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Why You'll Pay For Netflix — Even If You Don't Subscribe To Netflix
Velcroman1 writes "At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, Netflix announced Super HD, an immersive theatrical video format that looks more lifelike than any Web stream, even competing with Blu-Ray discs. But there's a costly catch. To watch the high-definition, 1080p movies when they debut later this year, you'll need a specific Internet Service Provider. Those on Cablevision or Google Fiber are in; those served by Time Warner or a host of smaller providers will be out of luck. But regardless of whether you subscribe to Netflix, you may end up paying for it, said Fred Campbell, a former FCC legal adviser who now heads The Communications Liberty & Innovation Project think tank. 'Instead of raising the price of its own service to cover the additional costs, Netflix wants to offload its additional costs onto all Internet consumers,' Campbell said. 'That's good for Netflix and bad for everyone else in the Internet economy.'"
Yes, they want to upgrade for fast low latency connections, and the people with Pentium IV machines will not see the benefit. Just like the people who were paying for dialup didn't see the benefit of pipe-size increases that were in place to accommodate DSL.
But while net neutrality doesn't allow them to charge for "Netflix" (which is as it should be), there is nothing stopping them from charging extra for the awesome bandwidth that will get to the customers, and to use that extra charge to pay for the infrastructure upgrades. These upgrades during low-Netflix-use times may benefit others.
Right now I pay $120 a month for 25Mbits, no cap. My friends pay $80 a month for 20 Mbits with a 250GB cap. So they already have everything they need in place already. Watching 10 movies a month and doing nothing else, you would blow through the cap and need the upgrade. Article's author is a troll.
this one.. I don't want where i live.. any European ISP to do this?
Laws and common sense still applies.
"Why you'll pay for geocacheing even if u don't access every single site cached." there, heading fixed.
Maybe if they spent some money on their infrastructure this wouldn't be a problem. But they won't because they have been given a monopoly by the municipal governments.
Watch as I play the tiniest of violins in sorrow.
Netflix is encouraging my ISP to build out infrastructure, and I'm supposed to be upset that I have to pay for it? More bandwidth is good for everyone, and can be used for anything, not just Netflix. This is unequivocally good.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I am not even interested in watching HD, why do they think I'll care about this? Most people I know are pretty happy streaming onto their laptop something that looks pretty low res. I see plenty of details on zombies already.
This is more neo-con style stories that want to allow ISPs to charge as they see fit.
Total BS. It should not even be on this site.
netflix is big enough now to be evil. welcome to the club, fuckers.
All of these cable companies want to charge Netflix for using their bandwidth. Netflix has responded by saying, essentially, that to use their highest bandwidth services on your network, you'll have to let us connect directly to your network. Netflix will still provide all of the servers and other equipment. Comcast, Time Warner, and whoever else only need to give them a location to tie into their network. I, as a customer, am already paying Comcast, Time Warner, and whoever else for that bandwidth. There is no extra cost for anyone else, because no extra infrastructure is required.
To me it is a stretch. The ISPs are not fools. If the Netflix customers want special high speed access, they will be forced to cough extra cash for that privilege. And that money will upgrade the network for all customers. They may not be able to tack on a "fee for being a netflix customer". But they surely will tack on a fee for "50 Mbps service with guaranteed network latency of less than 200 millisecond" or whatever is the technical spec.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This is the same old story, cable companies want content providers to pay them to reach their customers.
The 1080p Netflix service is only available when the ISP allows Netflix to deploy CDN (Content Delivery Network) nodes in the ISP's network.
Now true this is unfair to those ISPs who don't allow Netflix to deploy CDN nodes, but in general, CDNs save both the content provider and the ISP money: instead of traffic traversing the ISP's Internet connections, its served locally from the CDN nodes. So it acts to save the ISP money, not cost them. If 1080p videos are twice as large, but things are cached in the local network 75% of the time, the ISP sees substantial savings.
The only reason a major ISP would not want a Netflix node is that they are worried about Netflix competing with their (non Internet) TV services.
Overall, the Fox "article" is clear propaganda, written by and interviewing those who either, through ignorance or will, misunderstanding how CDNs operate.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Having RTFA, it seems that it isn't nearly as political as the summary spins it to be. Basically, they are saying that the increased stress on high bandwidth connections may drive up the cost for all consumers. It isn't some conspiracy by Netflix to frontload cost to consumers. This wouldn't be an issue if the US weren't 26th in the world in terms of Internet speed, because then a video stream probably wouldn't risk saturating connections in the first place. To be completely honest, I'd even be willing to pay a little more voluntarily if I knew it would actually go towards improving our infrastructure. I just know it won't.
That doesn't mean it's ever going to happen!
I remember reading an article years ago about how Yahoo! only payed for half of their transit costs. Since they were/are such a huge content provider, many ISP's wanted to peer with them. It makes complete sense to connect content to eyeballs in the most cost effective way possible. This has been going on for ages. This is now the Internet works, reducing transit costs by peering is nothing new.
The only difference in this case is that Netflix doesn't want to push their super HD content over their transit links. I would expect that ISP's don't want it either. The solution is a win-win for ISP's, especially ones that have a lot of Netflix customers.
This has always been my point with net neutrality. Net neutrality is worried about traffic shaping, etc, but I could prefer one VoIP provider over another by making sure the peering connection to their network is low latency compared to the transit link. I'm not shaping the competing traffic or blocking it.
The only way you're paying for Netflix is if the infrastructure build-out is so expensive that the ISPs carrying it can find no other way to pay for it, other than charging more. That's just not how things work with these companies. It's a one-time cost. They'll sell some corporate bonds, or preferred stock, or even float more common shares to pay for it. Stockholders have more to worry about (in the short run) than customers do.
I would submit that if they can't find any way to finance this other than to charge customers more, they shouldn't do the deal. Then again, maybe they've got golden parachutes that give them $50 million in severance if the company goes tits up. Maybe they want it to fail so they can pull that cord and spend some time in the bahamas.
So yeah, they're totally going to charge customers more for this, and customers are just going to take it. Whatever.
More companies should do stuff like this. This is ultimately the solution.
If you want SuperHD rivaling or beating BlueRay then you better upgrade your Internet.
So basically this is a Faux News article arguing against net neutrality.
ESPN already does this. You can only view the ESPN360 website if your ISP pays ESPN a fee for every one of its subscribers. It is a small fee and most ISPs have concluded that passing that fee along to all of their subscribers is worth it to keep those who would jump to another provider in order to get access to the ESPN360 website. ESPN claims that ESPN360 is a free website, since they get to hide the charge in your Internet bill (the ISP is not going to break it out because then the people who have no interest in ESPN would scream, but since it is so small most of them are completely unaware of it).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Netflix just wants peering agreements. Assuming the service provider doesn't have to build out to the carrier hotel then the cost is minimal.
(or whatever bandwidth they are using for their HD-Movies).
The Last Mile Cache is the only open solution which has the possibilities to handle these amount of bandwidth!
After hearing ISPs argue against net neutrality for years, my feelings are best described by a few words from the famous Nelson Muntz:
"HA HA"
I know that no-one RTFA's around here, but isn't it a bit much to simply quote the first couple of paragraphs of the article as the summary? Especially since the article is entirely opaque about why the ISPs will "have" to pay higher costs. It does a great job of beating the drum for it's chosen viewpoint, though.
And people wonder why Old Media News Services are going extinct - what's the point of "news" that uniformative AND biased?
This argument might have a little weight (roughly that of an ant) if Netflix charged ISPs to join is CDN. Netflix does not. TWC is the only ISP that hasn't taken Netflix's "join our CDN, and not be charged anything" offer. AFAICT TWC has only said "no" so they can complain and favor their own (legacy) video service.
In sort, taken Netflix up on their offer is CHEAPER then not for BOTH the ISP AND Netflix. While most ISPs won't pass that on to consumers, this is disingenuous, at best.
Existing HD titles already require 5Mbit/s (2.3GB/hour).
Basically. SuperHD is exactly nothing new.
Morphing Software
Because Netflix doesn't run on Ubuntu. Therefore Windows is more valuable in one aspect of the marketplace. Thus forcing people who would otherwise use Ubuntu to use Windows. This increases the costs to society of computing and makes the marketplace that much more less competitive.
So... which argument is more BS?
Although, it's completely unsupported it's actually pretty easy to get to work right now: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/how-to-use-netflix-on-ubuntu
Please, Please, Please don't buy Netflix because of this... they could break support any second now.
I mean, we're talking about Netflix, a company that seems to have about 0.0001 of available movies on their streaming service.
Wanna watch "Speed Racer" the movie? Fuggetabout it. Wanna watch "Chronicle?" Fuggetabout it. Wanna watch "Source Code"? Fuggetabout it.. Wanna watch "The girl with the Dragon tattoo" (american version)? Fuggetabout it.
In fact, if you can name a movie, it's almost guaranteed to NOT be on Netflix.So, what the heck are they offering on this new service? I mean, aside from "Breaking Bad" and "Star Trek"?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Hasn't ESPN been doing the same thing for years with their streaming service?
Learn to love Alaska
Latency might still be an issue. They usually park on my street and take an afternoon nap. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Have gnu, will travel.
Netflix doesn't have much in the way of any good movies. Along with this hi-def stuff is Netflix going to actually have movies people want to watch? Currently this isn't much of a selection on line. If their price goes up and they don't start getting betting movie selections I unsubscribe. Sure I like watching old TV shows and other such things but I can live with out it or just get it from vudu or hulu.
What's going on here isn't about Netflix, it's about bandwidth. It boils down to: the Netflix HD service requires a lot of bandwidth to the end user, Netflix is setting it up so the ISPs have access to the high-bandwidth external connection needed to deliver the streams to their networks, now the ISPs are trying to figure out how to allocate costs for the bandwidth on their networks to deliver those streams to the users. And right now I don't see a problem. My ISP has no regulatory problem whatsoever charging different prices based on the bandwidth available to me. So, do that. If the user wants the extra bandwidth needed to deliver the HD video stream and still be able to do anything else without mucking up both, he's going to have to buy the higher-bandwidth Premium service instead of Standard. If he doesn't, he's going to have to live with HD streams that stutter and jump and Web sites that load slowly or fail to load completely while the video's streaming because the ISP's throttling his traffic to the rate he's paying for. End of cost-allocation problem.
And I'd note that it's not Netflix demanding bandwidth on the ISP's network. It's the ISP's own users asking for the bandwidth. Netflix doesn't send a single packet to an ISP until a user of that ISP connects to Netflix and asks them to start sending data. And the ISP has explicitly sold their service to their users as a way to do that, to access sites and services on the Internet. That's why they're called Internet Service Providers: the service they offer is providing access to the Internet. If their users are requesting more data than the ISP's network can handle, seems to me that's an issue between the ISP and it's customers. I'm sure the ISP would rather side-step the issue, but I don't see where that obliges anybody else to help them. If I'm ordering things delivered to the apartment complex I live in and the complex has a gate that the delivery trucks won't fit through, that's not the delivery company's or the store's problem. That's between me and the complex to deal with.
When I listen to music or watch movies with my Grado headphones on my Asus Xonar Essence STX and my Samsung wide screen high res monitor I am willing to pay for quality matching the hardware. I'm not willing to pay for subpar crap.
The solution to expand the market beyond Megabox and bootleg is to offer high quality PREMIUM entertainment and market high quality audiophile and high end graphics cards and monitors. When people are willing to spend $200 on a sound card, and they own $1000+ worth of iTunes music and $200+ worth of movies why wouldn't you think they'd spend $5 more for the .flac? iTunes sound quality sucks with their .aac 128kbit. We should all be using flac yet somehow everyone is still downloading these low quality mp3s on their cheap ipod ear plug headphones? People settle for lower quality when you don't market high quality and while the bootleg music and movies are lower quality when you're offering quality just as low as that then who cares?
Offer at a minimum 24bit 96khz Flac. Offer higher speed internet with blue ray quality Netflix at a reasonable price and people will choose that over Megabox unless they genuinely cannot afford it in which case you didn't lose any sales. People want the best because life is short so offer the best.
You're treating op-eds like news items now?
News: Netflix is rolling out higher definition and higher bandwidth video qualities (similar to what is happening with most internet services).
Not news: Higher bandwidth actually requires more bandwidth, so ISP's must upgrade infrastructure.
Slashdot (apparently no better than Fox): You'll all pay more because of Netflix!!! Even if you don't use it!!!
Me: WTF?
Of course, when I saw TFA was on Foxnews.com, I realized what was really happening here.
Akamai has done this kind of thing forever. When I worked at Network Operations for the university I work at, Akamai approached us. They wanted to install cache engines in our data center. They would provide us all the hardware, 3 fairly high end servers and a switch, as well as support for setting them up. All we had to do was put them in.
Net result? About an immediate 5 mbps average drop in our traffic, more at peak times. This was back in like 2002, and we only had like 100 mbps of Internet total.
It was all kinds of great. We had less network traffic, people got much faster videos, MS updates, and so on (Akamai is used by a lot of companies), and of course Akamai saves on bandwidth on their end. Everyone won, it was better service/less cost for all parties.
Yes. I'm surprised that nobody else has read into this. All Netflix is doing is localizing their content in a small, 4U appliance inside of the ISP's.
From what I can tell is that this has potential to be a win for everyone. As you say, this is a win for ISP's, as it cuts down on internet traffic at their peering points - where things tend to be the most expensive - it keeps traffic inside of their network. This is also a win for the consumer, as it can deliver higher quality video. This is also a win for Netflix, because they can lower their internet bandwidth costs by moving their content to these localized (or regionalized, as the case may be) appliances once and serve streaming content to all customers on an ISP's network.
-Turkey
Did not subscribe to the IRS either, though I seem to be a paying member. Their website sucks though, no "fun" pics in the member section to be be found.
KERNEL PANIC -SIGFAULT AT ADDRESS #51A54D07
To get certain channels of ESPN, you had to be a subscriber of certain providers. Those providers bundle the fees for the "enhanced" ESPN channels like ESPN3 into the fees whether or not you want it, have it as part of your plan, or ever watch it. Been going on since 2009.
Per Ars Technica, this thinktank's got a history of opposing Net Neutrality.
Actually, read the Ars article. It's better quality than this paid hit piece. Did anyone notice that the final link in the summary goes to Fox Propaganda?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
As soon as I saw that the author of the article is "Fred Campbell, a former FCC legal adviser who now heads The Communications Liberty & Innovation Project think tank" I knew it was going to be some kooky tea-bagger/liberty-for-corporations-slavery-for-customers bullshit.
Anytime you see the words Liberty or Freedom thrown around by a TeleCom "think-tank" you can expect the usual "were here to fuck the consumer at all costs" propaganda.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The article paints the picture that Netflix should be paying extra money and charging its subscribers extra money to deliver high speed internet to them and that antiquated network neutrality restrictions make the whole thing unfair.
Netflix is now going to be able to offer even higher bandwidth services. In order to take advantage of them, you need a fast pipe (direct to your house and for your ISP to have good connections to the bandwidth sources) this means your ISP may need to cough up some more $s in order to deliver you the content that they are charging you for.
So let's review:
Netflix is paying for bandwidth in order to be able to provide the streams.
Consumers are paying for bandwidth in order to receive the streams.
If you don't purchase sufficient bandwidth from your ISP, then you can get the shiny new streams and you may need to give more money to your ISP if you want the highest quality service.
If you did purchase sufficient bandwidth from your ISP, but they have been enjoying being able to charge you for premium bandwidth (8mb/s down woot!) but they haven't been investing in the upstream bandwidth/peering/etc in order to deliver, then it's time for them to spend some more money on the infrastructure that your bandwidth is for.
The fact that 30% of the traffic is Netflix doesn't make it a Netflix problem. Netflix pays for its bandwidth. I want to stream Netflix so I spend extra $s to buy a bigger pipe. The only problem I see is the carriers raking in huge profits without investing in the infrastructure required.
Evolution: love it or leave it
But while net neutrality doesn't allow them to charge for "Netflix" (which is as it should be), there is nothing stopping them from charging extra for the awesome bandwidth that will get to the customers, and to use that extra charge to pay for the infrastructure upgrades. These upgrades during low-Netflix-use times may benefit others.
Their point is that, from a market perspective, a service provider "buying in" to a service like this through upgrades exclusive to Netflix (probably in the way of CDN servers/bandwidth) don't pass that cost on to just the consumers using Netflix. And while there might be some benefit to increased bandwith between you and the CDN hub, there is no guarantee that it will do you any good should you be interested in content that isn't on that CDN. The internet isn't a flat ocean of content that you pay for a little pipe full of, placement matters bigtime when it comes to overall throughput and latency.
Not too long ago Netflix showed a discrepancy between ISPs breaking down somewhere at the 1.8/2.0 megabit realm. Despite service providers almost univerally offering faster "guaranteed" rates than that (3 MBit to 6Mbit, which can be demonstrated with a *regional* bandwidth test) the bandwidth to the Netflix content was markedly lower. Why? Not all 3Mbit/6Mbit/25Mbit pipes are created equal.
"The Communications Liberty & Innovation Project" is actually part of the CEI, a "right wing" (in actuality it favors any government activity that will make its sponsors money) think tank. Representing major TV networks is one of their jobs.
The reality is that people won't buy Netflix enabled TVs if they don't care about Netflix.
As I understand it many of the "high" speed internet providers are not really keeping up with rolling out higher speeds and posting record profits. No competition in many areas gives the consumers no options so no reason to improve the networks. And I'm supposed to be enraged by Netflix paring partnering with ISPs to reduce network load? Wasn't there a report that Netflix was using nearly a third of downstream traffic in the US? More people pulling Netflix from a ISP's localized servers, less congestion for the net at large or am I missing something?
I can start an HD stream on Netflix, have it choke and degrade to 2-3 (occasionally 1) dots, switch over to Amazon and stream the same HD content without an issue. Netflix support claims "there was a drop in the system", but my router logs show no such drop. When asked about the difference in logs, they claim to have "better logs". When asked why Amazon can stream HD content that they can't, they claim it's because they use a "different technology" that is designed to "enhance the viewing experience". Wot? Netflix is good enough for a phone or tablet; actual HD streaming you care about, go with Amazon or whoever.
"Life is not magic." Dr. Ron Weiss - "If we don't play God, who will?" Dr. James Watson
It's a nonsensical argument to suggest that a company that introduces a service requiring heavy bandwidth is making all Internet users subsidize it by pushing their ISPs into upgrading their pipes. Pressure on bandwidth is not a negative thing.
The need for more bandwidth is one of the primary reasons why ISPs improve their offering over time. If it weren't for pressure on bandwidth they would mostly just sit back and let the money roll in without ever upgrading. Performing poorly on popular Internet services makes customers switch providers, and ISPs want to avoid that so they upgrade their links to provide a better service. That's how it works.
Netflix is merely pushing the bandwidth envelope, and that's good for all of us.
PS. I am not a Netflix subscriber, so no conflict of interest here.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
In Canada, you can get 250 MBit down (15 up) with a 1TB cap for $120. This is without netflix having a direct influence. The author is not just a troll, he's also an idiot.
This is clearly anti-net-neutrality propaganda, but I am glad it was submitted to Slashdot. It points out that someone with the power to commission such an article thinks, probably correctly, that this argument will actually make some of the readers angry at Netflix. I haven't even read the article, but I'd love to know whose personal/corporate army was supposed to be rallied by this.
It is my understanding that Netflix will provide the server(s) and the bandwidth from Netflix to the ISP. This is basically like any other content delivery network (Akamai, for instance).
The ISP may need to beef up the connection to their subscribers, but that is useful for all traffic not just Netflix.
Just reading all of the comments made me fall in love with the slashdot community. I had to make an account today. If isps would give a guarantee of the bandwidth they can provide instead of selling the fantasy "up to" bandwidth this wouldn't even be an issue. Faux News Sucks.
Problem is that is what the ISPs have been selling. It screwed up the peering model already, and next it will impact the ISPs.
The issue here is that any ISP would rather be able to keep charging the same rate for the same service (or increasing the price each year), rather than get the same fee for providing ever-increasing bandwidth. As the infrastructure is paid off, the providers should either reinvest or drop rates; they prefer to do neither.
As I understand, Netflix's CDN, while access to "SuperHD" content is used as the lever to get ISPs to buy in, isn't SuperHD-specific. So, buy buying in, the ISP improves the experience for Netflix users while simultaneously reducing the load Netflix places on the ISP's bandwidth -- resulting in better performance for all of the ISPs users.
Right there -- 5Gb of throughput is probably a lot less that any but an extremely small boutique ISP is already having consumed by connections to Netflix at peak. Last I saw stats, Netflix was estimated to be the source of around a third of the peak downstream internet traffic.
30-40 percent of all Internet traffic in the US is already Netflix. Those of us who don't download countless gigabytes each month are already subsidising the activities of heavier users. It has always been this way for the most part from the very beginning.
What concerns me more is the prospect of a network where what you can do depends on your ISP rather than just the size of ur pipe. LOL...
This is ridiculous.
Look at a statement posted in one of the links:
"It makes sense to create some sort of VIP lane for certain kinds of network traffic that enables high-density things like audio and video to have higher priority in delivery speed and quality,” he told FoxNews.com.
NO IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE.
What makes sense is that these cheap ass bullsh!tters upgrade their infrastructure so that everyone can stream high quality from any content provider.
By now everyone should have an uncapped 1 Gbit / 1 Gbit connection in their house with no caps.
The only reason they don't is because these companies are A-holes.
Recently, 100gbit over copper became cheaper, and 10gbit copper is already in peoples home LANs.
I don't see a reason why everyone cant have ultrafast, uncapped, neutral connection to anyone else.
Look at A-hole providers like verizon, they advertise a full fiber network to the home, but then they give speeds that resemble cable, sometimes even slower and for more money. For the same money they could have provided a true Gbit to the house like i said everyone should have by now.
At the providers, they could easily invest in infrastructure and not have to cap, filter, slow down, or do any of the evil things they do.
Another statement:
Tim Hanlon, a digital media consultant at The Vertere Group, says “bandwidth hogs” like Netflix should pay more for using the infrastructure than smaller companies.
He is sorta right, Netflix should pay more to their service provider, but where he leaves out, is that cost should be reflected in the netflix subscription, not in everyones isp bill. Also, its the ISPs duty to keep their infrastructure updated and speedy. What are they getting paid for. They should use the money they getting now, and upgrade their sh!t. All the time they spend bitching and moaning about bandwidth hogs, they should put that effort into upgrades to support, rather than punish, everyone.
I say that everyone with a capped internet connection, boycott their provider.
I will never give a penny to a company that prevents me from using what i paid for.
That includes service providers and hardware manufacturers.
You make a locked up device or service, u made an enemy out of me, and hopefully out of all of you.
-HasH@trypnet.net
I heard a report a while back that Netflix was a big reason for higher postage rates in the US (if anybody reading this still uses the US postage service).
With healthy competition, we wouldn't be having this discussion, ISPs would happily shoulder the cost to increase their customer base... wtf happened???
Maybe if they spent some money on their infrastructure...
WHAT? & lower the CEO's bonus & shareholder's dividends??? Not a chance!!! Unless of course the Fed underwrites the cost (ie free money) leaving the upgrade cost free to the corporation. But hey then we'd have that all important privatization that everyone knows is way more efficient that a Fed-owned network. NOT!
>Their point is that, from a market perspective, a service provider "buying in" to a service like this through upgrades exclusive to Netflix (probably in the way of CDN servers/bandwidth) don't pass that cost on to just the consumers using Netflix.
Yes, that is their point, and the grandparent's point is "that's bullshit." They have a mechanism in place to charge subscribers by bandwidth. They are buying "content access" they can serve to dramatically increase the amount of bandwidth their subscribers pay for. If your ISP gets another $40 a month for the bandwidth to enjoy HD moves as often as you enjoy SD movies, then the consumers that are using it are paying for it.
No it's not precise to the penny, some of Grandma's ISP fees may be going for this, but some of my fees have been subsidizing her unprofitable dialup connection for years. But then, some of your text messaging fees are paying for 911 service that you may have never used. Some of the cost of your voice minutes goes into handset development for handsets you don't want to buy. At Mel's diner my dinner tab includes the cost of ketchup that other diners use, and I HATE KETCHUP!
The article writer, and the industries for which he shills are greedy crybabies. Nothing more.
Time Warner can’t pass on the cost only to Netflix subscribers; every Time Warner customer would have to pay more.
Time warner *could* absolutely pass the cost only to netflix users, but that would not even be the best solution. The best solution would be to simply charge based on data transmitted rather than bandwidth caps. The cost you incur as a subscriber to an ISP is not your bandwidth cap during off peak hours. The cost you incur is how much data you actually send and receive during peak hours.
The pricing scheme employed by the ISP should incentivize efficient use of network resources at all times. Imagine if the electric company, rather than charging for kilowatt*hours (i.e. units of energy) charged for the analog of bandwidth limits (i.e. power usage, energy/time). This would mean you would pay monthly for a 15 Watt limit, or more for a 30 Watt limit. You could use as much enerfy as you wanted but you are not allowed to exceed a certain rate of energy per time. This means that if you run your electric dryer you'd need to turn off everything else or you'd need to pay for a higher wattage. How would people behave? They would waste electricty because there would be no incentive not to. All they need to do is stay under 30 Watts (or whatver they paid for). People would consume far more electricity than they do now *and* have a much smaller power limit than they do now. It's much better if people use as little energy as possible but are free to use very high power when they need to (like when using a dryer). This keeps prices low and allows the most freedom.
Imagine a world where you had to watch how much data you were using. It sounds terrible until you consider the benefit. Imagine you could download at like 1 terabyte per second. Current technology only allows for about 125 Megabytes per second, but that is rapidly changing. You would never need to wait to download things. You could get them nearly instantly. If we keep the amount of data people download per month the same, wouldn't it be better to just the same data but faster?, with the option of paying more and getting even more data?
If you wanted to save money you could even schedule large downloads to occur during off peak hours, like how people schedule their dryers to run during off peak hours.
Right now our internet works like a world where everyone pays for 5 Watts of electricity and in order to run your dryer you need to charge a battery off of a 5 Watt main for 5 hours to have enough juice to run the 30 watt dryer. (i.e. buffering a 50GB high def movie). But whenever you try to tell people that if they give up "unlimited" energy usage (power caps) they can have like 100 Watts for the same price (but just not on all the time), they freak out and think it's a bad thing.
Paying per byte is better than bandwidth caps.
Ever since I started using the Internet on dial-up, at 9600 baud I think, the same old scumbags have been shouting their outrage at anyone thinking of using services that came close to maxing the bandwidth. THINK! People were saying "how dare you", and "no ISP will be able to operate commercially" at the idea of users continually downloading 1KByte per second.
In reality, heavy users have driven the entire commercial Internet market. Heavy users, and new services that required much higher bandwidths, were the ONLY reason infrastructure was improved in line with what current technology made possible.
Today, most people are stuck on some archaic ADSL or cable 'last mile' connection. The industry, outside of Asia, has chosen to use caps and restrictive pricing rather than technology. At 8Mbits+, an Internet connection seems fast enough to most current users. Since retrofitted ADSL or Cable junk can reach many times that speed, ISPs have sat back, and refused to invest properly.
The future is households receiving most of their video streams over the Internet. This means proper 'last-mile' connections like 'fibre' , and connection speeds vastly higher than 100Mbits. Guess what? This is trivially doable, if Internet connections are given the same attention as electrical or water connections.
How do we judge whether a country is a third-world cr*p hole? Simple, we ask whether they can take electricity and clean water in the home for granted. The Internet is no different. Nations with caps and ADSL/Cable speeds ( 100MBits) are like nations with regular black-outs, or nations where one tap serves a group of homes. Why do those third-world nations never fix their infrastructure. Because some influential scumbag always argues that black-outs and water rationing are 'good' because they limit demand for the service.
That sucks.I pay 80 for 50Mbps no cap 10mbps up There really is a digital divide.
Ever heard of Vudu?
Guess not.
They stream something called HDX - stream is the wrong term - they let you download HDX files to watch later. These are not highly compressed crap like Netflix and youtube have with lots-o-artifacts. These files are as close to bluray as you can get, including 7.1 surround sound.
I don't really care how the data gets to me. If netflix or vudu want peering agreements, fine. Personally, I'm holding out for native Linux clients before signing up for these services. It is works on XBMC/Linux, that's a winner.
Only broadband available where I am is 12mb satellite with a 10gb cap. There is no cap from midnight to 5am but that's not really let's sit down and watch some netflix time. Watching one movie over netflix would get us close to our cap.
Look, this article is just another BS anti-net neutrality argument showing how the poor internet carriers can't afford to support rich Netflix's content. Powerful Netlix is strong arming the little Internet providers (like, ahem, Time Warner) into carrying all of that expensive streaming video and cutting off ISPs who won't play ball.
But the whole article is BS, and this is why: There is no buy in. No one is getting cut off.
According to TFA, Netflix is not forcing any ISP to carry this traffic and they are not charging any ISPs for the privilege. Netflix is providing local caching servers to minimize traffic across the national backbones. This will save Netflix money and save the ISPs money because local traffic is cheaper than backbone traffic. If Netflix really wanted to stick it to the ISPs, they could just turn on Super HD for all subscribers and really rack up the bills. Netflix is being downright polite with this. At best, Super HD will be a minor competitive advantage for a handful of ISPs who have the servers.
On average, about $5 of your cable bill is for ESPN channels, even if you never watch them, and you can't NOT get those channels unless you have the basic-basic channels. That is a more direct cost to cable subscribers than a theoretical cost pass-thru for the infrastructure upgrades described.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Never understood caps. Must be a Northeast thing. The fee is fixed for ISP's no matter how much data you use. In Florida I pay $55 a month for 20Mbits with no cap from my cable provider. $80/month would get me 60Mbps with no cap.
Best post in the thread so far hands down.
The simple fact is that if the ISP's would re-invest into their infrastructure they would be doing everyone a great service (themselves included), but instead they seem to be pissing away the profits and doing nothing really for their customers other than jacking up the prices for the same basic service. Of course there is absolutely zero incentive for them to do so in most markets since most have a utility style monopoly.
I got here through a series of tubes
> Article's author is a troll.
Looks like a paid shill to me. Netflix is paying for their bandwidth just like everyone else and the ISP has no business charging people for services they do not actually provide. Unfortunately, many big ISPs are owned by media companies (like cable companies) who see Netflix as cannibalizing their other business, so this nonsense will continue.
Am I reading something wrong. After looking into this, it seems Netflix is providing these caching appliances to ISP's for free, as well as free technical support from Netflix engineers for setup. These devices would be loaded with data during off-peak times. The only extra cost I can see is the electricity required to power these devices. I'm no networking expert, but would this also be offset by the advantage of more content being delivered locally, which would mean less bandwidth utilization on the backbone? Am I wrong here? Help me find the extra cost thatt would be carried down to the consumer.
Perhaps Netflix vs American ISP customers.
I don't see how this is effect me or anyone else in New Zealand. Netflix is not a popular service here, almost nobody uses it because Netflix doesn't allow it. We've got shit international bandwidth. It's hard to get good YouTube performance unless your ISP has a Google appliance. Thing is though, although Google appliances aren't free, they save ISP's money by reducing their expensive international bandwidth requirements. Any other appliance is only going to do the same, reduce costs (only to increase profits though, not lower customer fees)
Local bandwidth is cheap however and many ISP's have free peering between each other.
Damn. High speed internet sucks where you live dude...
Everyone runs caps. The issue is whether they enforce them through oversubscription, overage charges, or scheduled slowdownns.
Learn to love Alaska
Netflix is just putting some local servers at ISP's because the bandwidth requirements for superHD are too much, the only real way to do it is for isp's to have local copies of the movies.
http://interserver.net/
(Before I get started, a side question: Are we sure the "costs" we're talking about here, aren't negative? CDNs increase efficiency. If I were an ISP, maybe I would be happy that a hundred of my customers all accessing the same stream, only hit my upstream connections once instead of a hundred times.)
The key words in TFA are "must-have content." The premise is that many people must be Netflix customers and this is unavoidable. It's assumed, out of the gate, that Netflix can't lose. Nothing bad can possibly happen to Netflix and customers cannot say no to them.
Given that, of couse they can abuse their absolutely unassailable position. If nobody can say no to Netflix, then raising the price of ISPs is really just the tip of the iceberg; we're all going to have to name our first born childen "Netflix" too, and buy Netflix-branded cars and let Netflix VPs have special privileges with our brides. After all, we can't say no to Netflix's demands, right?
Just as a pointless exercise, though, let's imagine the unimaginable. What if customers can say no, and do? What if people see the "your ISP doesn't work with Netflix" message and decide "oh well, time to cancel Netflix." What happens then?
That aside, yes, I actually do know Netflix has muscle. I know many people who subscribe to Netflix, though I'm not one of them. Whether people can say no to Netflix or not, I admit that many won't, just like they don't say no to Microsoft and Apple. It's a world of shit out there, and I won't say it's not.
I am very interested in exactly how the Net Neutrality rules prohibit ISPs from charging customers extra for access to a particular server on their own internal network (the Netflix CDN), since AFAIK the neutrality rules only prohibit discrimination against people who access the outside. Normally it is allowed for ISPs to charge extra, for extra services. That's why I save money by not subscribing to my ISP's TV and telephone service. They're prohibited from charging me less? They're prohibited from charging other customers more, for access to the TV and VoIP servers? Are you sure about that?
I think the CDN node makes the ISPs more than a "gatekeeper" or network provider; they're file server providers. If there really is a bug in the rules that keeps them from charging the machine's users (and only that machine's users) for its costs (just like how my ISP currently charges its TV-over-IP users for their TV-over-IP servers' costs (plus an amazing shitload of markup)), then the FCC can change the rules again. Bugs are fixable.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
What about impact of buffer bloat?
Cross-subsidies are routine in telecommunications. We don't hear industry representatives arguing that the fact that you can't subscribe to individual TV channels but have to make do with bundles. This means that some people (i.e. those who watch a broad range of channels) benefit, while others might get a better deal with à la carte bundles if the could just get the one or two channels that they actually watch. If we're concerned that some TWC customers might get a worse deal because they don't watch Netflix and have to pay for it, then we should be just as concerned that these same customers have to pay $16 to go from the basic package to the one with 200+ channels even if they're only interested in one or two extra channels.
In fact, such arrangements are ubiquitous in all sectors of the economy. We're not outraged that a restaurant that offers free valet parking is spreading the cost over all patrons, including those that came by taxi. We're don't think it's unfair for malls to offer free bathrooms even if we never visit them but still pay for them. We're not mad at McDonald's because they give away free refills and we never use that opportunity because we're not as thirsty as other people. Etc. Etc.
Not too long ago Netflix showed a discrepancy between ISPs breaking down somewhere at the 1.8/2.0 megabit realm. Despite service providers almost univerally offering faster "guaranteed" rates than that (3 MBit to 6Mbit, which can be demonstrated with a *regional* bandwidth test) the bandwidth to the Netflix content was markedly lower. Why? Not all 3Mbit/6Mbit/25Mbit pipes are created equal.
Because of the *IAA and friends, Netfix is poorly designed compared to youtube or all of the peer to peer video streaming technology like QVOD or PPStream. Most people can make up for a slow connection by just buffering a video while they go get a drink or go to the bathroom or whatever. But, Netflix intentionally only allows you to buffer a few seconds of video. Hence, it is tough for Netflix to compete with the higher quality free alternatives.
yeah, I feel comedy is OK in regular definition because you can still hear the jokes and see well enough and action benefits more from crisper images.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I wonder what the likely hood of a smaller regional ISP negotiating a contract with them. I currently get 100/100 FTTH for $50/month from a local provider and would love to get some 1080p netflix.
If you pay your taxes you support terrorism!
...that guy.
go on pay more pay till your heads explode ROFL
I don't think you understand what an incentive is.
Who sells 250 MBit down and 15 up in Canada?
Seriously, how did they not think to just offer an HD package as an additional tier of service at a higher price?
Is it really easier to jump over all the regulatory hurdles, setup all the negotiations and deal with all that lawyering around than it is to say, "here's an option for HD streaming for an additional $X/month"?
Somehow, I doubt that and it causes me to wonder if there isn't something nefarious going on here.
Look, this article is just another BS anti-net neutrality argument showing how the poor internet carriers can't afford to support rich Netflix's content. Powerful Netlix is strong arming the little Internet providers (like, ahem, Time Warner) into carrying all of that expensive streaming video and cutting off ISPs who won't play ball.
It's worse than that. The language in that spiel is so loaded it's practically impossible even to figure out what the fuck the man is complaining about. I kept reading it, hoping that at some point the guy's argument would make even the slightest bit of sense, but every single descriptive element of the article (and I use that term loosely) was so charged with invective that he wasn't even able to make his own case.
The entire piece is just a poorly composed diatribe without any logical basis whatsoever. Honestly, if this is how the larger carriers choose to defend themselves, they deserve to lose.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
US's caps are crap.
I'm glad I live in a country where you can get access to a 100M symetrical connection without cap for about a third or a 4th the price you pay in the US. :D
And thanks to DNS magic, I can even watch Netflix in high-def, without having to worry about cap or who knows what else
And you are spot on. They are becoming a utility company like electricity or water, where you don't get anything but higher bills with time, and infrastructure growth goes to new subscribers or to replace/maintain the current ones, not many upgrades.
That model should not be used for ISPs, and someone will find a way to add value just like now wired phone lines are disappearing without any issues.
Worse part, is perhaps knowing that phone line infrastructure was paid for by taxes.
This concept of "Net Neutrality" is not sustainable. If I run an ISP and over 85% of my traffic is going to Google or Netflix or Amazon AWS (which is also Netflix) then, from my point of view, someone needs to pay for it. I'm not sure it's my subscribers who should pay since it will cost them too much money in subscripton usage fees.
It's undeniable. If my ISP traffic is consumed by so much traffic by a such-and-such upstream vendor, shouldn't that such-and-such upstream vendor share in the cost of providing that traffic? I think so, especially since such-and-such upstream vendor is collecting subscription fees from my subscriber AND collecting advertisement royalties for that traffic.
I dare say that the current model is not sustainable. The coming years will experience a fascinating sea-change in the so-called "net neutrality" model.
Kriston
Backbone doesn't charge by data used, but uses 95th percentile which is based on burst rates.
So if you keep down the bursts, you save money. Lowering speeds by oversubscription, charges, and such keeps down those rates. And many upstream providers charge based on pipe size, not usage/burst.
Learn to love Alaska
The way this story on Slashdot is spun is extremely wrong headed for the Slashdot audience. I am going to rebut this by explaining how the Internet works.
First, let me say that Peering is an extremely complex topic. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake in some peering decisions. Historically, the consternation in peering was over who paid to transport data over "long haul" network hops. i.e. it is a valid argument to say that it is unfair for a local ISP that is only in Seattle Washington to peer with Level 3 at a single location in Seattle, while Level 3 operates a global network with dozens of undersea cable links that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build/operate. In this kind of unbalanced relationship, Level 3 pays for all of the high costs to transport data (in both directions) across the globe when a customer on the small ISP in Seattle wants to talk with a Level 3 customer in Europe.
Now the "fair" solution to the prior case is for the small ISP to purchase IP transit from another large ISP (say Verizon Business), and then Verizon Business and Level 3 can peer in dozens of locations around the world. Then when a customer in Seattle on the small ISP wants to communicate with someone in Europe on Level 3, the packet will be transmitted from the small ISP, to Verizon Business, who will pass it to Level 3 via peering (likely in Seattle), and then Level 3 will transport it to Europe. On the return path, Level 3 will hand it to Verizon Business at a location peering point in Europe, and Verizon Business will transport it back across the globe to Seattle, hence making it "fair" whereby Level 3 transported data one way, and Verizon Business transported it the other way (with the small ISP paying Verizon Business for this service).
Now I need to explain how CDN's work differently in the peering game than traditional Tier 1 ISP's. You see, most flows on the Internet are not peer-to-peer these days. Most are heavily weighted unidirectional from Content Providers down to "eyeballs" (i.e. end users). So years ago, Content Distribution Networks were created to accelerate/facilitate this. Basically the business model is to place servers out as close to the "edge" (i.e. near end users) as possible, and then use them to cache data from the "origin" (the main web site that content comes from) in order to make loading faster for end users, and reduce load on the central web site servers. Now this can be accomplished in a couple different ways. CDN's would prefer to ship servers to ISP's and have the ISP place the server in their building and plugged into the ISP network. This is an amazing deal for the CDN as they don't have to pay for space/power/cooling, and the ISP is paying for the "upstream" bandwidth (i.e. back to the "Origin"), and they are not paying to deliver that data down to the end users. The reason this might be attractive to an ISP is if they are paying a lot for upstream bandwidth, and so having a CDN node within their network reduces their IP transit costs.
The other common way for CDN's to work is for CDN's to rent colo space in "carrier hotels" (regional network concentration points) and to buy their own upstream bandwidth. They can then peer publicly (i.e. on a public peering exchange such as the SIX in Seattle) and/or "privately" by private fiber interconnection. This takes some of the burdon off ISP's as all they need to pay for is their router ports to connect (plus perhaps a fee to the peering exchange if it is not a private interconnect). Though the legal agreements around any peering relationship are nearly always kept secret (who knows which party is or is not paying the other...)
Soo... Now to Netflix:
Netflix really is a lot like a CDN (the main difference being that they don't reach back to an "origin" site in real time - their content distribution nodes can download all the movies in the library all at a given time (during non peak hours) and from a single known upstream point). From what I understand about their new model of cont
apply in Australia
I lived on my street, in the next to last house built, with no option for cable at all. DSL sure, but there was no cable on my side, and no plans to build it.
I called, I chatted, I mail-bombed the board and executives with a copy/paste chat session which went so horribly wrong I would not have bought the company's services if it had been available the next day.
I saw a cable truck on my side of the street, 4 years after the last house was built. Nothing but satellite dishes on this side. I got DSL, which was re-branded AT&T two months in, and I was furious, but I trusted satellite less.
I got the $20/no naked DSL for 4 years, and finally upgraded to a faster speed. The cable co can go fuck themselves, which is exactly what they have been doing. They didn't call me to let me know it was available - they sent the same flier they have been sending for 4 years, when it has not been available.
I gave the co. my phone number, a very pleasant woman called me after my mail-bomb and apologized that they didn't have service here, and sorry that the representative took 30 minutes to not figure that out. So they have me as a lead. A simple call and some negotiation on price as someone who raised awareness of failures in their process, and I'd be a happy customer.
Still on DSL. Cable co can't be bothered with me, apparently. Or with informing customers that a cable has been laid and service is available.
Doing nothing for their non-customers, and would-be customers, despite having it pointed out to them.
Zero incentive indeed, even after having put in the cost. Sending someone out to knock on my door would have given them years of continuous service upgrades. Guess they don't care.
I'm always shocked by the amount of money you pay for broadband in the USA. I have 100/100 which i pay roughly $30 for (Sweden).
Dude, you mustn't have read it carefully - there was a car analogy.
Apparently NetFlix is a B-Triple overloaded with toxic waste being driven by a drug-crazed psychopath with a hooker in his lap which is hurtling towards a pedestrian crossing being traversed by a group of sweet little disabled orphans, who represent the cable+media companies.
How couldn't you understand it?
Netflix uses Adaptive Bitrate, which is based on HTTP (and therefore on TCP). Latency is not the issue, since all the video are chunked into fragments of 2-10 seconds and there is buffering on the client side. Note: Less latency is obviously desirable, as it improves throughput (smaller RTT), but the root of the issue is the sheer throughput.
It doesn't matter to me. My eyes aren't that great and 720p is good enough. Anything higher is wasted on me.
1) Netflix offers a "free" caching server, which they maintain.
2) Server downloads primarily at night to avoid peak congestion when possible
3) There is no "dedicated" line. Netflix only asks for a peering agreement at any of the many Internet Exchanges that they have access to.
So to recap. CDN supplied by Netflix to save bandwidth for the ISP, Off-peak caching, and a peering agreement at an IX.
Netflix is offering this service free of charge. If an ISP doesn't like it, then they shouldn't get it. Netflix is trying to reduce backbone traffic.
Couldn't agree with parent more. Still trying to figure out if Fox News tech people really know nothing about basic network concepts or if they are just shilling for the monopoly ISPs to be allowed to charge for coming and going. It seems in the US that costs have to continually rise to keep up even when the service does not improve that much. Who knew maintaining cable infrastructure took more than rolling it out in the first place? Could it be we need a little competition in the ISP market?
No you are the troll Anonymous Coward - get an account if you want to comment....
The point is people who don't use the service will be paying for it. ESPN did that with ESPN3.com - made time warner charge it's customers even if they don't use their site, simply because their subscribers have internet access.
That's extortion.
No you can't get that "in Canada.". Just a very few select locations. This is as stupid as saying there are no speed limits on the highways "in Europe" when you mean parts of the German Autobahn.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
If you upload videos of your own creation to YouTube or other streaming video sites, or if you stream on UStream/Livestream/Twitch.tv, then you are a "content provider".
Perhaps the point is that videos with unlicensed music playing in the background aren't exactly "videos of your own creation" because their copyrights haven't been fully cleared.
Time Warner Cable: 5mb down .8mb up, Frontier DSL 2mb down and .5mb up. There is no hope for bandwidth here.
Have you tried asking for the business-class service tier?
dumb marketing tricks (we only peer with other tier 1 providers... whats a tier 1 provider? Well its anyone we either a) want to peer with or b) couldn't get to pay us for transit, that's the def of a tier 1 provider).
If a tier 1 provider is defined as someone who doesn't pay others for transit, then let me try to put some rigor behind how this policy might be applied based on this definition, so that it appears less like a dumb trick: "We only peer with peers of our current peers." Consider it like the concept of a "friend of a friend" in online social networking.
I pay $99 for 55 down 5 up (which usually ends up being 75-100 down and 7-15 up, depending....mainly because there's not many people on my cable node), so far I've never hit a cap (and I stream 24/7).
Seems like it varies from market to market. (Go go, Google fiber...I really hope they expand operations)
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Almost certainly an artifact of VoIP and other telephony services on the backbone -- just as with OC3 back in the stone age. Remember when effective throughput went in the toilet above 3-5% voice packets?
Required low-latency implies artificially jacked routing priority -- for pathetic little effective payload. Compressing the content to fewer bits or attempting to 'utilize the silence' doesn't change the fundamental problem that little packets easily displace large ones even in a framework that supports different packet sizes in different pipes or virtual channels.
I was once tinkering with the idea of an RFC that would allow on-the-fly multiplexing of telephony packets into a larger payload, and routing that payload simultaneously to all destinations via some flavor of multicast protocol. Might even work at current levels of practical encryption or security for individual conversations...
I don't see any easy fix for the telephony capacity infringement, though...
(This is Overmod; I'm having login difficulties, solutions for which haven't shown up in my e-mail yet...)
Don't send mail bombs. The feds take that shit seriously. That, and why would any company want to send an employee to the house of the person who keeps pestering them?
+1 Disagree
Actually, I messed up my explanation. 95th percentile charges based on average "peak" usage. Bursting is actually cheaper. Based on the average end-user usage pattern, it's easier on the network to burst 100Mb/s for 1 second than it is to drag out 1Mb/s over 100 seconds. The problem is streaming data puts constant strain on the network, unless you build out your infrastructure to be able to handle higher speeds, then it suddenly get bursty again and the network start working well.
Time and time again, I hear that Internet Backbone bandwidth keeps dropping in price because supply is out-pacing demand. Every year backbone bandwidth increases 50% and prices drop 50%.
Another fun thing to think about is that for an ISP, the majority of the cost is not the Internet connection, but the last mile. Once you have a fiber connection to an upstream provider, increasing bandwidth is cheap and easy. Assuming your last mile doesn't have bottlenecks, like current poorly implemented cable networks with most of the bandwidth reserved for channels, but instead have a fiber network, then purchasing more bandwidth to supply your customers is quite easy.
There are already many stories of small start-up ISPs rolling out fiber, offering prices like 50Mb for $100, then 2-3 years later offer 250Mb for $100 because bandwidth is so freaking cheap.
Because in a lot of areas, one ISP has a virtual monopoly on high-speed access. Sure, there are competitors, but they tend not to be great options or are not evenly available.
In my area, I've got Charter. The competitors are a couple of local Telcos and AT&T Uverse, neither of which can match the 30m default bandwidth Charter provides (although one local telco is rolling out some fiber backbones, so we'll see). Charter does, however, cap at 250GB/mo - and provides you no tools to measure your usage or no access to any metrics beyond their own network people calling you to say "you used too much." For most folks, that's plenty, but if you cut the cord on cableTV and watch a fair amount of HD programming, that 250GB can go by quick.
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
No, they don't care. You did nothing but waste your time. It is not cost effective for them to offer you cable service.
The small startups have few regulations. They cherry pick profitable connections, and have no old infrastructure to support. Having worked for a number of telcos, the major issue is that they look way too long term. They buy a router on a 20-year depreciation. So moving away from 128k frame relay requires a write off for a loss, and nobody wants that. "If we take a $10,000 capital loss on a write off, we can cut operating costs next year by $1,000,000." You'd be surprised how many times the answer to that is "no."
But bandwidth costs. Access and distribution cost more than the transit.
Learn to love Alaska
Paying per byte is better than bandwidth caps.
No, it's not. You make a lot of assumption in your arguments. One assumption you make that isn't readily apparent is that the average consumer understands it all enough to work with such a pricing scheme. There would be endless confusion and arguments between customer and ISP. Who pays when software phones home? Who pays for updates that need downloaded? Who pays when malware is using bandwidth? LOL, how do you think that conversation between ISP and customer would go? How would the statements look? You would have to have a line-item list of some sort. Then you start encouraging deep packet inspection.
A quick googling reveals that the 'Communications Liberty and Innovation Project' is an offshoot of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Big Business PR body-shop. Fred Campbell is nothing but a water-boy for the Koch Brothers and other right-wing loonies. His anti-neutrality stance says it all: he's in the pocket of the large ISP's. Why bother listening to this rabid asshat? He has zero credibility.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
From what I've read, smaller ISPs have more legal hoops to jump through. They have more red tape and higher costs, but can offer lower prices and better service than incumbents, while turning over enough profit to pay off their infrastructure in ~5 years.
There have been several case studies in the past few years where an ISP went out to a rural farm area where cable/dsl was not offered, installed fiber, gave higher speeds and lower prices than an inter-city cable/telephone company. To top it off, with-in 2-3 years, they typically crank up their speeds even more.
How does a start-up ISP move into farm area and offer cheaper and better services than a cable/telephone company that has had decades of paid-off infrastructure in a city while having the benefit of bulk pricing.
The only conclusion is that incumbents are making massive amounts of money while complaining about being poor.
Where and who has this plan?
From what I've read, smaller ISPs have more legal hoops to jump through. They have more red tape and higher costs, but can offer lower prices and better service than incumbents, while turning over enough profit to pay off their infrastructure in ~5 years.
When you can write a book that explains how you can have higher costs, lower prices, and greater profit, then you'll be a millionaire. I've worked for big ISPs and small ISPs. The small ISPs have much smaller costs, but they complain about them more loudly.
Learn to love Alaska
I'm not referring to that, however (although that is a separate debate). I'm referring to those who produce original content and at least make an attempt not to use infringing material outside of a fair use context. The post I was replying to seemed to imply that "consumers" shouldn't have access to high upload speed, claiming that the only reason for "consumers" to need such a pipe would be to infringe on copyright. I also offered a valid use case that doesn't even require one to be a "content provider" - no court in the United States (nor elsewhere that I'm aware of, but would welcome knowledge of such) has ever held that a private individual would be considered to be "making available" copyrighted works if they are accessible on a personal, password-protected machine. I regularly stream audio from my personal machine to my iPod when I'm elsewhere with access to Wifi, and the only reason I don't do it for video is because my upstream restricts the effective enjoyable bitrate to something like 3 to 3.5 Mbps (I just now tested using the Speakeasy speed test at 4.18Mbps upstream and I would not want to attempt to stream video from my computer at 4Mbps). This may be fine for 480p or smaller video but I'd prefer to be able to stream 720p video when possible.
FC Closer