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AT&T Exec Calls Netflix "Arrogant" For Expecting Net Neutrality
jayp00001 (267507) writes "'As we all know, there is no free lunch, and there’s also no cost-free delivery of streaming movies. Someone has to pay that cost. Mr. Hastings' arrogant proposition is that everyone else should pay but Netflix. That may be a nice deal if he can get it. But it's not how the Internet, or telecommunication for that matter, has ever worked,' writes AT&T Senior Executive Vice President of Legislative Affairs, James Cicconi. Mr. Cicconi took issue with a blog post from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on the importance of net neutrality.
Your customers pay you, as their provider, Netflix pays their provider, and it's between you and their provider to determine who, if anyone, pays who, based on the flow of traffic.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
"But it's not how the Internet, or telecommunication for that matter, has ever worked,' Hasn't that how the internet has been? If someone calls me to play a song they wrote over the phone should they pay a fee to provide me that entertainment over the phone?
Sent from my TARDIS
I suspect they're cutting a check every month to someone for their internet connections.
Doesn't my monthly ISP bill pay for that delivery already?
What exactly does my cable bill give me then, if not access to services on the web?
The consumer is paying for it. That's why we pay the bill, and that's how ISP's make billions. That's how it has always worked. AT&T apparently is cheesed off about not getting two bites of the apple.
that we DON'T double or triple charge for the same bits being transported. I laid these wires with my bare hands! Signing papers is hard work! My yacht won't pay for itself!
for thinking the general public is so stupid as he.
I'm pretty sure I don't get free internet. And I'm also pretty sure that Netflix pays for it's internet service. The networks just want everyone to pay more, after using up free money from the government to build their infrastructure.
I don't pay you to provide me only the cheap internet, I pay you to provide me the entire internet. I don't pay Netflix to do that, I pay YOU to do that.
So YOU are the one that has to build the internet to provide me the service that YOU pro missed to supply me. No, you can't blackmail other people I do business with to help out. I have already paid you, you can't charge them for services I already paid for.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I'm already paying AT&T to deliver Netflix. Seems to me the carriers expect to be paid twice for the same service, once by the source (Netflix) and once by the destination (me).
The user already pays for it, both to AT&T and Netflix.
Bandwidth isn't
there is no free lunch, and there’s also no cost-free delivery of streaming movies. Someone has to pay that cost.
So the $80 a month I pay my ISP goes to what exactly? Oh, riiight... All those rural infrastructure improvements you've fought tooth and nail against. Got it.
Guess what, Jimmy? Without the likes of Netflix, we have no use for your "internet" that goes nowhere. Perhaps you could go read up on this idea on your Compuserve account.
In a bit of a clever public relations dance, Cogent has issued a press release stating that while the company refuses to pay companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast new peering tolls, they will pay the costs incurred by those companies to ensure there's adequate capacity at interconnection points. Cogent has been at the heart of more than a few debates over settlement-free peering, usually when the levels of traffic exchanged aren't equal. ...
The customer pays for the client end. Netflix and other companies pay for the server end.
But the greedy pigs at AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc. want to gouge people by triple-dipping with fees for the middle.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
His comment shows exactly where these ISPs want to take the internet.
It's not about paying for an internet connection so you can get what you want... no no.
They want you to pay for an internet connection to get what they want to give you.
And what about the incredibly high fees the carriers and ISP's ALREADY charge the consumers while restricting our consumption of data? What's more arrogant? Netflix expecting to be able to deliver their content over pipes ALREADY PAID FOR by us consumers, or that carriers expect subsidies and fees from everyone else while providing no real value to the consumer for those highway-robbery fees charged by them and, in fact, provide less value year over year while continuing to increase rates and lower caps?
Hmm. Guess which side I'm on?
But isnt that what access fee to carriers like AT&T are for? Isnt that why they charge more for faster speeds and some charge more for the total data transmitted monthly?
I am not sure that either A) he has thought his argument through from a consumer perspective, or b) he has a clue
Oh wait, no they are not, because Fed Ex is not run by greedy idiots trying to charge twice for one service.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I'm paying for Internet access. Not specifically WWW, FTP or any other specific service that runs on it.
AT&T has quite the sack to go on record with this statement. I can only assume they hope other ISP's will get on board and try to somehow make this an acceptable thought process. A few points...
1) Where the consumer goes on the internet is their own business.
2) If the consumer is using more bandwidth then your business model allows, adjust your rates to the consumer to match.
3) You can't build a toll road between a gambler and the city of Vegas and then charge both the gambler and Vegas for their travel.
This is the problem with removing net neutrality: the service providers will be double-dipping. Each endpoint pays a service provider for a certain level of connection to THE ENTIRE INTERNET, and the only speed limitations should be the lowest level of upstream/downstream bandwidth paid for by one endpoint or another.
Without this "hands off" approach, service providers can say "pay us for a certain amount of speed accessing THE ENTIRE INTERNET" and then say to Netflix or others "pay us to be allowed to send to our customer at a certain level of speed, even though you've already paid another provider for the same thing." That means that the end customers ARE NOT receiving what they paid for unless the sender pays the tariff.
This should absolutely be fought tooth and nail, because in the end ALL costs fall upon the end consumer. I, for one, would be more than willing to set up something at my end that helps Netflix host its streams in a distributed fashion as is done with torrent downloads.
Netflix should charge back whatever fees they pay to Comcast back to their customers that view content via Comcast. This lets the customer see the true cost of their ISP.
Why should users of Google and other ISPs that don't charge fees to Netflix subsidize Comcast subscribers?
I would like to introduce Mr. Cicconi to a device called a 'Telephone', particularly a variant colloquially termed a 'landline'. Historically 'telephone' companies, such as AT&T, would sell users a 'landline' to which they could connect a 'telephone'. These services included a basic connection charge as well as usage charges. In the event that a connection was made form one 'landline' to another, the party that initiated the session was charged for the usage of the session. This is exactly the treatment that Mr. Hastings is proposing.
In particular, I would like to note that while some providers charged users based upon usage, other providers allowed for a fixed cost plan where the subscriber paid a flat payment independent of their usage. These sorts of unlimited plans are exactly what AT&T, Comcast, etc. are selling as an ISP to their customers now, so they have no business trying to extract usage fees from Netflix and they have no business telling us that we're asking non-Netflix customers to subsidize the connections of Netflix customers. We've paid the fees that AT&T, Comcast, etc. demand for unlimited usage, so they need to provide it without whining about how they're not getting paid twice for the same service.
I believe it's about the data caps. Netflix wants them removed, AT&T basically says that users going over 150GB/month should foot the bill for infrastructure upgrades (as opposite to *all users* including those that do just e-mail and light web browsing). Seems fair to me.
As an American, I really get tired of billionaires arguing with millionaires about money.... All that happens is I get screwed.
- the US has fallen from 16th in 2012 to 31st in 2014 for broadband speed...
- pro sports tickets are almost unaffordable to the average person
- US healthcare is the most expensive per capita in the developed world and is ranked 33 for infant mortality
We need to get of this 'we;re great, capitalism solves everything' fox news mantra and look at what's actually happening.
Otherwise, at some point, there's going to be just 2 jobs left in the US. The guy who owns everything and they guy who cleans his toilet.
Dear AT&T, Cox, Verizon, etc. You seem to be missing the point. It is YOUR CUSTOMERS who want net neutrality. I don't think I am alone in saying I want to be able to use the bandwidth you sell me, and to be able to use it as I please. And I'm not talking about running a server or doing anything illegal. You are so, so lucky that there is no viable competition to your local duopolies. I think it is time that we (the voting tax payers that make your companies possible) work on that. I don't think you will be happy with the result once we get angry enough as a group to take action. If you compare the state of home and business internet service in the US to countries like South Korea or Latvia, to name only two, our current system is clearly not working, so it is time to try something else. Go ahead, keep gouging us while you can, I guess, 'cause ya ain't gonna like what is further down the road.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Stupid arrogant fucktard, Netflix already *PAYS* for their internet connectivity, so of course they expect net neutrality. It's the law you fucking retard (fucktard).
So, it's arrogant to expect you to conform to the law? Really? How about this, let's just have the Federal Government nationalize everything you own since you cannot follow the rules, and fines do nothing to make you conform, so let's just put you out of business, and all the *officers* of the company can spend hard time in Levenworth for their own arrogance.
Yeah, that sounds like the proper punishment for AT&T's illegal antics.
I suppose that in addition to paying for his groceries then he should pay the trucking company that delivers them to the store? I don't think anyone wants a free lunch. We want what we're already paying for without being charged twice.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong here but the way I see it is Netflix already pays an ISP for its access to upload and download data and the end users already pay their ISP access to upload and download data. Both ends of the connection are already paid for, charging anything on top of this is basically charging for the same service twice. Netflix and the ISP's share the same customers, charging Netflix more means they'll pass the charges on to their customers this basically amounts to the ISP's increasing their prices/revenue by artificially restricting the supply.
For example if the ISP made a deal with Netflix that they can utilize X bandwidth at a rate of $Y/GB then Netflix is already paying for the data it sends. Putting another condition on that data and saying that you have to pay $Y+Z/GB if the data is providing something to customers is just a BS way of raising the price for businesses when it's not costing the ISP a dime more than any other data.
Senior Executive Vice President of Legislative Affairs thinks that some other company is not playing fair.
Apparently there is no free lunch, unless you're Ma Bell and have the resources to influence fucking Congress.
Google Fiber, meet Netflix. Netflix, Google Fiber. Amazon Web Services, you in? Apple?
It's time to start more overbuilding. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, Comcast or whoever already has the lines and could bump up to 300Mb plans for $50 at almost no additional cost (making them hard to compete against). But, until you build (and build at a much faster rate than the current Google Fiber projects), this is only going to get worse. You're currently dependent on not just a quasi-monopolist monster, but a wounded and irrational monster (because their TV profits are hurting). You have to bypass them.
It's ugly, I know. There will be communities with roadblocks (overbuilding is supposedly legal everywhere since the Telecom Act of 1996, but reality isn't so pretty). Sad, but true. We'll end up bypassing those communities, too. In every community that welcomes you, BUILD. Fiber is nice, but if you have to go DOCSIS/HFC (fiber to the block/neighborhood) with a better upstream split frequency because of cost, build that... coax is under-rated. But build. You can train high school students to lay coax. You can leverage massive discounts for buying 30 million identical ONUs. Build. Please. For the good of the country and the internet.
What they use it for is their business
They are already paid by the end user and by the distributors like Netflix, who pay for their bandwidth usage. What the carriers want is to be paid three times.
Someone in the industry correct me if I am wrong, but my local POTS phone company does not charge the long-distance provider for access to their network.
The argument that other people are paying for my Netflix is absurd. If looked at that way, I am paying for their whatever they use... unless they don't use their connection in general, in which case they are paying for my last-mile service as well (notice: the last-mile provider doesn't want to change that).
What they are proposing is eliminating the internet and replacing it with a group of somewhat interconnected WANs operated by Verizon, TWC / Comcast, AT&T, etc)
As consumers, we pay for internet access to get the content we are interested in, not the content the ISP can make the most money delivering. If AT&T wants the content providers which are what drives consumers to subscribe to pay for the bandwidth it takes to provide than content, then AT&T should not be charging the consumer for delivering the content at the same time. It is quite simple, the telecom providers want to be paid twice for delivering the content; by the consumer and by the provider. It is purely greed and until the regulatory agencies are given the power to correct it, it will get worse for both provider and consumer.
As a Netflix customer who doesn't have to use AT&T, I strongly agree with your proposition.
I pay you $68/month for my broadband internet.
I don't give a damn about your whiny bitching, you deliver my content. If Netflix is the content I want, you !@#$ deliver it.
Playing these BS games is just you being greedy !@#$s.
The fact that my internet bill went from $35 --> $68 a month in a period of 7 years pretty much tells me you're just a bunch of greedy fucks.
So at this point, I am of the opinion we need to file a class action lawsuit against you for not delivering what we paid for.
And yes, your contract stating that said performance may not be available at all times, I don't think that will protect you. Because IMHO that's a good faith clause, that says hey sometimes shit happens. Sometimes bandwidth or connection will be down.
But in no way does that give you the excuse to have 0% uptime for providing service. And that's what you've been doing with your games.
Guess what AT&T, the Feds want their money back - you know, the millions they paid out for you to improve your infrastructure, those same millions that you gave your execs as bonuses while doing nothing to improve your infrastructure.
Yeah, those millions. While we're at it, they're going to revoke your licenses to be in the communications business, that includes cable, internet, cellular and phone service nationwide.. Why you ask? Well, it's due to your own arrogance and incompetence. You pissed away resources to improve your status, doubled and tripled the cost for communications and now have the temerity to ask content providers to pay you to deliver data that they've already paid to have delivered, that your customers have already paid you to deliver...
Sorry Charlie, but you can't do that. That's extortion and blackmail, that puts you (along with Comcast, Verizon, Time-Warner) up for Rico Act violations, please enjoy your time in prison and your loss of all infrastructure, patents and copyrights, you'll have nothing left.
The good of the people will prevail.
That I have paid $68/month to use at a given speed. And they are refusing me...and no there really isn't a capacity issue in most places. It's a bullshit greedy ass mo fo issue.
why is everyone so surprised and outraged? this is business doing what business does: maximizing profits. if there's no law saying they can't, they will. they are actually doing what they are supposed to be doing. if they weren't doing this, their board of directors should be fired. if you want to be mad at something, be mad at your representatives for not passing a law.
Liar.
They're also the reason we're willing to pay $70/month for internet.
But it's not how the Internet, or telecommunication for that matter, has ever worked
It's not how you ever wanted the internet to have worked. There. Fixed that for you.
Netflix announces that Comcast customer's (and only Comcast customer's) rates will go up $2/month.
And I don't think it is Netflix
I'm somewhat sympathetic to the ISPs issues.
1) Internet connectivity at the end user level is oversold. AT&T (comcast, timewarner, google fiber, [insert your ISP here]) does not charge in such a way that every single user can have 100% unfettered access to your bandwidth all simultaneously. It's just the way it works
2) Netflix may pay their ISP for their bandwidth usage.
Here's the disconnect. Netflix's ISP and [insert your consumer ISP here] do not share the same network. Thus at some point, the two ISPs have to cross some barrier. Now if all of [insert your consumer ISP here]'s customers are simultaneously connecting to Netflix at the exact same time for primetime hours, who's responsibility is it to ensure that the peering arrangement is fair? Does the consumer ISP need to pay to make sure that the peering relationship is such that all their users have the ability to stream from Netflix unfettered? Considering 1) above, is this fair to the ISP? They could do so, but to maintain their existing cost structure it'd likely mean that they may have a smaller pipe to another peer. Is it fair to users using those other peers or do they also have simply make sure ALL of their peers are able to fully pass 100% of traffic unfettered at peak times?
The simple answer is, if you expect the consumer ISP to allow full bandwidth to all of these sites, it's going to significantly raise the cost of bandwidth per end user. So we're complaining that consumer ISPs are demanding money from Netflix, but the alternative is to demand more money from the end user or eat the costs. We know eat the costs is never an option in the US market system :). So where's the money coming from? If the consumer ISP started charging people more for this, people bitch about being charged more rather than bitch about crappy Netflix.
Perhaps Netflix's tier 1 should pay for a larger peering pipe to the consumer ISP. But where's that money coming from? They're going to increase Netflix's rates, but even then, the consumer ISP would have to have the proper equipment to handle the larger peering pipe.
I don't really agree with the entirety of either Netflix or the consumer ISP (AT&Ts) arguments, but peering bandwidth has always been a balancing act, especially with multiple networks you have to peer with. This is why we have CDNs to begin with, and CDNs are paid for by the content producer, and they in turn either pay the consumer ISP to host their gear, or work with the consumer ISP to come up with a mutually beneficial decision. In some cases, the reduced bandwidth flowing through the peering reduces the ISPs costs that they can justify hosting the CDN equipment without asking for any money.
I do agree that it's wrong for a consumer ISP to purposefully lopside their peering arrangements to hurt a competitor, just like I agree that there's nothing wrong with the notion of paying an ISP to host a CDN appliance. Given our lobbying system, do you really think that net neutrality legislation will even begin to address the many nuanced aspects of this issue?
We have fascism, that is a close relationship between big industry and government, and a two class heirarchy.
That is what we have, it is not capitalism. If it were capitalism, then Comcast and AT&T wouldn't have received millions in subsidies to build out their networks. If it was capitalism, then anyone could start a wireless business. We do NOT have a capitalist system.
They think they know it. The truth is this....Telecoms and ISP's cannot keep up with the demand of content providers, especially when any yocal with a celly can now be a content provider. It takes years and gobs of cash to upgrade a network, and before you finish upgrading the network you have to start upgrading the network AGAIN. It never ends. The networks in many cases cannot handle the spike in capacity that we've seen in the past few years which is why now Net Neutrality is a talking point. The pressure is on the telcos to get networks on pace and they cannot do it without more money. Otherwise, everyone will have to wait There is nothing Neutral about Net Neutrality. Just like 'Climate Change' its a bunch of Orwellian garbage
They're all missing the main point, the bottom line, the simple solution:
The customer (that's you, the Internet user) pays for what he uses. Bandwidth, total gigabytes, whatever. You wanna watch Netflix? No problem, Bunky: pay for it. ALL of it, including the bandwidth you gobble while viewing.
Your subscription to Netflix pays them for their procurement, storage and upload costs. Your subscription to AT&T (or whoever your ISP is) pays for your download bandwidth.
Simple. I don't know why they're making this so hard.
Every month, customers get a bill from AT&T for their Internet service. So, what exactly is that bill for, then, if it's not to pay AT&T for providing Internet service? That does, as I understand it, involve transferring data packets in both directions between my computer and Web sites so I can access the Internet. So, Mr. Cicconi, if what customers are paying you isn't in fact for providing that service, which is what you're saying when you say you're not being paid to let customers access Netflix (which is a Web site), then can you please provide a detailed breakdown of exactly what that bill is for and what service you are providing to your customers for each and every item for which you're billing them. Because if it's not for providing Internet service as advertised, I think every single one of your Internet service customers is entitled to a refund of everything they've paid for a service you haven't been providing them and possibly damages for your false advertising (claiming you're providing them with Internet service when you aren't).
And, Mr. Cicconi, if you claim you are providing your customers with Internet service and that's what that bill's for, please stop whining that you aren't being paid to provide Internet service when by your own admission you are being paid.
As we all know, there is no free lunch, and there’s also no cost-free delivery of streaming movies. Someone has to pay that cost.
Aren't two people already paying the 'cost'? I pay for my internet connection and netflix pays their provider transit fees. I use EC2 as well, and you pay transit fees on all your data xfer. Isn't Netflix paying that too? And I'm paying my ISP.. so um, what's the problem here?
The first rule of PR warfare is accuse your enemy of whatever it is you are doing. If you're being greedy, accuse the other people of being greedy. If you're spending taxpayer money needlessly, accuse your political opponents of wasting tax dollars and then imply they're going to raise taxes. If you're committing a war of aggression, accuse the other side of being the aggressive instigators. If you burned down the Reichstag, say your opponents burned down the Reichstag.
The public, who wants a reason not to care, will take both of you saying the same thing, and will side with whoever it is they want to side with. They like believing the world is a just place, so they'll assume you're both assholes and ignore it.
Sadly, the reverse tactic does not work, we cannot accuse AT&T of only wanting what is fair.
It's about time at&t starts paying back the government for all the perks it got to create the company that exists today. See how they like it.
So setup your home router to not give any priority to the data coming in and going out. Assume you have 6Mbps download service. Start up a Netflix HD movie for the kids, then setup that Windows Remote Desktop connection to the office so yo can work on that Access db. Then try to make a Skype phone call. Lets say you have training material you need to also look at from iTunes or YouTube. Hope you done also have VOIP and someone picks up the phone to call the mother-in-law.
It all starts at 0
I know its unpopular but this situation is much improved if the customers paid by the GB downloaded. Then Comacst, ATT, etc would welcome new sources of bandwidth (like netflix or small startups) because they would get to sell more GB of data to the end users.
A monthly connect fee + a $/GB fee seems to solve a lot of this. It seems to me the root cause of the problem is that if customers don't pay for bandwidth, the ISPs have a financial motivation to ship less data not more.
It is right and proper to extort money from parties with deep pockets.
This is just one facet of good old American Capitalism.
My Heart Is A Flower
Mandated neutrality would cut into the potential blackmail AT&T can dish out.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It can be "their road" when they pay land owners for the lines through their property, and pay back the tax money that was given to them to subsidize its construction.
Netflix is already paying a provider for bandwidth. You may or may not know this, Slashdot Libertarian, but as your bandwidth usage goes up, your bandwidth prices go up too. As such, Netflix is already paying extra money to run that 18 wheeler due to the wear and tear on that road. AT&T is trying to bill them extra because the truck is carrying a product that competes with them.
Is that their prerogative? No. They built their network on public dollars and on peoples' private property under the conditions that they would act as a utility. If they want to not act like a public utility, then they can come to me and pay me a fair price to run lines through my property (or better yet, since I don't use AT&T at all, how about I just cut their line? It's my property after all.)
You know what's a nice deal if you can get it, Mr. Cicconi? Exclusive rights to use the copper wires connecting the residents in any particular district. AT&T and Comcast can start talking about nice deals when we see a free and open market for each physical media type in each region. Now go back to your copper-squatter's meetings and plot against your customers the way you do every day. Sorry Netflix beat you to the punch on the streaming licensing deal. Maybe if AT&T had believed in the future of broadband customers the way Netflix did, you wouldn't be embarassing yourself like this.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
This sounds an awful lot like a protection racket:
"That's an awfully nice service you have there, it would be a shame if something bad happened to it!"
As I told my cable provider, "I am not paying you to spy on me, or limit what content I can access, or control how I access said conten. I am paying you for X amount of bandwidth over Y number of days, nothing more, nothing less. Let's keep this relationship professional, shall we?"
OK, so it didn't have all that much effect on my service, but I do feel a hell of a lot better throwing it in their faces every chance I get.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
James Cicconi is a corrupt corporate elite if there ever was one. AT&T is trying to purchase T-Mobile. He's also claiming that consumers will be hurt and experience higher prices if the merge deal is blocked. This guy is head of lobbying efforts against net neutrality and for the T-Mobile merger. His points are quite easily debunked and if it weren't for the insane amounts of lobbying money being spent, even politicians would laugh at his face. Instead, politicians who agree and meet with AT&T should be voted out of office. I don't care if they're Democrats, Republicans, or any other party. It's insanity that anyone would even consider allowing AT&T to charge more for the type of content that is being served. As consumers, we need urgent protection from those that will keep the internet from progressing and fulfilling its potential. As consumers, we should pay for a gigabyte. If that gigabyte is a gigabyte of video or a gigabyte of a game download, it's none of their effing business. If I am a content provider, and I want to serve my video or games to consumers, why in the hell should I pay more because my 1s and 0s represent video? I will be the first mofo to volunteer to live on mars if net neutrality is destroyed. I firmly believe that this is the one issue that will wake the population up to kick the asses of those who, through lobbying, put the government in their pockets without giving a flying f what it will mean to society and technological progress for decades to come.
There is a lot of talk about Netflix but the main threat this imposes is censorship on (decent) news and truth tellers.
Now they are expecting Netflix to pay for their customers to get access to data, next they will block any decent news sites and ask them for money, to allow their readers to have access to data. If the government prohibits them from doing businesses with such news venues or they can't afford to pay, then there is simply no access (or 3 min for each page to load, eventually making people give up reading or reading much less content).
I wonder if people are testing their Wikileaks connection speeds, just like they are testing their netflix speeds.
I would really love to know where this so-called FREE Lunch is being served! Consumers and businesses pay big time for Internet connections and so do ALL website and web service companies! What this is about is a double dip. If these type of services where not available, who would pay anything to the ISP?
Games Cicconi used to work in the white house. He is the dude they send over to promise campaign funds in exchange for getting government policy that suits AT&T's agenda. The fight of Net Neutrality is going to be the ultimate showdown between the people and lobbying efforts from the ultra wealthy. Who really wields more power in this country? Does choosing representatives really make a difference? Will the allure of $$$ always corrupt those we put in charge, no matter who we choose?
I can see why parent is marked insightful... the more packets coming through a router, the more friction there is on the wires and other electronic components, the faster things wear out.
AT&T probably has an entire team of people who go around measuring wear and tear on routers and wiring using calipers.
Cable cutting and such is a temporary blip in the chart of increasing cable cost. You will pay for everything and "They" will know everything you watch all the time.
Enough People don't care enough to do anything about it.
This is a good idea, but the main problem is that how do you know if the bandwidth amount they claim you used is accurate? They can make millions extra per month by fudging the numbers a little. What independent auditing would be done? What recourse would you have? What if they claimed your data usage doubled or tripled in a month? Comcast customer service is already legendary for being hostile to their customers.
I subscribe to Netflix, but only to their Blu Ray by mail service. Why should I watch sub standard quality movies that are streamed in various quality when I can get proper 1080P with DTS sound on Blu Ray. And guess what! I can return one on Monday and get the next one on Wednesday. Streaming is fine for internet Porn. but to watch a proper movie, get the damn disc.
There is no way to morally or technically side with the ISPs on this one. It is a revenue grab - simple as that. These fucking horrible companies - mainly AT&T and Verizon - have been double and triple charging customers for data on the cell phone side and now they are trying to bring it to the wired side. For example, they charge customers for text messages differently than voice calls. They charge customers for a metered amount of data accessed through their cellphones and then another set of metered charges for accessing via tethering. It's bullshit. It's the same fucking data. It's encapsulated data packets..
Don't forget that the US has some pretty shitty home Internet connection speeds compared to our standing in the world as a 'technology leader.' Don't forget that the ISPs in the US have received hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars over the years to upgrade their networks. Don't forget that these companies are 'entitled' to your own property to run their data lines. Also, don't forget that these ISPs have relatively zero competition.
Also, do not forget that these ISPs run competing media providing entities. They would prefer to control your access to content - force you to watch commercials or pay monthly fees for channels - or force you to pay for 10 channels when you only watch one. When these companies are given an inch, they take a mile.
I write to my lawmakers telling them we need to look at gutting these companies - breaking them up and separating their media companies from the data providing part. Also, lawmakers need to understand that all data on the Internet is broken into packets. You can always tell who paid for the packets. In this case, AT&T and Verizon are trying to say they want more than the sending and receiving entities to pay for the packets - they want to charge extra for these packets to go in and out of their networks. Once that happens, they will just create more routes and more tolls.
I don't believe AT&T or Verizon deserve to exist as they currently do - they are putting the US at a huge disadvantage. Also, their CEOs are awful human beings.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
and nationalize the net infrastructure. Problem solved.
And AT&T believes we should eternally pay the same rates for their slow/overpriced/unreliable service when they're not bothering to upgrade the infrastructure.
We're dealing with at least one delusion here.
Whatever happened to the days when net neutrality wasn't "Arrogant", it was just "The Law"?
Netflix already pays its upstream providers. AT&T should be asking THEM to pay when they deliver all that data into AT&Ts data networks.
Someone has to pay to use the public right of way to run their fiber optics.
Have gnu, will travel.
Given that they're specifically asking *Netflix* to pay extra. That's not just a peering issue, that's a type of traffic issue, which makes it a Net Neutrality issue.
It would be a straight peering/transit issue if the Tier-1 ISPs just told Cogent "your traffic isn't balanced, pay for the imbalance" without bringing up what type of traffic it was. In that case Cogent could pay the extra and then charge Netflix more for upstream. Netflix would then pass the costs on to their customers or would find a new ISP.
Imagine if Netflix just tweaked their client software to send as much data upstream as it downloaded. Their network would then just drop the upstream packets on the floor.
At that point the traffic would be balanced, but I'm pretty sure the ISPs wouldn't be any happier...
Internet should be billed like my electricity bill--a certain fixed-cost amount per month to cover the costs of being a subscriber, and a reasonable cost-per-GB.
This is a closer fit to the real cost model of an ISP.
The problem is that the ISPs see metered billing as a cash cow and want to charge stupidly high amounts per GB.
Remove the Right of Way all these douchebags rely on for their business and lets see just how well they get along with this "no free lunch" bullshit.
There's nothing stopping ISPs from doing per-subscriber traffic shaping in a traffic-agnostic way. Thus, your neighbours could all be watching netflix and it would have ZERO impact on your Vimeo stream.
I think I'm paying my ISP to deliver bits to me. That's who is paying - ME. If I'm not supposed to be paying --- LET ME KNOW!
So you're suggesting that if Netflix modified their client to send as much data back to Netflix as Netflix sends to them that the ISPs would be happier?
Somehow, I don't think so given that ISPs typically have crappy upstream bandwidth to begin with.
I thought of this as well, but I figured it would probably be unworkable since people's home connections don't really have reliable performance, while AWS should have pretty good control over their bandwidth.
Customers are using more bandwidth. This is a matter between AT&T and their customers, to whom they are selling that bandwidth, and no other parties. The remedy is to charge customers according to what they use.
In the end, I pay both Netflix and my ISP. Both of them (and any transit in the middle) are making a profit from that already.
It just means that the ISPs shouldn't be doing traffic shaping by type across multiple users.
So if you want to watch a movie on Netflix, and I want to rsync my hard drive across the country, and someone else wants to something else, our packets should be treated equally based on how much bandwidth we've paid for.
I have no problem if you as a subscriber want to assign relative priorities to your packets. But those priorities shouldn't affect how *your* packets are treated relative to *my* packets.
AT&T wants to eat the souls of your children to strengthen itself for the final court battle between AT&T and God himself.
This is the same sort of problem we have with gas stations - how do you know you got 10 gallons, not 9.5, in a business with very small margins. Spot checks by an independent agency and very large fines would help. Maybe some company will make a router that is certified and will keep track. If you think you are being ripped off ,you can use one and find out - again this needs to be paired with large fines.
1) In telecom [telegraph, telex, telephone] "sender pays" has been the rules on settlements. Just like a sender pays to put a stamp on a letter. Even when a customer of a CLEC 1 initiates a call to another CLEC 2 through an ILEC, CLEC 1 pays ILEC, ILEC pays CLEC 2. This is why there were many of these free teleconference systems, they are run by CLECs trying to get settlements by having more people call them long distance.
2) There was a brief period of the Internet where "no one paid" for the Internet because of government support, and the result was a typical tragedy of the commons - horrible congestion (the 56K NSFNet). Eventually the NSFNet had to classify traffic into high-priority terminal sessions and lower priority traffic like FTP.
3) The CIX came along to interconnect large commercial networks. These networks were generally exchanging equal amounts of traffic. Once you bought into CIX, you peered without settlements.
No-Pay peering with others that exchange equal amount of traffic with you in both directions makes technological sense due to symmetric bandwidth capacities of interfaces.
For example, a network service provider's 100 Mbps FDDI connection at the MAE-EAST provides 100 Mbps in both directions. It doesn't make sense to peer with someone who sending you 100 Mbps and only receiving 1 Mbps of your traffic.
Peering and/or settlement agreements between networks have evolved over time to balance the real-world business situation. For example, you might not want to charge as much to a customer that runs a huge, dependable software archive that your other customers benefit from. Similarly, today's cable providers probably should make Netflix pay less, but Netflix should still pay something.
I feel this is something the market should work out.
In the meantime, we need to figure out how to enhance competition in the local ISP market. A Federal law to make local monopoly franchises granted by government illegal would be a good start...
>what difference is streaming 2GB of video vs downloading a 2 GB ISO
Although I think CableCos and TELCOs are being greedy here. This I have to answer. A big one. If your ISO download speed fluctuates who cares. If your streaming speed fluctuates below a certain level, buffering x%, it gets real annoying real quick. The providers do have a point that streaming is a different beast vs. other traffic.
I don't pay for internet so you can put up a tollbooth.
Fuck off
Sincerely, ....
ATT wants to charge certain providers a premium so that they don't count that bandwidth towards any limits. But in the face of increasing pressure to lower cost of bandwidth to customers, ATT looks elsewhere for money. No offense ATT netflix can just say no. The Internet maxim is that the net routes around damage. So, maybe see what it would be like for no ATT customers to get Netflix on their mobile devices, even though the user paid you for the bandwidth, netflix can patiently explain ATT wants them to pay twice and offer to connect them to a T-Mobile representative and note T-Mobile will pay their early termination fees. t-mobile meanwhile has similar pains and their response was to raise the cost of unlimited data for new customers. I said goodbye to Att years ago over their pricing structure. First to a MVNO then to t-mob. Don't be afraid to switch, and let their customer retention rep know why!
He is correct, there is no free lunch. But I pay a LOT of money to download a bunch of stuff. I should get to choose where I download it from. If I want to use it all on netflix I should be able to, if I want to spread it around some for google, some for wiki, some for slashdot, I should be able to... But it sure ain't free.
Netflix shouldn't even be talking to these people. Literally not even answering the phone when they call.
Rather... Netflix should keep their customers and media informed of bandwidth throttling and then let those customers and the politicians terrify the ISPs into doing their jobs.
Understand, I don't like using the politicians to push companies around. Its using one evil against another.
That said, the ISPs have contrived a monopoly for themselves. There is but one phone company in most communities and one cable company.
The reason for this is largely down to leases on poles and tunnels that the actual wires run through. The ISPs have set up a system for leasing this space that really no one else can afford or process the paper work to buy. As a result, they have no competition throughout most of the country.
Very well... then they complain when they don't have enough bandwidth to process all the customers they forced to use their wires and no one else's wires.
THAT is a problem.
They either accept net neutrality OR they we reexamine all these deals they've cut with local municipalities and states and counties to find the details that ultimately sustain their monopolies.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
reading crap like this makes more sense why at&t is not taking care of their Customers and upgrading their network. They are too worried about screwing people instead of providing their service.
Having worked in the network monitoring/service provisioning/policy enforcement end of things and had to be at least peripherally aware of all the peering agreements (to help make the technical parts work), I can tell you there are substantial expenses for all of the infrastructure to support inter-ISP peering (large $$$). There are also complex policy setups to allow all that of the user account policy stuff that these companies need to customize and differentiate service offerings. (Some networks I had a bit of visibility into included Verizon, Orange, AT&T, and others overseas)
You can argue that 'I buy 20 Mbps, I should always have 20 Mbps available'. You could get closer to that with a business connection (vs. residential). Take a look at pricing. I'd say easily 3 to 5x the price if not more. Even then I'm sure they still do a 'what % do we need to actually provide' analysis to limit their hardware and roll out costs to operate as efficiently as they can. But that would be closer. If we paid 10x as much as we do today, they might be able to reserve a full 20 Mbps for all of us all the time. Their current model makes access cheaper for the average consumer than a model which was not effectively pooled as the current one is (for basic access). if that's what people want, get your wallets out and campaign for this sort of setup. The companies are responsive and if the market was there for this, they'd make it happen.
The peering arrangements are complex and difficult to negotiate and sometimes to implement and police. Inevitably issues with connectivity, traffic or performance spanning peered companies is far more expensive to troubleshoot as well.
I'm not saying that these companies don't make some profits and don't gouge a bit (every market that has limited competition features this and arguably any high capital-cost system is a natural oligopoly so prone to this). I am saying there is a lot more to the expenses of these setups than just simply slapping a couple of network nodes together and yelling 'bingo!'.
This is a peering issue. Netflix is trying to get the cheapest path to its customers and doing it by seeking cut rate sub-standard ISPs who are then funneling boatloads of traffic through peered connections in an asymetric manner (which is NOT how peering is intended to work). AT&T is effectively objecting to that, but doing so in a crappy way because they have their own services that they are invested in that might compete so they are singling out Netflix rather than simply the dodgy not-quite-peers who aren't living up to peering agreements.
Here's the rub: If AT&T made a peering agreement and it isn't being adhered to, they have two options: Cancel it or convince the other party to amend it. If they cancel it, they might face a lawsuit for breach of contract, but if they have evidence of peering abuse/non-compliance, that shouldn't be a big issue. If they don't have proof of if their peering agreement has been written in an unenforceable way, then they should suck it up and when the term is up, write a more enforceable and reasonable peering agreement that will protect themselves.
Singling out netflix traffic is not acceptable. That's a net neutrality issue.
Having cut-rate peers that have agreements but aren't living up to them is also not acceptable. That's a peering agreement enforcement issue.
So, both AT&T and Netflix may have an interest here which is valid and both are engaged in some spinning and FUD for their own purposes.
Pooled capacity planning is simply cost effective. If it means we don't all get our full bandwidth all the time, then that's how it goes. We demand better performance until our ISP changes its pooling ratios (from 1/10th to 1/5th, etc) and installs new equipment or we change providers. If the ISP does have to change pooling ratios, then expect their service offering to rise in price to pay for it. TANSTAAFL.
All that said, natural oligopolies need strict government oversight and the government is lobbied so heavily by these large interests that this is not happening as it should. That's a matter to take up with your representative.
These idiots (and just about every other major provider) has taken incentives from the government to grow their broadband networks.
What've we gotten out of it?
Higher bills.
Bandwidth caps.
If we're lucky, single-digit megabit (or less) connections being defined as "broadband".
The connectivity providers trying to shake down content providers.
And a bunch of cock-mongering suits voting themselves massive bonuses and pay raises with the money that was supposed to be used to build/expand/improve their network infrastructure.
And how many thousands or millions of subscribers are paying these people how many millions a year for this shoddy, ass-tastic service?
And they can't even do it right.
It's not as if Netflix is bombarding their network with spam or other unwanted traffic.
ALL traffic from Netflix is at the request of the conectivity providers' customers.
So why the hell are they willingly trying to cripple or shake down these content providers? THAT IS NOT WHAT WE ARE PAYING THEM FOR!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
> That constrains the bandwidth between Cogent and the Tier 1s (which Cogent is definitely not).
Some sources disagree. Who is Cogent buying transit from or paying settlements to? Do you have a source for that?
Of course many people would say that Cogent isn't top quality, but that has little or nothing to do with their tier. Tier 3 ISPs buy transit from tier 2 ISPs. Tier 2s buy transit from tier 1 ISPs. Tier 1 providers buy from nobody. As far as I know, Cogent doesn't buy transit from anyone. (Modulo the same types of location-specific deals ALL tier 1 providers have with each other.)
A user in California wants to download a video hosted in Texas. Both the user's ISP and and the hosting company have fiber lines from Texas to California. Whose lines carry the video across the country? Alternatively, maybe only one company has spent billions building a nationwide network. Whichever company carries the bits across the country is the doing most of the work. The other company should either balance that by carrying half of the traffic cross-country on its network, or kick in a few dollars to help cover the cost. That's Level3's new approach, and it makes a lot of sense.
Which DIRECTION the traffic is flowing really doesn't make any difference. The cost is in carrying the traffic, so Cogent should expect settlement-free peering if and only if they invest in a network that carries their share of the traffic, if the bit-miles are equal.
o
In Finland it's the other way around - it's much cheaper to call mobile phones than landlines. The fact that almost no one has a landline anymore makes it moot though.
I believe that they're all *actually* oversold, but where exactly is Comcast's hard resource bottleneck?
Is it in whatever my neighborhood segment is (the block of end-user connections that terminate in a neighborhood-level fiber distribution node)? How many Mhz is my entire neighborhood allocated in the coax cabling that runs down the alley? Is it within my municipality (in between nodes and their upstream "super nodes")? Between "super nodes" and the metro-area central office(s)? Upstream from that?
I can see the physical limits of the coax -- that only has so many Mhz to allocate to TV channels, etc. Gimmicks like switched digital would indicate that this is real, that they already face allocation issues trying to deliver a hundred plus HDTV channels plus an equal number of SD channels, plus carry a lot of data traffic.
Internode traffic seems less limited; it's all their fiber and presumably when installing it they put it in enough to move tens of GBits of data even if its deliberately not all lit. Is it just at the peering edges or where exactly are they hard-constrained?
Because we US consumers know innately if such a billing method were come to pass, the 'minimum balance due' each month - even if no device was even hooked up - would be within 90-95% of our current three-figure cable bill.
AT&T is just being AT&T, double dipping as much as they can.
In sensible countries, you pay the telephone company for the line rental and for the calls you make.
In america, you pay the telephone company for the line rental, for the calls you make, AND for any calls which are made to you. Hell, even if you don't answer the call, they charge you if the other person leaves a voicemail!
If AT&T was a postal service, they would hand you a bill with every letter they give you, even though the postage was already paid by the sender.
The situation reminds one of an 1800's railroad tycoon that has already been paid to carry freight, asking for more money because he can.
Comcast has been paid by their subscribers to carry traffic from some magical place called 'Internet' to their customers.
They sold their customers sufficient access bandwidth to carry the traffic in question.
They advertised peak bandwidth with some unspecified peak to average ratio, but then showed apps working over the system like Netflix.
One could argue, this is selling sufficient average bandwidth even during busy hour.
This covers access, but leaves open the transit question of where is this magical place that Comcast should freely accept traffic.
Netflix chose a less than stellar ISP to carry their traffic to the Internet.
Perhaps they didn't pay to get traffic to where Comcast should take it.
But if they carry it themselves to Comcast, then Comcast shouldn't charge them to get it to Comcast customers.
But I think they are. This is what brings up the the railroad example above.
What to do is an interesting question. A strawman set of guiding principals might be.
The end user pays for full duplex access with reasonable, defined idle peak and busy average rates.
(With monopolies in access, common carrier regs might be needed to cover 'reasonable'?)
The user sourcing packets pays for transit, but transit is really cheap.
(A bandwidth spot market might cover 'really cheap'?)
Hard rules at the boundary between access and transit are needed to make the above two work.
(Picking the wrong rule set could be much worse than the imperfect Internet we enjoy today.)
(Perhaps game theory sims could try out some rule sets?)
The internet infrastructure of private companies should absolutely not be subsidized by the taxpayer. We are already being forced, arbitrarily, to pay for a private corporation's own assets. We are already having our property rights violated. Why should we entertain the idea of violating AT&T's right to providing the service they want to provide (another violation of property rights) when the first injustice will not be resolved?
It's time we make corporations pay for their own damn infrastructure. Then customers can make up their own minds if they wish to use AT&T's restricted internet service.
Awwww, sounds like someone is jealous of Netflix's popular public image.
Let's just say some internet connections aren't "netflix ready". ...
in a free market people can of course get a connection that is!
ooooh wait
-
p.s. if the interconnections are bad then ISP can cache neflix internally.
That analogy isn't right either. You can charge more for an 18 wheeler than a 4 wheeler, and maybe you can charge more for a 20 ton vehicle than an 18 ton vehicle, but you can't charge more for an 18-wheeler 20-ton vehicle built by Mack versus an 18-wheeler 20-ton vehicle built by a competitor.
They're both trucks. They both carry the same thing, you should charge the same.
Netflix and its competitors all use IP packets. They all carry the same thing, binary digits, so you should charge the same thing. If someone sends more digits, then you can charge them more, but you can't charge more based on what order the digits are in (meaning, in the order of a movie instead of the order of a web page).
"Sorry Charlie, but you can't do that."
Alas. If only.
If there was ever any doubt, we now know AT&T doesn't understand the Internet.... and spent want to. Customers pay to be connected. End of story. Apparently that's too complicated for AT&T.
Only boring people are ever bored.
It is AT&T that is "arrogant".
Comments such as this one make it plain that AT&T believes that they've bought enough members of Congress and enough of the FCC to be able to safely ignore those famous "free market" principles which would otherwise supposedly protect the American consumer from monopolistic practices - e.g., sending Netflix to the bottom of the priority stack on AT&T-controlled comm links.
The greatest arrogance lies in the fact that AT&T believes that they can publicly reveal - even boast of - the extent of the corruption that they've fostered without repercussion.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
We're going to get a lot less choices online. But perhaps the big boys like Google and Netflix prefer it this way, keeps competition out as well.
http://www.accountkiller.com/en/delete-slashdot-account Stop visiting Slashdot.
NO FREE LUNCH???
The telecommunications industry is one of the largest recipients of TAX PAYER funded government subsidies. Given their profitability, such subsidies should have been YANKED a long time ago, and for those who claim to believe in the FREE MARKET, should never have existed in the first place. So yeah Mr. Cicconi: There should be no free lunches. Let's end your industry's tax payer funded subsidies and yeah: PAY YOUR TAXES! Otherwise, give your consumers the bandwidth THEY PAY FOR! (damnnit!)
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/11/13/366988/over-half-of-all-us-tax-subsidies-go-to-four-industries-guess-which-ones/#
(A happy Netflix customer)
And yet, AT&T wants more money because they think they have the right to charge Netflix more to pass through their tollbooth.
- it's not their 'tollbooth', it's their road. On a road you can charge different rates for different types of vehicles, this is the same situation. An eighteen wheeler can cause more damage to the road that requires more maintenance than a motorcycle, this is the same thing: a movie that needs to be streamed a million times takes up much more capacity and energy and basically uses the system much more than millions of small individual requests do.
See, I even used an appropriate car analogy.
Talk about mixing your analogies.
Every single movie streamed from Netflix is paid for twice already.
Once to the customers IP and once by Netflix for domain availability and uploads.
So what you're saying is that providers need to e charged twice to provide something once. Your road analogy falls down there.
At a wild guess AT&T and the others are more analogous to Robber Barons who chrge for use of the Tollgate then steal your shit just down the road.
Wolja Future Tombstone: Shit happened then I died
ISPs don't have as much of an economic incentive as web based companies to provide you with quality internet service. Keep pushing AT&T, and you'll find yourself competing with companies such as Netflix for providing internet service. Google has already moved into the space, and I can see a future where others do too.
We (the taxpayers) already paid for all their infrastructure upgrades and they are just sitting on the money not upgrading. Google fiber is showing that they are liars, it can be done and still make a profit. If they upgraded their infrastructure with the money we gave them they would have no problem with this traffic but they want to double and tripple dip.
True an eighteen wheeler does more damage to the road than a motorcycle. but! Let's say you have 40 Giga tons of dog poo to move from point A to point B since you can only move say 300 pounds of dog poo on a motorcycle compared to 20 tons in a truck which means more travel by bike more wear on the roads. Most likely it would work the same.
The main thing here is the ATT customer is the one that makes the "Request" for the data not Netflixs. If the ATT customer didn't ask for the data it would just sit on the server and never go accross the wire. The ATT customer is paying for access to data THEY request. Where they request it from and what data they request is decided by the ATT customer who is "comsuming" the data. Doesn't matter if it is a movie or email. After all its all just 1's and 0's.
Maybe Netflixs needs to ask for more money for the load ATT customers and putting on their servers.
Amazing!
http://de.mon.st/RyEq2/