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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.
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...
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
... 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.
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
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
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 ?
4K is 2160p. It is 4096×2160. They decided to use the horizontal number instead of the vertical this time because it is bigger.
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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.
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
Hum, I think people are confusing letters here. The K in 4K refers to the Kilo prefix, as in 4 thousands. The P in 1080p refers to "Progressive" (full scan) compare to say, 1080i "Interleaved", which is really just 540 pixels resolution.
Like a previous poster said, they used the horizontal number because it's higher, but please don't start bringing in P or other things to muddle up the issue even more.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
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.
Part of it depends on where they set the cap. Time Warner tried to set it at 5GB (with large overage fees) and had to back down due to overwhelming critical response.
Of course, if they try it again, I'm pretty much stuck. They're the only high speed ISP in my neighborhood. It's either them or the not-that-supported-anymore Verizon DSL.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
What about business services? They are normally charged based on bandwidth pipe, not volume.
I don't think the proposal is well thought out.
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.