Slashdot Mirror
The Coming Internet Video Crash
snydeq writes "First, it was data caps on cellular, and now caps on wired broadband — welcome to the end of the rich Internet, writes Galen Gruman. 'People are still getting used to the notion that unlimited data plans are dead and gone for their smartphones. The option wasn't even offered for tablets. Now, we're beginning to see the eradication of the unlimited data plan in our broadband lines, such as cable and DSL connections. It's a dangerous trend that will threaten the budding Internet-based video business — whether from Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Windows Store, or Google Play — then jeopardize Internet services of all sorts. It's a complex issue, and though the villains are obvious — the telecom carriers and cable providers — the solutions are not. The result will be a metered Internet that discourages use of the services so valuable for work and play.'"
It needs to be regulated like a public utility.
As providers try to cap their data plans, new market players will emerge and take over by offering unlimited plans that consumers want
Right?
Commentators (including myself) have been predicting the end of the internet (as we know it) for almost two decades now -- but I (and all the others) have been proven wrong.
Yes, the demand for bandwidth is growing at a huge rate -- but so is the provisioning of that bandwidth.
If you live in a country like New Zealand (where I live) you get used to living with capped data plans -- they're just a part of life and, to be totally honest, it's never really been an issue for me -- despite the fact that I do a *lot* of online video, as you can tell by my Youtube Channel.
Sure, the arrival of IPTV will change the picture a little, as TV programming starts to make up an increasingly high percentage of the total traffic -- but hey, nothing's free and many people pay for cable so why not pay for IPTV in a way that includes the bandwidth you use as well? (as will soon be the case).
Uncapped internet? Never had it, never really needed it. I have 120GB a month and that's all I need -- perhaps because I don't like the kind of dross I find on TV anyway. Quality of content is *far* more important than the quality of the image.
It started with the old hourly charges from the old services like CompuServe and AOL, then "because of consumer demand" they went to Unlimited.
Notice this article talks about the "entertainment" side. Look at the Cloud side.
1. "Everyone use your software from the Cloud! It's nice and fluffy!"
2. "Let's cap bandwidth so that when you pull your data every 7 seconds you burn 4 megs, and then you will hit your cap and we can charge the fees."
If I was better at graphic design, I've wanted to make "chart news" with trends like these pointing in opposite directions in 2010 that becomes 2012's news when they collide.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
There are two solutions, both of which are obvious. The first, which is the solution the telecoms want to choose, is to charge content providers for providing content at reasonable speeds. This, of course, leads to a two-tier Internet, i.e. the big media conglomerates and the independent ghetto. The second is to pass laws that ban download limits for all wired service providers.
At this point, those are the only two options. Well, no, there's a third. We could build up a government-run infrastructure. But I'm not holding my breath.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
A market controlled by cartels or monopolies is not free, and is every bit as bad as a market controlled by a government.
I know you were being sarcastic. I am just adding to the thought.
With so many people ditching Cable and Sat TV plans in favor of an Internet-Only household, and with the Cable Companies being the majority providers of Internet Access, of course we had to see this coming.
Vz and Comcast aren't going to sit idly by while their subscribers ditch the media services and keep only the delivery service, and spend their money at Netflix and other media services.
The question is, will it be considered anti-competitive for them to allow unlimited delivery of their own media over the pipe, while charging extra for media from their competitors? I certainly think that's anti-competitive, and where net neutrality needs to come into play. But, I doubt we'll see it happen, at least in the US.
I'm in Australia. Internet access was once metered by the hour ($10 per hour dial-up) then prices fell to under a dollar an hour. Then I got ADSL in the very early 2000s with a whole gigabyte over a month, always-on. Then it increased to three per month. Then ten, fifteen, forty, then a jump to 200, and in 2012 I'm 'limited' to over a terabyte a month.
A fucking terabyte.
I can't stream that much video (even in good quality) and actually watch it in a month without quitting my job and family time and attaching myself to the couch with cheese & bacon balls and becoming an obese live-in hermit.
Oh, and the cost for those plans is a third it was when I was on 1GB quotas.
Yes, it came from an awful over-priced start, but the goods for cost is growing and keeps growing here.
Free market never really works well with critical infrastructure.
There was never any such thing as "an unlimited data plan".
There were plans that were misleadingly labelled as "unlimited", but what they really were, was plans where the ISP simply let people use up bandwidth in a first-come-first-served fashion. Whenever the demand reached or surpassed the infrastructures capacity, the de-facto limits of the hardware kicked in, regardless of what the sales droids had promised in the brochure.
For a company to offer a genuine "unlimited plan", the company would have to build up enough capacity to allow 100% of their unlimited-plan customers to use 100% of the bandwidth capacity of the wire running to their house, 24/7/365. The cost of such an infrastructure would be significantly larger than most people would be willing to pay for, especially since most people don't use or need anywhere near that much capacity.
So my feeling is that the demise of "unlimited plans" in the marketing is a good thing -- at least we're no longer trying to fool each other into believing bandwidth is infinite (as opposed to finite but cheap).
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I pay 40 € per month for a 16 Mbit/s dl and 1 Mb/s ul uncapped internet access on adsl2+. And still find it a bit pricey.
I'm in the heart of Europe.
You can't have a monopoly or a monopolistic cartel without government intervention. "Free market monopolies" are a misnomer, as the company that has provided such a high quality, low cost product that no-one can compete with them must continue to provide such quality, or risk new competition arising.
I see you failed to read all seven books of Adam Smith on what capitalism is, and are a servant of the Mercantilists that opposed Capitalism.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Nobody would have the balls to do that in my 100,000 person city because we have 4 ISPs that I know about, more likely 10. As far as physical lines, there's 1 coax and 1 telephone line owner so that's at least 2 truly separate ISPs. As soon as AT&T institutes a cap, everyone switches to Time Warner and vice versa. But if it was just AT&T, they're capping you.
Austria has unlimited data plans.
;-))
I have a SIM card from drei.at that you can use without a contract and recharge on a monthly basis. It comes at 15 EUR a month and gives you high speed HSDPA+ without a cap. Also, my regular internet comes wireless these days: I have an LTE contract at 49 EUR a month that gives me unlimited 100MBit down and 10MBit up. I live in central Vienna and I actually get the advertised speeds.
There you go Sweden, plus we have better weather and better food (and we don't extradite
UK has them - Three has mobile and several suppliers, notably Sky has unlimited landline
Finland — I didn't even see "limited" data plans last month when I shopped for a plan, it was all about how much bandwidth you can use.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Romania.
It does have and will probably always have unlimited data plans. For mobile devices there are speed caps once you go over a certain threshold, but that's it. The difference between subscriptions is basically the threshold size (6 GB, 20 GB, 100 GB, etc).
For regular broadband (CAT5, fiber optics and so on) there's no threshold and probably there won't be any, because ISPs here are in direct competition. There's no location I know of in Bucharest where you can't choose between at least 3 different ISPs. There are offers for new subscriptions, e.g. 6 months for 50% price or 3 free months, etc.
RDS (my ISP) offered me a free as in beer 3G dongle which allows unlimited traffic with no monthly threshold. I have downloaded a few ISOs through 3G when their regular line was down a few weeks ago at about 4 Mb/s sustained throughput.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
"capitalists left to their own devices would rather collude than compete" -- Adam Smith