaries, a couple whom get zillions and the rest are basically volunteers. It would be well worth it to not pay for ESPN if you don't want it. It would be pointless to argue about the one cent per year hillbilly channel.

Re:A la carte cables

[ArsonSmith]

Of course it wouldn't be this way, but as it is you pay say $50 for unlimited bandwidth. If you go to a tiered system shouldn't ~$50 be the maximum?

If I'm downloading 5Tb a month for $50 and someone else is doing 50M a Month for $50 then perhaps I'm not getting it cheap perhaps the other person is just getting ripped off.

Even if you consider the low use subsidizing the higher use (often refereed to as niche users) then those niche users may be charged $75 instead of $50 and the others charged less.

Of course anyone with real technical understanding knows it's the connection that costs the most and the bandwidth is a comparative drop in the bucket.

Re:A la carte cables

[Anonymous Coward]

Sensible answer: Since the reciever doesn't send a request for a specific channel, and can record one channel when you watch another, you must logically be getting every channel (including those you can't watch because they're scrambled).

The cable companies also figured that out and they don't like it. No sir, not one bit. That's why they are rolling out SDV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_video. When that finishes, every time you want to watch a channel you will have to ask them for it and then wait for it to be put on the feed to you.

If you thought channel-change delays were annoyingly slow as part of the change from analog to digital, wait until you're living with SDV. No more Al Bundy-speed channel changing for you.

Re:A la carte cables

[DesScorp]

And I would happily make a deal with them: I'll take a metered usage, pay-as-you-go Internet access plan if I also get a plan where I only get the channels I choose to pay for.

Re:A la carte cables

[h4rr4r]

Because I do not want to watch the same damn thing at the same damn time as you. I am not the problem, I am willing to pay to get this service. I am not willing to be robbed though.

Re:A la carte cables

[natehoy]

The ceiling ain't gonna be where your monthly charge is today, that's for sure.

Think about it. The cable company is (by and large) regulated to ensure a reasonable profit margin. That margin isn't going to change by a whole hell of a lot, so the cable company will still need about the same AVERAGE amount of money per consumer just to maintain the wires and gimcrackery.

So let's say there are two customers in this plan to make the math simple. Currently you each pay $50 a month, your neighbor downloads his 50mb and pays his $50, and you download your 5TB and pay your $50.

The company changes to a pay-as-you-go sort of plan. $20 a month buys you service and your first 20GB of data, and it's, say, $1 a gigabyte over that. So your neighbor still isn't scratching the surface of his allotment, he saves $30. But if you were capped at your current charge, you'd never pay more than $50, and the cable company is out $30 (your neighbor's savings).

They've lost money, and they have not discouraged you from gobbling up bandwidth like it's free candy. And it's not, really, most service providers currently pay by the gigabyte (a very small fee, but if someone is using 5TB of bandwidth on a consumer connection each month $75 isn't going to garner much of a profit, if at all).

The real problem is, though, the niche users are the minority. By and large, most customers will be saving money on this. A lot of money, unless the ISP charges a significant "base charge" to make a profit off maintaining the connection. Which means the niche users are going to be milked until they moo, then they'll go for blood, then when that's dried up they'll grind your bones for the calcium.

They might put in a service charge cap, but it's going to be a lot lot LOT higher than what you pay today. And the wired and wireless worlds have shown us that companies don't tend to want caps on charges, only caps on data amounts you get with those charges (a' la the Comcast 250GB/month limit).

So if you download 5TB, that's a flat rate for you of $1 a gig, $5,000 please. If you want your service charges capped at $100, then you'll be limited to 100GB a month. I'm sure they'll offer "bandwidth management", for an extra fee.

Re:A la carte cables

[jd]

Damn, that's going to ruin the channel-changing game.

(For those unfamiliar with it, you score 1 point every time you change channel part-way through one person's sentence and have what's said on the other channel create something that forms a complete sentence. Bonus of 1 point if what's formed is gramatically correct, a further 1 point if what's formed also makes some sort of sense.)

Re:A la carte cables

[ArsonSmith]

except supply and demand factor in to this as well. The neighbor has already proven he's willing to pay $50 for his little bit of data so if his drops at all it'll be an insignificant amount to pretend they were doing him a favor. While they will be looking to stick it to anyone that is using more than the average, or curb their use down to the smaller amount.

You have to remember most ISPs in the high speed market are either monopoly or duopoly providers and don't have real competition to keep their prices competitive and features in line with what users want.

Re:A la carte cables

[TheoMurpse]

Why is it funny? They want to make as much money as possible, so they make decisions accordingly. Is that so hard to understand? There's no right to have glorious parallels in all business decisions, you know.

That being said, this sucks for us, the clients.

Re:A la carte cables

[Anonymous Coward]

or if you know what you're doing, you can watch probably 4-6 channels per TV.

Yeah, if you have Parkinson's and hold the remote contol.

Re:A la carte cables

[Anonymous Coward]

SDV is already rolled out in numerous American markets, mostly for low-demand channels.

That's why TiVo users that use a Cablecard often have to get an additional SDV adapter.

Also, there's no reason in theory why SDV has to be slow (and actually, I haven't noticed it being any worse than the typical channels). The slowness of channel changing is mostly due to the atrocious design of cable boxes. Honestly, I'm pretty sure Scientific Atlanta recruits their firmware people directly out of the trailer parks. Even when the box is tuned to analog feeds (yes, it will handle them)--it's slow as shit in the interface department. A good counterexample is that when you watch video on demand, the FF and REW commands actually travel to the headend where the seeking and stuff is done. Not on the box. There is no technical reason that digital video delivery couldn't be done better. It just isn't... and the reasons are numerous, yet all depressing.

Re:A la carte cables

[commodore64_love]

>>>cable companies all want us to pay as we go for internet access, yet still insist on pushing bundlings of hundreds of TV channels

I'm certainly no fan of Comsucks, but in their defense: The bundling deals are a requirement of NBC, Disney, and other channel owners. Comcast HAS to buy the bundle rather than individual channels, therefore they'd gain nothing sell you just MSNBC which also comes with CNBC, Bravo, Syfy, Telemundo.

As for internet:

I don't see how pay-as-you-go would save any customer any money. You can already get DSL for as cheap as $15 and Dialup as cheap as $7. If all you need is email access plus some web browsing, then buy one of those plans. It's not like cellphones where pay-as-you-go saves cash.

Re:A la carte cables

[Anonymous Coward]

actually they dont, the channels them selves do... example... ESPN's contract says it must be on basic, and if you buy ESPN, then you muse also carry a bunch of other ESPN channels, and ESPN dictates weather they go on basic or premium... this has nothing to do with the cable company... and MOST channels do the same...

Re:A la carte cables

[poetmatt]

or if you're not retarded and hook up HTPC's that can handle it.

Re:A la carte cables

[bluefoxlucid]

Yes but what you don't understand is the cost associated with pushing down, say, 1 stream of HD video to every household at the same time. And some households have 2, 3 TVs... so your kids are watching cartoons and you're watching Showgirls.

For perspective, the HD stream for Netflix is 3800kbit/s. A pair of T1 connections is 1.544 x 2 == 3.088Mbit/s. An OC12 is 601Mbit/s payload, and so can carry about 161.95 of these signals at once. A quick google finds an ad for "OC12 from $14,999 / Month" so a little over $93/mo is enough to give you the bandwidth to watch exactly 1 HD video at the time, assuming you're not using the Internet for anything else. If you want to be able to watch two shows at once (i.e. TV in your kid's room and in your room), you're looking at a bit under $190/mo for internet service. Plus whatever additional fee the ISP adds i.e. so they can make a profit.

All this assumes that roughly 161 customers would all be watching TV at around the same time, say between 5pm and 9pm. If you want enough downstream to watch one (1) show without lag AND we can guarantee that 50% of the customers are watching between 5 and 7 and 50% between 7 and 9, they can oversell their bandwidth by 100% and you can have a base cost of about $47, with the caveat that if more than half the people on your street are watching at least 1 TV show or movie at the same time as you then you'll experience network congestion and the HD video quality will degrade (or it'll lag, skip, and REBUFERING...)

Understand?

Re:A la carte cables

[SirWhoopass]

Because the media networks don't want you to. Not only do they sell a bunch of channels packaged together, but they insist that their channels be included on a sales tier with everything else. They don't want to have a "NBC package" as an option... you might not buy it. They want their entire lineup to be included in the base cable package.

To make this happen they typically blackmail the cable company and (more importantly) the customers by withholding the one channel everyone wants. Usually a channel that carries major sporting events in the market they are negotiating.

The old days...

[slapout]

I remember when CompuServe charged $12/hour.

Then GEnie came along and charged $18/hour during business hours and $6/hour at night.

Re:The old days...

[GiveBenADollar]

Exactly,the consumers want pay as you go internet. How many discussions on slashdot have we had against download caps/restrictions where the only logical conclusion is pay as you go internet. You can't have unlimited throughput, no restrictions, and a low price! It doesn't work, because the peak bandwidth does cost money. The ISP industry needs to either put restrictions on how much you can use per package, or they need pay as you go. We the consumers have pushed them there because of how much we consume, and I for one welcome pay as you go.

Re:The old days...

[pooh666]

ok who do you work for?!

Re:The old days...

[Troggie87]

The argument agains this is that companies like, say, Charter, will simply put the per MB price so high that consuming media through the internet is infesible. Which is oddly convenient for a company that would then control the only cost-effective media delivery system, a.k.a. cable. Perhaps they make some deal with Microsoft to route X-Box live traffic seperately for a fee, but past that I'm doubtful.

Re:The old days...

[Beorytis]

Exactly,the consumers want pay as you go internet.

Only problem (right now) is that if we start to pay as we go, we'll need better ways of knowing how much we're going. If I end up with pay as you go, I want to know how much my online activities are going to cost before I do them. E.g. If it costs me $0.10 every time I visit my credit card website, I might pay the premium for paper statements.

Re:The old days...

[Shark]

It would also promote efficiency. 'unlimited' data leads to a lot of waste in my opinion. When there's some constraint on bandwidth (even relatively mild), it makes people consider cost/benefit of whatever they put/get online.

Re:The old days...

[GiveBenADollar]

Umm... maybe I missed something I thought we were talking about Pay As You Go VS 'Unlimited' (but very limited) or capped plans. If this argument is about Pay WHERE You Go then I'd like to change my position.

Re:The old days...

[Beorytis]

Ultimately it will be pay-where-you go: If you go to a bland, passive text only site that only needs to send you a couple thousand bytes you pay a lot less than a java & flash loaded interactive site.

Re:The old days...

[thunderclap]

I agree with one provision. If I pay for say 30gbs of bandwidth and 15gb of upstream, I don't want the provider to say a thing about what the content is. I Either ala carte it with no analysis of what it is or flat rate it and monitor but not both.

Re:The old days...

[zeroshade]

The only restriction necessary is the current method of restricting bandwidth (granted they should update the infrastructure because at least in the US we get shafted for bandwidth). Pay as you go and download caps are just wrong. The only thing that ISPs worry about is the bandwidth at any given moment. As long as there is bandwidth to spare they are happy. Pay as you go, download caps, anything that is designed to make you consume less is done so because if you consume less then your bandwidth at any given time is going to be less.

In other words, update the infrastructure and stop oversubscribing and everything will be fine. Anything else is just ISPs trying to increase their profit margin rather than provide better service.

Re:The old days...

[Captain Centropyge]

WHO...DOES... NUMBER...2... WORK... FOR..?!! (Comcast, probably...)

Re:The old days...

[Bucky24]

I imagine that image/ad blocking plugins for browsers would become quite popular, and most major companies would likely restructure their websites to be smaller.

Youtube and Netflix on-demand would become much less popular.

Re:The old days...

[GiveBenADollar]

In other words bandwidth should not be restricted so that friday night surfing becomes a pain? Update the infrastructure and stop oversubscribing?! If they did that the costs WOULD skyrocket. Yes ISPs do things for profits and some do have huge profit margins, but they do this because it is so hard to get into the industry and they will continue to do this until the regulations and technology allows more options for broadband. Pay as you go does not solve these issues, but it does allow people to pay for what they uses. Either PAYGo, caps/throttling/blocking, or overselling until we are all back in the days of 28.8 because of all the torrents/movies downloading on our block. You choose.

Re:The old days...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you are either a rich bastard, or you are an executive for a telco. Otherwise, you wouldn't have written such a retarded reply. Long live the capitalist pig!

Re:The old days...

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can't have unlimited throughput, no restrictions, and a low price! It doesn't work"

It's funny because it's exactly what I have here.
Unlimited internet access, plus tv, plus phone, plus a free routeur for 30€ a month.
Welcome in France.

The main difference between internet here and in the USA is that our network is far better.
Actually, it's the only thing showed by the saturation caused by video provider. USA should upgrade its network.

Re:The old days...

[Anonymous Coward]

The consumers equally also want pay as you watch TV.

OH WAIT NO THEY FUCKING DON'T! NO-ONE DOES

Re:The old days...

[Cimexus]

That's the thing though: oversubscription is the only way you can offer affordable residential internet services. That's the point of pay as you go: the ISP can forecast fairly accurately, how much bandwidth they are going to need (and thus how much they have spare), because they know the amount of data they have sold their customers in a given month. As customers' demand more bandwidth (i.e. upgrade their plans to ones with higher caps/lower per-MB cost), they can easily know when they will need to upgrade hardware etc.

Without caps you can get the situation where a sudden, unexpected killer app blows all your bandwidth forecasts out of the water and you end up having network congestion or having to resort to traffic shaping/prioritisation techniques to keep your network going at an acceptable rate.

I am a citizen of both the US and Australia and have internet services in both countries. The difference in ISP philosophies is quite interesting. In Australia 'pay as you go' Internet is the norm, and has been since the dawn of broadband internet access. You select a plan with a given download cap (ranging from ~15 GB at the low end to >1 TB at the high end). If you exceed your downloads in a month, your traffic is slowed dramatically (e.g. 128 kbps). This is better than cutting you off completely but still makes anything but very basic email and web surfing impossible. ISPs tend not to be as 'bundle-oriented' as in the US. They sell you an amount of data, and generally don't force you to bundle TV/phone/other services with it. Bundles exist, sure, but they aren't compulsory or as common as in the US. Also, most ISPs never do any form of traffic shaping (e.g. torrent throttling), deep packet inspection, or prioritisation. They sell you a 'block' of data and since you are paying for what you use, they couldn't care less what you use it for.

In the US they obviously sell you an amount of bandwidth (i.e. a speed), rather than an amount of data. The download allowances are generally unlimited; however the speeds offered are generally slower than in Australia for an equivalent type of service (e.g. DSL maxes out at 6 Mbps in most of the US, whereas (up to) 24 Mbps ADSL2+ is ubiquitous in Australia. I suppose since they are selling you unlimited downloads they have to limit the speed more (which is an indirect way of 'capping' your download limit anyway). Some US ISPs also deprioritise certain types of traffic, such as P2P.

There are pros and cons to each business model. On one hand, I do enjoy not having to monitor my usage in the US. You can just use the net without thinking about how much you are downloading. That is nice. However, I regularly experience awful quality of service from US ISPs, particularly in peak periods: random packet loss, slowdowns and other obvious signs of network congestion. I also don't like the idea that (some) ISPs are sniffing my traffic and deprioritising certain traffic. Even if it doesn't significantly impact my speeds, I just don't like the ~idea~ of it.

In Australia, you do have to be slightly conscious of what you're downloading (although you should really be choosing a plan with a cap that fits your 'natural' usage of the Internet, so you don't have to think about it as much as you might expect). On the other hand, I do find the quality of service significantly better than the average US ISP. The service acheives its rated speed any time of day or night on any type of traffic - no peak period slowdown (note: some Aussies stuck on RIMs will disagree with this, but RIM congestion is a separate issue than core ISP network congestion).

So I don't see any real harm in a company choosing to offer pay as you go/capped style Internet. Provided there's a good choice of caps (as there is in Australia ... let's face it, a 1 terabyte cap might as well be unlimited for most intents and purposes). For light users especially, there's a benefit because the small-cap plans are generally dirt cheap - my parents in Australia are on a 10 GB plan that cos

Re:The old days...

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak for yourself. My internet service has no cap outside of the speed of my connection and that's the way I like it.

Re:The old days...

[fostytou]

....and for some reason you think that ATT, comcast, or COX would have any desire to give you the pros without the cons? I guess the strange thing to me is that I think the majority of people are paying for non-guaranteed 6Mb connections from comcast at $45/mo and not really using them. I'd love to get my parents on a $15/mo plan that got them that service, but I guarantee the ISPs will do everything they can to keep from making less money off of someone, no matter how reasonable their internet usage is.

Re:The old days...

[Isaac-1]

I remember when CompuServe was $20 per hour for 2400 bps, and $9.60 per hour for 300 bps. (yes to you youngsters that is bps not kbps)

sincerely

(formerly) 72766,1640

Re:The old days...

[commodore64_love]

>>>Exactly,the consumers want pay as you go internet.

I don't see how pay-as-you-go would save customers any money? You can already get DSL for as cheap as $15 and Dialup as cheap as $7. It doesn't get much lower than that. Now maybe after you exceed a certain cap, say 250GB, then the plan can convert to pay-as-you-go but most internet companies already do that.

Re:The old days...

[zeroshade]

Bandwidth should be restricted (as it is now) not the amount of data.

Update the infrastructure and stop oversubscribing?! If they did that the costs WOULD skyrocket.

Nearly every other modern country has faster AND cheaper internet. Most of them don't have a download cap, they just have bandwidth limits like the US. This is because they've updated their infrastructure and, at the very least, oversubscribe less. In addition it's because there is actual competition between them.

Yes ISPs do things for profits and some do have huge profit margins, but they do this because it is so hard to get into the industry and they will continue to do this until the regulations and technology allows more options for broadband.

Then fix the regulations. The technology exists, the problem is that ISPs buy laws that prevent municipal ISPs. They prevent legislation that would allow competition. We need more competition in the ISP space. Maybe something similar to a European approach where some areas have the infrastructure owned by the government and it gets leased to any ISP who wants to use it. This would make lower the barrier to entry and promote competition. Either way, Pay-as-you-go is not a good option because all it will do is increase profits for ISPs and punish anyone who wants to actually USE their internet service. Right now, I have my desktop computer set up so I can access it from anywhere. I can upload/download files to and from my desktop whenever I need to or want to. Just last week I copied 11GB of data from a friend's computer to my own via this set up. Yes, this is a luxury I enjoy. However, many many people do similar things because they can. Developers come up with and sell utilities to facilitate these types of things for users who aren't as tech savvy. The giant boom of internet applications, streaming video, etc. in the US is facilitated and increased due to the unlimited nature of internet. As long as your speed is enough to support the quality you desire, you can watch/download/surf/whatever. PAYgo would reduce and maybe eliminate a lot of innovation that happens on the internet in the US.

Re:The old days...

[thejynxed]

See, the thing with this tired old argument is, is that all of these telcos were, are, and will be given massive subsidies via our tax dollars to improve their infrastructure.

Instead they wasted it on deep-packet-inspection units, advertising, and unnecessary corporate bonuses.

just that

[Anonymous Coward]

you can't use visa or mastercard to pay....HAHA

I might be okay with this on one condition...

[chemicaldave]

...if the telecoms also give me pay-as-i-go cable TV plans. Why haven't they caught up with customer demand? Just let me pick which channels I want to watch and pay less for only those channels instead paying a premium for a bunch of channels I wont watch. The options they give are baffling. Pay very little for local channels, or pay a fuckload for 200+

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd go a step further...cable boxes and satellite boxes are pretty advanced....so I should only pay for the time that I'm watching the channels too.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[DragonWriter]

...if the telecoms also give me pay-as-i-go cable TV plans. Why haven't they caught up with customer demand? Just let me pick which channels I want to watch and pay less for only those channels instead paying a premium for a bunch of channels I wont watch.

The actual marginal cost for the individual channels is small, most of the cost to the cable company is the fixed cost for the connection. So, when you do get either pay-as-you-go (which would be everything is pay-per-view), or a-la-carte (pay per channel) cable pricing, expect the basic connection fee to be most of the cost of the lowest existing cable package, while at the most common level of viewing, the total charge is a little bit higher (to account for the higher cost associated with the more flexible billing) than the average current cost, with less cost-free flexibility (on a pay-go plan, you can't watch more quantity without more cost; on an a-la-carte plan you don't have access to check out a show you've heard about on a new channel.)

There has been building pressure for it, so I'm sure that one of these options will be mandated, but when it is, I bet the people who cried out for it are going to wish they hadn't.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why haven't they caught up with customer demand?

Because the customer isn't demanding it. We're still paying large sums for bundled channels, most of which we never touch. When we all start cancelling the service, citing bundle-bollox, they'll be able to go to their real customers, the advertisers, with new ammunition on why they need to pressurized the channel owners to allow unbundling.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[Anonymous Coward]

it would be better if there was tv neutrality, but you can be forgiven for missing the point. neutral media packages are also equal.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[Twintop]

As much as I agree with you about al a carte cable TV, it would kill the over-the-top selection. It is the major/core channels that supplement the costs for all of the specialty channels that get included in the current packages.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[MBGMorden]

Except that cable and satellite boxes are also pretty low-power too. I know a TON of people who power off their TV when they're not watching it, but leave their cable/sat receiver on all the time. I'd wager a fairly significant percentage of the population would pretty quickly get hit with a bill saying they were watching TV 24/7, which they may have only been watching for a small fraction of that.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[colinnwn]

I bet you are wrong about that for most consumers. From what I understand, many channels may not cost much, but there are a few that cost a lot (like ESPN which I care nothing about) and when you have 200 or more channels, even a little cost starts to add up fast. Of course there will be a few where the price goes up and they complain.

In my area, broadcast only is the lowest level and it costs about $12/mo, which is what I have now. The next cheapest basic package is $40 plus about $8 per TV connected due to the required cable box for most digital channels being encrypted. That's a huge difference. I'd be willing to pay $12, plus a few dollars a month for a few channels that I really want. But most of the garbage they offer is just that, and I don't want to pay 3 or more times what I pay now for about 3 more channels that I do want. I also don't really want another damn box connected to my TV. Cablecards should be $2/month, or I should be able to buy a set top box for a one time fee of about $80.

I wouldn't mind being required to have the minimum channel order time be 30 days, or if I have to get my request completed by an agent, having a reasonable charge for that. It wouldn't be reasonable to be able to order channels for one day when a show was on, and waste agent's time connecting and reconnecting channels repeatedly. But since this can easily be automated, there also shouldn't be one year commitments for channels, or $30 per channel connection and disconnection charges.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[Anonymous Coward]

the content providers prohibit ala carte cable plans in their agreements with cable companies. Blame the likes of ESPN and HBO and Showtime.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[colinnwn]

I guess there are still a lot of customers tolerating over $100/month cable bills? Not me. For the past year I've paid out the nose for "fast" internet (15/2 at $60/mo), and broadcast only cable $12/mo, and had a Netflix account. I wouldn't go back. 99% of cable programming is crap. I get better quality for less money.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[DragonWriter]

I bet you are wrong about that for most consumers. From what I understand, many channels may not cost much, but there are a few that cost a lot (like ESPN which I care nothing about)

The ones that cost a cable company a lot to get are the ones where the market will bear a high cost -- that is, where having or not having the channel makes a substantial difference in marketing cable service as a whole. These are precisely the channels that, in an a-la-carte system, the most subscribers would be buying.

Yeah, some people -- particularly, people with esoteric tastes that don't like popular channels -- will save money. But on average, a-la-carte will mean higher prices (from higher costs), with the less flexibility.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[VortexCortex]

I'd go a step further...cable boxes and satellite boxes are pretty advanced....so I should only pay for the time that I'm watching the channels too.

Weeelll, you see, the thing is: It doesn't actually cost us anything let you access 10 of our channels vs 500 channels.

This is because Satellite TV transmits all channels all the time to just about everywhere around you. So, it really doesn't cost us anything more if you watch TV constantly instead of only 10 minutes a day, and satellite distribution to 1 million customers doesn't cost us any more than distribution to one customer.

We've successfully tricked most people into thinking that a huge price increase for twice the number of channels is reasonable when, in fact, all we do is change the DRM keys in your set-top box so that you can decode the extra channels that we are sending to you (and everyone else in your city) anyhow.

Oh, and extra monthly fee for having a 2nd set top box? Ha ha ha, we make you pay for the set-top box, then charge you extra per month for something that costs us nothing to transmit! People gladly hand us more money Hand over Fist, it's amazing how dumb they are!

With Cable it's a bit different, we pay to maintain the lines, but other than that, it's the same.

TV is a purely distribution only system, there is no "on demand". The Internet is a totally different beast (which we use to provide some on-demand services). With the Internet, we try to send you only the data you request. Actually, we don't do that, we send any data destined for your IP, whether you wanted it or not, so beware of DDoS attacks because your pay-as-you-go bill will be humorously expensive.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[colinnwn]

"These are precisely the channels that, in an a-la-carte system, the most subscribers would be buying"

I don't know that is entirely true. ESPN is expensive because many men insist on having it, and Disney can use their joint marketing power to require it to be carried on basic cable, or to not allow it to be a separate package of premium sports channels. I still bet 30% of cable subscribers would cancel ESPN if they could, which is a substantial minority, not really esoteric tastes.

"But on average, a-la-carte will mean higher prices (from higher costs), with the less flexibility."

I'm far from convinced this will be true either. I don't see how a-la-carte creates less flexibility under any circumstance. Yes bundling could create administrative complexities that raise cost. But it can almost completely be automated, and most cable systems are already set up to do a-la-carte, they just chose to bundle due to revenue/marketing/license considerations. But given the 3x increased cost from broadcast only (which one can reasonably assume is mostly the physical plant and fixed costs) to the lowest cable package, there is a lot of fat in there that many customers can choose to cut.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[Bigjeff5]

Apparently you've never heard of copyright nor royalties.

The cost is not in distributing the content, it's in displaying it.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[VortexCortex]

Apparently you've never heard of copyright nor royalties.

The cost is not in distributing the content, it's in displaying it.

That makes no sense. You see, it's $5.00 more per month for another set top box. No matter how many channels I have subscribed to.

So, for just $10.00 more per month (1/8th my monthly bill) I can be "displaying" 200% of the content I'm currently displaying, yet my bill will only increase by 12.5%

Obviously: the largest charges on my bill are for "distribution", not "display", otherwise my bill would double with each additional set-top-box... Yet, it doesn't... it's only $5.00 more per additional display.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your logic is flawed.. you're an idiot. If you're going to do satire, you've got a long way to go.

The "Obvious" part isn't obvious. Not only have you failed to make a convincing logical argument why the extra fees are for "distribution" and not content reimbursement. There's no law of nature that requires the relationship between content fees and the number of boxes be 1:1 (as you seem to assume) or even linear. No reason.

The ignorance of your claims is also plain obvious to those that bother to look at the financials for a DBS company. The content producers are getting cuts of all that money, including extra receiver fees. How it is is accounted can vary. I am no friend of the cable and satellite companies, but the business is a little more complicated than you seem to believe.

As an example, in the case of Dish Network, if you bought your own equipment, there was never a second receiver fee as long as you had a phone line connected. If you understand the reasoning behind the this (as silly as it is)..you will then realize why I don't believe for a moment you have any experience in the broadcast business (even fake).

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't make their money off you. They make it from selling commercials. You are paying them to be their product.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[Zepalesque]

While I fully agree with the sentiment, people do not pay for work. People pay for value.

They value 500 channels more than they value 10 - so they are willing to pay more for it.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[Anonymous Coward]

You say "its amazing how dumb they are" as if they don't have any idea that they're being screwed...

See, the thing is, we know very WELL that we're being screwed, but we simply don't have many options. If I want to have two televisions with Comcast Xfinity service, I need to pay for two boxes. The fact that it doesn't cost Comcast any more for me to watch on the second box is irrelevant. I don't HAVE another way to accomplish my goal. It's not stupidity, it's lack of options.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[Anonymous Coward]

I might believe you really work for a satellite tv provider except that you do pay more... you pay each programming provider for the number of users who get it.

Really.

Re:I might be okay with this on one condition...

[VortexCortex]

You missed the point. The point was that the charges made no logical sense.

I believe that, with your help, I've successfully demonstrated that the the "relationship between content fees and the number of [displays]" is not 1:1, or linear.

Ergo, I seem to have made a perfectly logical argument that discredits the statement:

The cost is not in distributing the content, it's in displaying it.

Thank you for you time.

Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

They will also want to charge content creators on the same bandwidth so they can profit more on the same bandwidth, but not actually invest into upgrading their infrastructure to handle the traffic and thus negating the need to have tiered or metered plans.

Captialism, ho.

Re:Problem

[Chemisor]

> They will also want to charge content creators on the same bandwidth so they can profit more on the same bandwidth

Ok, so content creators will start not giving that ISP access to their content. If that content is desirable to the ISP's customers, they would switch to another provider that does not charge content creators and therefore has more content. The greedy ISP loses customers and goes out of business. The consumers win. Capitalism, ho!

Sure, I'll take metered internet

[mykos]

As soon as they provide me at least a 30 mbit connections with a maximum fee of $50 per month. Companies seem to be able to do that just fine outside of the US and Australia.

Yet another bit of history repeating

[arivanov]

When the commercial Internet started it was all PAYG at least in my corner of the world. You paid fixed price per connection and price per meg. Only large ISPs and their like managed to get fixed rate deals. Joe Casual user and Joe's Company Ltd paid per MB.

One of the first thing I had to write when I became employee No 6 in what was to become a large ISP in my country was exactly that - the traffic data collection, accounting and billing system.

The Telcos, Cablecos, etc _REMOVED_ all this when they entered the Internet market because it did not align with their legacy billing systems for legacy services. However, now the Internet is more important that the precious legacy voice or PPV so it is not surprising that things have come around full circle and "does not fit our billing system" is no longer a valid business reason.

Duh! Get ready for it

[jmorris42]

Like every utility, customers are eventually going to be paying fees that relate to their usage of the resource. I know this is an alien concept for you younger slashdot users who only know the world your marxist prof has taught you about but consider this a learning experience. Deal with it.

When the usage levels between users can be more than 100 to 1 it can't be fair. Either you have the low usage customers subsidizing the net hogs or you price the service where the low usage customers simply cannot justify the service. Or the government meddles and makes things go from bad to worse.

Lets examine the rest of the utility world. Do we have flat rate electricity? No. Do we have flat rate water? No. We sometimes have flat rate sewer but more often it is tied to water consumption on the assumption that most of your water eventually goes down the drain.

We do tend to have flat rate cable because a) until recently it would have been hard to meter and b) it doesn't cost the cable company more if you watch more. On Demand changes that model and guess what, most on demand programming carries a charge. But the biggest pushback against paying for cable by usage is the advertisers wouldn't like people getting into the habit of switching off unless they were actually paying attention and it would end useless (often bundled) channels being able to collect fees per set when nobody was watching.

So yes, if you are using more of a scarce resource you should expect to pay more. This is econ 101, which I realize is a scarce skill here but ignorance of reality doesn't mean you can ignore it.

By use is fine if the prices are sane

[h4rr4r]

I would say 10 cents a GB would be great. Those could even be per GB at a certain rate, or time of time. So they can sell higher speeds or different usage patterns.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[Anonymous Coward]

No, pricing per GB is not fine. Data volume is an irrelevant metric for network usage. Among themselves, internet providers never use volume based pricing! It simply does not reflect the costs in any meaningful way.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[dhammond]

Agreed. I would like to see internet connectivity treated as a utility, just like my electricity and gas. If the price reflects that actual costs incurred by the ISP, it would be fair for everyone involved. That's a big "if" though.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds fine to me, too.

However, I'm worried that they'll adopt the same price structure as the cellphone companies. I can't see how they can justify increasing the unit price by five-times after you've used X many minutes/bytes, etc. The Allowance pays for all the fixed monthly cost to run the system. Everything after that is windfall and should, really, go for a lower rate-- at most an equal rate.

The pricing system used by power companies should be applied. I pay $7.65 for the first 100 KWh and $0.0765 per thereafter (I live in Maine). It's essentially a flat-rate where the charge you for the first little chunk whether you use it or not. I would be perfectly happy with my ISP charging me X*10 for the first 10 GB, and then X/GB thereafter (X being variable to the size of the pipe) .

But I find the article's mention of "tiered pricing" a bit ominous.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I would say 10 cents a GB would be great

Are you kidding? That's more expensive than the equivalent in blank DVDs and 2-3x more costly than a hard disk.
If an ISP can't do better than the cost of manufacturing a physical product and shipping it half way around the world and at least two lays of middlemen then they are already abusing the crap out of their monopoly.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say 10 cents a GB would be great. Those could even be per GB at a certain rate, or time of time. So they can sell higher speeds or different usage patterns.

So according to you my 5 gig a month account with Verizon should be $0.50 a month? Let's get realistic. You might as well say free is the only plan that makes sense. I'd be thrilled with a $1 gig or on mobile accounts $3 to $5 a gig would be tolerable. Realistically to watch movies and videos you need 20 to 30 gig a month. That's really no more than a movie a day so 50 gig might be better. I'd happily pay $50 a month for that much on a wireless or even as much as $100 a month. You should be able to get that on a landline for $35 to $50 a month. Everyone is sweating downloaders but what about purchases I want to download? Overcharging to prevent illegal downloading harms everyone.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[Toze]

And 640K RAM ought to be enough for anybody. Let's not set firm prices on things that get used up more and more rapidly as time passes.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[h4rr4r]

I never said anything about wireless. I too have this verizon service and it is a huge ripoff.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[mattack2]

Think of a ton of blank DVDs (even in 50 packs commonly bought) in a shipping container -- the shipping part of the problem has got to be almost infinitesimal per GB.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Either way you've got all the other handling steps, sitting in the distributor's warehouse, loading and unloading, re-shipping to the stores where they sit on the shelf and have other inventory costs.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[RaymondKurzweil]

You're honestly comparing cheap pieces of plastic used as a storage medium and sold at retail with a telecommunications network and infrastructure??? Really? You think everyone here is that retarded?

I mean, sure all info is measured in bits, so telecom is measured in bits and so are DVDs. But gasoline is measured in gallons, and water is measured in gallons... That's about the level your example is working at, IMNSHO.

There's a reason that the irony of "sneakernet" is funny... You seem to have missed it. Why don't you just stick to disk media if that seems to solve all your problems, and is cheaper.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You're honestly comparing cheap pieces of plastic used as a storage medium and sold at retail with a telecommunications network and infrastructure??? Really? You think everyone here is that retarded?

Apparently you haven't been around long enough to be aware of Tannebaum's famous quote - "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

The point is that networks are supposed to be more efficient than sneakernet. When they aren't, something is clearly wrong.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[RaymondKurzweil]

Um... You didn't bother to read the last paragraph of my post.. I thought about deleting because it may have been too condescending.. But apparently it wasn't in this case.

And the ironic part of Tannenbaum's observation is that sneakernet actually *is* at times more efficient than using some low-latency telecom network. Not that anything is wrong.. that is the whole point. He wasn't lying. Try it and see. Even Internet2 can't compete with my van filled with Western Digital hard-drives. It really boils down to an observation on the bandwidth/latency trade-off.

So at this point I've completely lost the point you had. But it's too late for me to care.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[RaymondKurzweil]

Oh, well maybe you did read it.. In any case, I had precisely the Tannenbaum example in mind when I mentioned sneakernet in this context.. because they often go together in examples in introductory networking classes. What else did you think I meant by that last sentence then?

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[goose-incarnated]

I pay 19 ZAR/gig in SA (not counting fixed cost of line). That's about 2.7 USD/gig. I'm fine with it, as it *is* PAYG, and the gig has to be paid for before you can use it (and payment is simple when you run out and need to buy more). The months that I am home and watching all the monty python sketches that exist on youtube, I buy more gigs. The months that I am away from home, I pay nothing.

It works very well - I pay for what I use.

Re:By use is fine if the prices are sane

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So at this point I've completely lost the point you had.

Seems like you've lost the point that you had too.
You are pure rant, zero exposition. That's pretty narcissistic.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[h4rr4r]

Electric is nothing like this, more than 60% of my bill is some sort of non-variable having electricity fee.

How much does an isp pay?

[jmichaelg]

How much do ISPs pay for their connectivity? Can they get flat rate access and if yes, how much does something like an un-metered gig/sec connection cost per month/year?

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[h4rr4r]

This varies a lot, Tier 1 providers just have peering points and own the equipment, they then trade carriage of each others data. Smaller providers rent OC lines and pay huge fees but are allowed to soak the line 24x7, then they oversell that.

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[chemicaldave]

Look up Tier 1 service providers

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

ISPs don't pay per volume. The most common metric is a base price depending on the maximum throughput plus a variable price based on the 95th bandwidth percentile.

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[silas_moeckel]

Teir 1's do not pay anything (but they have to actively manage there business to get the traffic fairly even) this is what makes a tier 1 a tier 1. In the medium market I can get a 1gb connect with a 1gb floor for $1k a month 10gb for 5k and I do not deal with anything over 10gb at a single location (few people do). So while all the cable companies (none of them are tier 1 networks in the US to my knowledge) might pay most of the DSL company's do not since they are mostly Tier 1 networks. Now people generally buy on 95th percentile billing that is you throw up the top 5% of the samples (5 minute samples generally) and are billed on that rate with a minimum bill of so many mbs. There are no real per month costs past that for bandwidth, so my 16mbs comcast line would cost them less than 8 bucks a month to buy the bandwidth for if I maxed it out all month. Oddly I expect they will play the normal consumer billing of per megabyte delivered and probably more for a megabyte than I could buy it for in bulk.

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[vlm]

ISPs don't pay per volume. The most common metric is a base price depending on the maximum throughput plus a variable price based on the 95th bandwidth percentile.

A pretty accurate summary of buying transit. On the other hand, peering is a fixed monthly fee (usually quite low) to trade local traffic with your immediate physical neighbors almost always at zero per byte cost.

And of course ALL the other expenses of an ISP are constant per month. Electric, salaries, rent, equipment loan interest, private line interconnects, property taxes, etc ...

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[Burdell]

Yes, we can get flat rate. IIRC, our Internet transit OC-3s (155mbps) are around $6000-8000/month each, plus we have internal network links between POPs, routers to connect, power, cooling, etc. (and us employees like to get paid). We also have redundant links so a failure of one link doesn't cause a significant service disruption (so if we have N OC-3s, we can't sell Nx155mbps of bandwidth). A big portion of the costs are transport links (dedicated point-to-point circuits between cities), but the IP transit portion is still about $20-30/mbps/month IIRC.

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[Hatta]

In the medium market I can get a 1gb connect with a 1gb floor for $1k

They're making some nice profits on that. I get about 10mbit down on cable for $50/month. Assuming they don't oversubscribe (they do), they have 100 customers on that one mbit line. That's $5000 income for $1000 worth of bandwidth.

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[jmichaelg]

I've seen Cogent advertise $4/mb which translates to $4,000 /gb and I've seen OC3 prices higher than that.

Who is offering a $1k rate?

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[jmichaelg]

By "redundant link" are you saying you purchase bandwidth from different vendors or you purchase multiple OC3s from the same vendor?

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[Burdell]

We buy links from different upstream providers. Multiple links to the same provider only provides redundancy against link failure, not provider network problems, peering spats, etc. Also, buying two links from point A to point B from the same provider probably means they are muxed together, which means you don't have much redundancy at all. We use different local and long-haul carriers where possible, but that pushes up costs some more (you can't just find the cheapest provider and use them).

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[Wesley Felter]

And of course ALL the other expenses of an ISP are constant per month. Electric, salaries, rent, equipment loan interest, private line interconnects, property taxes, etc ...

Some of those are proportional to the amount of equipment, and ISPs have to install more equipment to provide more bandwidth.

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[silas_moeckel]

Cogent and L3 and a few others I have NDA's not to mention. IP transit has no real cost of goods, maintaining a network has very little per bit costs or even per port.

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[silas_moeckel]

Lets remember they have there own cable plant to maintain (really no incremental cost from the cable or phone plants they all ready had) and piles of tech support for the clueless idiots that think there ISP is responsible for fixing there computer.

Re:How much does an isp pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much do ISPs pay for their connectivity?

Can they get flat rate access and if yes, how much does something like an un-metered gig/sec connection cost per month/year?

Fear not. Your ISP is making gobs of money. Indeed, they have so much that they send millions of dollars a year to any member of Congress that will vote in favor of any bill that will allow your ISP to be able to make more money from you, while adding 'fees' to maintain their wires and serve 'poor' areas.. all while winning huge breaks in corporate taxes.

Sounds like someone should start working on a backup internet that we can run to after the government finishes taking control of the current internet. ( Shutting down websites, allowing ISP's to charge per GB, routing all traffic through secret rooms to be parsed as they spy on us all... etc. )

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[chemicaldave]

What about off peak usage? Should someone using bandwidth during peak usage hours be charged the same as someone who uses it off-peak? Bandwidth is a resource whose scarcity depends on others' use. How you are charged should be based on time of use and bandwidth used. The total amount used shouldn't be the only factor.

Blame Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

For once, you really can say "Blame Canada". Our oligopoly is raping us on the cost, the monthly caps, the limited 3rd-party choices who are also getting raped with bandwidth costs.

In the near future it might very well be worth it to live 100 meters of the border and get wireless internet from an USA provider.

Re:Blame Canada

[Lanteran]

It's about as bad if not worse in the states. Living withing 100m of the border won't help you.

Re:Blame Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

50$CAD (39.60 USD, before you make any joke) per month for 5mbps, combined download+upload monthly cap of 35GB.

Add another 10$ on top of that because you have no choice but to rent "their" modem and then about 12-15% of taxes on top of that.

Still think it's worst in the USA?

Re:Blame Canada

[MBGMorden]

I don't know. I'm paying $50 per month + taxes (so more than you). I also have a rented modem (though that cost isn't itemized), and only 3 Mbps, so slower than you. I am however, uncapped, which I guess is a big plus. Still, for the bandwidth I have, I feel like I'm overpaying quite a bit.

Re:Blame Canada

[vux984]

50$CAD (39.60 USD, before you make any joke)

Who are you letting do your currency conversion?

$50CAD is $49.45USD right now.

Wave goodbye to the industry

[BigSlowTarget]

>Analysts say pay-as-you-go Internet access could put the brakes on the burgeoning online video industry,

No, it won't. Like advanced cellphone systems earlier this century the industry will simply move to where it is viable. America will limp on with inferior general service then deny that the service is inferior and proclaim it a world besting triumph of technology.

Re:Wave goodbye to the industry

[Opportunist]

Pretty much this.

Technology will develop where it can. It will not develop where it cannot. Simple as that.

There is a very good reason why there are so few high tech companies are in Africa. Why? Because the infrastructure just plain sucks. Unreliable power, hard to get internet, logistics a nightmare... if you want the same, go ahead. Companies, especially those dependent on readily available and cheap internet technology, will go to countries where, well, internet technology is available and cheap. Europe, for exapmle. A perfect internet network, little downtime, affordable rates and in general on par with the US when it comes to other perks.

Why bother opening a company that depends on the internet in the US?

Man, if only...

[njvack]

Wouldn't it be great if someone would start a pay-as-you-go scheme for electricity? Or long-distance telephone service? Or gasoline?

Flat-rate services rely on light users subsidizing heavy users. If the rates are fair, pay-per-use is a good idea -- certainly better than arbitrary data caps that might get enforced god-knows-when.

And yes, people with lots of money can afford to buy more stuff. That's how it works.

Re:Man, if only...

[wcrowe]

...If the rates are fair...

There's the rub. The rates won't be fair. At least not in a neighborhood like mine where the cable company has a monopoly. The rates aren't fair already.

Re:Man, if only...

[Beorytis]

It's also about paying a premium to not have to think "how much is this going to cost" every time you use the service.

Re:Man, if only...

[vlm]

How bout a pay as you go monthly bus pass? Or a pay as you go police service? Pay as you go public library? Pay as you go medical care, which has worked so well in the USA? Pay as you go mail delivery (as opposed to sending mail) ?

Re:Man, if only...

[Hatta]

Electricity and gas are unlike bandwidth. They are limited in a way bandwidth isn't. If you use a unit of gas, you have to generate more. On the other hand, if you use a unit of bandwidth there's another unit waiting for you. Conversely, if you don't use a unit of gas you can save it for later. If you don't use a unit of bandwidth it's gone forever, and it costs the same to maintain the network whether you use it or not.

Pricing structure should encourage people to conserve gas and electricity. Networks (computer and phone) have to be maximally utilized to provide the lowest cost per packet. Pricing per megabyte discourages maximal utilization which leads to waste.

Re:Man, if only...

[jmorris42]

> How bout a pay as you go monthly bus pass?

Which is priced based on a typical user. And guess what? There probably isn't a 100-1 difference in the usage between bus pass holders like there is in Internet usage.

> Or a pay as you go police service?

That is a service more comparable to an insurance model. How many times do you WANT to use the police? Never. It is always because a) something beyond your control happened or b) something within your control that you failed to do.

> Pay as you go public library?

Everyone concedes that public libraries are essentially income transfer. Giving everyone some level of access to information has been decided to be something we want to do as a society. Whether it is a good idea or not is certainly something reasonable people could debate in the political arena. Saying this as someone who works for a public library btw so I'm probably a bit biased.

> Pay as you go medical care, which has worked so well in the USA?

Actually, we have the best system even though it isn't a pure capitalist one now. And most everyone has now realized it gets worse from here unless we can pull a miracle and repeal Obamacare.

> Pay as you go mail delivery (as opposed to sending mail) ?

And this one is why I bothered to reply since it does bring up a very good point. In the postal service it is strictly sender pays and there are consequences. We pretty much accept the spam because the sender pays and most thinking people understand they are the ones keeping the postal service afloat, 1st class mail certainly isn't expensive enough to keep the system going and volume is dropping. If most consumers end up on a receiver pays Internet model it will trigger massive changes, most of which few people are thinking about. Get ahead of that curve and one could get filthy rich.

Now people don't care how massive a pageview is unless it is on a smartphone and those currently tend to get special pages anyway. If the viewer is paying for bandwidth it won't be long until browsers begin indicating what a page is using. Now a web designer thinks nothing of embedding 100K of Javascript just to animate buttons and similar frippary. Ram in as many banner ads as possible to maximize revenue and who cares how optimized they are! Flash ads? Sure! Nope, not if the viewer is paying. If we aren't careful things will get crazy. Advertisers will try to make deals with ISPs so that their bits don't count but if the user's tools for estimating usage don't have a way to share that information it won't help. Scamming and fraud will run rampant.

Re:Man, if only...

[h4rr4r]

How in the hell do we have the best system?
What metric are you basing it on?

We do not have the highest lifespans, nor the lowest infant mortality, what are you basing this on?

Re:Man, if only...

[jmorris42]

> What metric are you basing it on?

Several. One important one is foot traffic. How many Americans go abroad for medical care when the poo hits the fan? A few go to get drugs the FDA is dragging its feet on. IN other words only when the government gets in the way. Now how many foreigners head here when they are ill?

> We do not have the highest lifespans, nor the lowest infant
> mortality, what are you basing this on?

Liars love statistics. But statistics rarely actually lie. It is in how they are used and misrepresented. For example many countries simply don't count very premature babies we routinely save as 'births' in their statistics but because we don't save 100% we show a lot more 'infant mortality' for trying. We also have a bigger spread in socioeconomic conditions in our population than Western Europe. Yes in our Democrat Party Strongholds we have somewhat higher infant mortality but in the rest of the country it is pretty rare. Kinda unfair to assign blame to the medical profession for more general problems in society isn't it? Same for lifespan. To the extent medicine can extend lifespan we are #1. But again doctors can't cure the drug war, gangs, drunk driving, suicide, extreme poverty, etc.

Re:Man, if only...

[h4rr4r]

How many Americans go abroad for medical care when the poo hits the fan?

It is becoming more and more common to take medical vacations to access affordable treatment, in the same vein people go to Canada to buy their drugs cheaper.

To the extent medicine can extend lifespan we are #1.
Please provide a citation.

Considering I know people who died early of treatable conditions, perhaps not curable but surely life could have been extended, but could not afford it I am going to disagree. They died due to long term conditions they did not inflict upon themselves but as they were not something the ER could deal with they died.

Re:Man, if only...

[cmburns69]

On the other hand, if you use a unit of bandwidth there's another unit waiting for you.

That's an irrelevant distinction as bandwidth is a scarce resource (in economic terms). Instead of being separated into physical units (e.g. liters, gallons, etc), bandwidth is separated into temporal units (e.g. KB/second). There are a finite number of these units at any specific time. If somebody is to use all those units at once (the full pipe), other users are deprived of bandwidth.

Therefore I agree with the GP as those who use more pay more (just as with everything else).

If the rates are fair, pay-per-use is a good idea -- certainly better than arbitrary data caps that might get enforced god-knows-when

Re:Man, if only...

[mattack2]

But bandwidth is limited because there's a limited amount that can be used at any one time divided by the number of people that want to use it. Just like the freeways get clogged during rush hour.

Re:Man, if only...

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO you are missing few considerations

1) Bandwidth is not unlimited. Someone having too much of something is == Unlimited.
2) It takes investment and infrastructure to generate bandwidth (i.e. bandwidth does have associated cost). Thought that cost keep on reducing exponentially with time.
3) Storage of electricity and gas is not cost free. And at few times they do let gas and electricity get wasted just because storage will be too expensive and in-efficient. Like battery are known to be inefficient and lose change with time.

Considering everything is a resource and one should use resources effectively and maximize benefits for society. Pricing structure should be such to make resources cheaper for all and not in benefit for few resource hogs (okey I might be one of them)... And above all net should be neutral.. charge for bandwidth and let me download that song at high speed.

The problem is not pay as you go arrangement. The problem here are corporates and wall street stock holders, who would want exponentiation growth...

Re:Man, if only...

[PineGreen]

That is not quite true. I have 10Mbit connection and if everybody on my network was utilizing their 10Mbps all the time, everything would come to a grinding halt. So, if they charged for usage, the total transfer would be lower and hence the infrastructure cost would be lower. It is quite clear that most of the traffic is not netflix, but 1% of guys maxing their connection by downloading porn via bit torrent - I think they should be charged more, there is nothing unfair about it.

Re:Man, if only...

[Anonymous Coward]

With that line of thinking, that minimalizes the internet, and creates a higher price factor to each individual unit. It flies in the face of everything that has occurred since the 90's.
This has nothing to do with maximally utilizing anything, it has to do with charging money for using a megabyte. It smacks of AOL-esque dialup charges in the early 90's.

Re:Man, if only...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pricing structure should encourage people to conserve gas and electricity. Networks (computer and phone) have to be maximally utilized to provide the lowest cost per packet. Pricing per megabyte discourages maximal utilization which leads to waste.

So House A with 10 residents (2 employed, 8 heavy internet users) and House B with 2 residents (both employed and infrequent users) are expected to pay the same price? Or what price structure do you propose. The status quo you seem to favor is: $X / per house. What the fuck sense does that make? Yet these houses may be separated by a few meters making your network arguments bunk. Do you propose that it be "per user"? Or is there peak usage involved? Also, electricity does have a base load that is a lot like bandwidth. Check out per hour pricing if such a plan is available for you. Middle of the night electricity is cheaper than a hot sunny afternoon. Why? Because bandwidth and electricity have a lot in common. Oh, also, I have 200 amp service. If I wanted more, that could be arranged. If I had 100 amp service, my fucking bill would be the same. Consider Y amp service as the speed (Y) you can consume electricity. At work, we have X000s amp service of 480 3-phase. We really don't pay extra for that big fucking pipe. We pay for the juice we use and it is in the interest of the power company to provide and service that big pipe (har har). Also, you suggest we "provide the lowest cost per packet". Why? I want to increase the value of the packet (no ads, fewer posts from you) and then multiply the fuck out of the packets. Simply using packets to lower the cost regardless the value, latency, availability, et cetera, is fucking stupid. Are you fucking stupid?

Re:Man, if only...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the network needs to be engineered to handle the expected (and always increasing) peak time usage. If you hit a congestion point for even 30 minutes at peak time it affects ALL customers in a bad way, so the network must continually be expanded and upgraded to avoid this. This is often nontrivial and very expensive, cost of more equipment, cost of supporting/sparing for the equipment, cost of additional colo space, cost of additional inter-colo links, cost of additional transit or peering links, cost of additional staff to support it - mostly paid for by broadband products under huge downward pricing pressure.

Then along come some groovy content distribution folks that plug into the net in inexpensive colo sites for an ultra cheap prebuilt (by other internet service providers) distribution platform and bang - up goes the usage on residential users all over the country destroying the business model that allowed broadband to reach the per month costs it has reached so far.... now ISP's see an increasing number of customers actually costing them money.

Usage based broadband solves the problem, those that have a usage model that matches the pricing model - no change, those that would end up costing the ISP's money - pay more to use more.

Re:Man, if only...

[SleazyRidr]

It makes it a little more complex at least. Everyone streaming Netflix at 7pm when they get home from work stresses the network. A few guys torrenting Linux isos overnight doesn't put anywhere near that level of strain on the network.

You'd have to do something like off-peak plans that a lot of electric companies provide. You want it at the same time as everyone else, then it costs you $x, but if you wait until midnight then you can get it for $x/2.

Re:Man, if only...

[BeanThere]

For example many countries simply don't count very premature babies we routinely save as 'births' in their statistics but because we don't save 100% we show a lot more 'infant mortality' for trying. We also have a bigger spread in socioeconomic conditions in our population than Western Europe.

I actually agree with you on this. Another example is violent crime. Western European nations routinely criticize the US for being "violent" and unsafe because the average per capita homicide rate is a few times higher in the US (and incorrectly blame it on the "gun culture" and arrogantly think they're safer because they don't have a right to carry arms), however when you factor in spread of demographic and socioeconomic conditions you find that most areas in the US are statistically just as safe as Western Europe, if not more so, and that the majority of violent crime is confined to a few areas that skew the averages.

what's the problem

[z-j-y]

the majority of customers will pay about the same price as they are paying now. the price is set according to how much the companies can milk. the detail doesn't matter.

if you have to download 10x movies than the average population, why is it that the other customers should fund your hobby?

Re:what's the problem

[paulsnx2]

What you are saying is that what we have today is good enough for the future, as far as the eye can see. You do not want to watch videos on Youtube, you do not want programming delivered over the Internet, you do not want news delivery via podcasts over the Internet, or real time maps, or traffic/weather reports.

I do not "fund your hobby" when you watch all the sports channels 24/7, and you do not "fund my hobby" when I watch YouTube videos all day. But when TelcomX charges you a flat rate to deliver "Sports Bits" to support your "hobby" while I pay out the WaZoo to seek programming outside the control of TelcomX....

THEN the problem still isn't that I am paying for your hobby!!! Like you imply, nothing has changed except....

I am getting shafted in an attempt to force me back onto their broadcast schedule!!! My "hobby" and your "hobby" are no different. We are both sucking down bandwidth. But the media companies can control the broadcast schedule of your "Sport Bits" hobby, while my DIY entertainment schedule eludes their control, and denies media companies their Advertisement Eyeballs.

Re:what's the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

... will pay about the same price as they are paying now ...

So will my bill go up or down? I'm guessing that the phone and cable companies aren't looking to suddenly lose revenue on this. My rates will go up, I'm sure.

In other news, 640k is enough memory for everyone, too.

Re:what's the problem

[z-j-y]

It would be nice if TelcomX charges cable TV fee based on usage.

Re:what's the problem

[z-j-y]

if they can increase your price, they would have done it now, regardless of fee structure.

Re:what's the problem

[Hatta]

if you have to download 10x movies than the average population, why is it that the other customers should fund your hobby?

You answered your own question earlier:

the price is set according to how much the companies can milk. the detail doesn't matter.

Kick the heavy downloaders off the network and they're not going to bring the prices down. In fact, since it costs the same to run a saturated and empty network, and you're dividing those fixed costs among fewer users it may even cost you more. Bandwidth that is not used is wasted, you should be thanking the heavy users for not wasting this resource that you are paying for whether you use it or not.

You'll take metered internet...

[DragonWriter]

You'll take metered internet (or not internet at all) when the providers serving your area decide that's the only thing they want to offer.

Re:You'll take metered internet...

[mykos]

You make me sad, sir, because you are correct.

Re:You'll take metered internet...

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Then I'll take no home internet at all, and take my laptop down to a Starbucks or a Barnes & Noble and buy a coffee when I need to jack in.

Re:You'll take metered internet...

[Anonymous Coward]

And if they are also paying for usage, what makes you think they will continue to provide that service to you for free?

Re:You'll take metered internet...

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Then fuck it. The internet is good for only two things: cat videos and porn. I don't need cat videos since I have two cats of my own. And my mind is dirty enough to make Larry Flynt, the Marquis de Sade, and fucking Caligula look like choirboys.

Re:You'll take metered internet...

[RobDude]

I (sometimes) wish the internet was less awesome. Back in the day, it was slow and laggy. You'd use the internet, sure; but you'd go to big LAN parties too.

And then you'd have awesome weekends of all sorts of video games and all sorts of file-sharing (at speeds that put the internet to shame).

With storage as cheap as it is....man....sign me up.

But I don't know anyone who goes to LAN parties anymore, and I don't know where any are.

Re:You'll take metered internet...

[DWMorse]

If you're in the southern MN area, look me up. (Searching my Slashdot username does wonders for finding me, intentionally.)

We gather several times a year and it is GLORIOUS. If Internet access starts to suck, we will gather more frequently.

LAN parties are not dead. They're just not as popular as they once were. When / if the kids' internet access is limited, the numbers will swell, and we will once again get to yell obscenities at each other across garages as we pwn faces.

Re:You'll take metered internet...

[gnapster]

This is exactly what we are doing right now, in my household.

Re:You'll take metered internet...

[The Wild Norseman]

Then I'll take no home internet at all, and take my laptop down to a Starbucks or a Barnes & Noble and buy a coffee when I need to jack in.

And where will you go when you need to jack off?

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I bet the other 40% is based on the number of kilowatt-hours you use. For me, 70% of my electric bill is based on the amount of energy I use, which makes sense.

How Depressing.

[paulsnx2]

Seriously, why do we have to pay more as improvements in technology drive the costs towards zero?

I don't much care if we go to a "Pay as you go" as long as the cost of such access continues to drive towards zero the same way everything else with computer systems has done historically. However, if we do not have competition, and we allow the big companies to erect huge barriers to entry against competition, then not only will this cost us as consumers, but will bash our ability to compete in the world, and bash our economy into the ground.

The FCC has no responsibility to safeguard the income for Internet providers, Cable providers, or Media companies. Their responsibility is to the citizens and to establish fair rules for competition. However, competition doesn't have the political clout that corporate America has.

Re:How Depressing.

[blair1q]

why do we have to pay more as improvements in technology drive the costs towards zero?

Because that's what the capitalist economic model is all about.

From each according to his ability to pay, to each according to his ability to avoid paying.

Re:How Depressing.

[jmorris42]

> Because that's what the capitalist economic model is all about.

No, this is because the ISPs are now government granted and regulated monopolies. In a free market there would be dozens of companies competing like crazy for your dollar and as costs fell rates would follow.

Because it was the government doing it they did it stupidly when they broke up AT&T all those years ago. So it again and get it right. Break up the phone AND cable companies. The part with the natural monopoly stays a government regulated monopoly and has the physical plant; the head end/CO and the wires going out to subscribers homes. The other half escapes the regulators and competes evenly with as many new entrants as want to provide dialtone, video and Internet over the regulated wires on a equal footing.

Re:How Depressing.

[blair1q]

The cable companies compete with the satellite and DSL companies. The phone company now delivers HDTV if you want it.

The only thing the cable companies have a monopoly on is cables, and you can't free that market up or your neighborhood will look like this:

http://www.indiamike.com/photopost/data/502/India-new_delhi_goa_001.jpg

If you want to live with that to maybe save a dollar a month by choosing the least-competent provider in the market segment, go for it.

Re:How Depressing.

[CookieForYou]

If you have ever seen the underground conduit in an urban environment, it's actually a fair bit worse than that.

The simple difference is that we can afford to bury our cables 15 feet underground here in the west (and are generally required to in the city).

Not debating the other points....

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[h4rr4r]

Yeah, the other 40%. Which means I spend more on some sort of flat rate that the gp would call "marxist", please ignore the fact that this makes no sense as he is pretty uneducated.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[jmorris42]

> The total amount used shouldn't be the only factor.

Probably not. And even electricity is some areas is priced that way. If we had a free market in Internet service it would work itself out soon enough.

Too bad we don't have anything like one. In one corner we have The Phone Company, a huge bloated government granted monopoly so old and senile it almost let the Internet slip through its fingers. So tied to the government it is difficult to see where the government stupid ends and the corporate idiocy begins. In the other is the new scrapy upstart cable monopolies, not quite as tied to the government but desperate to fix that defect. Circling the two lumbering behemoths are a few hopelessly out of their league wireless providers... ignoring the majority who are just divisions of The Phone Company.

Wireless isn't going to meet the demands of broadband hidef content, probably won't ever even handle YouTube on smartphones. And forget sat, latency kills.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[jd]

Tle old International Packet Switch Stream used pay-as-you-use and it was in a hell of a lot more countries than the Internet, with far more secure services. It died.

Sure, with the stipulation...

[Troggie87]

... that it is definitively legal for communities to install their own fiber and operate city-owned internet services. If metered internet and traffic shaping is actually being done to give the best price to the greatest amount of people, then certainly some small down in nowhersville Iowa is no threat. No need to sue them at all. Right?

Unless this is all an elaborate scheme to maximize profit to the detriment of the consumer. Then one self sufficient city-owned internet provider with great speed and low cost could be a dangerous thing indeed.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[Anonymous Coward]

Electricity: Mostly constant network costs, variable power production costs.
Internet: Mostly constant network costs, no data production costs (for the carriers).
Electricity: Billing mostly for the variable power usage (price per kWh)
Internet: Billing mostly for the variable data volume (price per MB)

Can you not see what's wrong with this picture?

The $14.95 DSL days are finally ending

[cdrguru]

We have been the victims of market share building exercises since 1995. The concept of offering service to people at rates that are unsupportable doesn't work long term. Clearly.

The problem with IPTV is the physical capacity on both cable and DSL doesn't exist. You can't support a star configuration fed from the head end where the combined bandwidth at the "node" is higher than can be served with any reasonable physical connection. The way things have been built today doesn't support IPTV even at fairly low resolutions and high compression. What we have today is a few early adopters trying out HD resolutions. If this grows, and it probably will, nobody is going to have decent service until they dig up all of the cables and replace everything with dedicated fiber from the head end to every house. Which is silly and isn't going to happen anytime soon.

IPTV? Get it while you can, because it isn't going to last out of the early adopter period. There simply isn't the bandwidth available to every home. Or even half.

Somehow, I'd expect prices to skyrocket as this happens. Or demands for payment from anyone with a financial interest in delivering content to homes. Or both.

Re:The $14.95 DSL days are finally ending

[KlomDark]

What does this have to do with the Iowa Public Television channel?

Re:The $14.95 DSL days are finally ending

[mirix]

It's a damn shame they didn't bother to use years of revenue and govn't grants to upgrade the network.

They milked whatever they could get out of an oversold network for far too long, profited handsomely, and now it's going to harm technological progress. I can't say it surprises me, with the myopic view of "next quarter" above progress and sustainability.

Party in my Car

[pooh666]

War driving time baby!

Gap between the wealthy and the poor

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what... the wealthy are always going to be able to have nicer things than the poor. Nothing in life is going to change that, despite how hard some people try.

Ad Blocking

[colinnwn]

I've never much minded internet advertisements as long as they weren't popups, popovers, or popunders. But if I have to start paying for every bit delivered to me, my hosts file is gonna get big fast, adblock and javascript blocking will become required addons for all my web browsers. Every business that advertises on the web should be screaming bloody murder at internet providers to not implement this. It will decimate the internet revenue model for many companies.

Re:Ad Blocking

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

> my hosts file is gonna get big fast, adblock
> and javascript blocking will become required
> addons for all my web browsers.

That is a very accurate assessment. My ISP sells throughput in "units", dimensioned in GB. The cardinality of a "unit" varies by time of day and week, so that usage is shaped to conform to the ISP's costs ( they make it very easy to monitor and estimate usage ).

Although we don't have much chance of consuming a 125 GB "off-peak unit", an 8GB "peak unit" is much easier to burn-through and Privoxy is therefore laden with rules. There's no point disabling the proxy only for off-peak hours..

In fact my partner will summon me if she sees any form of online ad; since its appearance is so unexpected she wonders if "something has gone wrong".

Re:Ad Blocking

[vlm]

Its framed as a war between the content providers and the monopoly last mile providers. But the real economic war will be between the ad networks aka google and the monopoly last mile providers.

Re:Ad Blocking

[spiritgreywolf]

Either that or if I get charged by data I do not want, I will hold the cable company liable - just like junk faxes and calls to my cellphone from people trying to sell me things. Wonder if I will be able to track that data and take them to small claims court? As soon as they try controlling the content, too - I think a few lawsuits might push them into falling into common carrier status as well. I dunno - I just know I hate the fact other countries get FAR better speed and access than we do...

Re:Ad Blocking

[vux984]

But if I have to start paying for every bit delivered to me, my hosts file is gonna get big fast, adblock and javascript blocking will become required addons for all my web browsers.

Perhaps you should find out how much those bits cost you first. Right now I pay $99/mo for 175GB, with an overage rate of $1.25/GB.

That works out to:

0.56$ / GB for the first 175
1.25$ / GB beyond that

A couple observations:
1) This is starting to look a bit like my electric bill. (And I've never had any complaints about that business model.) I don't unplug my microwave between uses to save all that juice its using to power the clock.

2) Lets say I used up the first tier with big downloads, and was into the cap. And suppose I implemented adblock/javascript blocking, and fucked around with my hosts files incessently, how much money would I save? I *honestly* can't see it being more than a few bucks. I'm skeptical it would even register.

Every business that advertises on the web should be screaming bloody murder at internet providers to not implement this. It will decimate the internet revenue model for many companies.

It will impact on those that offer very high bandwidth downloads, as the distribution cost borne by their customers will put off some percentage of their customers. So what?

In reality land, P-A-Y-G internet will look a lot like cellular phone service... where you buy a plan that includes X GB, and costs Y/GB to go over it, and for W/month you can pick 5 favorite sites that don't count to the allotment, for Z/month evenings and weekends are free... and if you sign up a family member you get a bonus Q GB.

Re:Ad Blocking

[vux984]

That is a very accurate assessment.

How much money do you really think downloading the ads is going to cost. I'm expecting pricing in the $0.50 to $1.50 per GB range. Even as a family that is constantly using the internet, I don't see the savings from ad blocking cracking more than a couple bucks.

I'm also, per my other post, expecting pricing to be primarily sold in pre-sold tiers, much like cell phone minutes. People will prepay for a tier that covers their need. When choosing between the 50GB/$100 with 1.25GB overage vs the 75GB/$120 with $1.10GB ... pissing around over even 3000MB worth of ads or whatever is just noise in the discussion.

Re:Ad Blocking

[h4rr4r]

Why not just have a cron job change the rules?
Simple automated and you could have working youtube.

Re:Ad Blocking

[colinnwn]

And I pay $61 for supposedly unlimited, but I expect I would get some polite notices to knock it off if I went over 200gigs/mo, so I really pay about $0.60/GB, but would probably get cancelled at the $0.31/GB level.

It is similar to my electric bill, but I do monitor standby power losses, and unplug or get rid of appliances that are too piggy. Acceptable standby power losses generally add to the functionality and convenience of using the product. Internet advertisements 99% of the time do neither.

Whether the difference of blocking ads or not is noticeable to your bill will depend on if you do a lot of streaming and downloads that eats bandwidth, or a lot of static webpage viewing where the fancy animated ads use more bandwidth than the content.

In the end it is more about principle, for me to pay for delivery of a product, your product better be valuable to me. And if it becomes an issue for many consumers, I am sure the already automated processes for creating, maintaining, and distributing hosts files will require little time to set up and virtually no time to use, so the transaction is frictionless.

There are multiple groups that will be affected negatively. Media distributors like Netflix will be hurt, but if enough people implement ad blocks out of principle or because it makes enough difference to be worthwhile, it will hurt advertisers, free to the consumer content producers, and ad servers (like Google) as well.

Your proposed reality land sounds both like a reasonable prediction, and something to be utterly terrified of. Given the ologopoly of landline internet providers, that data interconnection charges between providers I don't believe usually bin price by time, and the fact the internet is now relatively heavily loaded on the evenings from ~6pm to midnight, I'm not so sure you'll get evenings free, possibly just midnight to 6am and weekend days. That's not terribly helpful.

Re:Ad Blocking

[vux984]

It is similar to my electric bill, but I do monitor standby power losses, and unplug or get rid of appliances that are too piggy. Acceptable standby power losses generally add to the functionality and convenience of using the product. Internet advertisements 99% of the time do neither.

I'm aware of power consumption, but it has to be pretty egregious to be worth changing things. If I forget the light on in my closet for an afternoon that's 100x the loss of leaving an unused microwave plugged in. So anally chasing down things like the microwave is just noise.

I agree with the usefulness of internet ads, but again appeal to the fact that the time wasted in blocking them exceeds any real financial gain you'll get by doing so. I'd block them because they are annoying, not because OMG they are costing me money. After all, there ARE ways for them to serve ads in ways that will be harder to block... simply serving them through the hosts server will bypass nearly all current blocking methods (granted at some expense to the host, but they'll eat that cost if that's what it takes to make the ad revenue.)

Whether the difference of blocking ads or not is noticeable to your bill will depend on if you do a lot of streaming and downloads that eats bandwidth, or a lot of static webpage viewing where the fancy animated ads use more bandwidth than the content.

In theory yes. In practice no.

In practice, if you aren't streaming or torrenting and mostly just surf the static web where the ads make up a big chunk of the bandwidth... then yes... at that point the ratio of ads to content is substantial.

But you'll never rack up enough total bandwidth just surfing the web for it to make a difference.

I doubt you'd be able to crack even a mere 5 or 6 GB just surfing the "static web with fancy ads".

That's sort of situation is going to comfortably fall into the lowest tier of usage.

You HAVE to get into video, torrenting, large file downloads, etc to rack up enough usage to break out of the lowest tiers that will be available.

In the end it is more about principle, for me to pay for delivery of a product, your product better be valuable to me.

Fair enough. And I respect that. But you have to realize you are in the minority. Most people aren't going to implement complex filters to save 50 cents a month.

And if it becomes an issue for many consumers, I am sure the already automated processes for creating, maintaining, and distributing hosts files will require little time to set up and virtually no time to use, so the transaction is frictionless.

Also true. But adblock is pretty painless, and yet most people don't know / both. Its already pretty frictionless...

And like I said, if it becomes an arms race, the content providers aren't even trying right now for the most part. If it becomes an arms race, then the friction level will go up.

I don't believe usually bin price by time, and the fact the internet is now relatively heavily loaded on the evenings from ~6pm to midnight, I'm not so sure you'll get evenings free, possibly just midnight to 6am and weekend days. That's not terribly helpful.

Good point. Peak time for voice is 9 to 5. Peak time for internet might be evenings. On the flip side, very few "large downloads" need to happen at peak time.

I can schedule an iso to download at 2am. I can throttle the torrents at peak time. Windows update scheduled for 3am. Maybe this would be a good thing.

The really big downloads are mostly not time-sensitive / interactive.

If I want to watch a netflix movie, I can pick the one I want to watch, have it cache overnight, and watch it the next day. Or I can stream it live, and have it use up my peak-time allotment.

I'm not sure its really all that terrifying.

Re:Ad Blocking

[colinnwn]

Well I think my actual ad cost at around $0.50/GB would be several dollars a month, but it would be interesting to investigate. It is a valid point that as long as ads don't get increasingly bloated, and bandwidth costs continue to go down, fighting for several dollars a month as advertisers get better avoiding blocks probably isn't worth it.

Personally the only large downloads I do is regular Ubuntu updates and the occasional Netflix viewing on my Roku or Wii. I don't think NF can be cached by any set top box player, and for any significant amount of a movie to be cached in the Windows player you have to Haxor it up. That's not a very good solution. I would also be annoyed by having to manage my viewing habits 24 hrs in advance. Not having to do this was supposed to be an advantage of NF streaming.

I'm also not convinced that internet providers would generally even provide non-metered times even if they were sub-prime. Right now they could offer plans that are say 2mb/256kb from 6am to midnight weekdays and 30mb/3mb from midnight to 6am weekdays and most of the weekend, yet for various reasons they don't other than the standard congestion and oversubscribing. If they did start providing time-binned download limits, I could adjust. What I greatly fear is segmenting the internet to where you can get a cheap plan with unmetered access to a few provider dictated websites and a very low allotment to the wider internet, or much more expensive plans with reasonable allotments to the whole internet.

If that is where we are going, I think franchise agreements should be prohibited, the last mile should be owned by the municipality, and any internet provider should be allowed to lease space wholesale on the network to access customers.

Re:Ad Blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

The next step I want to see is the ability for me to mark my traffic "low priority" (up/downloads, torrents, etc) and it will be scheduled at a good time for the ISP in exchange for less cost or something.

Re:Ad Blocking

[NoSig]

1$/GB is more expensive than a harddisk. I.e. it will in this case actually be less expensive to BUY a harddisk and send it in the mail as a mean of transporting information. 1$/GB is crazy expensive.

Re:Ad Blocking

[Skidborg]

And so hardcore internet culture switches to waking up early instead of staying up late. Even less contact with the living human race.

Re:Ad Blocking

[vegiVamp]

Meaningful content is often (no, not always) text. So is most layout - CSS. Ads are usually flash or images. What do you think ?

Re:Ad Blocking

[vux984]

1$/GB is crazy expensive.

The average person pays more than that; in the sense that they pay between $30-50 for high speed internet and they download less than 10GB/mo.

Futzing around the web, browsing, twittering, checking email and facebook, simply doesn't use a lot of bandwidth.

Re:Ad Blocking

[NoSig]

That money is for having any sort of connection in the first place. The first 1kb/s is worth much more than the next 1mb/s, as it enables you get to a message at all. So I don't think it's quite fair to take the monthly expense and divide by the data downloaded.

Re:Ad Blocking

[vux984]

Agreed.

But at the same time I don't see buying a hard drive and fedexing it around the country is quite a fair comparison either. :)

Got what ya wanted

[dazedNconfuzed]

Here ya go, net-neutrality proponents: a per-byte charge. Did you really expect otherwise?

Re:Got what ya wanted

[Stunning Tard]

Will some bytes cost more than other bytes? That would be an easy next step, so I consider this a step away from net-neutrality.

Re:Got what ya wanted

[Cyko_01]

I wish I had mod points right now! will someone PLEASE mod parent up.

Re:Got what ya wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill yourself.

Re:Got what ya wanted

[Bigjeff5]

Depends on if your carrier's network gets saturated.

If so, definitely.

If not, no, it won't.

That's basic supply and demand there.

Re:Got what ya wanted

[Stunning Tard]

I meant to say bytes from different sources costing different. Bytes from different times of the day costing different only concerns me if it leads back to the first one.

Re:Got what ya wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet access is a privilege, not a right. I was warning people about this five years ago but everyone insisted some action by the FCC was necessary to make it "fair." Just remember with regulation comes regulatory fees. Expect to pay more as you go. But of course we'll just blame the ISPs, right? The government is only interested in regulating when they can assess a fee or otherwise tax the service being regulated. If you think this decision has anything to do with making broadband more accessible, think again.

Re:Got what ya wanted

[TwistedGreen]

My last-mile provider has selective traffic shaping AND a per-byte charge. Net neutrality is a myth in Canada.

Re:Got what ya wanted

[Eil]

Wait... what?

Metered bandwidth is a strike against net neutrality because it forces users to adjust their Internet usage to optimize for a lower bill. This makes streaming content (music, video, games) an unviable market, which would otherwise be able to compete fairly against the incumbent service/content providers who hold legal monopolies in most populated areas.

Re:Got what ya wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off. You don't get to mod by proxy.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[FooAtWFU]

It's funny to see the moralizing "you should pay what you use for!" types try to defend this. You know what? "Pay as you go" would be reasonable if they actually charged you a good (low) flat rate based on the costs you incurred. But the actual billing scheme is so far divorced from those real costs it's rather hilarious.

They're just abusing their monopoly (sometimes a geographic monopoly, sometimes regulatory too) to extract more money from you. There's nothing good and righteous and wonderful about that, really.

Might be Amusing....

[BJ_Covert_Action]

It's going to be a bit humorous when 90% of Americans shit their pants at not being able to watch kitty cat videos on Youtube for less than $50 per month. Or when the cost of their Netflix services suddenly triple. I'll start stocking up on popcorn now.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[blair1q]

I already pay for use by buying the top-tier bandwidth option and fitting into their stochastic model of peak usage.

But usage patterns have changed and they think they can ask for more money because now I'm using my Internet as a TV, which is outside the stochastic model they used to produce the cost apportioned to me when they set the tiered pricing model.

But the resource isn't actually scarce. I paid for unlimited usage of a 30-mbps link. It will be scarce when I need to get more than 30 mb of data into each second. And then I'll go to their competitor, who is now offering a 40-mbps option (but I'm leery of the reality of that, since it's DSL).

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[jmorris42]

> Which means I spend more on some sort of flat rate that the gp would call "marxist"

Not all flat rates are bogus. Yes there IS a cost involved with just having an electric meter. The electric company has to maintain the fixed infrastructure to service a customer regardless of usage. The billing department's expenses are pretty much fixed per account, etc. There are fixed regulatory fees to pay, etc. When the fixed portion is so high though you should be a bit suspicious that they haven't bribed some politicians to let em hose ratepayers or the politicians aren't imposing 'Robin Hood' surcharges to subsidize the rates of preferred groups. First be sure you aren't on the electric company's rate leveling plan as it will screw with the numbers big time.

I Fear $50 + The Meter

[zentec]

There's two reasons for consumption based-billing:

1. Make Netflix a lot less inexpensive in order to keep the profit line strong on their own video offerings.

2. Raise prices. Consumption based billing won't be less expensive for people who are light users because broadband service will be $50 for the privilege of having the coax terminate at the house, and *then* you pay what the meter says. And it won't be cheap; I would not rule out several dollars per gigabyte. By doing so, the ISP has a nice fat recurring revenue stream for doing absolutely nothing, and a service pricing structure that encourages you not to use the service.

I don't have a problem with consumption based billing. I have a problem to the GOTHCA! capitalism of having Wall Street and its corporate minions finding yet another way to fleece the public.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[lwsimon]

Capitalism is not defined as "using the power of government to expand and enforce profitability." In fact, that is the antithesis of capitalism, as capitalism is all about the respect of *every individual's* economic rights, which is obviously not being done when you have a government agency telling companies what they can charge for services they provide.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[Ichijo]

By doing so, the ISP has a nice fat recurring revenue stream for doing absolutely nothing...

That sounds like a great opportunity for competitors!

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see it getting that bad. If they price it that high people will simply cancel their service and the companies will get nothing, the current $50 - $60 range for broadband is fine for most people, start raising it to say $75 and up a month and you'll see people deciding its not worth it, why would they want to pay $50 a month for a service that's to expensive to actually use?

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[dontbgay]

Just like Marx didn't take into account the greedy corrupting the system, it seemd you're no taking into account that capitalism suffers from bullying. They have the money so they can make the rules. In capitalism, the power is (supposed to be) in the people. It's looking like the natural end of functional capitalism doesn't meet the theoretical end.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[TheoMurpse]

That sounds like a great opportunity for competitors ten years from now, once they've raised the capital, convince municipalities to revoke the forced monopolies, and then spend tens of millions to roll out new fiber.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[Bigjeff5]

The power is always with the people.

The problem is people have this real Stockholm's Syndrom thing going on and almost always give power to people who want to fuck them over.

I personally believe capitalism has managed to hold this in check a lot better than marxism ever has, because capitalism is designed to work with selfishness instead of against it, and it is therefore is undermined less by corruption.

However, chip away at a tree long enough and eventually it will fall. Nothing is immune to corruption, and the ones to blame for allowing it to continue are us.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[butlerm]

which is obviously not being done when you have a government agency telling companies what they can charge for services they provide.

Suppose the local electric company decides to charge $1 per kwh on weekdays, $2 per kwh on Saturdays, and $3 per kwh on Sundays and holidays. Should the local public utilities commission have the power to prevent that?

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[butlerm]

If things get too bad, municipal shared access fiber is much more likely.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[butlerm]

And it won't be cheap; I would not rule out several dollars per gigabyte.

At rates that high, wireline providers would be courting FCC price regulation. I am not sure they could get away with charging a marginal rate of even $1 / GB at any reasonable level. What price the government will allow a monopoly or near monopoly to charge is highly dependent on the actual economics - in this case the actual economics of expanding the access networks to handle a much higher level of traffic. Plus a healthy margin on top of that. Public utilities regulation (or the threat of it), Internet style.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[choko]

Capitalism also forbids monopolies and collusion, but with the telecom industry, that's exactly what you have. Limited monopolies and in areas where there is more than one company, collusion.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[lwsimon]

No. There should be no local utilities commission.

If you don't like the rates being charged, you should purchase a generator, or solar panels, or a windmill, or...

Think about that for a moment. How much fossil fuel is being burned to generate electricity in power plants? Now imagine a decentralized system, where places like my house, in the country and two miles from the nearest neighbor, are simply unprofitable to connect to the grid. Choosing to live that far out would necessitate a means of energy production - wind, solar, geothermal, whatever. That would tie the cost of energy production to me directly. Do you think I'd use less energy when I'm responsible for making sure the system is capable of generating it? Would there be an "energy crisis" if this were the case?

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[lwsimon]

Capitalism forbids barriers to market entry, not monopolies. In some cases, a need is best filled by a single business, and that's fine - so long as others are not prevented from competing by external force (i.e., government).

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[butlerm]

If you don't like the rates being charged, you should purchase a generator, or solar panels, or a windmill, or...

New plan. The real value of the millions of miles of utility easements across and under public lands and streets is astronomical. So the government charges fair market value to all utilities. Fair market value is what they could get if they had to lease the easements from private land owners.

Then, as a matter of public policy, the government gives tax credits to those utilities with service and pricing policies that vaguely accord with the public interest in universal service at reasonable rates.

Either way the cable companies and the telcos are leeches at the public trough.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[Eil]

I don't have a problem with consumption based billing. I have a problem to the GOTHCA! capitalism of having Wall Street and its corporate minions finding yet another way to fleece the public.

I agreed with everything you said until you deliberately conflated the world's most successful economic system with the anti-consumer actions of a handful of companies. Who, by the way, are granted local monopolies for service and content, which is pretty much the exact opposite of capitalism.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[DragonWriter]

Capitalism is not defined as "using the power of government to expand and enforce profitability."

The people -- who were, after all, largely socialist critics of systems then in practice -- who coined the term used it to refer to a specific method of doing exactly that.

as capitalism is all about the respect of *every individual's* economic rights

Capitalism is about selectively defining what is and is not an "economic right" to serve particular interests.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[DragonWriter]

Capitalism also forbids monopolies and collusion

No, capitalism does not. Capitalism tends to those things. Systems, such as those in most modern advanced mixed economies, put into place to forbid monopolies and collusions were put into place by governments responding to popular anger at the effects of capitalism.

Re:I Fear $50 + The Meter

[lwsimon]

The "end state" of *any* governmental system is totalitarianism. Government is a necessary evil, held in check only by the demonstrated will of the people to overturn an unjust system and replace it.

As Americans, we've lost the apparent will to fight - with weapons, or with words - and our government knows that. It has become a nearly living thing, slowly probing and expanding the boundaries within which it is allowed to operate. Today, the government is literally in every facet of our lives, and most of us don't realize it.

We will either wake up as a people, and begin that fight anew - not necessarily with weapons, mind you, not at this point,but with words, ideas, and political action - or we will continue to slowly fall into an increasingly fascist social democracy.

If you ask me to point to when this decline happened, I'd point to Marbury v Madison. The doctrine of judicial review is a stabilizing influence on the American system, and that system depends on a measure of instability. Once the people had a "legal process" to address the slights of Congress, it was no longer reasonable for them to march down to the capitol and threaten to hang the bastards when they stepped outside the lines laid out for them.

Without that doctrine, yes - there would have been violence and bloodshed in our history. I don't believe the Civil War would have happened, though, and the nation today would look entirely different. Probably smaller, with more legal hassle between states - but without the huge, overarching federal government that is sapping the very life out of the economy and society today.

And that, sirs, is my rant.

Spam anybody?

[thewils]

Let me get this straight, an ISP could bill you for forwarding your email spam that you didn't want in the first place? Looks like they have zero incentive to do anything to prevent it.

Re:Spam anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

But this happens in America already with your mobile phone networks, where you have to pay to receive a call or SMS. This is baffling to us in the rest of the world, where you only pay for outgoing calls and SMS. I realise that you'll usually have a phone plan where these costs are included, but even so, to pay to receive calls and SMS you don't want, even bundled as part of a plan, seems like insanity.

With the Internet, the situation is reversed: in American you are used to not paying for data, whereas in the rest of the world it is very common that you do. Australia's former government monopoly telco charged 19c per megabyte for many years. Nowadays, you usually buy a cap, but the per-megabyte charge for exceeding it hasn't fallen much over the last decade (it's still 15c or 18c, for two of our major ISPs).

PS. Yes, that's per megabyte. Not gigabyte. You really don't want to go over your cap.

Re:Spam anybody?

[Fnord666]

Let me get this straight, an ISP could bill you for forwarding your email spam that you didn't want in the first place? Looks like they have zero incentive to do anything to prevent it.

What, you mean like my cell provider who allows spam text messages because they "have no way to prevent it" and then charges me for it? Yes, your ISP can and will charge you if at all possible. For most people (at least in the US) it's not like you have much of a choice to go elsewhere anyway.

The reason this is dumb

[Tobor the Eighth Man]

Bandwidth isn't like gas. Nobody's mining extra bandwidth or depleting our nation's bandwidth reserves. The cost of data transfer, for a provider, doesn't scale linearly with customer use like a commodity might; up to a certain capacity, it should cost them more or less (not exactly, but close to) the same to operate a network at peak capacity or one at lower than peak capacity. So if I'm transferring 1 MB/hr or 1000 MB/hour, as long as the network isn't being overtaxed and slowed down by my usage it shouldn't matter how much I'm transferring. This is why a flat rate (or bandwidth tier) makes sense for ISPs, and is a fair arrangement with the consumer.

Pay as you go makes it easier to bilk customers and introduce ridiculous fees out of proportion with the cost of the service. Consider the massive disparity in how much you pay in terms of the actual bandwidth used for text messages, as opposed to voice or data.

Now, I'm not an expert in this. It may be that there's some aspect of this I'm not seeing. But as near as I can tell, pay as you go is strictly bullshit that will lead to consumers paying more for the same service and is a gateway to greater price hikes and obfuscation of actual costs.

Re:The reason this is dumb

[c_jonescc]

Exactly! Who cares how much I download in a month - if nobody uses the pipes there isn't more for later.

I'd settle for speed capping and speed-based pricing tiers. Get a standard rate for evenings and weekends, pay more to go as fast or faster during business hours (or vice versa depending on which time of day is straining their networks), and just rate limit people.

If I can cleverly buffer so that I can stream Netflix at 56k - let me! It doesn't cost extra. It's only trying to give a large number of people a smoking fast download rate at the same time that costs extra, as far as I can tell. So, sell it to me that way.

In fact, where I live, Time Warner already does this. I get about 5Mbps down for what I pay, and if I want to pay more I can jump up to 10 or 15Mbps. Seems perfectly reasonable, and if they have the ability to sell that high transfer rate it must be accessible to them, no matter how many Netflix movies I stream at 5!

Lying, greedy, extortionists - Telecom.

This makes sense IF THE RATES ARE REASONABLE

[jpstanle]

As long as the per-byte rate is in line with current costs, I don't see the problem with it. Moving bits costs money, and moving more bits costs more money. I've always thought broadband providers should behave more like public utilities given their government endorsed monopoly of the infrastructure.

If we paid by the byte, it would eliminate the need for arbitrary data caps. If I want to pull down a terabyte in a week, I can. I just pay more than my neighbor who only downloaded a few GB in that same week. That seems fair, right?

The problem though, as it always is with telcos, is that the pricing will NOT be fair. The cable companies in particular are trying desperately to make a grab for the lost revenue in their PPV and other cable TV cash cows as people opt for cheaper alternatives like Netflix.

More justification for AdBlock...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all the more reason to start blocking ads. Not only do they intrude on the Web pages, provide avenues for blackhats to compromise people through addon exploits, and obtain persistant tracking data, but one has to pay for their presence with this system.

Re:More justification for AdBlock...

[rnturn]

And, due to the lack of advertising revenue, more and more websites will erect paywalls or introduce subscription plans where only certain content will be freely available (like it is now) and more will only be available to subscribers. None of that will adversely affect the network owners, though, so maybe the FCC won't mind.

And they think piracy is bad now?

[HikingStick]

If they move ahead to a pay-as-you-go model, I believe more people will knowingly and willfully become software and media pirates. It will create a huge black market for downloaded media files, which will get exchanged via sneakernets around the country. Once they start charging per Mb/Gb, more and more people will take the risks associated with piracy, because it will make the relative cost of digital media far too high.

I have a friend who lives in a rural area where his only Internet access options are Deep Blue or Hughes.net. He's been trying to leave Deep Blue because their service has been horrible (very inconsistant throughput rates), but Hughes.net has caps set at 200Mb,300Mb, and 400Mb, depending on the plan you choose. They come straight out and call it their "Fair Play" policy--that they automatically throttle anyone who reaches a daily bit limit, and they specifically note that their service is not suitable for streaming video services like Netflix. The funny thing is that they push potential customers who want to download streaming video toward their premium plan, which still has a 400Mb cap--it still would be largely worthless for pulling online video.

Phone company plans always used to be pay-as-you-go. The development of unlimited use plans arose as a marketing tool to win more customers in competitive markets, and it eventually became a very common option in the consumer market (businesses almost always have pay-as-you-go plans). If this really happens, it won't take a rocket scientist to realize that any ISPs who stick to no-cap unlimited use plans will immediately have a competitive advantage over others (like [...ahem..] Comcast) who are likely to try to milk the new cash cow afforded by such changes.

Re:And they think piracy is bad now?

[eggman95]

Phone company plans always used to be pay-as-you-go. The development of unlimited use plans arose as a marketing tool to win more customers in competitive markets, and it eventually became a very common option in the consumer market (businesses almost always have pay-as-you-go plans). If this really happens, it won't take a rocket scientist to realize that any ISPs who stick to no-cap unlimited use plans will immediately have a competitive advantage over others (like [...ahem..] Comcast) who are likely to try to milk the new cash cow afforded by such changes.

The problem here is that the majority of ISP's have NO competition in a given area. It's difficult to compare Cellphone providers to internet ISP's such as Comcast and TimeWarner. Cellphone companies fight for your business because you have a somewhat decent choice of who to go with. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint etc. In my area, Comcast has no competition. I can't get anything else, so why would they want to offer a fair deal, when they know they have customers by the balls. The ISP monopolies is one of the real issues here.

Why do I feel like I'm gonna get screwed by this?

[Triv]

I was just talking to a coworker about this.

I use an above-average amount of bandwidth. Between Netflix and gaming and youtube and the occasional bittorrent, I feel like, without having any hard numbers at-hand because Comcast's bandwidth meter can't be found on their website (despite their steamroller media blitz that hyped up how proactive it makes people at watching their usage. Way to fail, Comcast,) I fall on the higher end of the usage spectrum but nowhere near the 250gb/month cap; probably 80gb - 100gb if I had to guess, maybe even 50-60gb most months.

It would make sense to me that, since I fall on the upper-end of the usage spectrum compared to, say, bittorrent seeders on one end and grandmas who check their email every couple days on the other, my bill would stay more or less the same on a metered plan, grandma's would drop significantly and Mr. torrent freak's would go up; a reduction would be nice, but I would be okay with not paying more.

However. If (heh. If.) the cable companies see this as a way of milking all their customers for all they're worth as an incentive to get them to pay more for an unlimited plan by scaring them with an inflated per MB bill...

Yeah. This could be good if the rates are reasonable, but I'll eat my hat if that turns out to be the case.

Welcome back

[airfoobar]

To the days of the 56k.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[Cloudgatherer]

Like every utility, customers are eventually going to be paying fees that relate to their usage of the resource.

Except bandwidth is not a resource. Water, electricity, and gasoline are examples of resources paid for by consumption, because once the resource is expended it is gone. Hence the reason why those are paid for by the amount used.

Bandwidth is similar to renting. You pay your rent whether you are there or not and this ensures that it is there when you want it. "Renting" does not use up the residence for the next guy who rents the place after you (under most circumstances). So, the parallels to other utilities are pointless comparisons. The comparison to current cable TV is valid, except your post ignores any "resource" argument, instead citing advertisers. There are many other valid comparisons as well, such as monthly subscriptions to newspapers, gaming services (MMOs, others), and entertainment such as NetFlix.

I do not think the idea of pay per MB/GB (or whatever) is a good idea in the slightest. The average technical savvy of an end user is simply not sufficient enough to handle it, and there were examples of this pay-per-usage already for mobile phones with data plans (some of the early iPhones always accessing the internet, racking up a bill in a month of 1000+ dollars unknown to the phone owner). I do not dispute that those who abuse bandwidth, (un)knowingly or not, should not be limited in some fashion, but monetarily is the wrong way to go here.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[hurfy]

Try our water bill..the envy of the cablecos...

$84 for $3.71 worth of water :/

Makes me want to strangle the fools saying internet should be a utility :O
At least 50% of my internet bill is not for getting rid of waste bits.

What's wrong with QoS?

[jd]

You pay for a specific pipe already. If the ISPs and core routers enabled fair-service curve, each pipe would get a fair chance at the upstream pipe. Heavy users would then not swamp lighter users and lighter users would not subsidise heavy users. This eliminates all of the (somewhat technologically ignorant) objections raised by ISPs and by some of the posters here. Then you add in ECN, which instructs a machine to throttle back if it is behaving badly on the network (and blocks machines that won't play fair). Packet-dropping schemes like BLACK and PURPLE deal with

This isn't rocket science. Hell, these days even rocket science isn't rocket science. Neither of these suggestions would be difficult. They've been discussed in depth since the 1990 and have reached an amazing level of quality control that is fair to all users and equitable to all providers. Without raising costs.

Re:What's wrong with QoS?

[ducomputergeek]

QoS won't work on the internet. It works well for a local LAN, say an office where you need to priority for VOIP over email, or even access from say your house to the first node, but once your packet leaves your ISP and hits the backbone or another ISP, who can guarantee you QoS then?

Re:What's wrong with QoS?

[jd]

Your understanding of QoS seems limited. QoS is already used on the Internet, extensively.

The way you use QoS on aggregate traffic is to guarantee QoS for the aggregate. This is known as Integrated Services (IntServ).

The way it works is that a backbone router or switch says such-and-such a port has bought a pipe that is X% of the total pipe, so is guaranteed X% of the packets sent through. If there is spare capacity within a given time interval, after it has recieved the X% allocation, then it gets a fair shot at whatever is left over.

It doesn't guarantee QoS per conversation, per host or even per address block. It does guarantee QoS for the summation of everything coming in, but that is it.

What it means is that a user with Y% of the ISP's total bandwidth is guaranteed Y% of the packets leaving the ISP, no matter how network-intensive any other service on any other machine is.

Provided packet-dropping schemes are fair (and WRED and PURPLE are fair), then it further guarantees that of the packets within that Y%, if N% are lost because of congestion, N% of those Y% will be lost for ALL users from that ISP, with no discrimination.

In short, it is absolutely impossible for someone to clog up the networks with network-intensive applications with such a scheme.

To claim otherwise is, simply put, moronic. To argue that this isn't QoS because it doesn't guarantee a specific service a specific level of connectivity or that it doesn't place an absolute floor on the level of connectivity is also moronic.

If it uses a QoS mechanism, it is called QoS whether you like it or not. Your personal terminology is of no significance whatsoever.

If it provides a level of service guarantee beyond that which the backbone providers claim they can support (without requiring paying per packet), then it falsifies the backbone provider's claims, no matter what dictionary you point to.

Bitching and moaning doesn't alter what this does. Get over it and accept the ISPs are wrong.

Toothpaste back in the Tube Dept.

[Anonymous Coward]

- Aint gonna happen - as someone (like probably a few of us here ;-) who has lived and struggled through days and nights of telephone cradles, x00 baud modems, all of this metred by the goddamn second, going back to pay per min/GB aint featuring in my horizon anytime soon.

Probably, the best thing that ever happened re: democratision of the interent was the introduction of widespread high-speed, non-metred access, be it ISDN, cable, xDsl, whatever. I probably actually use the Internet less than I did then, however, I undoubtedly now consume more bandwith, whether or want to or not. Going back to metered? - No Way, Joe - the only way you are getting that Genie back in the Bottle is when you prise this mouse from my cold, dead hand.

At worst, as long as there is a demand for unmetered access packages, someone is going to provide them - and, I'll be subscribing, whether I use them to the full, or not. Typical actually, now the public actually have that what they undoubtedly want, someone is busy trying to change the Status Quo - I blame the mobile providers personally, however, they can go jump as well.

Utility status

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not think that it would be such a bad idea. Water and electricity are charged the same way. The utilities don't tell me how to use those products. Data should be the same way. As long as the rates are cheap enough and they can't tell me what equipment to attach to the network

Re:Utility status

[c_jonescc]

If people aren't using the water, it gets saved, and there is MORE water later.
If people aren't using electricity, the plants slow down, and the production cost is LESS.

If people aren't using bandwidth, the infrastructure is EXACTLY the same. Bits don't get saved up.

Rates based on speed make sense in this case. Rates based on total usage do not.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[wygit]

EVERY utility?

So my Aunt Ethel, who talks on the phone 3 hours a day, pays more than my Aunt Mildred, who makes 2 phone calls per month?

I bet they'd be surprised to know that.

Yes: your framing

[dazedNconfuzed]

Many/most electricity bills are being split: one part is production, one part is delivery. While most consumers use the same company for both, many opt for an alternative producer of those kWh different from the company owning/installing/maintaining the wiring for delivery. That industry has worked out the division, and worked out the billing (often onto one bill few examine).

Internet already splits that: you pay (often $0) the producer of those bytes (Google, CNN, Netflix, whatever) separate from the compan[y|ies] providing delivery thereof (Comcast, Clear, various "backbone" networks, etc.). With more customers demanding cumulative bandwidth beyond capacity (or will soon), the delivery companies are balking at the all-you-can-eat model. At some point they must implement some billing changes which will account for Gramma's occasional receipt of emailed grandkid photos vs. local kids downloading anything they can find plus demanding low-ping response times vs. families ditching cable TV in favor of streaming video, all in a manner fair (yes, "to whom?" being the obvious question) to all.

Upshot: data delivery services must, at some point, switch to metered delivery - if only to implement fair distribution of limited services via supply-and-demand pricing.

Re:Yes: your framing

[Anonymous Coward]

The analogy wasn't my choice. I just pointed out the fundamental flaw. If you had focused less on the split electric bill, you would have had a better chance of realizing that per-MB billing is indeed meant to profit from something that doesn't cost the network operators anything.

I do not dispute that some sort of fair metric is needed, but per-MB is not that metric. In principle, only a very small percentage of the network traffic determines the cost of the network. Most traffic is "free". Someone who watches Youtube videos during peak network usage costs the network operator more than someone who downloads hundreds of gigabytes off-peak.

Re:Yes: your framing

[mirix]

Metered delivery could be alright, if the connection fee and per gig rate is fair.

eg. $10 connection fee, 10c per gig (or whatever. just example):

Grandma downloads 593k of emails, pays $10.10/mo
Power user DL's 200GB, pays $30/mo

However, I'm thinking they'll make the current.. $40 or whatever be the flat connection fee, and add data on top of it. Which doesn't give grandma a discount for her data thriftiness, and could double the cost for someone that actually uses the service. Which is a sort of lose-lose, except for the telcos of course.

And then you have to factor in speed. If i want a 100Mb connection instead of 1Mb, do they bump up the "connection fee" or the per GB charge?

Re:Yes: your framing

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a completely arbitrary pricing scheme. A gigabyte (an amount of data) doesn't cost anything. If Grandma decides she wants to download 100MB of grandchild photos (videos in the not too distant future) at peak-usage times, then these 100MB cost the same as the 200GB of your "power user" if she uses the same peak-time bandwidth.

Bandwidth costs money. You could offer a 64kbps connection for $10/mo flat and several Mbps for $30/mo flat and that would be mostly fair.

If data volume had any relation to actual costs, then you'd see ISPs using that metric to bill eachother. Pricing per volume is completely absent from inter-ISP billing.

Re:Yes: your framing

[suutar]

I'd expect them to bump the connection fee a little bit and get most of their extra money from the fact that you're probably going to be downloading more stuff over a faster link. I refuse to bet money on that prediction, though.

Re:Yes: your framing

[grimarr]

The recent spat between Comcast and Level3 indicates otherwise. Comcast at least claims that the reason they want money from Level3 is that Level3 is sending them too much data. (That may not be the whole story.)
In any case, it seems that peers DO sometimes charge each other for the amount of data transferred, or at least for the imbalance in that amount.

Re:Yes: your framing

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's just how it's portrayed in the mainstream media. When ISPs talk about traffic imbalance in peering situations, they never mean the total or average traffic. They are only interested in bandwidth. Bandwidth is what costs them money. The required bandwidth is determined by the traffic at peak times.

Pay More for Less

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one am getting tired of the "pay a LOT more and get even less than you did before" trend that I'm seeing across multiple businesses now.
It seems like the trend is to pay us less but expect a h!@#$ of a lot more work, make us pay more for internet but "give" us extreme limits beyond what we have now, make us pay multiple times for what we used to only have to pay once for (books, music, movies, etc).
And they expect us to believe that a government agency will protect us from the abuse of this policy?
PLEASE as if the past few years of laws being written by corporate lobbies and pushed thru by their bought/paid for congresscritters haven't shown us how well THAT works.

I'm pretty disgusted by this whole mess.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[denzacar]

Lets examine the rest of the utility world. Do we have flat rate electricity? No. Do we have flat rate water? No. We sometimes have flat rate sewer but more often it is tied to water consumption on the assumption that most of your water eventually goes down the drain.

Except internet access is generally not considered "utility", nor is internet access based on a consumable resource.
Other than periodic upgrades of infrastructure (pushed by higher demand for their services and increasing numbers of users) - costs for the providers ARE flat.

Now, overselling their capacity and then blaming their users for "hogging" - isn't that kinda like false advertising?
How was that covered in your "econ 101"? Or should the customers just "deal with it"?

We need theme packs!

[Joe The Dragon]

Like they have in a Canada.

and the 2-3 min boot time + 30 min + guide load ti

[Joe The Dragon]

and the 2-3 min boot time + 30 min + guide load time on cables boxes after a power loss does not help as well.

Also what about HBO Why can espn be like HBO or even offer games on a PPV?

Re:Why do I feel like I'm gonna get screwed by thi

[D Ninja]

Way to fail, Comcast

Why do you assume they failed? Maybe they advertised it to appease the current WHARGABL of the month, and then...just didn't implement it (or made it hard to find). Either one is not a failure*.

* Failure is oftentimes defined by point of view...

With one condition...

[Draaglom]

The fact of the matter is, data transferred outside of peak hours costs the ISP very little (approximately 0) per gigabyte; the pay-as-you-go charges should account for this.

offer a choice full speed at $ per KB or slower sp

[Joe The Dragon]

offer a choice full speed at $ per KB or slower speed when you go over the limit.

Option 1 – If you may need additional throughput some months you may purchase an "unlimited" plan. With this option, you will be billed according to your service plan for any throughput in excess of the plan allowance.
Option 2 – If you prefer flat rate billing, you may choose a "limited" plan. If you exceed your plan's throughput allowance, your connection speeds may be slowed down until your usage is back in profile with the plan.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[YrWrstNtmr]

Mildred can probably get a low use, local only line if she wishes. Billed per call.

+ a line fee + fees to cover costs of headend / CO

[Joe The Dragon]

+ a line fee + fees to cover costs of headend / CO / RT / NODE.

If it's cheap enough, it doesn't matter

[rastoboy29]

Paying by the byte is no different than paying by the gigabyte or terabyte.  If it's cheap enough, at least we could do away with the fictional "unlimited" plans, and heavy filesharers could simply pay their fair share.

Personally, I torrent anything that pops into my head and as it is I never get any grief from Comcast.  If the ISP's have to pay by the byte, why not the customers?

I think a lot of people are assuming it will be very expensive.  If it is, a competitor will come along at some point (hopefully!).  Just saying maybe it's not a disaster.

Re:If it's cheap enough, it doesn't matter

[Chris Pimlott]

Do you really think the ISPs are paying their lobbyists to push a bill through Congress so they can save their customers money?

Re:If it's cheap enough, it doesn't matter

[shentino]

As long as combo companies that also offer internet services don't give their own traffic a discount.

*cough*netneutrality*cough*

Re:If it's cheap enough, it doesn't matter

[choko]

In many areas of the US, there is no competition for broadband. Cable companies collude with each other to divide up the area so they don't have to compete.

uncast at&t AT&T U-verse seems to work for

[Joe The Dragon]

uncast at&t AT&T U-verse seems to work for TV

yikes

[shentino]

We need net neutrality now more than ever.

I bet the first thing that will happen with pay-as-you-go is that you'll get your ISP's traffic for free. Especially if it happens to also be your cable provider.

Won't happen - telecom doesn't really want it

[TheWoozle]

The problem is, changing over to pay-as-you-go won't necessarily increase revenue for telecom or cable companies. I suspect that when the consumer pays a fixed cost per unit bandwidth, we'll find that demand for bandwidth is fairly elastic. Instead of paying more to maintain their current bandwidth usage, most people will cut back on their usage. Which, despite what the telecom companies tell the politicians, is the last thing they want. Rather, they want people to pay more while still maintaining their demand for bandwidth. The "our networks can't handle it" is merely the pretext under which they drag their feet on infrastructure upgrades while protesting "if we only had more money..." in order to perpetuate constant fee increases. If upgrading their infrastructure would increase revenue, they would have done it already.

Re: Sig

[rnturn]

Can you look over walls? Or wrestle poodles? And win?

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[jmorris42]

>Except internet access is generally not considered "utility"..

Eh? Find me an consumer level Internet provider these days that ISN'T a government regulated utility operating under a government granted monopoly? The little Mom & Pop ISP is long dead.

> nor is internet access based on a consumable resource.

Yes it is, just not in the same way as the electric company having to buy a trainload of coal to provide the power to your PC. All current Internet plans marketed to end users is based on over subscribing the bandwidth. Go price a T1. Now compare and contrast to a 1.5Mbps DSL line.

The T1 is symetrical while DSL is designed to lock you into a content consumption model. You also tend to get a good SLA on the T1. More importantly DSL service is almost always limited (either spelled out or they just silently throttle the hogs) while you can nail that T1 up all month and they don't care. In fact if your throughput drops below the rated speed your SLA will often kick in and refund cash to you. Compare the bills though. Yes that SLA adds some to the sticker shock but most of the difference is they are pricing the T1 expecting you to bang the heck out of it.

I could agree if...

[k6mfw]

... for following conditions:

1. No spam

2. No ads (popup,popunder,popover, etc.)

3. No having to wait for other advertisements on webpages (I hate seeing "waiting for adyieldmanager.com")

4. When downloading large files, I want constant download speed. Not when first downloading it is 230kbps to then later slow to 15kbps.

I could care less of broadcast TV, not much on it anyway these days.

And "surfing the web" or "googling" is becoming just as worthless. Not to go OT, I was trying to find where I can chop the upper and lower black portions of 4:3 video footage for a true 16:9, all the sites I found are bankrupt forums describing using the crop mode in Adobe Premeire (which doesn't work) or useless answer such as "google for instruction manual" (there is none).

Most websites I found are either ones I know of for past few years or from word-of-mouth.

Re:I could agree if...

[YrWrstNtmr]

Not to go OT, I was trying to find where I can chop the upper and lower black portions of 4:3 video footage for a true 16:9, all the sites I found are bankrupt forums describing using the crop mode in Adobe Premeire (which doesn't work) or useless answer such as "google for instruction manual" (there is none).

Here Put in 'crop 4:3' in the search bar. Have fun.

Re:I could agree if...

[k6mfw]

>[videohelp.com] Put in 'crop 4:3' in the search bar. Have fun.

Thanks! I found much discussion on this topic, didn't answer my question directly but gave me a better sense of direction to find a solution (i.e. forget Premeire, get Vegas instead).

This site has lotsa video discussion, good and informative articles (but have to be careful not to spend too much time reading at work!).

Another example of getting better knowledge by word-of-mouth.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[jd]

When the usage levels between users can be more than 100 to 1 it can't be fair.

I do so love a challenge. Here's some examples of the theory:

• Beyond Best Effort: Router Architectures for the Differentiated Services of Tomorrow’s Internet (1998)
• The Impact of Active Queue Management on Multimedia Congestion Control (1998)
• Comparison of Tail Drop and Active Queue Management Performance for bulk-data and Web-like Internet Traffic (2001)
• Bandwidth Allocation for Non-Responsive Flows with Active Queue Management (2002)
• A Comparative Study of Active Queue Management Schemes (2004)
• PURPLE: Predictive Active Queue Management Utilizing Congestion Information (2003)
• The Addition of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP (2001)

And here's some examples of the practice with CISCO routers:

• WRED
• DWRED
• ECN within WRED
• Hierarchical Queueing Framework

Other systems:

• Juniper's support for WRED and QoS in general
• QoS in HP ProCurve switches
• QoS in Nortel switches

Now, tell me again that only a Marxist would believe that it's possible to have pipe-based fair-service on the Internet.

So what changed?

[russotto]

Has it ever been forbidden to offer metered internet?

Re:So what changed?

[Rockoon]

Nope. Not in America anyways...

This is some big assed fallacy or some shit and I still havent figured out how the fuck it became the subject.

Hope and change

[reboot246]

I hope all of you are liking the change.

Suckers!

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[SourceFrog]

Like every utility, customers are eventually going to be paying fees that relate to their usage of the resource./p>

Quick thought experiment for you. What's the cost of stringing a Gigabit ethernet cable between you and your neighbor with a couple of switches on each end. Now, what's the monthly cost of maxing out transfer on that cable, 24/7? And what "resource" are you "consuming" when you do this? A miniscule amount of energy, that's all. Water and energy have a marginal unit cost of production that is far more proportional to the consumption of that resource. E.g. you use ten times as much energy, and ten times as much coal has to be mined and burned. Use only 1/10th of your ethernet cable, and the cost is approximately the same as maxing it out. Capital once-off costs are proportional to infrastructure size, while maintenance is a variable cost. "Duh" - I don't think you've ever come close to "econ 101", as these are basics. That doesn't mean bandwidth provision should be free, of course, but it does mean that the business models are different to utilities. You've just made the fallacy of hasty generalization. Oh it resembles a "utility" therefore it should be charged like a "utility". Or do you have vested interests in this game?

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

So how much would it cost me to play world of warcraft on a 'pay as you go' plan?

and that's unexpected?

[holophrastic]

"the wealthiest would have the greatest access"

Isn't that the entire point? The wealthiest can go to more movies, in better theatres, and with faster downloads.

Why would it surprise, or upset, anyone to hear that the wealthiest spend more money on more things more often? And that the wealthiest make for better customers and easier markets, in part due to their smaller size?

If you want to see a society where the poorest have the same access as the wealthiest, you'll have to petition Disney for a new type of fairy-tale.

This just in: the wealthiest have greater access to food, cars, and travel too.

Re:and that's unexpected?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would it surprise, or upset, anyone to hear that the wealthiest spend more money on more things more often? And that the wealthiest make for better customers and easier markets, in part due to their smaller size?

So, they spend more to make up for lack in other areas?

Re:and that's unexpected?

[holophrastic]

Usually, yeah. Typically the wealthiest spend the majority of their time acquiring/protecting that wealth. So instead of spending time -- which is exhausted by the above -- spending money is easier.

You spend the currency of excess. For the wealthy, it's money. For the less-than-wealthy, it's time.

I like to use the home theatre as the example. Good bet that the more expensive the home theatre -- think $90'000 of a room -- the less the owner uses it. But if you were working hard, and making money, you'd want to spare the time of going to a theatre and waiting in line. You'd want to come home, and relax with family -- in your theatre.

Make Us Angry?

[b4upoo]

Really! Does the FCC really want to test the anger and rage of frustrated Americans right now? People are getting kicked around quite a bit these days and the last thing the agencies want to incur is wrath and the rage of the public. If anything we need to de-commercialize the net.

Say Goodbye to Multiplayer Video Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Say goodbye to your online multiplayer video games. The MMORPG market should easily be crushed by this because you will not only be paying to access the services monthly, but also paying your ISP to access the service by the minute. And as the summary states, it would also create a bigger gap between those with money and not.
 
TODAY: if you have $30 available to spend a month you can get reasonable access to the net (limited to 10bps). If you have $5/month you can still get your email and work documents/applications from a dial-up ISP. If you want to play games you get the $50/month for 30bps.
TOMORROW: you have to pay a access fee between $5 and $40 for the link speed as before, except now you also have to pay $1 for every GB you transfer.
 
How the fuck is this helpful at all?
 
CAPTCHA: dopers, what the FCC are.

Re:Why do I feel like I'm gonna get screwed by thi

[YrWrstNtmr]

Cox Cable also has a (unadvertised) bandwidth meter. Currently, I get "We're sorry. Your bandwidth information is unavailable at this time. Please try again later."

Unfindable, unknown, or broken....fail.

The foregoing powers

[tepples]

To one who can actually read it says they can pass any law that is "necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers..."

Such foregoing powers include the following:

• "To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to [...] provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States", or in other words, full power to create entitlements.
• "To raise and support armies". The army clause has been interpreted to allow an Air Force, given that it fulfills the same purpose with new technology.
• "To establish post offices and post roads". As with the army clause, the postal clause appears to grant power over communication that fulfills a purpose essentially to that of the Postal Service. It's not called electronic mail for nothing.
• "To regulate commerce [...] among the several states". Almost anything could be construed as "necessary and proper" for this, especially since Wickard v. Filburn.

Re:The foregoing powers

[jmorris42]

> general welfare of the United States

That is in the Preamble. The Constitution grants specific powers, that taken in whole are deemed by the Founders, to promote the "General Welfare". It can't be read as a general grant of authority to do anything that a politician claims promotes the general welfare. If that were the intended meaning they could have just stopped the document at the Preamble and saved a lot of sweating it out in Philidelphia without the benefit of air conditioning in the middle of summer.

> or in other words, full power to create entitlements.

Most certainly not. The word welfare didn't carry that additional definition when the Constitution was written. Sorry, you do not have the 'Right' to be made happy by enslaving your neighbor. You only have the Right to Persue Happiness.

> The army clause has been interpreted to allow an Air Force

Actually it would be more like the Navy with the heavy focus on big expensive things that require a highly trained force to maintain in readiness for war. Of course the modern mechanized army meets that description as well. A rare case where tech really does render the original Constitution outdated. We should correct it the right way instead of ignoring the problem.

This sucks

[AlfaMike]

It might work good for a reasonably fair country like the US but in crap countries like mine where everything is run by cartels and everything is outrageously overpriced I can see myself paying equivalent to 2 dollars per gigabyte or so. Maybe more. And if America implements this the world will eventually follow.

Wekcome to South Africa

[jaysoncvl]

This article seems like normal life from a South African prespective. We have always, until recently, paid for usage. We buy our interent in amounts of Gigs. Yuo are charged from as little as R29 (ZAR) up to R59 (ZAR) PER Gig. Only recently have we had companies starting offering us "uncapped" internet. Furthermore, the amount to "top-up" your internet over your intial montly buy, is normally charged at a premium rate per gig. This is alright for home users, but look at SME's. Sometimes we will use 50 Gig a month. Sometimes we will use 52 Gig a month. The extra 2 Gig's we need to buy for that month, cost us almost double the price of our original amount per Gig.

"Welfare" in the tax clause

[tepples]

general welfare of the United States

That is in the Preamble.

It is also in the tax clause. I'll paste the entire tax clause here, with my emphasis: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States".

The word welfare didn't carry that additional definition when the Constitution was written.

Alexander Hamilton supported a broad interpretation of "welfare" in the tax clause, and case law supports this. What am I missing?

Sorry, you do not have the 'Right' to be made happy by enslaving your neighbor.

Then explain the patent clause. In at least one country with a legal system deriving from the same common law underlying the U.S. legal system, Monsanto successfully sued someone for patent infringement for growing patented glyphosate-resistant seeds by accident. So it's either buy Monsanto seeds or don't farm your land.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[denzacar]

Eh? Find me an consumer level Internet provider these days that ISN'T a government regulated utility operating under a government granted monopoly? The little Mom & Pop ISP is long dead.

Government regulation or ANY regulation does not make a SERVICE a utility.

A good rule of thumb if something is a utility would be the answer to the question "Would child services found a home without X suitable for raising children?".
Electricity, running water, gas (heating) and sanitation (sewer) would have 'Yes' as an answer.
Phone, internet and cable TV would have 'No' as an answer.

Another question would be "Can you store X?". And yes, you COULD store electricity - it wouldn't be very practical but you could.

You can't store up on your phone calls nor can you pre-browse the internet no more than you can pre watch the next season of your favorite cable show before it airs.

Yes it is, just not in the same way as the electric company having to buy a trainload of coal to provide the power to your PC.

Uhh.. NO. It is NOT.

Just because they planned to oversell by 100% while their infrastructure can handle 50% at best, doesn't make the amount of the product they are selling finite.
In fact, their ability to oversell DEMONSTRATES that it is not a finite source. Just try doing that with electricity or water.
The reason they can do that at the first place is because you are not buying data or speed or internet access from them.
You are actually RENTING the use of their infrastructure.

Which they can rent out almost infinite number of times to almost infinite number of customers - only not at the same time and with decreasing quality of service (and price for such service) as the number of customers increases.
Somewhere in the middle of all that there is a "sweet spot" that would let them keep the number of customers as high as possible while providing the quality of service that they can charge as high as possible - and still keep all their customers.

The fact that they are overselling beyond that attainable "sweet spot" shows what they really are - greedy and bad planners.

Time to go back to dialup

[nurb432]

Or just disconnect totally, as will be the point? I guess that's one way to squelch online 'speech', remove the 'citizens' from the medium.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[gknoy]

What are the costs of scaling this up to cover the infrastructure needed to handle an entire neighborhood, city, or state? What are the costs of supporting it, both in terms of technicians and people manning phone lines?

I suspect you're right, though, in that those costs probably don't scale as much with traffic as it does with subscribers.

I told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

I told you if the FCC get's the authority to regulate the internet, it would fuck it up just like it did the "public spectrum"

The FCC shouldn't have authority to regulate the internet. So how did it get the authority?

customer demand?

[nurb432]

Since when has that been a concern for a monopoly?

it's Really Very Simple

[carrier lost]

None of this would be an issue - net neutrality, bandwidth charges, tiered pricing - if the FCC would just reinstate their line-sharing rules.

Force the telecoms to open their lines up, at cost, to competitors and there would be a breathtaking array of choices for consumers.

And as always, in a free market, competition would drive the price to the absolute bottom.

That's why it will probably never happen...

Re:it's Really Very Simple

[cheekyjohnson]

Unless, of course, they all decided to go the same route as the others to maximize profits?

Re:it's Really Very Simple

[carrier lost]

Unless, of course, they all decided to go the same route as the others to maximize profits?

Except that, going the same route would not maximize profits.

In an open market, you have two things to offer to differentiate your product - price and service.

If you have five providers all offering the exact same thing, it's reasonable to assume they'd each get 1/5 of the market.

The minute one of them decides to do something to increase market share, it's off to the races.

Re:it's Really Very Simple

[cheekyjohnson]

The minute one of them decides to do something to increase market share, it's off to the races.

But if they know the others would likely do the same thing (to prevent too many customers from going to them), why would they even bother? It's not an uncommon thing for competing companies to scheme together, as far as I know.

Re:it's Really Very Simple

[carrier lost]

It's not an uncommon thing for competing companies to scheme together, as far as I know.

Though it does happen, it's called "collusion" and it's frowned upon by the courts.

This is what the FCC should be worried about - the telecomms and cable companies gaming the system. It doesn't appear to be high on their list.

Information payed for by

[n_djinn]

In all that was done to get the net going the pay as you go model will undermine it. FCC is approving this? My ISP already has then ONLY as the option, I live in a 1 ISP town and have no choice....

Good.

[drolli]

I am fully convinced that this model should not only be allowed, but be enforced, at least for high priority traffic. Right now flatrates are a bet on how much the user uses - and for sure the companies know better how much the average user uses than the average user. Its even better (for the company). If the user happens to be outside the main probability distribution peak (to higher usage), then his contract will be canceled with some strange argument (We never heard about that if he is outside the peak towards lower use). Having different prices for different classes of service, you could e.g. range from 1cent/GB for bulk traffic to $1/GB for real-time traffic (numbers are for illustration).

Right now, and that is the same for mobile and for the normal net, there is no incentive to use a good solution, instead of a solution where the average transfer is increased. I would even say changing this could drive providers to provide things free proxies (e.g. windows/linux and virus scanner updates would run much faster) and a web control panel where they can control what happens on their account (I always find it wonderful how people change from "this is to complicated to understand something" to "want to control every piece of it" if you attach a money tag to a decision.), because then this could be sold to the customer. Probably it would be faster then for the user, cost less traffic on the backbone, and there would be a monetary incentive to do it (Marketing: ultrafast free updates).

The users would learn to distinct between bulk traffic and other traffic - Maybe they would even consider to start a download for a movie a few hours ealier if its then only 1Cent instead of 1Euro. And Programmers would finally learn how to use the IP header flag indicating the service class - because then again, an download manager is not only "fast", but may be also "cheap". Believe me, the very same people who right now have the energy to find the fastest downloader (even if the difference is marginal) would invest their energy to make it cheaper.

Local Loop is the killer

[witherstaff]

Actual data connectivity is cheap, getting it to your premise is the expensive part. The local loop usually means you're using some monopoly telco and they can charge whatever they like.

Re:Local Loop is the killer

[butlerm]

The local loop usually means you're using some monopoly telco and they can charge whatever they like.

That is what we have the FCC for - to get after the local access providers if they exploit their wireline monopolies too much. $0.10 or $0.20/GB marginal rate is not going to be a problem. If large wireline providers try to charge ten times that much (and you know they want to), that would probably bring Congress and the FCC bearing down on them with telecom style pricing regulation.

Stop voting Republican, ya twits!

[rsilvergun]

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. Seriously. Odds are at least 40% of the people posting voted Republican last election, and they're the one's pushing this crap. Yeah, the Dems go along, but begrudgingly and only because they can't win reelection from you twits w/o a huge wad of cash to run votes.
Oh, and if you're 'independent' you're just part of the problem. Look at how you've voted the last decade. Notice how you vote for Dems when Reps are in and vice versa? Yeah, you're that easy to predict, and that easy to manipulate.
Start voting with your wallet and stop voting for the guy you want to have a beer with. Yeesh!

Re:Stop voting Republican, ya twits!

[cheekyjohnson]

How about don't vote for either, instead?

Sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but if this becomes reality, much like existing bandwidth caps in some areas, it will become laughable to the knowledgeable. Of course it is an outright money grab, nothing less. But I am afraid it will stay that way, unless an outright miracle occurs and people disconnect their internet service in droves. Only then will we get to say "Ah, fucked up, didn't ya"

Small Guaranteed Pipe, Pay for Queue Rank Plan

[fostytou]

For all of you congestion-mongers out there (sorry, when high speed internet has been available I've never experienced congestion related problems outside my point of contact).... why don't they just charge everyone a flat rate for unlimited transfer, then give you the option to pay more if you don't want to be congested (if the network calls for it)? That seems to solve everyone's problems. I'd gladly drop something off the $70/mo for 60Mb service and get put in queue 3 of 5... especially if that guaranteed me 1mb of unqueued service for requests and gaming. Can't we all just get along?!

apt-get install big_bill

[twitter]

No thanks to yet another way to drive up the cost of free software. How else can Microsoft make distribution on shiny disks competitive again? Patent extortions? That's a whole other issue that strangely has help from ATT in Texas.

Thank you, hairyfeet, for pointing out the obvious anti-competitive nature of pay by the minute internet service. You might want to mention that cable companies already have all the bandwith anyone could want but they use 99% for pay per view movies and other rip off services.

Now, let's look at some possible solutions. Municiple networks and Open Spectrum are winners that make entertainment and telcos very nervous.

Municiple wires work well in Tacoma, Washington which only has 250,000 people, so it should work just about anywhere and it should. Almost all US cable networks were built with monopoly protection and have that obligation to the public.

Open Specturm and free software are really the only way to insure free speech in the future. If you haven't figured it out yet, non free software and network control are two sides of the same coin. It's about the power to shove adverts in your face and control public opinion about issues, just like the good old days of broadcast and switched networks. Only free software gives you control of your computer and only free networks let you share news and opinions with your neighbors. The rest resembles the old USSR more than anything else, the publisher's paradise. We already own what we need to stay free, all we lack is the collective knowledge and will to take it.

Re:apt-get install big_bill

[hairyfeet]

Oh My Lord, it's Twitter and he is actually saying nice things about me! You DO know that I'm the "token Windows guy" on places like LinuxInsider that you love to hate? Yeah, that's me. BTW from what I've been told they really don't give a shit about MSFT and they ain't getting any "extortion' or big ole checks from Steve, but it is simply a case of any IT monkey can set up a "clicky clicky" WSUS server and Linux has about a bazillion repos spread all over hell's half acre. So I hate to break the news to ya old troll, but this one you can drop the blame square on FLOSS for not getting together and setting a common repo that all can use. As for OSX nobody uses it except the local college here who has their own backbone so the Mac guys won't care about us townies.

Sadly, and the world is probably gonna start spinning backwards for me actually saying this as a Windows guy, but on the rest I actually have to agree with you. Having competition at the local level would finally give us a REAL free market and allow REAL competition instead of the duopoly we have now. I can tell ya though that if this does roll out nationwide like I've been told it is gonna royally suck for you Linux guys. No more testing different distros, no more apt-get-shitload of updates, it is gonna be a major suckfest for you guys. The only hope I can see is if you get the local LUGS to all set up local networks and hope they don't get you for data that stays in the network, but even then that will probably cut you guys off from large sections of the flyover states as you don't see many LUGS in these small towns. Hey, maybe you Linux guys should cook up a "one size fits all" repo system that any IT monkey can set up on a WSUS server?

Re:apt-get install big_bill

[Anonymous Coward]

she knows exactly who you are, and she's not being nice.

Re:apt-get install big_bill

[hairyfeet]

Hi MR AC! Uhhh...who exactly is "she" and what does that link have to do with it? Because I actually checked it and it was talking about some bald guy that was hairy, or some guy that has little feet. If that is the best "info" this she person can come up with they ain't even close, as I have long hair halfway down my back and being 6 foot my feet sure as hell ain't little.

So maybe you could define who this she is and perhaps learn to Google correctly? Because a bunch of IRC chats about someone who has a hairy back really doesn't have anything to do with this discussion or me. They were all talking about Boycott Novell and I avoid that place like the clap, same as I avoid WinSuperSite. Having fanboys drooling all over each other really don't appeal to me. At BN it is all a global Illuminati conspiracy to make Bill Gates the secret king of all media, while at WSS the guy actually said Vista was a wonderful OS on release and ran fine on 1GB of RAM. Yeah, both are bullshit.

Re:apt-get install big_bill

[Anonymous Coward]

How's the weather in Satsuma Willy?

Re:Why do I feel like I'm gonna get screwed by thi

[Homburg]

I don't know if Comcast's website is the same for every region, but, at least for me, the usage meter is on the "Users and Settings" page of their "Customer Central" website.

Warning

[Anonymous Coward]

User maintains more than a dozen sockpuppet accounts on Slashdot.

Welcome

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to how the rest of the world operates, you don't see us collapsing because of it.

An SUV

[Anonymous Coward]

"a USA provider" The rule is "a" before a consonant sound and "an" before a vowel sound. In this case "USA" is a "Y" sound. (and Y is a consonant here.)

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[butlerm]

But the resource isn't actually scarce. I paid for unlimited usage of a 30-mbps link.

That is a bit of a non sequitur, don't you think? What ISPs lie and mislead people about has no bearing on whether they have the resources to deliver on their promises. Think Bernie Madoff.

The market rate for actually (not just stochastically) unlimited connections in the 1 Gb/s range is somewhere around $10 / mbps / month in the United States. Plus local loop charges.

The fact that you are not getting charged at least $300 / month for a 30 mbps "unlimited" connection simply means that you either do not run your connection anywhere near capacity or you are being wildly cross-subsidized by much lighter users.

I hate greedy american corporations

[Anonymous Coward]

really I do.

I'd like to shit in all of them and their employees mouths

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[Isaac-1]

Your child services model breaks down using your own examples. Sure some of those things tend to be used as warning signs (rightfully or not) by the Child Services workers, however people living "off grid" are becoming more and more common in the US.

Electricity is just the most common thing people skip going off grid, and it is not just people in mountain cabins doing it surprisingly enough.

It can also include people providing their own drinking water, through rain catchment, ground wells, etc.

Sewage for a typical home can easily be handled by a composting dry toilet system

Sure this works better in some climates than others, but it is still possible in many areas to have a reasonably comfortable life without use of public utilities.

Of course there are also the extremist that decide by choice (not financial circumstance) to go live in a tent with their whole family.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[Isaac-1]

Get over yourself, they don't care that you are using your internet connection to watch TV, what they care about is EVERYONE and their Grandmother that used to just check email once per week are about to use it to watch TV.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[Isaac-1]

The problem is you just described your local modern cable system in a typical small to mid size city. They have the gigabit infrastructure running to the few thousand households around town, the problem is all those customers are sharing a single 100 "gigabit" capacity link to the larger city a hundred miles away where it plugs into a major internet backbone. This means that a small fraction of those thousands of local customers can soak the outbound connection if you don't do something to throttle it. Unfortunately the ISP marketing departments have spent years selling internet based upon bandwidth to the subscriber not capacity of the network.

IPTV

[Anonymous Coward]

By itself IPTV is not a problem. On-demand unicast streaming is.

If multicast is used the bandwidth usage splits nicely. Of course that works only for live feeds so there's little improvement over broadcasted TV.

Pay as you go... uh huh...

[Stone2065]

Pay as you go internet... what neanderthal thought up THIS fragrant idea? Not to mention the added cost to the consumer for seeing ads, but here's a fun one. I pay $15 a month for an online MMORPG (no, not WoW). Guess what will be one of the first things cancelled if I have to start paying a per gig/meg/? fee in addition to my monthly internet service AND to the MMORPG? The sheer ramifications of having to pay on a per use basis boggles the mind. IF this load of shit goes through, here's my NEW pattern... Start the computer, check email very quickly, cut off the network connection, then maybe play something that DOESN'T require internet, etc. Blog? HA, you're funny. No more for me. Read/post to Slashdot? Don't hold your breath. I'll start buying a regular newspaper, bitching about not getting my phone book... essentially going back to say 1990, with a few small perks, IF I want to pay for them, like email, and online gaming. What a crock of shit...

Subject

[Legion303]

The wealthiest already have the greatest access. I mean, it takes me an entire hour to illegally download a DVD and deprive starving MPAA executives of their hard-earned percentages, but that's only because I can't afford $100/month for something like FIOS.

It's been that way here more than 14 yrs. now

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've never much minded internet advertisements as long as they weren't popups, popovers, or popunders." - by colinnwn (677715) on Wednesday December 08, @04:29PM (#34493126)

How about malware laden attacks hidden in ad banners as well:

MICROSOFT APOLOGIZES FOR SERVING MALWARE:

http://apcmag.com/microsoft_apologises_for_serving_malware.htm

?

That's no first, & that's from as far back as 2007 (NYTimes had the same thing happen, & I've even seen it over at widely travelled forums like majorgeeks.com in their banners also (this one I actually have a screenshot of it to this day on this one as I used to go there & my browser refused to visit that particular site that day due to antivirus/antispyware warnings (the source of that one was canlimuzik.org iirc))

---

"But if I have to start paying for every bit delivered to me, my hosts file is gonna get big fast" - by colinnwn (677715) on Wednesday December 08, @04:29PM (#34493126)

Heh, since 1997, mine's gone from 27,000 entries up to 912,000 as of today, from reputable sites for that type of information listed in below...

However, I also haven't gotten a virus in more than 15++ yrs. online because of the use of such a large HOSTS file (in part, the rest is due to "system hardening" on any OS' I used in that timeframe + patching & more in "layered security fashion", ala -> http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22HOW+TO+SECURE+Windows+2000%2FXP%22&go=&form=QBRE ).

HOSTS files as blacklists, work in this capacity (you can't get burned by what you cannot touch, in other words).

---

"adblock and javascript blocking will become required addons for all my web browsers." - by colinnwn (677715) on Wednesday December 08, @04:29PM (#34493126)

They should be as well, for "layered security" (especially javascript blocks with by NoScript, or the way Opera does it, which is "BY SITE PREFERENCES" (leave javascript off globally, by default, & then turn it on for sites you CANNOT USE PERIOD, WITHOUT IT (such as say, online tests, or e-commerce related sites that use javascript for database accesses etc./et al)), only)

Even though HOSTS do just a better job than AdBlock does (see it below) here, because they cover more than just certain browsers only, & their built-in email programs, but NOT external to them email programs that are widely used such as Outlook Express/FULL MS Office Outlook for example (where HTML + scripted email can be a potential hazard for infestation also).

---

15++ ADVANTAGES OF HOSTS FILES OVER DNS SERVERS &/or ADBLOCK ALONE for added layered security:

1.) Adblock blocks ads in only 1 browser family (Disclaimer: Opera now has an AdBlock addon (now that Opera has addons above widgets), but I am not certain the same people make it as they do for FF or Chrome etc.).

2.) HOSTS files are useable for all these purposes because they are present on all Operating Systems that have a BSD based IP stack (even ANDROID) and do adblocking for ANY webbrowser, email program, etc. (any webbound program).

3.) Adblock doesn't protect email programs external to FF, Hosts files do. THIS IS GOOD VS. SPAM MAIL or MAILS THAT BEAR MALICIOUS SCRIPT, or, THAT POINT TO MALICIOUS SCRIPT VIA URLS etc.

4.) Adblock won't get you to your favorite sites if a DNS server goes down or is DNS-poisoned, hosts will (this leads to points 4-7 next below).

5.) Adblock doesn't allow you to hardcode in your favorite websites into it so you don't make DNS server calls and so you can avoid tracking by DNS request logs, hosts do (DNS servers are also being abused by the Chinese lately and by the Kaminsky flaw ->

Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

If there were big class-action lawsuits for false advertising, nay, fraud, everytime an access provider tried one of these schemes to monetize packets or ports. You want to call it pay-as-you-go, crippleweb, or whatever, fine. Just don't bill it as Internet access.

The FTC should have weighed in on this a long time ago, like back when Earthlink and other ISPs started blocking port 25 outbound, but they don't, so it's going to be up to users. Hosting companies and big corps don't get this kind of shitty treatment; us lusers will have to band together.

Seems like a far more useful form of activism than DDoS voluntarism to me. But what the fuck does an old fart know? Now, get off my lawn!

reasonable profit margin? My ASS

[way2trivial]

assets of $112 billion since founding in 1963
one hundred and twelve billion dollars in assets

35 billion in gross revenue..
thats $112 for every person in the USA
Net! income-- 3.6 billion.....
thats a straight ten percent over the top after they have amortized and tax dodged and debt leveraged every dollar they reasonably can.

COMCAST HAS THE FUNDS TO BUY SPORTS TEAMS AND NBC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast#Acquisitions_and_joint_ventures

In case you missed it, I disagree and find offensive your assertion that their profit is 'regulated'

What a pain

[fascam]

While it only covers a small portion of the population, I see this being real a pain for some of us. I have to work from home from time to time so in turn my company covers the cost of my internet access since it's required for my job. So what, now do I need to install a second line? One for family use and the other for business? Iwish these guys would open their eyes. No customer likes pay as you go. While it's a little different, Netflix doent charge you per streamed movie and they're making money hand over fist. Make more money by having a better product and not by squeezing your customer until you get every last drop of blood out of them.

Artificial Scarcity

[TwistedGreen]

Yes, these ISPs want to create artificial scarcity to conform to a business model they are more comfortable with, and many people think this is okay because it's familiar. When will they learn that digital communications are quite unlike the old paradigm of physical communication? Even switched networks are very different because there are a limited number of lines: Not so on the Internet. These kinds of per-byte proposals are very disingenuous.

Here's hoping

[moeluv]

that everyone who is here on slashdot, has a strong opinion about this and is a U.S. citizen is taking a few momnets to contact the FCC with their thoughts. It's easy enough to bitch about the way our society is going and how ignorant governemt agencies are but the truth is many civil servants do take input presented in an intelligent manner. Everything that happens in this country is brought on by the action or inaction of it's citizenry. Sadly inaction and complacency seem to have become the order of the day.

Only pay when the TV is tuned in

[Anonymous Coward]

And only pay when the TV is tuned in, even better... I only watch 3 hours of TV a week and the rest of the time it's off.

Dont think so....

[hesaigo999ca]

I seriously doubt that this will happen, as no users using your bandwidth,
no bills being paid, plain and simple, laws of demand, you make it too
expensive that too many people cant afford, you will have no on left using it....
internet would die a slow death, and companies would come back with better pricing then let their companies die....
it would last maybe a few months before the bottom line was hit too hard that they would recant their decision.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[SourceFrog]

What are the costs of scaling this up to cover the infrastructure needed to handle an entire neighborhood, city, or state? What are the costs of supporting it, both in terms of technicians and people manning phone lines?

I already sort of covered that with: "Capital once-off costs are proportional to infrastructure size, while maintenance is a variable cost" though perhaps you didn't understand the terminology, these are standard finance terms (support/technicians etc. are 'maintenance costs' that are proportional to the number of users, that is basically the definition of 'variable costs', while capital costs are inherently once-off or 'now and again', i.e. the cost of 'covering the city' - you only need to pay it once anyway). The reason I didn't expand further on that is because my point is that those will *at worst* be comparable to the actual utilities ANYWAY, and are otherwise better for the reasons I mentioned - there is little "consumption" in the true sense of the word - as well as other reasons such as some types of broadband infrastructure not even requiring cable installation e.g. 3G.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[SourceFrog]

I obviously wasn't claiming that stringing a cable to your neighbor is exactly equivalent to an ISP setup, that's why I called it a "thought experiment", in order to grasp why broadband is different to water and energy. The ratio of the capex to install the line between you and your neighbor, and the cost of maxing it out (a tiny, tiny amount of electricity, perhaps 1W) is simply MASSIVE. My point was also that if OP had even the faintest introduction to "econ 101", as he so arrogantly derided others for, he would understand this already, as these are BASICS. The 'support and maintenance costs' for your cable would be that every now and then you'll have to replace the cable e.g. if someone mowing the lawn clips it. These same principles apply on every level in the broadband supply chain too. Stringing a fiber cable under the ocean costs a fortune, perhaps a billion $ or so for a decent installation. But the cost of transmitting and receiving the light pales into nothingness compared to that cost. The main costs are of maintaining the line e.g. sending out ships if it breaks or replacing repeaters etc., and things like marketing. Investors seek to recover capex over some period of time. Covering a city with a shiny new telecoms network isn't easy or cheap, sure, but with water and energy you are transmitting 'something', it has to come from a dam or water treatment plant or coal must be dug from a mine, these things are extremely expensive, while with telecoms you are transmitting signals, which cost almost nothing to generate or transport. As for whether or not it should be a government utility, if you ask me, that's a moral argument. Personally I am neither a socialist nor a communist, it's not clear to me that there is any valid argument why the state should be granted an exclusive right to monopolise the telecomms market at the expense of human liberty.

Re:Duh! Get ready for it

[blair1q]

My internet is provided by my cable company (Cox, but Comcast is basically the same). They're already delivering full-bandwidth HDTV to every one of my N televisions, each of which can be recording two channels 24/7/365.25. I actually pay more for the link to my computer than I would if it were just charged as another TV. By a disturbingly large multiple, come to think of it.

So you go get over yourself.

How do I register my discontent with the FCC??

[artao]

As far as I know, there's no way for me (or you) to have any influence or input into the FCC's decisions. I would LOVE to have someone prove me wrong. PLEASE prove me wrong !!! Who or what do I phone or write to to get this horrible horrible idea to die quietly and without a funeral ?? If this were to happen, I may well have to cut my 'net off or risk going completely broke!! BOOOOO!!! Haven't they learned anything?? as cell phone companies are dropping pay-as-you go in favor of unlimited access, 'net providers are looking for pay-as-you-go. LAME LAME LAME LAME LAME!!! .. of course, cyberpunk always predicted this ....