FCC Boss Backs Metering the Internet

An anonymous reader writes "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has publicly backed usage-based pricing for wired internet access at the cable industry's annual NCTA Show. He makes the claim that it would drive network efficiency. Currently most internet service providers charge a flat fee and price their packages based on the speed of the service, while wireless providers are reaping record profits by charging based on usage, similar to the way utilities charge for electricity. By switching to this model, the cable companies can increase their profitibility while at the same time blocking consumers from cutting the cord and getting their TV services online."

Comments

Their wet dream

[Anonymous Coward]

By switching to this model, the cable companies can increase their profitibility while at the same time blocking consumers from cutting the cord and getting their TV services online

Re:Their wet dream

[Anne Thwacks]

Based on the evaluation of the effect of ths in the UK, it will mean people divide into two camps:

Those who pay over the odds to buy a deal for a large amount of data they dont need, to ensure they dont exceed their budget limit.

Those who are too terrified to use the service at all for fear of "bill shock".

Over a period, most users end up in camp 2, and the usage collapses, until one or more ISPs revert to the "unmetered" model, and collect all the users.

Re:Their wet dream

[AngryDeuce]

You know, I honestly don't have a problem with metered billing, with three enormous caveats that I'm sure the ISPs would never in a million years agree to:

First, I want a new Telecommunications Act that opens up the lines similar to what Clinton did in the 90's with telephone. If you recall, after that passed, a plethora of 10-10-XXX long distance only carriers emerged, offering lower and lower cost per minute. We used to pay something like .25 a minute for long distance through MCI back in the day and within a few short years were down to a nickel using competitors services. This would require Forced-Access provisions, obviously, but the person that owns the lines is entitled to compensation at a fair market rate.

Secondly, I want the ISPs to be declared utilities once and for all and fall under the purview of the local utilities boards in the areas they service. That allows the public to have input into what is, for all intents and purposes, a monopoly. That way, when Comcast (for instance) decides to roll out some bullshit cap designed solely to kill Netflix and competitor VOD services, there would be hearings where they would have to explain their reasoning. Although, if the first point were to come to pass, the second would likely be unnecessary, as we would be able to go to a competitor.

Third, no more deep packet inspection, no more throttling, no more "traffic shaping", no more game playing. I pay you by the MB, what I do with those MBs is my own fucking business. Does the electric company give a shit what I'm using my power on? No, because it's none of their fucking business, and they get paid regardless. Ditto with bandwidth.

Those three things happen, I will be more than glad to pay for my usage. If not, they can take their newest fucking scheme to gouge the fuck out of us and shove it up their ass, because without those caveats, that's all this metering bullshit amounts to.

Re:Their wet dream

[N1AK]

The main difference in the UK is that we actually have a lot of competition in the broadband sector. In the US it is not unusual to have 2 or even just 1 viable option (your local cable company). Metered use is fine in a competitive enviroment (in fact arguably it is better because it stops low use customers subsidising heavu users) but that isn't true in a monopoly.

Unless the US government can force some competition into the market then it will only be able to keep the market 'fair' by constantly controlling company behaviour.

Re:Their wet dream

[jellomizer]

Your argument sounds like a lets go back to the old ways. Because the old ways we didn't have all these problems.
The issue is we got on the net and we were hooked.
When I first got online I used metered Internet. I payed by the hour. Then when I got to college I had unlimited High Speed internet. After I got out of college I bought Unlimited High Speed Internet, why because I got use to it, and it solved more problems then it created.

The real problem is the High Speed internet providers are in a conflict of interests with their products.
Consumer High speed internet is running off the infrastructure of their biggest competitors Cable and Telephone. So Cable Companies and Telephone companies are the ones offering Internet... And they are the the ones with the most to lose with larger internet adoption, with VoIP and Streaming Media.

We need to work on a method of getting Internet threw many other companies. A wider selection of wireless Internet services, Internet via power grid, cheaper and faster satellite internet, communities of shared wi-fi signals....

Re:Their wet dream

[Bengie]

Except off-peak data transfers are "free". Nearly of the cost of being an ISP is infrastructure. ISPs have to size their back-haul connections to peak usage which is almost entirely determined by the average user.

Someone transfer 20Mb/s 12 hours per day but during off-peak is going to cost less than someone transferring 2Mb/s for 1 hour during peak.

The cost to the ISP isn't determined by volume, but by burst. Volume can influence the burst, but it is only loosely coupled. I could easily time and packet shape my traffic to the point where it's cheaper for the ISP to handle 10TB of data than it is 10GB of data. In other words, I could manage a heavy BitTorrent seed in such a way that it costs less than your mom updating her FB status and watching a few funny cat videos on Youtube.

Re:Their wet dream

[AngryDeuce]

The fact is, any network which allows some fucktard's torrent or tentacle porn to make my SSH sessions become unusable is a piece of shit network which shouldn't be in business.

Who the fuck told you your SSH sessions were more important? Do you think your neighbor gives a rat's ass what the fuck you're doing on the internet?

This is precisely why traffic shaping is complete horseshit: it's completely arbitrary. What if my job is to watch and review movies and TV shows all day long? Under your definition, I'm sure that would be much less important than your SSH crap, but I assure you, to me, it's absolutely not.

What is "important" is subjective. You're no more important than me, and how I use my internet is none of your fucking concern. We pay the same rate, we get the same service, end of fucking story.

A license to exploit the consumer

[yesterdaystomorrow]

The problem with this model is that it's very hard to control your usage. There's no practical way to know in advance how much a particular click will cost. Of course, the providers love it for exactly that reason.

Re:A license to exploit the consumer

[msobkow]

...connectivity costs have been unsustainably low for at least a decade now.

Not at all. Take a look at the price of long distance packages or basic phone service.

The shift to IP based systems has saved the telcos and ISPs billions of dollars, which they've reaped as profits for shareholders instead of investing in infrastructure. The fact that the infrastructure has not kept up is not due to a shortage of profit, but an excess of profit. That money should have been invested in long term growth instead of being paid out.

Take a look at Saskatchewan. We have more miles of cable and wiring per capita than pretty much anywhere else in North America (we only have a little over a million people/potential customers in the whole province.) Due to a government mandate to SaskTel, the "preferred supplier" (and not a monopoly), over 98% of our population has access to high speed internet, whether via landline or wireless services.

Even for a wireless link, you can get unlimited bandwidth for about $60/month for your smart device. I pay about $45-50/month for a 6.5Mbit down/700Kbit up DSL link. There are no caps, no monitoring, and no filtering.

Yet SaskTel turned in one of their most profitable years of all time for 2010, despite the "huge" infrastructure investments they were mandated to make over the years.

The same is not the case in Ontario, for example, where a similiar link would cost me close to $100/month and come with caps. But Ontario is a "free market" province, so the providers cherry-pick the populated centers, screw the rural customers, and reap huge profits at the expense of the people's access.

Check out the results of metered access in the UK. Within 5 years, people were so paranoid about running over their limits that the market collapsed. Even those who were willing to pay for outrageously large bundles were being hit with overage charges, and people became afraid to use their internet access.

Some providers brought back "all you can eat" packages and cleaned up on the market.

The same will happen in the US.

Unless, of course, the oligopoly is strong enough to ensure that no provider runs their links without caps and overage charges. And given the lure of the almighty dollar and the gleam in shareholder's eyes south of the border, I'm pretty sure the oligopoly will hold together well enough to thoroughly screw over the consumer.

As someone else noted, propping up the ISPs and telcos means that other businesses that depend on bandwidth suffer: Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, and a bazillion "me too" video and audio streaming services.

Let the telcos who didn't invest die a slow and painful death. It's the only way the market will open up to companies that put a higher priority on planning for the future. If you let the companies who nickeled and dimed on infrastructure gouge you for profit now, you're rewarding their incompetence and poor planning, and you'll only get more of the same.

Innovate or become obsolete. That's where it's at.

[g0tai]

So, cable companies failed to innovate, and depsite seeing this coming, didn't change.

Now their entire world is threatened by the internet, and the FCC are attempting to apply a band-aid to help keep their business model going. This will also be to the detriment of the consumer, and ultimately progress.

Sorry, but his application of the 'band-aid' is fundamentally wrong. In business, if you fail to innovate and keep ahead, you will eventually be surpassed by someone else/another business whereby they are ahead of the curve or willing to change. This is happening, and frankly, the cable industry has no-one to blame but themselves for failing to innovate.

They didn't innovate, and now they are realising that they are fast becoming obsolete.

Wag the Dog (again)

[Walt Sellers]

Over and over we go through this.

Metering has the eternal problem that ends with a enraged customer calling customer support over the shocking bill at the end of the month. AOL used metered services for years. When they finally went flat-rate, their business exploded with more customers than they could handle. When AT&T shifted from metered and offered flat-rate data for iPhone, they got more customers than they could handle.

Metered services can be good alternatives or add-ons to a flat-rate service, but they will be filling specific needs. A serious gamer may want low-latency. A serious file sender may want high-bandwidth on-demand. (I need to get this huge file sent to the office NOW.)

Metered services also have one big sore-spot: the meter itself.
      - when do you get to see the meter? Just once per month at billing time?
      - who verifies the meter is accurate?
      - how are ISPs prevented from abusing the meter? Recall that long ago, laws had to be written to stop phone companies from charging for calls before they were actually answered.
      - how are bytes being counted? Bytes are not counted like phone minutes. Packets are re-transmitted out of necessity. Do they count twice?

I may be wrong ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... but I get this feeling that under the current administration America is actually going backwards on a lot of things

Ever from the start of the so-called "Information Hiway" the users had fought hard to get the flat-rate package from ISP

It has been that way for decades and suddenly officials from the Obama administration supporting the metering of Net usage

It is also under Obama administration that the MAFIAA tried (and fortunately failed) to push their SOPA bill - and if my memory served me right, the Obama administration was supporting the bill, and only after stern objection from millions of Net users that the Obama administration changed their mind

I am afraid to think what will happen i4 years from now if this administration is to win the upcoming election

Re:I may be wrong ...

[letherial]

So Mr Romney is going to do better? you want to see a HUGE sell out, look at him and is multiple stances on every issue depending on who is paying the most

Seriously, blaming this on one administration, one congress, or one party is utterly ignorant. Fact is, the rich have far to much control and mr rich guy himself taking the mantel of presidency will lead our country back to double down bush era, less taxes and more power for the rich; more hardship for everyone else.

And if you think the recording industry will have less control with a republican in the white house...well then i will take back my statement that your ignorant, instead ill just call you plain stupid.

Lets just be clear, i cannot imagine the American people will accept romney as a president, i think he will lose and lose big. If the right wing was serious about anything, they would put up electable candidates...huntsman was a good choice, but retards herd the stupid in that party, in turn, the right wing has gone from a political party to a cult.

Re:I may be wrong ...

[AngryDeuce]

I see OWNS is so superior to the Tea party.

One group set up free, donation-driven, volunteer-run libraries so that people could learn more about different things. The other had signs reading "GET THE GOVERMINT OUTTA MY MEDICAIRE!!!!!!" and "TEACHERS ARE BRAINWASHING OUR CHILDREN!!!!!!"

That about sums up the difference between those two groups.

To be honest, though, I knew the Tea Party was a fucking joke when they started on the birther nonsense, long before OWS even existed. You can ask Teabaggers today and still hear a bunch of retarded bullshit about how Obama wasn't born here, not to mention all the whispered "He's a Muslim!!!" as if that would even have a fucking bearing on the conversation.

Re:I may be wrong ...

[realityimpaired]

The reason that countries in Europe have declared Internet access to be a human right is because of the disparity in pretty much every walk of life between people who have access to the Internet, and people who don't. It has become a major deciding factor in school performance, which itself is a major deciding factor in future success in life. And of course, because people who are living on minimum wage can't really afford a $100/mo layout for Internet access, let alone the cost of the computer itself, it becomes a deciding factor for their children, too. $7.25/hr times 37.5h/week = a little under $1100/mo before taxes, and from that you need to pay rent, food, and utilities, not to mention stuff like clothes and incidentals... $100/mo for Internet is a very significant part of their budget.

Internet pricing and access absolutely needs to become a major public policy issue. It's nothing for most of the people reading this, but I'd lay odds that most of the people reading this are not trying to make ends meet on minimum wage. It's an entirely different kettle of fish when $100/mo means you don't eat for a week versus when it means you make one fewer trip to a restaurant each month and are still saving for retirement.

Re:I may be wrong ...

[__aaeihw9960]

You actually just called out major flaw in the US election system. We no longer vote for the best candidate, and they no longer run on the 'I am best platform.' We now vote for the least bad option. When Bush came up for a second term, his competition was Kerry - who may actually be a Cylon.

So, we voted for the one who was the least bad - Bush.

Look at campaign adverts now. Sure, they run clean ads for the first few months of the election year, but mostly the ads are, "Look at the fire demon I'm running against. He eats babies and punched orphans. I do not." We are forced to look at the bad of (a) vs the bad of (b), instead of what (a) and (b) really stand for.

Again, I believe that Bush was re-elected simply because we are no longer voting for a candidate, but against another.

Want proof? Look at the comments in this or any /. thread about Obama or Romney. No one really has good things to say about either one. Most comments made are that Obama is awful because _____, or Romney is awful because ______. At this point, the vote against Candidate A attitude is so deeply entrenched that we have more of a popularity contest than an actual fucking presidential election.

For some reason I feel like I did a terrible job of explaining my rant. I hope that all makes sense and doesn't come across as too 'screw the gub'ment'.

Re:I may be wrong ...

[cpu6502]

>>>Sure, they run clean ads for the first few months of the election year, but mostly the ads are, "Look at the fire demon I'm running against. He eats babies and punched orphans. I do not." We are forced to look at the bad of (a) vs the bad of (b), instead of what (a) and (b) really stand for.

Funny you mention that.
John Adams ran a similar ad against Thomas Jefferson in 1800. He said if Jefferson were elected, "your daughters would be subject to his fiery desires and become whores in the streets". Vice-versa Jefferson's ad said Adams was a sickly man of ill repute and beady eyes.
The idea that U.S. elections used to be clean are a falsehood. They have always been dirty.

Re:I may be wrong ...

[lgw]

The Republican Party had moved far to the left on spending until about 2 years ago. Bush was the biggest-spending Republican in my lifetime. At it's core, that's why the Tea Party started (first in reaction to the corporate bailouts, growing to oppose healthcare spending as well). Yes, there's a purge going on, driven by the Tea Party, of big-spending Republicans, but it's pretty minor as purges go (just a few primaries) thus far. But that's all economic right vs left, and we damn well need one side or the other to be the "spend less" party or we're all doomed.

On social issues, of course the Republicans have been drifting slowly to the left: as always happens, those radical ideas of one generation that worked become the commonplace ideas of the next generation (those that didn't work are forgotten), so as any party ages it tends to drift to the left. Say what you want about Bush, but he purged the remaining racist embarassments from high-profile GOP positions during his first 100 days.

Re:Corporate greed drives your laws in America

[Anonymous Coward]

US is a corporately own and run state, pretty much fascist at this point.

Re:Who loses out

[firex726]

I got a feeling, stuff like AdBlock will be much more popular then, who wants a video ad eating up their BW on a site, especially since the ad is larger then the entire site itself.

users? I say bs--

[way2trivial]

flat rate pricing didn't come because USERS FOUGHT, corps do not give a rats left testicle- however you think people fought?

Compuserve got it's ass handed to it by the likes of aol, mindspring and earthlink because of competition.

when everyone could choose which POP to call the market created it's own efficiency- and found a way to work in a fashion that benefited the consumer, ultimately the pricing war became flat rate service.

the key to efficiency is choice of provider, followed by fiscal evolution.
The responsibility of the government, representing the people, is to ensure we have the choices.

not to write exclusive contracts with sole presence providers.
not to prop up entities with massive right of ways that don't get offered to others-- and to occasionally DENY a request to merge.

Anyone notice verizon is very in bed with comcast on a lot of deals? the fact that verizon stopped expanding fios- think it might be tied to the fact that verizon now sells comcast products? Cripes-- verizon had the poles to take on comcast territories without huge legal shenanigans- and instead they got into bed with the big fat fuck that is so efficient with it's operations (and fair with it's pricing) that it bought whole sports teams and NBC?

WHY the hell does a gov't granted monopoly service provider get to set it's rates so painfully & obviously above it's cost of operation that it can expand so far and fast. they should never have had enough money for those deals. as a gov granted monopoly they should be so bent over the 'justify the expense' audits that when you walk into the local business office customers should need their own pen to fill out a form-- cause they can't afford a box of them.

I fear every administration- unless you can vote with your dollars- you can't change anything