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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."
Seriously the ISPs who get behind metering and capping are just trying to stop the cord cutter movement. They know they are dinosaurs and the end is near. They are the same ones who refuse to take free Netflix CDN boxes to reduce the Netflix backhaul by 90%, and improve the service quality to their customers as well, instead trying to charge Netflix bandwidth fees. There is nothing whatsoever precious about Internet bandwidth. Every few years some new tech lets them put 100x as many bits down the same single mode fiber-optic pipe, and it's burying or stringing that pipe where the lion's share of the cost is.
Since Google isn't in the TV game really, they have nothing to lose by letting you pass all the data you want.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Doesn't say anything about things being different for uploading, but if you are running an Internet facing video camera (or three as seen here) you will easily blow through that 5GByte/month bandwidth cap.
... for the industry perhaps?!? ;-)
NCTA calls is "Fair Broadband Pricing"
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I could get behind a hybrid plan. Base cost for a base level of bandwidth. Base should cover the "long tail" of the usage curve, i.e. the least-consuming ~90% of users. Then charge per unit over that threshold. If this over comes to pass it should be paired with a requirement that providers treat all packets the same, regardless of source and destination.
I'd be ok with it too if it meant that Granny paid very little, but I think that we'll see Granny paying the same amount she currently is while everyone else gets to pay out the ass without being able to turn to alternate ISPs. It's not like this is really going to lower anyone's monthly fees, even Granny's; it's just an excuse to charge more. I would love to be proven wrong, but that's just not the business model these creeps run.
This is not going to work. Most software and games are moving to online distribution and many of these titles alone are over 10GB in size.
Some things never change.
It's past time for municipalities throughout the country - and whole states, even - to reclaim the easements that telecommunications companies rely on unless they can start meeting some very strict (and escalating) service quality targets. Practically nobody else in the West pays as much as we do for service as poor as ours when it comes to phone, television, and Internet access. Threatening to replace them with municipal and state-run companies should put their feet to the fire. We already know that they don't compete, and in fact collude.
The greed of these companies is boundless and they control access to infrastructure which our present and future prosperity relies on. No more games. They will continue to tighten the screws until they are forced to stop.
nothing about if it was the right thing to do, just: "If you don't do it soon people will won't let you do it because they'll expect unlimited Internet". No discussion of the technical need. It's pretty clear there is none, and this is just a money grab.
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Bandwidth is a time sensitive commodity. It's going to be sending either a 0 or a 1 100% of the time. Instead of caps, they should think about allowing customers to volunteer to be throttled for a reduced fee.
It's similar to an airplane ticket, in that it's worth full price, right up until the point the gate is about to close, at which point they will take any price over the marginal cost of fuel. I know many people that would be happy to let "full price" guy go first if it saved them a few bucks.
It's kind of like the MP3, which was one of the first formats that the *consumer* picked out, and media companies hated. I can kind of see both sides of the metering argument, but it would be nice if the market had a say in it, rather than it being just a bunch of bastards trying to pay off congress to ram it down our throats.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Artificial scarcity may be my least favorite of all the artificial things.
Even if you take them at their word, bandwidth is not the highest cost component of an ISP's business. It is all in the infrastructure and that is basically fixed whether you use one 1 byte or 10 terabytes.
Over the last few years, wholesale IP transit costs have dropped 50% per year. Nowadays big ISPs are probably paying roughly $6 per terabyte. With pricing so cheap it is obvious that usage is not the driving cost.
Source: http://www.dslprime.com/dslprime/42-d/4830-internet-transit-costs-down-50-in-last-year
(I realize that ip transit is priced by data rate not total bytes, but all of these usage-based billing schemes are priced in bytes per month, so I did a rough conversion of the units in the source to the units comcast would use for pricing.)
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
which he says is good for consumers who are 'accustomed to paying for what they use'
Such as paying $72 per month for cable despite never turning on the TV? No, sorry, my issue with this statement is that while they mean those who use more will pay more, they do not mean that those who use less will pay less.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
What was that line you Yanks sing about "owing your soul to the company store" or something like that? Funny how the rest of the civilised world has ZERO issue with the provision of broadband without data caps. And yet, you Yanks suffer the dribble from endless shills 'proving' that unlimited Internet services can never be financially viable.
Here's a clue, Americans. Look at other lands. If THEY can do something, so can you. The rest of us have no need to mass medicate our children, no need to mass mutilate the genitals of our male children, no need to DENY appropriate medical treatment on the basis of illness rather than wealth, and no need to allow depravities to control effective telecom monopolies so they can provide the crappiest possible service at the highest possible cost.
Wasn't always thus. We Brits used to look upon your 'free' local telephone calls with envy, as we got stung for every minute used regardless of destination. We'd watch depictions of YOUR kids sitting on the phone for hours in the evening, thinking of how no-one could ever afford to do that in the UK. How low you Americans have sunk.
You allow the worst kind of evil filth to place your senior politicians in their pockets. You are cretinous enough to CLAIM you have 'democracy', while formally recognising lobbyists as a legitimate class of political operatives. Only a Yank could be so spineless as to allow a 'lobbyist' to proudly bribe your President IN THE OPEN. Other nations have these filth too, that is true, but they have to operate in the shadows. Only a Yank could claim a 'lobbyist' is an acceptable part of a true democracy.
Your media companies (including the owners of Slashdot) do NOT want the competition a free Internet offers. Unlike in other nations, the USA has a tradition of allowing criminal business cartels to create the laws under which you live. Criminality exists all over the planet, and so does bribery. Only America perverts the definition of capitalism, and formalises the process.
The best model for the Internet is the one that has grown it to the unthinkable success it has today. And I mean UNTHINKABLE. Go look at ALL the commentary when us enthusiasts first jumped into the new web-based version of the Internet. EVERYONE said "this is a nerd paradise that is going nowhere". Microsoft was the LOUDEST critic, sinking its fortune into CDROM instead (and I know that doesn't seem to make sense- but it is absolutely true). Obviously, a few years later, MS did a 180, but only when they could no longer deny how wrong they had been.
The Internet is unique because it is people driven. The usual filth played no part in its success at all. Now, this same filth sees the Internet like the Spanish saw the New World- as an undefended land of riches to be plundered. In America, Data Caps = 'rape', 'pillage', 'enslavement' and 'genocide'. But filth like Powell don't care, any more than the Spanish did, so long as his side gets some short term gain. To continue the analogy, it is notable that South America went historically to hell, compared to North America.
No caps mean, if you give people CHOICE for the first time in most American States, that people will pay to use the company whose policies match their usage. No caps mean very cheap monthly services will exist with caps (and NO, that is NOT a contradiction), and somewhat more expensive services will exist where 'unlimited' means customers own level of usage, along with sane traffic management policies, will define the quality of the service. New companies will arise if existing companies become lax offering what customers want/need/expect/can be given with state-of-the-art network tech.
More importantly, no caps mean that the tremendous level of innovation on the Internet (creating new services with new revenue streams) will continue unabated. This innovation is LOATHED by the filth by the filth that currently bribes your politicians, because it represents COMPETITION.
Will there be refunds of cash or bandwidth of for things like:
1) Cached content in the ISP
2) Banner Ads/Pop ups
3) Promoted content by media companies (trailers/promoted music videos/anything on myspace or facebook)
4) Content served by the Internet provider like cable tv on tablets?
No, this is bad and wrong. Network access is a resource unlike electricity and water. If you don't use water today, the water will be there tomorrow. If you don't use electricity today, they can run power plants at lower capacity and save fuel for later.
Network access is different. Bits transferred today have absolutely no effect on your ability to transfer bits tomorrow. Any bandwidth that goes unused is wasted. Charging for bits discourages people from using bandwith, and encourages waste. Bad and wrong.
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This must more of that "free market" behavior we keep hearing about.
Notice how lobbyists always seem to have a "better idea" about how the "free market" should work.
This is just more corporate greed. They see what appears to be lots of free activity and just can't stand it. They have to find a way to monetize it.
This irritates me as much as the phrase "In order to serve you better..."
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
We all agree we want these things, so why aren't we working harder to make them available? When we wanted to go to the moon, we did. So here we are and we want free Internet. Seriously, compared to the moon that's nothing. And entire generation of scientists said FU to gravity and we can't even transfer a bit of data without charging an arm and a leg for it like it's the most precious thing in the universe? When did we start giving up so easily? Maybe it was when somebody realized there was money to be made in scarcity...
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Ponder this for a moment, dear industry: When I have to pay by the byte that reaches me, I'll monitor CLOSELY what bytes I get. So I will make sure that no ad banner, no ad flash, no navigation flash, no tracking cookie, no ... you name it I won't accept that I get it. You'll see a whole new era of filtering, even and especially from people who didn't mind the ads and the nuisance so far, because until now it only gets on their nerves. With that proposed change, it gets on their wallet. And while people are willing to put up with a lot, as soon as they notice that they could save a nickel by jumping a hoop, they'll do it. And that hoop will probably be filtering software.
I also foresee how we'll get services that do that for you, from countries that are not on the meter (and that cannot be hit with the near certain ban on such services), where they provide proxies that strip all the "unwanted" information out of the content (so it doesn't clog your pipe, something that would even with the best filters probably be unavoidable). So far such a service isn't viable, considering it would have to charge for something you can do yourself for free (if you bother at all), but with a metered line and being able to provide it fairly cheaply (which is far from impossible), this can easily take off. Not to mention that in this time and age of total surveillance the information where people surf to and when, and how long they stay there and what they do there, is money by itself.
And now I have to wonder, is that really what you want? Customers you cannot track sensibly anymore, whose browsing habits you cannot sell, because all their traffic is going encrypted to one single IP outside the country?
Not to mention that then customers will take a closer look at your "overhead" and wonder why 10-20% of their bandwidth is being wasted on ... on whatever the hell those "cable" connections waste it on.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Data capping is not only about money
It is also about restricting the spreading of information
True, nowadays most of the data flow online are leisure vids (netflix, youtube et all) but ... critical vids, such as the ones that we got from area of conflicts, such as Syria, also consume up lots of data
Capping of the data could restrict the spread of information as well
Let's say there is something happening that the power-that-be does not want others to know, and it was an emergency and they did not have time to cut off the net feed ...
Without data capping anyone with a net-enable smartphone can upload the critical vids and perhaps store it in an online cloud somewhere
With data capping the power-that-be can, theoretically, get the ISP to stop the flow (even if they can't cut the net feed)
Never trust the intention of the power-that-be
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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.