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Top US Lobbyist Wants Broadband Data Caps
sl4shd0rk writes "Michael Powell, A former United States FCC chairman, is pushing for 'usage-based internet access' which he says is good for consumers who are 'accustomed to paying for what they use'. Apparently Time Warner and Comcast (maybe others) are already developing plans to set monthly rates based on bandwidth usage. The reasoning on the NCTA website lays out the argument behind Powell's plan."
The end is near my ass. I'm in Los Angeles and I still only have one option for broadband access at any reasonable speed -- and it's Time Warner Cable. The end is nowhere near until we somehow break the monopolistic (or duopolistic) stranglehold these bastards enjoy in any given market. Apparently this stranglehold is in large part perpetuated by political deals these ISPs have made with local government (e.g., the City of Los Angeles) wherein the city gets kickbacks from the ISP for rights of way, etc. Because local governments are dependent on these kickbacks to support their budget, there is no competition. It's a form of payola.
The end is near my ass. I'm in Los Angeles and I still only have one option for broadband access at any reasonable speed -- and it's Time Warner Cable. The end is nowhere near until we somehow break the monopolistic (or duopolistic) stranglehold these bastards enjoy in any given market. Apparently this stranglehold is in large part perpetuated by political deals these ISPs have made with local government (e.g., the City of Los Angeles) wherein the city gets kickbacks from the ISP for rights of way, etc. Because local governments are dependent on these kickbacks to support their budget, there is no competition. It's a form of payola.
If you're in a Sonic.net coverage area, check them out. I'm 6000 feet from the CO, and get 14mbit down, 1.3mbit upstream -- no monthly bandwidth caps, and their pricing includes a real analog phone line (not VoIP) with unlimited long distance. For about double the price, you can get business DSL that bonds 2 lines to give you about double the speed.
I was getting 50mbit/10mbit from Comcast, but dropped them after moving to Sonic because once a week I'd see latency and packet loss so severe that the line was unusable.
No, data transfer is NOT free. The datacenters (HVAC/power), equipment (hello depreciation, upgrade cycles, support contracts), lines (installation/repair), peering arrangements (outside of tier 1 backscratching) are all very expensive, and it takes a small army of people to keep all of this low-volume, insane-price junk running.
Keep in mind that an OC-48 line can only support 2405 megabits of traffic, or enough for about a hundred heavy users @24 megabits each. It costs what, 100K a month? 50k? maybe slightly less by now?
A typical, medium-sized/30 floor apartment building can have 300 units in it. Are you going to run an OC-192 line to a single building? Or let them run at 8 megabits max once everybody starts going nuts? Keep in mind that IP's answer to link congestion is silently dropping packets.. ...or maybe instead slap them with usage fees to encourage at least some of them to become light users instead?
If you want an equivalent comparison, the electric company is providing you with the same electrons over and over, just fluctuating back and forth.. soo why are you paying them money? Electrons are everywhere, and they're always moving, after all.
Also regarding transfer rate - a lot of that is out of the control of the ISP itself. It's not their fault that Level 3 and Cogentco are having a tiff or something, nor the fact that you're downloading content or performing (retarded) speed tests from a site hosted on a T3 with 15,000 other broadband users.
Your ISP installs equipment in your area. That equipment is VERY expensive. You'd be surprised how much actually. In fact, your bill is likely heavily subsidized by the government and even other customers via fees and such. Your ISP figures out average usage in your area and then installs the equipment that will provide whatever speed they're trying to sell there. Not everyone uses 100% of their connection 100% of the time. If they did, your bill would be much more expensive. So the equipment that leads to your house CAN support the speed (usually) that you are paying for. And the equipment that feeds the remote in your area can usually support about 60% of users at max capacity.
Now, the problem is that Netflix and services like it concentrate usage at specific times. Not only that but netflix, unlike other content providers, refuses to work with ISPs. Google, for example has a department in charge of "peering" and when they have a contract with Level3 but plan to move to Sprint or something, they call up the ISPs and let them know in advance. The ISPs can then sign similar peering contracts with Sprint. Netflix is hostile in this area, they just switch... with no notice... and they leave the ISPs in the lurch. There are about 10 major players on the net, and Netflix is one of the biggest. When they just move all of their traffic to another network its equivalent to a stampede of elephants running to one side of your boat. The ISP either has to let customers suffer or sign a hasty contract with another carrier and take a loss on the previous commitment. Google doesn't do that, not even Microsoft does that.
Anyways, I'm not sure usage based billing is the solution, but like it or not, it IS coming to this country. and yes, I work for an ISP. They are trying to be creative about it, but I doubt it'll come to anything. The easiest solution is to just charge you more. So that's what will happen.
Sigh. There's so much wrong with your post it's not even funny. It's obvious you can do basic math, but what you can't seem to wrap your head around is that people aren't using 100% of the bandwidth 100% of the time. It's called an oversubscription ratio, and it's typically around 250:1. Which means your "OC-48" line wouldn't support a mere 100 heavy users... it would support 25,000 heavy users. It would very probably support a quarter million normal users at a much more generous bandwidth and latency than they currently get.
Also, you seem to be laboring under the delusion that fiber optic isn't easy to upgrade. You upgrade it like this: Open rack. Push button. Remove transceiver. Screw in new one. Push button again. Close rack. Do the same thing at the other end. Done. You can take an 'OC-48' line and put in an 'OC-192' line very easily... so if you have heavy bandwidth users, you just need to replace a couple pieces of equipment.
On the other hand, coaxial cable has some very severe limitations -- you can't just open up a box somewhere and pull out a piece of equipment, a couple repeaters, and call it a day... you have to replace hundreds or thousands of devices to upgrade.
Which means fiber, once it's in the ground and run out to the customer, has a vastly lower upgrade cost. Vastly. Lower.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The activity of municipal entities is regulated by law. Law is made by legislators who are elected, and desire to be re-elected. And here is the flaw in your plan.
Maintaining a monopoly on broadband Internet and Cable TV in a municipal area is profitable so far and above the cost of being elected to legislative office that the incumbent monopolies have managed to influence all the elected folks to protect them from competition from municipal entities in the interest of "capitalism and fair play."
Some are grandfathered in. You can get gigabit in the grand Ephrata, WA metroplex (POP 7664) through the local power muni some 15 years now. Or in Aberdeen, WA (POP 16,265) through the local power muni for a decade or so. In Tacoma, WA, the Click network can sell you 100Mbps through the power utility, but even though they serve the greater metropolitan area with power (including me) you have to be within the city limits (not me) to get that Internet deal because: protective legislation protecting incumbent ISPs like Comcast.
So: Help us Google Fiber. You're our only hope.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Speaking as someone that actually /has used/ municipal internet service, none of that bullshit is true. TWC and AT&T fought hard to prevent it from happening, because they didn't want to actually put the money into upgrading infrastructure and their scare tactics only worked so far.
Perhaps your municipality just sucks.
Actually, the few municipalities that have survived the gauntlet of lawsuits and corrupt state governments report much better service at a fraction of the price. Why do you think ISPs fight so hard against them in court?
Unlikely. There are already federal laws that require internet censorship 'for the children' as a condition of funding for libraries - it's in the Children's Internet Protection Act. The ACLU challenged it, initially won, but was overturned on appeal to by the supreme court.
Good comparison! I heard from someone important that the Internet was just a series of tubes.....
I'm not sure why you felt it necessary to post your anti-Netflix bullshit. As pointed out in a sibling post already, Netflix hosts on AWS and your claims about Netflix randomly switching carriers doesn't even make sense.
Further, Netflix has built its own CDN hardware and network and tried very hard to work with ISPs to get this equipment in their data centers. They've deployed CDN units to hundreds of ISPs but the big boys won't play. I don't suppose it has anything to do with the fact that these ISPs also sell content and have no desire to improve Netflix's performance.