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."

Comments

Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[symbolset]

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.

Re:Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[mfh]

Google wants us to have 1gbps so we can pump our information to them faster. The more information Google can get from everyone, the more they know about existence from the perspective of a futurist deity, which could be a very powerful tool in years to come when we're trying to figure out what to do about all the problems our predecessors have left us with.

Re:Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[sneakyimp]

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.

Re:Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[deathcloset]

Shut up and take my data!

Re:Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[ackthpt]

I'd say the monopolies need to end. They were granted at the time to encourage investment (ha!) and a return on for the rolling out of services. We are a decade past this in much of the urban landscape, but they actually want caps on these pokey little connections they have deigned to give us. Fibre Optic is nearing doorsteps, finally, in my neighborhood and all they have to offer is 24Mbs... Really. That's the best you can do AT&T? This doesn't sound like investment, it stinks like milking a geriatric cow.

Re:Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[girlintraining]

I'd say the monopolies need to end.

Since the FCC seems to be the source of all these problems, we need to bypass them and form a wireless citizen-based infrastructure. Because the FCC won't take kindly to being shut out and unable to excercise regulatory control over it, it will have to be resistant to triangulation.

Fortunately, our military has already provided the path to this future; The communications systems onboard our stealth bombers. They use ultra wide band transmitters (UWB) and rapid frequency hopping technology on the order of around 300,000 times a second. By syncronizing a pair of PRNGs (Pseudo Random Number Generator), you can create a symbol matrix that adds +1 or -1 to the digital signal; effectively an XOR mask. The reconstructed signal can then operate at near the noise floor, and without knowing the PRNG seed, you will only get a lot of multiple-source noise -- there's no way to separate out individual very low power emissions and source them out. This is how GPS operates. Combine software defined radio with a bunch of FPGAs for front-end processing and you've got yourself a wireless digital transmitter suitable for use in a citizen-based mesh network.

Now, is unregulated wireless a good idea? No. It's a very bad idea. But if you weigh out the costs of allowing businesses to dictate terms to the FCC, who has totally lost their way with regard to their primary mission: Serving the people, with the costs of raising the noise floor by a not inconsiderable degree and potentially impacting wireless services worldwide... I think a substantial and growing minority would agree this may be the only way to solve all these problems of internet surveillance, privacy, and corporate control of most of our natural resources (which includes the EM spectrum).

Re:Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[symbolset]

The cost of the SFP+ module is nothing against the cost of burying 500km of fiber. Those fibers used to carry 1Mbps when they were laid in the trenches, and were almost all dark. Now they can carry 200,000 Mbps, and they're still almost all dark. At the current pace of progress there is no reason to believe most of it will ever need to be lit up.

Google is putting in the fiber in KC and so far there are no complaints about oversubscription. Google designs and manufactures their own switches, fabrics and ports - as anyone pulling that volume should do, so they aren't paying retail prices, markup and all that jazz. It's not even proper Ethernet. Perhaps Google is using a better fanout than you are thinking, also, with 200Gbps links to the neighborhood. They claim to be turning a profit with $70/mo unmetered, unfiltered, uncapped symmetric gigabit fiber to the door. Why don't you ask Google how they're pulling that off when these cable companies claim they'll go broke if their subscribers saturate the measly 15-30Mbps they're given.

Also, Google is manufacturing the fiber terminal switch and wifi router, the set-top box, the tablet. They didn't just buy Motorola for the phones.

Re: Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[guruevi]

But regardless of whether you have dial-up or OC-48, the data centers need to run, the lines need to be laid, the peering needs to be done. It doesn't cost any more to pass 1MB or 1000MB. Bandwidth costs real money, individual data transfers do not, the hardware is agnostic to whom, what and to an extent even where you are transporting bits.

In a datacenter you do not buy per MB. You buy per Mbps or Gbps or even simply to terminate a point-to-point fiber connection (where you are yourself responsible as to what hardware hangs on both sides).

For home and most business connections you can indeed oversell. Even in data centers you can oversell but less than a home connection. Currently ISP's like TWC are overselling 10,000:1. So they are SELLING 10Mbps of bandwidth for each 1 kbps they have peered towards others. This is possible since most consumers only burst data and local caching helps a lot. TWC currently implements DOCSIS, you can easily sell 100Mbps or even 10Gbps to a consumer with minimal hardware investments, plenty of headroom over urban coax, they don't NEED to upgrade their lines in the next 2 decades and the current infrastructure has been in place for the last 3. Fiber has virtually infinite bandwidth, once invested you NEVER need to upgrade it anymore.

Re: Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[Lumpy]

Does it cost less when 0 bytes per second are flowing or if it's at capacity?

I can tell you, the Same $10.000 a month is charged if it's running at full capacitiy or if it's sitting there unused. Therefore the amount of data transferred HAS NO COST, it is essentially free, the cost is for instantaneous bandwidth availability.

Re: Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[Anonymous Coward]

In a datacenter you do not buy per MB. You buy per Mbps or Gbps or even simply to terminate a point-to-point fiber connection

This x 1000. There are a growing number of providers that offer a 1 Gbps dedicated line with a 100TB monthly transfer limit for $200/month. This includes server rental or rack rent, power, and keeping your gear on a UPS with generator backup, and fuel contracts that will keep you running at least two weeks in the event of a severe power outage. There's no way the consumer-level ISPs are going to convince me that it's just too expensive for them to give people more a terabyte on a 50 megabit line for $50/month, even factoring in the last-mile plant costs.

Re: Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[mysidia]

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.

You've got it wrong. It's not DATA TRANSFER that is expensive. It is CONCURRENT DEMAND that is expensive.

Suppose I want to download 1 Terabytes of data and upload 1 Terabytes of data.

It will have A VERY DIFFERENT COST for the service provider, if I insist on fully utilizing my 30 megabit link to demand 100% of its throughput for that transfer during peak hours, than if I Spread out my file transfers over a longer period of time, and I structure my demand for capacity, so that it falls at times other than the peak usage hours for their network.

Or if I run that 1TB transfer at 5 Megabit per second 24x7 on my 30 megabit link.

It will take me 20 days worth of time to move that file.

Now, you can't possibly tell me that this costs the provider just as much as me maxing out my connection 24x7 for 3 days to move all 1TB at 30 Megabits/S down and 30Megabits/S up.

Which one do you think REALLY matters to the network?

CAPACITY DEMAND or data usage?

Re:Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[symbolset]

Peak bandwidth is the rate at which data is delivered. Putting a monthly cap on data transfer reduces the average monthly bandwidth but not the peak. Remember the old adage: never understimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes. There are 2,419,200 seconds in February. Divide a 50 gigabyte cap by 2,419,200 seconds and you get an average monthly bandwidth of roughly 160kbps. About 3x dialup. Barely even broadband. Before you make fun of this math, I used to pass this much data in the 1980's, buying and aggregating new lines to meet growing real bandwidth needs as an ISP.

90% of users never get anywhere near even this cap. So what they're trying to do is to keep the actual utilization of broadband down even below saturation of dialup would do. There are two possible reasons for this:

• They choose not to invest in the backhaul to support the actual evolution of usage over the last 15 years, even though that backhaul is fiber and it costs them only a few hundred thousand dollars a city to upgrade their endpoints and switching to adapt to the improvements in technology that move data 100,000x faster over their backhaul.

• They are invested in content providers who sell and deliver their streaming video time-fixed content over coax, and the content itself, advertising networks and agencies, and the established relationships involved. A transition to an all IP-based TV would be a disaster to their other assets.

I'm willing to bet the answer is the latter, not the former.

Re: Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[bobwalt]

Yah, Well I live in Santa Clara, California and our power is provided by Silicon Valley Power a municipal power company owned by the city. My rates are the lowest in California and lower than many places in the country. Their service is better than the other power providers and a large portion of it comes from renewable sources. So perhaps the old whine about how terrible the government is doesn't seem to fit.

Re: Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[unitron]

The customers of municipally operated Greenlight in Wilson, NC don't seem too unhappy with their service.

Time-Warner's unhappy about it, of course.

You say Comcast knows they have to compete with AT&T.

Are you talking cable versus DSL, or cable versus cable in the same neighborhood?

Most places you have a choice of between 0 and 1 cable companies from which to choose, and your phone wiring may or may not be new enough and close enough to the central office for DSL to be a viable alternative to cable internet.

Re: Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[symbolset]

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.

Re: Help us Google Fiber! You're our only hope.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

eh

[buddyglass]

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.

Re:I actually don't see much wrong with this.

[avelyn]

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.

Flies in the face of online distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Massive Profits, Miserable Service -

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

You'll notice what he said

[rsilvergun]

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.

He's an idiot

[MetricT]

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.

Artificial Scarcity of Freedom.

[deathcloset]

To me "Bandwidth caps" means "Internet limits". To me "Internet" means "freedom of information": Anyone who can hold sand in their hand can see what I'm inferring.

Artificial scarcity may be my least favorite of all the artificial things.

Problem in Search of a Solution

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.)

does not work the other way around

[themushroom]

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.

Re:does not work the other way around

[Lije Baley]

Exactly. Tell them they can have usage-based billing for internet when we get all our programming ala carte. That'll shut them up.

So what?

[rsilvergun]

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...

A dangerous side effect on data capping

[Taco Cowboy]

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