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High-Bandwidth Users Are Just Early Adopters
silverpig writes "Cisco has released a whitepaper on mobile data usage which has some interesting data in it. The top 1% of users consume 20% of the bandwidth, but that share is down from 30% previously. 'Regular' users are catching up as they watch more video. High-bandwidth users of today will be relatively average users by 2015, so network operators should look to those users for insight in designing their future networks."
That means I actually have to spend money on my network!
I thought those heavy users were all supposed to be pirates?....now they say they are early adopters, does this mean we're all going to turn into pirates? Best get out my peg leg and shine it up....
An IT infrastructure company came out with a report stating that operators should beef up their infrastructure.
I think the network operators and ISP's solution to those high bandwidth users is to cap bandwidth, shape traffic, enforce download/upload caps - pretty much anything short of actually spending money on designing a future network.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
I'm wondering if this means the same is true for all broadband. Obviously there will always be heavier users, and I think everyone here knows they need to worry more about upgrading infrastructure and less about how to limit users to make it work as it is, but could they realistically NEED to increase their capacity within the next few years to avoid having their pipes always clogged by what's become regular usage?
Network hardware vendor releases report encouraging more spending in network hardware!
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
In Canada, we are facing a fight over Usage-Based-Billing, and whether the federal government can effectively force it on ISPs. The idea isn't actually terrible per se, but the way they're trying to implement it certainly is.
One thing that has come up time and time again is that it's to protect the consumer from the excess of the 1% of extreme consumers. They're often implicitly labelled as pirates by the ISPs, but in fact are the vanguard.
An excellent article in the Globe and Mail had this to say on the matter:
The knowledge that penalties await heavy Internet usage does something quite terrible: discourage desirable behaviour. Most of Bell’s arguments for treating consumers as wrongdoers rely on the villainization of “bandwidth hogs” who use up everyone else’s bandwidth and generally bring misery to the land. But there are better words for big users of the Internet: “pioneers” and “innovators.” A nation that spends its time worrying about bandwidth caps is not a nation that leads.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The cell phone companies are way ahead of the curve on this one. They've been working on ways to screw us over for years now... and the more you know about making the sausage (from sites like HoFo), the more you know how bad you're getting it. Especially in the US.
Just a few days ago, I got a text message from T-Mobile saying, "Texas Recovery Fee now included on monthly bill." Oh for crying out loud. Does the grocery store charge me a "Municipal Services Recovery Fee" to get back the cost of their food service license? Even the tire store doesn't charge the "tire disposal fee" if I tell them to load 'em up in the back seat. I'd drop 'em in a minute if it weren't for two things: 1) Everyone else is just as bad or worse, and 2) T-Mo makes it easy and *cheaper* to stay *out* of a contract, which actually makes me *more* likely to stay.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
You're talking about the same companies that knew IPv4 addresses were rapidly depleting for years and are just now taking steps to implement IPv6. Their main concern is minimizing expenses while maximizing profit. The less your average user uses, the more users they can squeeze onto the same pipe. I'm pretty sure most ISPs would love it if everyone bought an $80 data plan and only used it to check their email. There's no room for long term planning when you have shareholders that expect constant short term growth.
...so network operators should look to those users for insight in designing their future networks..
Network operators developing future netowrks? HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa.
... Good luck with that.
Oh, wait, you were serious? Wow
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Just call them "bandwidth hogs," oversell your capacity, and blame your connectivity problems on the people using most of the flow they paid for.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
today's early adopters will continue to be ahead of the curve, adopting tomorrows new tech as we do today?
Why can't we let people believe whatever they like? It's not like a little religion has ever hurt anyone.
...so network operators should look to those users for insight in designing their future networks.
...so network operators should look to those users for insight in pricing their future networks.
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Well, shouldn't early adopter pay more then ? Early adopter of cutting edge CPU and motherboards and of any technology for that matter usually pay more than after the technology has become mainstream.
I have unlimited bandwidth and I would like it to stay that way but seriously, when you think about it, are upgraded networks going to be given by Cisco to anybody who asks ? Usually, the consumer ends up paying one way or another. You have the choice to let casual users finance heavy users or to charge per use, just like at the gas pump.
Another alternative is to cap bandwidth or charge more for bandwidth only at given times. This model is similar to cell phone plans where you get free minutes at off-peak times.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
The oft repeated rule of thumb is that 80% of a product is bought by 20% of the customers. Here, 80% of the product is bought by 99% of the customers.
The top 1% of users consume 20% of the bandwidth ...
"The early adoptors of today are using what main steam users will be using in a couple of years!" OMG, Stop the presses, I have NEVER heard that before!
I don't necessarily have an objection to a per-bit charge, under two conditions:
1. The charge is reasonable compared to the actual cost of sending that bit (none of this $2/GB crap).
2. I get the maximum available speed on the network at that time - you don't get to constrain me based on speed *and* volume. That's like saying you're going to charge me for my water based on usage and water pressure.
The Canadian numbers were a joke, though - the caps were so slow that if you actually got the advertised speeds, you'd hit the cap within days (or sometimes hours!) of the beginning of the month.
huzzah is right! That means I get paid if they want my advice since I'm an early adopter. What? You're saying I don't get paid? Pshhh, in the future, everyone gets paid. I know this because I'm an early adopter. -hired!-
Seriously. Cisco wrote a whitepaper saying, essentially, "bandwidth usage goes up"? Early adopters use more bandwidth early, and then everyone else catches up. Let me check; yep, translation: "usage goes up."
There are bacteria growing in my fridge that worked that out in seconds. What was that Cisco author doing with the rest of his time? (Oh right; downloading porn in HD 3D...)
I get free minutes all the time. Just a flat monthly rate. As for early adopters being subsidised by casual users, I think you have it backwards. It is the early adopters that are doing the subsidizing. Most of the subsidizing was done early on when the casual users didn't even have a connection. The early adopters paid to get the whole system up and running. Now, early adopters are the ones that are paying for the higher bandwidth connections. Every ISP I know of has multiple tiers of service. I pay more because I want to go faster. Others pay even more than I do. Guess what? When you decide to stream Netflix and Hulu, you will be able to do it because the early adopters paid to get the system up to a level that you can do it.
The complain of heavy usage is not new. I had the same argument with my father years ago when he complained that people viewing pictures on web sites were bandwidth hogs. I don't know a single user that would not fit the 'bandwidth hog' definition of 10 years ago.
Disclaimer: I work for a major Canadian ISP. The only one not implementing UBB.
I completely agree with your first point... but it does conflict with your second point. There is only so much bandwidth available between Yourself and your Content. The amount of available bandwidth varies depending on where your Content lies - so to say that you expect the maximum speed, all the time, is like saying you expect the entire Internet to be built in a uniform manner, with pipes big enough to support everyone during peak times.
The simple fact of the matter is, you want a Committed Information Rate, or CIR - a promise that you will be given your maximum bandwidth all the time. There are also very good reasons a CIR of even 1 Mbps costs upwards of $500/month - because the service provider will build their network around you, even if it means laying extra fiber to your house. But you still wind up paying for.
The other thing at play here is that the cost of bandwidth changes. Much like gas or electricity. If you truly want to be charged on the actual cost of the bandwidth, the service provider will need to take into account where your traffic is going, and when. The easier solution is just to charge a flat rate. Not at 10000% markup, but at something more like 20 cents/GB. Should cover traffic going just about anywhere.
The problem with the structure of both DSL and cable based residential internet connections in the US is that it is a "star" configuration with a "neighborhood node" or DSLAM at the core. You can connect up many homes to the node before things start to degrade, but the limiting factor is the upper limit on the bandwidth between the Internet at large and the neighborhood node. Once you reach that limit all you can do really is split up the homes onto two nodes with separate feeds to the head end and the Internet.
Unfortunately, splitting a node is going to likely require running a new fiber link from the head end. Think that comes cheap? We are talking about trucks and heavy equipment here - digging, running fiber ducts, and burying it again. Where do they get the right-of-way for this? Consider that in many parts of the country the neighborhood node fiber link was put in 10-15 years ago when the neighborhood itself was being built on former farmland.
End of the story is that the "cap" is going to exist for a long time because there are major physical aspects to be overcome. This isn't upgrading a Cisco router to get better throughput. It is going to require substantial physical changes in the network that involve digging a lot of trenches in places where nobody wants a big trench dug these days.
The Internet in the US has been sold to users as what kind of speed they can achieve in "burst" mode for short durations. It has never been sold on the basis of getting consistent speeds over long periods of time to watch a movie from Netflix. The fact that you can get 20Mb/sec while downloading a 10MB file is meaningless if your average over an hour is 1.5Mb/sec. We are rapidly approaching the point where the node to head end connection cannot support IPTV requirements and Netflix will probably be the first on the block to notice. IPTV will be unusable for anyone with a crowded residential connection. I hope you have enjoyed your early adopter status because that is about to change.
I recently bought a Roku box and I give it two years maximum before it is unusable here in Phoenix. I suspect the "upgrade" will be to a box with a hard drive that downloads movies to buffer them but that will be a while in coming. And it is a completely different experience for the user.
I'm a forward thinking person using technology that I purchase for my own benefit and that of my ISP, who takes my money in exchange for internet access. Yet, I'm labeled an ABUSER by the company that sells me this service. It's Comtastic's super-dooper faster than a liquid pooper service and I like to stream (no pun intended) LEGAL music and video services that compete with my internet service provider. Yep, I like Netflix, Pandora, Hulu, you name it and I game it, as long as its legal and less expensive than the diarrheal service offered by my ISP.
-- Wondering how long until the internet becomes fully corporatist, like television.
As for early adopters being subsidised by casual users, I think you have it backwards. It is the early adopters that are doing the subsidizing. Most of the subsidizing was done early on when the casual users didn't even have a connection. The early adopters paid to get the whole system up and running.
This is not inconsistent with what I said, as for early adopters of any technologies like CPUs, the early adopters usually pay all the R&D budget etc. Once the company has paid its R&D and infrastructure budgets, it can then afford to make the technology mainstream and lower the prices because the cash coming in is now pure profit.
So, at any point in time "early adopters" or people using more resources than average are usually paying more. For the CPU example, casual users subsidizing early adopters would mean that a company selling CPUs or graphic cards would sell their high end product the same price they sell their lower end products which you do not see too often. For some reason, the same logic doesn't seem to prevail in the mind of many people when it come to bandwidth usage.
Just lag a little behind in technology related matters if you want to get the best bang for the buck. If you want to be in the "early adopters" group for ever in any technology matter, you should expect to pay more than casual users for ever IMHO.
Again, I said in a previous post that I have unlimited bandwidth well, 905 GB/month limited by line speed. I am happy with my free buffet plan and I would like to keep it this way but I am honest enough not to deny basic facts and not to bias my opinion on the matter in my own selfish interest.
As a side note, I qualify as an early adopter of Internet connectivity, dialup in 1991 and ADSL since 1998 as part of a testing group for a prototype project. I still use this connection nowadays and this is why my bandwidth isn't metered.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Man they're smart. I'd never figure that out.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
It would not work in the United States because (1) to be a broadband ISP you simply must own the cables and infrastructure is very expensive, and (2) local governments routinely give away monopolies that prevent competitors from operating.
In the USA broadband internet access is classified differently from telephone service and doesn't require any sharing of physical lines. Before broadband when everything was dial-up you could start your own ISP with almost trivial effort: a little hardware and a good uplink. Now entry into the field is a multi-million (more likely -billion) dollar proposition, even if you could get approval from the government.
In a country where regulation is detested this kind of thing is permitted because it's "business friendly" - meaning that Comcast has bribed enough officials to keep the competition out, so the result is friendly to them.
I want my Cowboyneal
As per the norm, the summary has little to do with the article.
The scale won't compress, it will slide. There will still be high bandwidth users in the future, just as there were in the past. As a side note, how is this in anyway news?
More people are buying smart phones over time... Crazy.
Not to mention the hypocrisy of these same company's selling there wears with promises of super fast downloads, streaming video, movies, fastest network, etc....
Oh but don't dare actually use it, you're a pirate then!
They are like some sort of petulant child, that's also crazy...
Hi. I make network equipment. I know a lot about network equipment. I think a big change is coming to network equipment. I think you should learn to use a lot of network equipment. A whole lot of network equipment. You need more network equipment. Oh, and did I tell you I make network equipment?