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Web Usage-Based Billing On Its Way
tripleevenfall writes with this excerpt from SFGate:
"The days of watching movies on the cheap via the Web may soon be over. Time Warner Cable and U.S. pay-TV companies are on the verge of instituting new fees on Web-access customers who use the most data. ... U.S. providers have weighed usage-based plans for years as a way to squeeze more profit from Web access, and to counter slowing growth and rising program costs in the TV business. While customer complaints hampered earlier attempts, pay-TV companies are testing usage caps and price structures that point to the advent of permanent fees. ... Cable's best option is to find ways to profit from the online shift, said [analyst Craig Moffett]. If the companies were to lose all of their video customers, the revenue decline would be more than offset by lower programming fees and set-top box spending. 'In the end, it will be the best thing that ever happened to the cable industry,' Moffett said."
We can make your entire industry irrelevant with a single referendum. Tread lightly, telecoms.
Charge people for 2160p 'high-high-definition' content streaming. there isnt 2160p yet you say ? dont worry. once this shit gets going .....
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This has been on the horizon for some time here in Canada. We came damn close recently (but massive public outrage managed to stop it), but they are talking about it yet again.
I wish we could just skip through this long painful phase where the established dinosaurs hold back natural progress for as long as possible. We all know this is the future.. and it annoys me that I may not actually see in my lifetime things we could be doing from a technological standpoint right now because some huge established companies refuse to adapt or get out of the way and have the piles of money and armies of lawyers/lobbyists to keep it up for decades.
Honestly, while I don’t have much faith in governments doing things properly nor illusions that it wouldn’t be influenced.. I think at this point I’d love to see Internet access become a government run utility.
I could get behind this if it's done reasonably. Figure out what the top 10% of users use, draw a line there and say it's an extra $5 each month you surpass it. Likewise, figure out what the bottom 20% use, draw a line there and knock off $10 for each month they don't surpass it.
Of course, asking these guys to be reasonable is like asking Apple fanboys to use Windows...
So FTP, Bittorrent, RTSP, are not covered?
And everyone will soon follow.... Everything will eventually be tiered pricing.
The amount of miles you drive determine the price you pay for gas at the pump.
The amount of food you eat determines the amount you pay.
Grant it, this is currently being applied to non-essential services, such as data plans and someday broadband internet and cable TV, but with dwindling natural resources, this is likely to happen to where you pay less if you consume less...
We are trying to kill off Netflix because they had the foresight to get rights to stream our tv shows before we thought it was a good idea. Now we are losing millions of people to hulu and netflix and others so we are gonna charge you for using thier service and make you use our service since you won't choose us.
Sincerely,
The Cable Dinosaurs
Other than simply being bad grammar, what does this quote from the article mean, "If the companies were to lose all of their video customers, the revenue decline would be more than offset by a lower programming fees and set-top box spending."
...????
Does this mean that cable companies will decrease their cable fees if they lose customers, thereby increasing profits.
How much is a byte of data worth? Will the price of video per byte be the same as the price per byte for music? For text? For other forms of data or media? Who sets the price? I'm sure there are lots more questions that nobody in the industry is interested in answering right now because . . . money!
The easiest way to institute metered bandwidth is to reward users who simply aren't interested in doing a lot of bandwidth-intensive tasks with a lower bill. If I could get my grandmother a $10/month basic plan with 2GB of bandwidth and basic customer service support, with say a $2/10GB add-on fee, it'd be a steal. She'd almost never use the 2GB of bandwidth in the first place, so most of that $10 would end up subsidizing other users--but without jacking her.
This just goes to show that the sociopathically greedy nature of a lot of industry executives has blinded them to the obvious. If you make a higher pricing structure a two-way street, most people won't mind.
Oh, that's okay then. I'll just go right back to torrenting the shows I want to watch, then, and you'll lose the few pennies of advertising dollars you were getting from me. Bye!
I've always maintained they should align their price structure with actual costs. Maybe this won't get us all the way there, but it may end up being closer than their structure is now. Bundle their fixed costs into a fixed fee then recoup the rest in per-usage fees. To differentiate different plans based on max bandwidth, either up the fixed fee or up the per-usage rate for plans w/ higher bandwidth. Since they're now charging per usage, the telecoms have very little (legitimate) incentive to do any sort of throttling, enforcing of limits or traffic shaping.
I never quite understood the moral panic that seems to appear when this comes up. Asking people to pay for what they use doesn't seem like *that* radical a concept to me.
* If you run more appliances, your electric bill goes up
* If you drive a longer distance, you need to buy more gas
* If you make a lot of cell phone calls, your bill goes up
* If you eat more, you pay more for the groceries
Why is Internet use seen differently?
And before someone says, "I'm paying for X megabits/second, I should get that!", please understand that your feed connects you to the next upstream concentration point (switch, router, whatever). Beyond that, it's all shared bandwidth, and oversubscribed. That's one of the chief benefits of a packet-switched network -- you don't need to dedicate a circuit to each subscriber. Asking for dedicated connectivity the whole way[1] is asking for a return to the days of leased lines, where you paid thousands of dollars a month for 1.54 Mbit/sec.
[1] And, of course, the Internet doesn't have a "whole way".
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I'm still not sure what the problem is here? I watch most of my TV online via Hulu, Netflix, and a variety of other means. And I have Comcast High-Speed Internet with a 150 GB/month bandwidth cap. I have yet to even come close to passing that threshold, and Comcast has never complained to me about bandwidth usage. And I thought I was a "heavy user". Which leads me to believe that the true "heaviest users" must really be sucking up some serious bandwidth -- these are probably all the guys starting and hosting torrents, though,. . .
Uh, we already do this?
If I drive more miles, I pay for more gas. Ditto with food. I don't know of one grocery store with an "all you can eat" plan. If I want more food, I pay for more food.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
with their internet as they have been with their phones....
Look at what the wireless companies are doing with their phones and the fact that people pay for this abuse. $30 data plans... required for smart phones.
So you imagine the crap they will pull on internet if they get their way. I have no problem with usage based pricing provided that the line is separated from the provider. As in, treat it like my gas company. There is one company which gets paid a flat rate to maintain all gas lines in the state. From there providers piggy back on it charging what they think they can for the gas delivered over those lines.
The problem is how to fairly reimburse companies who truly did spend their own money upgrading their networks and how to get places that are not adequately served to similar levels. I can drive five miles from my house and the gas is still the same natural gas with same availability but people I know who live their only have DSL whereas I have opportunity for both cable and dsl (and my cable is 20 down)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Because you guys pay for bandwidth and the oversell it , that's all an ISP does. It buys a 1 mbps line for a month and sells it to three people hoping only one of them is actually online at any time. If they all get online they pull this shit your trying to pull , so as to convince them to stay online less but still pay the bill.
The reason cellphone companies do this with talk time is theoretically because they have to pay per minute spent talking outside their own network. The reason they're doing it for data too is because they're scam artists.
Go away slime.
Wouldn't the best solution be to used local cached media servers inside each telcom/cable-co data center? For example, the most popular Netflix videos get cached locally on Netflix's own racked up servers. Cable within the city WAN has plenty of bandwidth. No need to charge extra for that. So the technical problem with data usage over paring agreements is solvable. Now it's just a business decision to make it happen between the content providers.
Life is not for the lazy.
OK - pay JUST by usage. I'm OK with 10 cents/GB. Though I'd hope the price would come down from there.
Some people seem to think that because this is happening with mobile internet, the same could happen on wired internet. But there is a problem. First off, there are TWO forms of wired internet and the infrastructure for that is there. The wires are in the ground and they are increasingly capable of higher and higher speeds. Fibre is often waiting to be even used. There is excess capacity readily available.
Mobile is different, towers are not just expensive and prone to interference, getting a new tower up takes a lot of administrative work. Further more, by the nature of mobile, the heaviest use is in the most build up and populated areas where is it is hardest to increase coverage.
No such problem with wires. The heaviest use is spread over a city (offices during the day, suburbs at night) and the cables can carry near infinite capacity and getting a small distrubution box up is no hassle.
So... who is going to be the first to STOP advertising with downloading and say "we are going to charge you more"? There are, at least in Europe, to many ISP that have given up on trying to sell content just sell you data. They got no other interests and have the infrastructure to just sell data.
The fact is that data is insanely cheap nowadays, people know it AND will know it that the OTHER provider CAN sell it cheaply because that other provider is bound to advertise with it. If the are not... well... at least in the EU their are watchdogs that will ask how it comes ALL at once decided to increase their prices at the same rate.
Some of the big internet companies keep dreaming of fat profits and people paying to download wallpapers, ringtones and now movies. It never happened. I don't see it happening anytime soon. People are just to cheap.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
to fight this? The general public in America is so apathetic anymore that this is inevitable. Sure, we bitch and complain a lot, but when it comes time to actually do anything, nothing materializes. I'm genuinely surprised that the "Occupy" movement has lasted as long as it has, I figured it would fizzle completely in a few days. But, back to the point, this is a bad idea for me, the consumer. I don't give a rat's @ss that cable companies' profits are shrinking. That's not my fault. Put something worth watching on television at a convenient time and I'll sit down and watch it. I'll even watch the commercials. But the fact that I watch little to no network television is solely due to poor decisions on the parts of the providers and studios. Stop paying actors such ridiculous salaries, fire the horrible writers and get people with writing skills and tell compelling stories. Fire the executives that rake in disgusting paychecks and keep demanding dumbed down crap, "reality shows" and bad reboots. But don't tell me that I have to now pay more for my internet because you can't manage your finances like a grown up! But seriously, what do we do to prevent this from happening? I can cancel my internet.... oh wait, Comcast has a monopoly in my area so I can't leave. I can post a rant on Slashdot.... oh wait, that won't do anything. I can tell my neighbors about this and try to raise awareness, maybe organize a protest.... oh wait, it's America, they'll get all fired up, but never actually get off the couch. I can call my congressman.... oh wait, he's in the cable companies pocket. I can call Comcast and complain... oh wait, they don't give a $hit what I think. So what do we do? And not just about this, but about a lot of things. Look at the state America is in today, and on pretty much every issue, we the people are backed into a corner and have no real options. Personally, I'm ready to get out the pitchforks and torches.
Replying to self to add this.
Source 1: I had a few friends that were small-time ISP's , i know what it costs to run a network and I'm sufficiently educated to extrapolate lhat towards running a larger network.
Source 2: The largest ISP in Romania operates on a scaled up "small isp" infrastructure ( cheap man's FTTB). Guess what: it works and you get 100mbps metro connection for 19$ / mo . We used to have data caps , they built their network up following the market's demand and now we don't.
Looks like I'll have to add that tethering package onto my 4g phone and use it as my internet. Sorry Time Warner Cable, your product is already worth less than what I pay, why the hell would I want to pay more?
Sure, as long as the cable company starts billing things that use my bandwidth that I do not want, like advertisement. Better yet, let's start doing that with cell data as well.
Same with protests over fuel. In the UK, the government try to raise road taxes, introduce tolls, car-share lanes, congestion charging, parking fees etc. when the only thing that matters is pence per litre. Raise that, and blanket the roads in "no parking", "no gas-guzzlers" signs that are ENFORCED and the hardest-users are hit worse (including those who use higher grades of fuel, drive more, have huge cars, make unnecessary journeys etc.)
I'd much rather pay PAYG extra fuel and not have to keep digging out change/cards, fill in forms, etc. and get a shock at having to pay some things once a year, some every time I fill up, some when I use only a certain road, etc. for the use of the roads.
The only problem with usage-based billing is making sure that the measures are accurate, account for all usage (i.e. not point just metering download if someone else can upload ten times as much and pay less) and work out to the same rates for normal-usage users.
I pay about £10 a month for a basic (lowest package) 30Gb allowance. To me, that means I pay £0.33p per Gb. That seems not unreasonable, given local ISP prices. But if you try to charge me more than that per Gb then we're obviously going to have contention. And if I *do* want to use 100Gb one month, it had better be available because *I'm paying for it*. And if I use 1Gb, you better not charge me more than £0.33p (plus a small monthly fee, I bet!).
You can have it any way you like, PAYG, contract, etc. but the point is that if you bill me by usage, I *will* use what I want, when I want and pay ONLY what I feel is fair under those circumstances. When some telcos are still charging pounds per MEGABYTE for mobile data (and not "Oh, you went over 30Mb, so we limited the speed of your mobile data" like they do with broadband) it seems only right that this "fair" mechanism comes to broadband and is adjusted to meet TODAY'S standards as well as tomorrow's (i.e. don't charge me more than I'm paying now for the same usage).
If you watch more television you don't get charged any extra, so why would the internet be any different?
Because, when you live in poverty one of the few "blessings" in your life may be your internet connection. Don't make the mistake of confusing technical ability with financial success.
When was it that access to the Internet was replaced with "web access?"
Seriously, now, are we going to be expected to pay more for connectivity if we use ports other than 80/443 and protocols other than http(s)? Because it sure sounds that way from what they're calling it and what they're complaining about.
Then stop telling me that is what you're providing. If somewhere upstream can't handle the rate and limits it, that is one thing. But I don't give a rat's ass about your oversubscription issues. If Comcast tells me "20 Mbps", then under no circumstances but the rarest should COMCAST ever throttle me. The upstream provider can rate limit as they need to.
Honestly, I don't mind paying for what I use. What I mind is getting LIED TO about it under the guise of "advertising".
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I think this is just going to get people more conscious of data on the web. I will feel less regret loading my favorite websites with all those flash ads if I am actually paying to see it.
You're not "consuming" data. Your using bandwidth. You're not "consuming" data like it was electricity or gasoline. Why does everyone else MISS the point? It's not sending data through the pipes... it's how FAST you send it. Throttle the heavy users after a certain point and STFU. Bandwidth is a scarce commodity. DATA is not. Slow down the big users and let grandma tweet her bowel movements in real time.. or grow your capacity. I don't give a fuck if you oversold your "unlimited" internet. Fixing it by charging for going over 10GB (that was TWC's first trial) is stupid.
This is nothing more than a revenue grab from most monopolies because competition sucks.
Because the Internet is like a road and you typical aren't charged by the mile. The ISP doesn't normally provide the content, just bandwidth or a road. That's the difference, the reaction is they have lost there mind over their absurd cost of this service, providing a conduit to the net. The toll is way too high for what they do.
... when IIRC the MPAA and the RIAA managed to convince regulators that it was fair to add an additional tax to the sale of all audio and video tapes, incl. DAT. It's called the private copying levy. They argued that, since it was safe to assume that the overwhelming majority of tapes would be used to make illegal copies of copyrighted content, the tax would go some way to compensating them for their losses. Of course, this idea was unfair, because it also taxed everyone who was not interested in music or Hollywood movies, or only recorded their own material. Nowadays it also applies to blank CDs and DVDs. However, this new proposal for a web usage tax is such a blunt instrument it makes the old "blank media tax", as it is also known, look like a razor.
This is why I chuckle a bit at the "discs are dead, long live streaming" folks. Personally, I'd love a service where I can stream anything ever made at anytime so I never had to fire up Handbrake/VLC ever again, but it ain't happening with gatekeepers like this in charge.
The big problem I have is that the internet is not a consumable resource. Yes, if I drive a lot, or eat a lot, or use a lot of electricity, my gas, food, and electrical bills will go up- but that's because those are resources that can be consumed. The internet (and phone access, by the way) isn't consumed when I access it. It's just There.
Sent from my CR-48
With all the money these idiotic ISPs spend on lobbyists and lawyers, they could probably spend LESS just upgrading their infrastructure to accommodate with today's usages.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
That is because the ISPs are not the ones providing me with what I consume whilst online. Gas/electricity etc is a) a finite resource, 2) produced to a cost.
Bandwidth is just the hose transporting whatever it is i consume.
So, the cable companies (which deliver content to customer's homes) wants to charge people extra because of the high number of Netflix (which delivers content to customer's home) streaming subscribers. I see this becoming a huge anti-trust lawsuit with Netflix suing the cable companies for trying to install barriers in their Internet service to protect their their TV service profits.
My company home page
1. It's not inline with the operating costs. For gas or electricity, the more you use the more of the resource is used up. Hence, it just makes sense to pay for usage. With bandwidth, it's not exactly the same. There is a large base cost to having a given infrastructure; the additional cost to actually use the infrastructure is comparatively small (routers and switches transferring packets do consume a bit more electricity than routers and switches idling... but this is small compared to the base cost of installing and maintaining the routers and switches at all). In general, people find it unfair for consumer costs to be highly unrelated to actual production costs (it feels arbitrary and like price gouging).
2. Related to #1, it's just generally inefficient not to use data-transmission infrastructure at near 100% capacity. Once the infrastructure is in place, it's cheap to just use it. Thus, it's overall more efficient (in terms of productivity per amount of resource used) to encourage people to use the Internet to capacity. Usage-based billing has the opposite incentive: it encourages people to ration what is in not a traditional resource. (Unused bandwidth is wasted, not banked for a rainy day.)
3. In an overall technological/economic trend sense, usage-based billing has the effect of keeping society locked into a fixed data-transmission infrastructure. The incentive to expand and improve the network, add bandwidth and capacity, is eliminated. Thus progress in telecommunications is stalled. Most people would agree that the deployment of telephones and the rapid expansion of the Internet have been overall beneficial to our economy and technological progress. Thus, it seems like continuing to expand our communications infrastructure would be a good thing. Usage-based billing maintains the status quo instead of encouraging expansion of our networks.
4. As others have pointed out, to the consumer, data bandwidth is more like cable TV or landline telephones: both of which have traditionally been a "pay per month; unlimited usage" model (with many exceptions, of course: long-distance calling, pay-per-view, premium content,
Why is Internet use seen differently?
I think the short answer is: "Because it's different." Bandwidth is not a tangible resource like gas or food. Treating it as one is not efficient.
I was around in the eighties when having a link from one computer to another meant that you had to pay usage fees. By the minute actually. Making large transfers of data were simply cost prohibitive, your average youtube video would have cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars at those old rates.
When people began to talk about having a world wide internet connection they got absolutely no response from the telcoms on the issue simply because, the idea of changing their service fees from a "by the minute" to a flat rate was unreasonable. They simply refused. Then after it had been shown that data could be sent in different (beyond hearing) frequencies, without affecting their normal voice business, they still balked. Opting instead to offer their lines at the same rate for whatever usage.
In the end it literally took an act of congress to force the telcoms to lease their lines out for internet use. Not by the megabyte or by the minute.. but the whole lines. Believe me there was more than just a little resistance. Since then the telcoms have been fighting to regain the ground they lost when the internet was created, and to be able to charge you ten or a hundred times more for the same service they provide now.
In fact you are right.. there are no established laws on the books that protect the "internet" as we know it.. from being chopped up and charged for by the website. But the it wouldn't be the "internet" , and the telcoms would have no incentive at all to upgrade the available infrastructure when they could simply charge you more and more for the ever expanding pieces that they can chop off.
once more into the breach
Only one of your analogies really works:
* If you make a lot of cell phone calls, your bill goes up
The rest are resources that are produced (which take time and money to do). Once a network is setup, it can handle X bandwidth and only requires basic maintenance. People could use as little or as much of that connection as they want and it won't cost the provider any differently.
The providers cost comes where they have to upgrade their networks to support a larger load. If they have a static user base, then they may need to raise costs to cover expanding their network (assuming their costs haven't gone down for their uplink connections).
Its not what it is, its something else.
Internet is fundamentally different from the things you mentioned, because it is not a limited resource. It doesn't cost the companies anything to offer more internet, in fact the larger their networks and the more people connected, the cheaper it is for them to give us internet. These fees have absolutely nothing to do with real cost to the companies. They see us on FBook all the time and think it's unfair they aren't getting a percentage.
Not to mention they already have gov't-mandated monopolies where small towns can't provide themselves internet. Our country is behind in network connection speed -- these companies are not even good at what they do! There's no Union for global Internet users......OWS Anyone?
Except if money is tight this month, I can drive less and only pump as much gas as I absolutely need. With the cable company's plan I'll have to pay $50 for that first gallon _then_ the going rate after that.
I wanted to rate you 'overrated' but here goes: data is not water or petroleum. It costs the same whether you use it or not, it's a fixed cost that depends only on the infrastructure.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
If you go to Mandarin, you pay only 20 bucks, and then you eat all you can eat...oh, wait, i screwed your argument, sorry man.
I never quite understood the moral panic that seems to appear when this comes up. Asking people to pay for what they use doesn't seem like *that* radical a concept to me.
* If you run more appliances, your electric bill goes up * If you drive a longer distance, you need to buy more gas * If you make a lot of cell phone calls, your bill goes up * If you eat more, you pay more for the groceries
Why is Internet use seen differently?
Which one of those things is not like the other? The cell phone bill example, and imo its because its much more like the broadband issue we're discussing here than any of those other examples.
Drive until your gas tank is empty and that gas is completely gone forever.. it's a resource that can no longer be used by someone else. The same goes for food after being consumed and electricity.
Broadband is slightly different. If I use my current max (which is only the amount available that is not currently in use by others sharing the connection) for five or ten minutes to download a large file and then go back to my default level, that broadband is available for use by others. You could argue that those that use higher amounts more frequently are "hogging" the pipe but they WERE sold x amount of broadband per second with or without caps. It's not the consumers fault that the cable companies chose a model where they over-subscribe lines to save money. If they're paying for a resource they should be able to use it as advertised. Furthermore, are they really "hogging" it for extended periods of time? Most situations involving high bandwidth usage seem to be in bursts, such as downloading a file. I've never seen netflix use enough bandwidth to put a serious dent in what I've been paying for (10mb) and that, besides the occasional multiplayer game, are when I'm actually using substained bandwidth levels.
There is technology out there to increase bandwidth availability but upgrading and building infrastructure doesn't make them money so they don't want to do it. It makes far more business sense to yell at the top of their lungs that the sky is falling, that there is a shortage on bandwidth, so they should charge more.
What these idiots don't seem to realize is that people cut the cable cord TO SAVE MONEY. If you then start charging them more for Internet what makes you think they're going to want to pay it? They won't. They'll just stop consuming extra content and avoid paying any extra money.
Seriously, do these morons think we're retarded? That we're just sitting on piles of cash every month waiting to write them checks?
?
2160p
Why not just jump to 4K?
Because they're pretty much the same thing. K resolutions are across; P resolutions are down. This means 2160p, or 3840x2160, is already close enough to 4K.
wait, Tebowing is out then?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If they go to usage based billing and I need to make a financial choice between internet and cable, the decision for me is an easy one. I would guess that it's just as easy for a very large percentage of people.
It'd be just as easy for my aunt's husband: he'd go back to dial-up and keep his NFL and NHL games.
In all fairness, its not a completely free resource. Every network message puts extra strain on every system it hits before it reaches its destination. The more bandwidth being used, the more throughput data centers need to be able to handle, increasing the cost of hardware, electricity, and maintenance staff.
Of course, that doesn't justify the huge fees ISPs dish out.
If you watch more television you don't get charged any extra, so why would the internet be any different?
you do, on pay-per-view with drm.
that's what they want.
anyways. the real panic comes from this: the companies want you to pay MORE for LESS than what they delivered for you a year ago.
who the fuck would like that, especially when it's a computer related technical expense - where things like switches etc, dslams, wireless bridges, cabling etc COST LESS EVERY FUCKING YEAR.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
From the article
"Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski publicly supported usage-based pricing in December, a victory for cable companies concerned that usage-based billing would run afoul of net neutrality rules prohibiting Internet services from favoring one form of content for another."
Look at the FCC chairs history
"He was Chief of Business Operations and a member of Barry Diller's Office of the Chairperson at IAC/InterActiveCorp and executive responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting. He earned at least $USD2.5 million when Vivendi acquired Universal assets in 2003.[10] He had previously served on the Boards of Directors of Expedia, Hotels.com, and Ticketmaster.[5]"
The Internet shouldn't be metered at all, rather they should use fixed priced and fixed caps, want more? buy the next tier up to and including unlimited data transfer.
They did this with Television, first it was the proliferation of advertising to the point where TV shows are now 1/3 or greater advertising time, then with cable TV they continued to raise the prices.
Now they will do it with the Internet effectively destroying innovation, and lets not forget telecoms suing people in towns trying to create their own service providers because their towns weren't deemed profitable enough to deploy services to.
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/09/telco-to-town-were-suing-you-because-we-care.ars
It just seems to me that corporations really run everything, and since they are bottom line focused that translates to greed running everything which in turn translates to the death of everything else.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Sure, it's like pay-per-view for everything.
"Maybe I'll just cancel my cable subscription so I can afford the bandwidth for Netflix"
I've had high-speed since it was available in my area, long before most people in my town did.
I've been a bandwidth hog in the past. I used to leave file-sharing programs running all day long, keeping seeds active (all legal stuff of course!) So, I definitely can identify with those who abuse the service.
For the past 5 or so years, though, finding a high-speed ISP that doesn't get bogged down around 7pm each night is nearly impossible. I've started getting up early, just so that I can watch streamed video without it queueing. Internet access is like everything else, it's limited.
I know that 10% of the people use 90% of the bandwidth. If the ISP just identifies those people, and charges them 25-50% more, then maybe they'll leave and go some place else.
Is it so unreasonable to want this? There are other options for hosting servers (ie. SDSL), and if people want to host large amount of video files to others, they shouldn't be scared of such services. Leave standard consumer-level internet packages who use a standard amount of data.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
If you watch more TV (not purchasing more channels, just watching the ones you have) does your bill go up?
A better system is where people that use a lot of bandwidth have less priority then the people that use less. That way I don't get punished for other people willing to pay the service provider for more bandwidth then myself that doesn't go over the bandwidth cap. The UBB model means that they would actually get more money by identifying people that consistently run over their limit and give them network preference as the price to bandwidth ratio is much larger.
If you're willing to pay $20 for an "all you can eat" of a single meal, you're already in the super-premium billing range. That's far more expensive than what you would pay to eat the equivalent at home.
I logged in only to see if I had mod points.
I can get broadband from different providers. My cable company, or FIOS from the land line phone company. Neither can afford the loss of customers if they go to metered billing.
We really need to start thinking about things like mesh networks, with the proposed censorship bills and monopolistic ISPs doing with us as they please. I realize this is not exactly feasible at the moment, at least outside of densely populated areas, but we need to start thinking of alternatives to the current status quo.
giggity
Go and buy a $20 antenna and watch HD in much better quality than the recompressed video streams from your cable provider or netflix.
You're paying for a crappier signal.
It's just There until everyone is streaming Netflix and Blockbuster and using Facetime, and then suddenly some backbone somewhere is saturated. 10 gb connection, 100gb, whatever it is, it can't hold any more.
"It is oversubscribed" means if everyone tries to use what they paid for, it will not work. Your e-mails will time out, your web pages won't load, it won't be Just There.
It is consumed. Think about it like a hot water heater. It has a set capacity, but normally you don't reach that capacity and the hot water is Just There. But if you invite 10 smelly OWS hippies to take a shower and clean up, some of them will use all the hot water and start accusing you of artificially limiting the hot water supply, manipulating scarcity to increase revenue.
The problem comes when we hit the limit, and I think pay per usage is fine. Because someone somewhere will think, why do I have to pay $200/month for my internet when I only send a few hundred e-mails without attachments? Why jack up my bill so those youtubers can watch each other do stupid things? Network expansion gets expensive, and you can either charge the people who use it more, or make everyone pay more.
Why Muni-owned Providers?
Why not consumer cooperatives?
Why not Muni installed and maintained conduits for cables with wholesale bids for access?
Why not Muni installed and maintained cables and switches, etc. with wholesale bids for access?
Why is creating municipally owned providers assumed to the be optimal alternative?
Municipalities seem to be a convenient source of financing for building local infrastructure for modern telecommunications, but nothing seems to indicate that it is the obvious optimal ownership structure in all cases.
But if i go to any other fast food restaurant, and pay them $20 buck, i could get only one hamburger, fries, coke, cookies....and that's all..... So again, who is in the super-premium plan?
Like a lot of us here, I used to have cable/satellite, then dropped that for a fat net connection and Netflix. I use a digital antenna for OTA free programming. I watch loads of PBS stuff OTA, which I love. Great picture, very little advertising(remember the good old days when PBS had NO advertising...) One of the best things about something like Netflix is I can enjoy SOA or BB with NO COMMERCIALS. Sure, with the DVR I could record and ff my way around those, but I prefer not to have a remote in my hand constantly, having to remember "Oh Shit! Here come those mind numbingly annoying commercials, time to pause/ff!". Plus, like a lot of us, I REALLY got sick of the price gouging and constant plan adjustment(hear that Netflix?) between cab/sat. Personally, the only industries I loathe more than cab/sat are Lawyers, Insurance. The real problem, as we all know is that THERE IS NO COMPETITION IN THE BROADBAND MARKET!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please, could someone from the "Defenders of what is referred to as THE FREE MARKET" explain why there is little or no choice in broadband providers. I can choose between two...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Not like we didn't go through this before guys.. remember most dialup used to be like this.. then a company came around and said 'oh look.. UNLIMITED'.. then everyone went unlimited because they had to if they wanted to keep marketshare.
Of course the problem is it was alot easier, and alot more choice, in Dialup.. basically, from my limited understanding, what Google in theory wants to do with Fiber (you have the pipe, who/what internet service you pick is up to you?).
Let the companies charge for usage I say. But also let people become infuriated by it! Maybe enough of them will standup, cause someone to notice and create Unlimited plans again, and the people that care can get back to 'Unlimited' access again for another 10 years before the circle comes back around.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
In the case of electricity, gas, or groceries, your increased usage leads to a decrease in the supply of resources available. You've consumed something, so you should pay for it according to the amount you've consumed. That only makes sense, since ownership of that resource has essentially been transferred to you and the manufacturer or seller cannot recover it from you.
In contrast, time is the resource I consume when I make use of an ISP's infrastructure to access the Internet (if you disagree, consider that the bandwidth "consumed" at any moment is the exact same regardless of if it's being used or not, since any bandwidth that goes unused at a particular time is lost forever). I'm not pulling up fiber with each megabit "consumed" or reducing the worldwide supply of megabits with each download. Whether I'm in the top 1% or bottom 1% of users, all I'm doing is pushing electrons around. Instead, what I'm paying for is the privilege of making use of their product for the period of time that I am a paying customer. We have a word for that: renting.
Since my reply wouldn't be complete without a car analogy, I'll point out that if I rent a car, there are essentially two primary factors that determine the amount I pay: the quality of the car and the amount of time it's in my possession. I can rent a cheap sedan or a high-end sports car, and I'll pay differently according to the quality afforded by each. Similarly, I can rent smaller or larger amounts of bandwidth from ISPs. And with the cars, I pay based on how long I use it. Similarly, with ISPs, I pay based on the number of months that I subscribe to that particular bandwidth level.
Now, I'm not ignoring your points regarding oversubscription, since they I do agree that it is a major factor, but I think that oversubscription is essentially their problem, not ours. If I was renting a car (in some hypothetical, frictionless world) and the rental agency wanted to re-rent the car I had to someone else for the hours that I was sleeping, but was faithful in returning it or an identical one by morning, that has no practical impact on me, so I have no reason to care. The key point is that they have the resource available when I need it, since that's what I'm paying for. Now, of course, that's not really possible in the physical world, but it is when it comes to the Internet, so there aren't any issues with doing it, as long as it's done appropriately.
Instead, they've tried to ignore the problem by charging based on usage, but that won't help at all, since all that does is reduce the number of outlying customers (i.e. the top 1%), allowing the ISPs to "pack" more customers into the same part of the infrastructure as before. I.e. The result is an increase in the Customer:Infrastructure ratio, which will only aggravate the issue of oversubscription, rather than alleviate it. And by compressing a larger share of their customers into a smaller area, they're discouraged from leaving the wiggle room that they currently have to keep for their outlying customers, meaning that when something major happens (e.g. Michael Jackson dies, 9/11, whatever) and everyone wants to get online to see it, the ISPs will collapse under the strain. Charging based on usage is bad for both customers and ISPs in the long run. Their dinosaur eyes are just too short-sighted to realize it.
It's not really about paying the monthly caps themselves, though sometimes they're so low that the ISP seems stuck in 2001. It's about the insane prices some ISPs are asking which can be as high as $2.50 for every gigabyte over the monthly cap. Most companies are both media providers and internet service providers so there's a clear conflict of interest here.
It's this simple. They already provide me unlimited access for a certain price. They want to take away my unlimited access and charge me more for the privilege of being caped. They are trying to sell me an inferior service for a higher price. No thank you! If they are going to put in caps they could at least lower the price.
Because when the ISPs (usually the cable companies) talk about metered bandwidth, they aren't talking about charging, say, $1 per GB used. In a scenario like that, you could have a low use user who gets Internet access for $2 a month. (e.g. Grandma who uses it for e-mail and light web browsing like on Facebook.) Meanwhile, a high use user could pay much more. (e.g. Someone who likes playing the latest 3D, high definition, MMPORG while downloading HD movies on the side.)
Instead, they usually talk about having a minimum payment, say $45 a month. Then, if you go over their caps (set as low as the cable company can set them without causing a user revolt - see Time Warner's plans for a 5GB cap), you would begin getting surcharges per GB that are way out of line with the costs involved, say $10 per GB.
This isn't only-charging-people-for-what-they-use, this is keep-people-from-using-too-much-bandwidth. And, as the ISPs that most often do this also usually provide television services, the reasoning is clear. The less bandwidth a person has, the less likely they are to cancel TV and stream online instead. The cable companies hate online streaming, even if you limit to 100% legal sources and ignore piracy for the moment. A future where anyone can watch any show via streaming is a future where their main business model - Providing entertainment to people in segmented channels at preset times - is dead. They won't let that happen without gouging the customers thus slowing it down for as long as possible if not outright killing it.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Policies like these will only affect the top 5% heaviest users who waste their lives watching movies and playing games online. It will only hurt the bandwidth hogs while simultaneously making the web a better experience for the other 95% of users.
I'm all for this.
i.e. payed for by someone else.
Alright let me answer this.
Let's start with a few differences here.
1. Telecom is a natural monopoly. You don't have free entry and exit. To compare this to other industries like shopping for groceries doesn't apply. Luckily the other 3 examples you give are 'natural monopolies' to a large extent.
2. The is no actual cost/MB on the internet. Well there are transit charges... but for the Big ISPs, this is a non-issue and the costs are minimal. So this doesn't apply to things like driving. For driving, there are fixed costs like building roads... but there is a natural cost/km in terms of gasoline. That gasoline has to be purchased. Similarly for electricity, if you burn fossil fuels or anything, there is a cost/watt.
There is nothing 'natural' about cost/MB. When you go to an amusement park, they charge a single entry fee; you are not charged per ride. When you watch TV, you watch as much as you want. Subscription models are out there a plenty.
3. Yes, most rational people understand that the bandwidth is shared. Most rational people understand congestion. I have worked on designing the routers that power the internet. Congestion IS a real issue. However, the question needs to be answered in terms of how to control congestion and how to fund expansion.
4. I'm not against usage based billing in principle. Theoretically you could take the fixed and operational costs and divide it out on use basis... I am against it in practice. As I said, ISPs typically operate in a natural monopoly environment. The power to abuse their position is always there. Usage based billing is ripe for abuse.
They can start charging significant (above cost) premium for going over the limit. People can find it hard to monitor their accounts. Lord knows with all the auto-updating and synchronization... it is hard to keep track of. And somehow, it's always a challenge getting these companies to stop access after crossing a threshold. I asked my ISP to do that once... simply stop my internet access for the rest of the month if I go over... they wouldn't do it. I know its easily done from a technical level, but they won't. They can start messing with UBB to stomp out competition from internet video...
5. The other thing about the internet that is different is the ability for the ISP to fully control its network. This is different from say the road congestion. With roads, we fundamentally can't control when people drive, the route they take, how they drive, the speed they drive, how often they drive...
With the internet, we can fully control how the data flows. This is especially true with DSL. They can perfectly control their networks by throttling users. They all have the equipment to do this. They have to... as when their network are actually congested, they have to do something about it :P
And so I have always proposed the following for such networks that is both fair to users and fair to the ISPs.
1. No usage based billing.
2. Companies may throttle users... but not independent protocols
3. Companies can sell different tiers of service. For example 'GOLD' users get throttled last if congestion happens. Or they can sell different maximum speeds.
Simple regulation always works best. And this is simple. No need for the government to sit around trying to compute the cost/MB in complex environments.
Given the natural monopoly status of telecom, I think this is a very reasonable regulation.
This is what we get for giving/selling the whole thing off to the cable monopolies.
Check your premises.
You know, I'd be okay with this as long as the costs were reasonable. Lower the base cost and put the truly heavy users in a higher bracket. I don't want to pay $80/month and then also have tiered service above that because I decided to stream a movie.
Internet access should only be allowed by "Network" companies and not anyone who provides content at the same time as this ic a conflict of interest.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The math behind this is totally bizarre. Twenty bucks a month for 5mbps or 60 bucks a month for 15mbps makes sense. Triple the bandwidth, triple the cost. However, add some some arbitrary all user cap of, say, 100GB per month:
5 mb/s = 300 mb/min = 18000 mb/hour = 2250 MB/hour = 2.2GB / hour.
So, about 45 hours of low speed internet for $20 dollars, but only 15ish hours of high speed internet for $60. You pay more to get less overall internet access! Only if triple bandwidth also implies triple cap does this make any sense whatsoever. Using this same logic, if you're one of the lucky few on a 50mbps connection, OF COURSE you're going to use ten times as much data as the person with 5mbps connection. Probably more, really, considering the person who wants the cheapest available internet probably doesn't use it to its full capacity. Someone needs to explain high school math to these companies. A little statistics, maybe a little calculus, and it wouldn't surprise you at all that only the very few people who buy the best internet use the most bandwidth. Gee, I wonder who's going to use more water, the single bedroom home or the big restaurant down the street?
It's the DEGREE of fees. It would be like going to a restraunt and finding that the first steak is $10 but if you want more food the "overrage" steak is $50. That is, if you left the restraunt and came back you could eat 2 steaks for $20, or if you sat down and ate 2 at once it would cost you $70.
That's how these overrage fees work. Since there's generally 0 or 1 competitor that can offer a comparable product (no, satellite and wireless internet is not really the same tier as a wired system) they can get away with this.
Now, if these extra charges were REALISTIC compared to their costs + 15 percent profit I'd be fine with them.
What would a realistic fee be? Well, how much is actually providing the bandwidth (versus running the wires themselves or advertising or tech support etc) actually costing the company? That is, what percentage of their total revenue goes to upgrading network switches, paying for higher quality wire, etc.
That percentage is roughly what your fees should be going up by. The math isn't hard to understand.
Suppose there's a $20 "base fee" that gets you 50 gigs a month, and providing more bandwidth costs 30% of the ISP's budget. Then the fee to double the 50 gigs to 100 gigs should be about 6 dollars.
The power company in many states is regulated this way. A slight wrinkle in this is the power company IS allowed to charge people who consume too much power a penalty fee but this is because generating excess power causes pollution and thus it's in the public's best interest for private individuals to make their homes as efficient as possible. Extra internet traffic only costs a small amount more energy.
You answered your own question.
- Basic user Bill pays *less* by getting a slower (less data) connection.
- Heavy user Bob pays *more* by paying for the higher speed (more data) connection.
The higher speed connection often costs double, triple, or more, thus the extra data *is* paid for. The only people claiming otherwise are the companies who complain about their own best customers, and the people who buy the company PR about how they suffer horribly (by accepting people's money) and how it's the mythical "heavy" users' fault the company network is having problems.
You're blaming the customer for using exactly what the companies advertised, wrote a contract for, sold, and takes regularly monthly payments for. I can't believe this argument is still going on.
Bill
I never quite understood the moral panic that seems to appear when this comes up. Asking people to pay for what they use doesn't seem like *that* radical a concept to me.
* If you run more appliances, your electric bill goes up
* If you drive a longer distance, you need to buy more gas
* If you make a lot of cell phone calls, your bill goes up
* If you eat more, you pay more for the groceries
Why is Internet use seen differently?
And before someone says, "I'm paying for X megabits/second, I should get that!", please understand that your feed connects you to the next upstream concentration point (switch, router, whatever). Beyond that, it's all shared bandwidth, and oversubscribed. That's one of the chief benefits of a packet-switched network -- you don't need to dedicate a circuit to each subscriber. Asking for dedicated connectivity the whole way[1] is asking for a return to the days of leased lines, where you paid thousands of dollars a month for 1.54 Mbit/sec.
[1] And, of course, the Internet doesn't have a "whole way".
Internet is different because the ISP's are asking for something different.
They're not saying "We want to charge you $0.10/gb" or whatever. They're saying. We want to charge you $60, and give you a puny plan with 10GB. THEN, we want to charge you $0.25/GB (or whatever rate is astronomically more than what it might actually cost them), so that your actual bill ends up more like $100+
We won't tell you how much bandwidth you're actually using, you'll have to guess.
We want to charge you more during peak hours (the newest scheme)
If they were *keeping* the limits they had and considering reasonable overages, that would be one thing. They're not. They've upped the base cost, lowered the bandwidth ceiling, and then tried to tack additional charges on top of that.
What about business services? They are normally charged based on bandwidth pipe, not volume.
I don't think the proposal is well thought out.
Asking people to pay for what they use doesn't seem like *that* radical a concept to me.
Why is Internet use seen differently?
Maybe because bandwidth hogs are not the primary cause of congestion.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Really important thing to note from the article. They mention the profit margins on the broadband services are 95%. Anyone remember that bullshit about them needing to manage their networks because bandwidth was so pricey? If it's so pricey then how are they making 95% profit? I mean on my 69.00 a month data bill they are paying a total of 3.45 in fixed costs. That includes installation, support, sales, marketing, accounting etc... So the bandwidth cost is probably less than a buck. Wow pricey. They are such fucking greedy money grubbing boldface liars that think we are stupid enough not remember they said that. Most business don't enjoy 95% margins except for like high end audio and jewelry. Remember this the next time they start spouting bullshit about how put upon they are for us actually using the network we fucking paid for and they are reaping huge profits from. I hate these people.
How is electricity a resource beyond an environmental one? If a city outgrows it's electricity source it raises rates to build a new plant.
An internet provider has to pretty much do exactly the same thing if it runs out of bandwidth.
love is just extroverted narcissism
What little headway they've made, convincing people to pay for their content rather than download it for free from places like The Pirate Bay, will be quickly reversed.
Liberty in your lifetime
it's just generally inefficient not to use data-transmission infrastructure at near 100% capacity.
And once the infrastructure saturates at 100% capacity, a rise in dropped packets starts to eat into perceived quality of service. Rationing is an attempt to keep the network from heading too deep into saturation. Perhaps an ISP could try counting only use at peak hours toward the cap.
The people who decide to use an hour each day for study or mental enhancement rather than mindless, passive, commercial-loaded crap "entertainment" would get the equivalent of 9 work weeks of enhancement each year. I've already given up Bones and House because of Fox.com's commercial-ridden presentations, lousy web presentation and cross-scripted ads. The last shows to go will be NCIS and CSI, but I'm willing. 10 years from now they won't have added anything substantial to my life anyway.
If the shows are really good, such as "IRIS" or "The Great Queen SeonDeok" I can buy the whole series on DVD, without commercials. (Your individual taste may vary.)
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
What's lost in all the sturm und drang around this is, this used to be the norm. Companies like Netcom would offer per kilobyte (yes, kilobyte, not megabyte) plans and they made a fortune doing so.
Until EarthLink came along and offered all you can eat Internet for $19.95 a month. That was 16 years ago, and tiered and per-byte pricing died when they did that. The same thing would happen here: customers would immediately jump ship to competitors offering unmetered pricing.
Of course, this is all assuming the existing telcos don't manage to use regulatory capture to prevent them from doing so. But that can't happen in a market with low barriers to entry and few regulatory burdens. Start trying to regulate how much telcos can charge for Internet and you'll end up with exactly the problem you deride.
tl;dr: the market will solve this problem, keep government out of it.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Back when regulated public utilities couldn't sell content, we didn't have this problem. The remaining independent ISPs still don't.
It's not a technical limitation. Sonic.net, which serves Northern California and the Los Angeles area, continues to offer unlimited data access up to the bandwidth purchased. Their deal is that you buy, say, 3mb/s to 6mb/s, and they guarantee the lower figure. (I get about 4mb/s on that deal.) There are no additional bandwidth charges, and their CEO says they're aren't going to be any. Since AT&T announced caps, he says Sonic has been "overwhelmed with demand".
They buy a local DSL connection from AT&T and backhaul it to their switch in Santa Rosa, CA. Sonic is also putting in fiber to the home in some areas.
In principal, I'm OK with some form of metered usage. But I don't want to pay for the bandwidth associated with advertising -- if all I want out of a page is the 2K of text that dispenses useful information, I don't want to pay for downloading all the Flash ads, video ads, css, scripts, and other cruft that is the overwhelming fraction of the data downloaded by the page.
Of course when the story popped up I figured I'd try to find out if I was one of those big data users whose internet fees would go up to $600/month. I took a trip over to Time Warner's website and tried to find the place where they tell me how much data I used this month and last month. As far as I can tell there's no such place. So the take home message is, "Somebody somewhere is using too much of our bandwidth. We want to charge them more." As long as it's 'them' and not 'you' they can get away with stunts like this.
Also, "it's all shared bandwidth, and oversubscribed" is misleading -- metered billing doesn't fix peek usage.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
The problem is not that people are not paying for what they use, but that the ISPs don't want to give you what you pay for.
Consider their Bandwidth Cap strategies. If you purchase a 1Mbps connection for a month, then you ought to be able to peak it to 1 Mbps for the entire duration of the month - or (1Mbps * 3600 * 24 * 365.25 / 12) = 2628900 Mbits or 2628.900 Gbits of data transfer. Compare that to the 250 Gbit bandwidth caps they are putting on their customers, which is only 1/5th (20%) of that 1Mbps connection. Now remember that they are not selling 1Mbps connections to people - but anywhere up to 20Mbps. So while you are paying for a connection rate, you may only be allowed to use anywhere between 1% and 20% of that connection rate over the period you are paying for it.
If instead they actually tried to provide the service the customer is purchasing - capping at the full bandwidth purchased, most effectively done by capping at the specified connection speed - people wouldn't complain, they'd happily fork over more for a faster connection with an effectively higher cap; compared to now where the cap is 250Gbit regardless of whether it is a 1 Mbps or 20Mbps connection.
Doesn't seem to hard a concept for them to provide what they are being contracted for now does it? Of course, that would require that they upgrade their infrastructure to actually handle that, which is their real objection - they'd rather complain, cap you below what you paid for, ultimately not deliver the service, and pocket the profits instead.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I never quite understood the moral panic that seems to appear when this comes up. Asking people to pay for what they use doesn't seem like *that* radical a concept to me.
It does when what you're being forced to buy used to be free. Are you willing to pay for air? Rainwater for your garden? I just HATE the love and worship of money. If my electricity had been unmetered all my life then yes, I'd howl if they started putting electric meters in.
If you make a lot of cell phone calls, your bill goes up
No it doesn't, I'm on BOOST mobile. Flat $45 per month, unlimited calls, long distance, text, SMS, walkie talkie, 411, email, and internet.
If you eat more, you pay more for the groceries
Not necessarily. Steak costs a lot more than chicken.
And before someone says, "I'm paying for X megabits/second, I should get that!", please understand that your...
All I need to understand is the contract you signed with me. I don't care about your problems, they're there for you to solve.
Free Martian Whores!
How does this affect online gaming? Everybody's talking about streaming video and stuff, but All I really want to do is game.
I'm not. I'm currently paying 0.3 cents per Gigabyte.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
You don't find "all you can eat" deals because you are looking in the wrong place. Adding grocery store to your search is basically the same as adding "that isn't all you can eat". The word you want to add to your search is "restaurant". http://www.google.com/search?q=all+you+can+eat+restaurants gives you 160 million hits. I think it is safe to say that "all you can eat" food deals are widely available.
If you cancel altogether, they probably wouldn't even bother sending someone out to disconnect you. That's what happened to me. I still get basic service, but pay $0.
Add rent to the list of fixed price things people are used to. Sure, having 4 people in a house is going to put more strain on the door hinges and light switches, but the big cost is in the initial construction. If 1 person is home using the house 8 hours a day, or 4 people are using the house 20 hours a day, the maintenance cost difference is negligible. Once you start getting to 10 people for 24 hours a day, it is time to start looking at a bigger house. Charging per person/hour of house usage is not the answer.
My cell phone bill doesn't go up if I make a lot of cell phone calls. Actual unlimited calling is common these days.
Late is the hour of my post. However I do not see anyone else making this point, so I feel I must try.
"As more video shifts to the Web, the cable operators will inevitably align their pricing models," Moffett said. "With the right usage-based pricing plan, they can embrace the transition instead of resisting it."
This completely ignores the fact that a great many of us can get Internet access somewhere besides the cable company. Right now, I admit, I have access through one of the large cable companies. However the telephone company will sell me 7Mbit DSL (enough for solid streaming, in my experience) for $20 a month for five years and no contract. The same phone company also called me to let me know that they are pulling fiber to my house and early next year I can subscribe to 40Mbit/10MBit for $40 a month. That means, next year, I could send the cable company packing and have the same download speed with twice the upload speed and save $50 a month.
Go ahead, make it worth my while to switch.
I will not mourn that which I never had to lose. - Unknown
The reason is because they're going to cap things at such a ridiculously low rate now that more and more people have "discovered" internet streaming. They're going to lobby like hell to "prove" how expensive it is to do build outs of hi speed internet - at the same time they've taken billions in tax payer money - not subscriber money - to do just this.
Somebody else above said find the top 5% of users - probably using torrents close to 24/7 - and say your bill is going to be more expensive, then find the bottom 10% or so of people - who really only use e-mail and maybe some basic facebook stuff - and say their bill will be $10 less a month. That, to me, is a reasonable plan.
That's not what's going to happen though. They're going to find a way to make it more expensive for everybody, not give those low end users a break at all, or a really small break they can point at and say "See, we're not just a money grubbing company." They'll axe that top percentage - which, by and large, let's face it are probably illegally downloading movies, t.v., OSs, and games anyway, and make "normal" usage of Netflix seem like you're breaking their network.
As it will kill off use and destroy the net as a whole.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Because unlike power, the cost is the same regardless of what you are using. Same can be said for cell phone use. The actual cost to provide that service is the same if you use 1 minute or 24/7.
This is nothing more than bilking customers. and i call BS on your argument that i shouldn't get what i bought. Screw the provider, if they cant handle my use of what i bought, then don't sell it. "Sorry customer, but you only get 1/2 a burger today, we had to share the grill with someone else, but we are still going to charge you full price"
---- Booth was a patriot ----
*Imagine if your appliance always pulled the exact same amount of electricity whether you used them or not, your electricity bill would stay the same.
*Imagine if your car used the same amount of gas whether you were driving or not regardless of how far or fast you went, your gas usage would stay the same.
*Imagine if your cellphone had a dedicated frequency just for it and it used that frequency whether you were using it or not, your bill would stay the same.
*Can't really do the same with food without bringing up the Replicators from Star-Trek along with their food reclamation so not touching that one
Well that is how Internet is, it doesn't cost them anymore whether you use it or not, it is a case of them trying to avoid paying for capacity upgrades to meet overall demand while also trying to increase revenue while simultaneously trying to force people back to a service they can better control.
Or spend a bit of extra dosh to bet a business-class connexion
Provided that the ISP is even willing to run business-class service to your residentially zoned address. What's your DUNS number again?
Please keep all your limbs and appendages inside the quota.
"* If you eat more, you pay more for the groceries"
No, you don't. "* If you eat more, you pay for more groceries" would be accurate. The groceries cot the same if you eat more, but your cost goes up because you buy more of them. It's a subtle but very important distinction.
For electricity, gas, and food I pay for each unit. Use less, pay less. Use more, pay more. Simple, fair. This system is like one price unless we say you went over some arbitrary amount and then we charge more. Oh and forget about ports that conflict with something we charge even more for [VOIP anyone?]. And why would you actually contribute content [set up a web server at home]? All we understand is people sitting on their couches and leaching. This internet pipe thing is complicated.
I gave up cable and started doing more real-world activities like going to the gym. Who knows what would happen if I give up cable internet.
Peace,
Mike
your comment in the subject line. That's not what the subject line is for. Thank you!
At the end of his book "The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires", Tim Wu concludes that a larger, stronger and more activist FCC is our only hope to save the Internet and get the USA back on track with bandwidth (thus market/jobs) competitiveness. This is where regulations do more good than harm.
Are those of you canceling cable on DSL, then, for internet? That's not really a great option. Better than satellite, I guess. Perhaps it's time to go with a neighborhood wifi coop...
I'm completely fine with this.... IF their pricing is based on some reasonable profit margin over their costs. The figure I've heard is around $0.03 / GB of data (or less is their cost), plus some reasonable monthly fee. So, let's say $10-20/mo is a reasonable monthly fee. Let's also say I use 100 GB of data, and that 100% profit on that data is a reasonable markup. My bill would be.... (on the high end)... $26. OK, so now I'll go a bit more crazy the next month and use 500 GB of data. My bill... $50. While I use NO WHERE NEAR 500 GB of data, my bill is higher than that $50 currently, and WAY over the $26 (and I typically don't even hit 100 GB). So, lets say someone uses 1 TB. The bill... $80.
Of course, then we could start asking what that $20/mo is being charged for (if all the costs are already included in the $0.03/GB). And if they are charging $20 before the data, they certainly don't need 100% markup on the data. Of course, if there were any real competition in the industry, these prices would work themselves out down into these kinds of prices and lower.
Because you can not control your bandwidth in any meaningful way.
Also, there are so many sources of bandwidth hogs on the internet that it's silly.
Also, in general, the rates are ludicrous and can be reached what should be considered normal behaviour.
Also, they refuse to let people get different rates at different hours.
Also, monitoring bandwidth usage is highly resource intensive and hard, making it cost more and not really making it worth it.
Another aspect is that as soon as the meter starts, actually using the internet means losing money, meaning, you use it in a less obiquitous way.
OK, now which gutter is this again?