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Apple Reportedly In Talks With Comcast For Separate Apple Streaming Path
An anonymous reader writes "Apple is reportedly in talks with Comcast to obtain a network pathway dedicated to live and on-demand programming for subscribers of unspecified Apple services. In other words, Apple traffic would be separated from the rest of the public's internet traffic. This deal is different from the one Netflix made with Comcast in that Apple is reportedly asking for separate traffic in the path from Comcast facilities to consumer homes; the Netflix deal only gains Netflix direct access to the Comcast network. While net neutrality rules no longer restrict ISPs from monetizing their traffic prioritization, Comcast is still bound in that respect until 2018 as part of the conditions for its acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011."
This is how the internet dies : Toll roads.
The floodgate of pay to play has been unleashed.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
There's no 'separate pathway' over a single line. Are they talking about QoS?
Omeganon
There is just no way our honorable representatives are going to let some monopolistic shite like this get shoved down our throats.
The rest of you voted for the honest candidate...Right?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I'm sure we'll see a rush to judgment that these deals are the end of network neutrality, blah, blah. From the outside looking in, we don't really know what added value is being provided to the content providers. Quite possibly, likely in my view, Comcast is providing CDN services to Netflix, and may be doing so for Apple as well. If so, there are benefits all around, in terms of Comcast, Netflix and reducing backbone congestion. A CDN is quite different from a toll road.
Furthermore, the Internet as we know it today would not be able to function without CDNs. The only people who would be empowered would be those conducting DDOS attacks.
Private lines from Apple to Comcast endpoints, just like what Akamai, etc do
http://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/the-facts-about-xfinity-tv-and-xbox-360-comcast-is-not-prioritizing
According to the article Apple wants something much like what Microsoft got except that, as Apple did with phones, they want to do it without Comcast providing the apps.
How about no.
How about Comcast get broken up for being a monopoly, and it's "acquistion" of Time Warner be denied.
This isn't Fernginar.
Stop businesses from operating like Ferengi "capitalists"
I'm not sure if I'm reading it right, but it feels like:
1. Get dedicated wires laid down by Comcast for you;
2. Start with Apple-only services on your new national network that Comcast gladly laid down for you;
3. A bit later, start offering general Internet services through your brand new national network that Comcast can't take away from you no matter how much they scream in horror;
4. Be ahead of Google Fiber in term of reach, since Comcast were so helpful in helping you compete with them;
5. Profit!
Did I miss anything?
Question for religious people: where do unrepentant masochists go when they die?
I, for one, applaud Apple's forward thinking innovation and dedication to providing excellent and swift service to their customers.
This is the quality of support you get when you actually compensate companies for their work, you self entitled freetards!
Comcast would have a vested interest in having customers use Apple's services.
Lawsuit on line 1...
Best Slashdot Co
CDNs are exactly the same as a toll road. There is limited bandwidth over the wires and in this case Comcast is going to be bumping some other content providers off the road in order to make way for Apple exclusive use.
I wonder if troll roads is where IPv6 will start make headway?
leave IPv4 for the unwashed masses and all
What is being glossed over when the CEOs come out and say that Netflix and other content providers want a "free ride" is that it isn't Comcast that is paying for this network infrastructure and their customers aren't their property... We the customers are paying for this network infrastructure with our money and we are being told we are getting a level of bandwidth service to the "Internet".
For CEOs of Comcast and Verizon to demand that Netflix or others raise their prices and pass along those price increases to the customers of Verizon and Comcast if they want to connect to these networks is fundamentally a dishonest argument for fairness since it is the customers of Verizon and Comcast that want to access these Internet services in the first place and it is the Verizon and Comcast customers that are already paying both companies in order to do so.
It is way past time for government regulation. Either at the state, federal or local level to demand net neutrality. And if localities can't impose net neutrality in their licensing, permit or franchise agreements because the big companies have bought off the Feds again, then municipalities should just put up their own wires.
Customers like end-users content providers pay for bandwidth access. And Netflix for example and it's users are customers are due what they have paid for. Anything else is extortion. Seriously, why dangle higher speeds in front of customers if you aren't allowing them to use it? Don't sell what you have no intention of supporting. Paying a third time for extra guaranteed bandwidth is nothing but extortion when you are threatening the content providers income.
The new Tivo Roamio pretty much does this already. Pay $2.50 / month for a cable card and use the Tivo box directly. It integrates with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime video and others as well as live tv. You can search for programs on all services at the same time and choose where you watch it (or if you will buy it from Amazon). It's pretty much awesome.
I get the "everything on demand" that Apple is shooting for is slightly different, but the bulk of this fight has already been fought by Tivo for you.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
This is very sad news indeed. The internet was founded on an open, neutral platform. This is just pure and simple greed on the part of Big Telecom. I will chalk the defeat of net neutrality up to another one of the Obama Administration's growing list of failures. By that same token, I think a Republican would have failed equally. The U.S. political system is broken and dysfunctional.
it's a duck.
Calling it a 'managed service' feels like a sham.
But I bet their lawyers can make seem it just fine.
And the folks supposedly watching the store will let it happen.
Possible solutions:
1) Municipal broadband
2) Common carrier monopoly status for these monopolies
3) Defined Internet exchanges with equal access to the exchange for both the content provider and the customer.
4) Perhaps a combination of all of the above where the community runs the exchange.
What's really going on here is that Comcast (and the other cable companies) realize that some/most/all of their current subscriber base is eventually going to "cut the cable" and go with internet-based TV and free broadcast TV. It's easier than you think if you have an Apple TV or Roku or some such.
What Comcast is doing is trying to find a way to keep their revenue up when they're not hauling in boatloads on the Cable TV side of the ledger. When content providers are paying for bits, then Comcast has a revenue stream to replace the revenue lost when someone cuts their cable.
For "fJUDalism" to contiue in the Jew-Nited States of Amerika http://corporate.comcast.com/n...
INDIRECT toll roads, where charges vary by car manufacturer or the brand of fuel inside them, or some other nonsense. If it were only toll roads, paid by all the users as they use it, it really wouldn't be a problem at all. (IMHO that would be downright good news for everyone, and we can only hope we're able to get to such a situation.) It's the bundling and attempts change at what point a person makes a decision about when to pay for bandwidth, to obscure costs and control who can cost-effectively particate, that is so ugly here.
Bill me, not the people who made my HTPC (Apple, in this story's case). Charge me the road's toll, not Chevy or Chevron. We need the numbers foremost, not obscured (and almost certainly inflated as a result of being freed of market forces).
If there's a cap, no party's traffic should ever be exempt from it. No party's traffic should be billed at a different rate. (If there are different rates, it ought to be based on stuff like QoS, time-of-day, and so on -- actual cost/congestion factors.)
If your local power utility sold appliances that were exempt from KWH charges (or made deals with certain manufacturers so that their appliances were exempt), nobody would be fooled by such obvious bullshit or think the appliances in question were "great deals." Everyone would be demanding that the government either stop enforcing the monopoly, or else prohibit such behavior.
This is blatantly corrupt, and at a minimum, needs to become a violation of franchise terms.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
CDNs are not like a toll road. Think of them as a carpool parking lot. Data is cached within the provider (Comcast), that way it isn't congesting Comcast's transit network. Delivery to the end user *should* be the same priority as anything else. (Doing otherwise is not net neutrality, bad, etc)
They're an easily controlled single point of failure for tracking AND controlling what others see too. Why not tell the ENTIRE truth of it?
It costs X to provision and maintain internet service, you charge Y > X to a customer every month, and you clear Y-X in profit. Why is this so fucking difficult?
I've always viewed Apple afficionados as having an overly inflated sense of self-superiority to everyone else in tech matters, but I've always chalked it up to self-justification for the premium they pay up for Apple products and their patented rectangles. If their premium goes instead towards taking bandwidth away from me or bidding up the cost to me, then I may no longer be able to resist my ever present urge to take their iWhatever and "accidentally" drop it in a toilet.
Before you stick your head back in the sand, Apple has reportedly said the negotiations with Comcast are NOT about prioritization of traffic but have to do instead with dramatically reducing buffering. (And Apple was originally negotiating with Time Warner Cable, before Comcast interrupted by acquiring TWC.) Apple is apparently looking provide a quality of Internet streaming service that the world has never seen. Imagine being able to channel-surf faster than ever before.
CDNs = single point of failure for tracking + controlling what we see online too. Why not tell the ENTIRE truth of it? Is it because you're being PAID BY COMCAST not to?? Now please - Don't even *try* tell me THAT doesn't go on: I used to work @ cablevision's NOC and yes, they have "special shills" to reply online to ANYTHING about CableVision (no other employees are allowed to), and part of WHY they give you free cable (also for control of that aspect of their shilling crap too).
in the future, bandwidth will be worth way more than it is now. everyone should be smart enough to not sell any of their bandwidth, and by 2018 apple will probably have gone down in success and the cost will have gone dramatically up.
We are good until then.
Then it all falls apart.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I am libertarian. A free market requires competition to remain free. The market for the last mile telecoms is not competitive. Most local markets are served by one telecom or maybe two. Whether monopoly is the result of free market competition or a natural monopoly is irrelevant. When a market becomes or is becoming monopolistic it becomes necessary to regulate. Of course regulation often backfires, so there is a difference between good regulation that results in more competition with better economic results and bad regulation which usually does nothing but freeze the status quo.