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Cable Companies: We're Afraid Netflix Will Demand Payment From ISPs
Dega704 (1454673) writes While the network neutrality debate has focused primarily on whether ISPs should be able to charge companies like Netflix for faster access to consumers, cable companies are now arguing that it's really Netflix who holds the market power to charge them. This argument popped up in comments submitted to the FCC by Time Warner Cable and industry groups that represent cable companies. (National Journal writer Brendan Sasso pointed this out.) The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), which represents many companies including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Cox, and Charter wrote to the FCC:
"Even if broadband providers had an incentive to degrade their customers' online experience in some circumstances, they have no practical ability to act on such an incentive. Today's Internet ecosystem is dominated by a number of "hyper-giants" with growing power over key aspects of the Internet experience—including Google in search, Netflix and Google (YouTube) in online video, Amazon and eBay in e-commerce, and Facebook in social media. If a broadband provider were to approach one of these hyper-giants and threaten to block or degrade access to its site if it refused to pay a significant fee, such a strategy almost certainly would be self-defeating, in light of the immediately hostile reaction of consumers to such conduct. Indeed, it is more likely that these large edge providers would seek to extract payment from ISPs for delivery of video over last-mile networks." Related: an article at Gizmodo explains that it takes surprisingly little hardware to replicate (at least most of) Netflix's current online catalog in a local data center.
"Even if broadband providers had an incentive to degrade their customers' online experience in some circumstances, they have no practical ability to act on such an incentive. Today's Internet ecosystem is dominated by a number of "hyper-giants" with growing power over key aspects of the Internet experience—including Google in search, Netflix and Google (YouTube) in online video, Amazon and eBay in e-commerce, and Facebook in social media. If a broadband provider were to approach one of these hyper-giants and threaten to block or degrade access to its site if it refused to pay a significant fee, such a strategy almost certainly would be self-defeating, in light of the immediately hostile reaction of consumers to such conduct. Indeed, it is more likely that these large edge providers would seek to extract payment from ISPs for delivery of video over last-mile networks." Related: an article at Gizmodo explains that it takes surprisingly little hardware to replicate (at least most of) Netflix's current online catalog in a local data center.
Reminds me of the stories of panhandlers begging at intersections who get picked up by their chauffeurs at the end of the day to go back to their mansions.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
This might be reasonable if it was coming from a group who hadn't spent huge sums of money fighting to stop legislation that would have made it illegal for either netflix or comcast to charge for the specific route. That being said if Comcast, Time Warner, etc. make Netflix pay to be inside their networks now and in the future Netflix turns around and says "if you don't pay us to stay we will remove our servers from your networks and your customers will have to get Netflix through standard routing" then I have no sympathy for them but they may be right in worrying.
The Telecommunications association seems to have forgotten how telecommunication works.. not to mention the meaning of the word "indeed"
back in the 1990's ESPN extracted payment from every ISP for users to access the website
this was before watch ESPN and needing a cable subscription. this was at the dawn of the internet for people to access a "free"website.
They are dreaming. We are thinking about throttling them here right now. Why should we let all those other sites suffer due to one service using nearly 75% of our bandwidth.
Customers are DEMANDING those bits. If you can't afford to keep those bits flowing, start charging your customers more.
To some extent I'm sure it's still happening. As a Comcast subscriber I have access to an online streaming service called "WatchESPN" that lets me watch various ESPN channels on my computers or phones, as long as I'm on my Comcast internet connection. I don't use it, but I guarantee you that part of my monthly fee is paying for it, just like I don't watch any of the ESPN TV channels but I know a big chunk of my monthly cable TV fee goes straight to them. Of course ESPN also offers ESPN3.com which requires an additional monthly subscription on its own.
There used to be a chart with a nice breakdown of how much the average cable subscriber's bill goes to each of the content providers. ESPN was by far the biggest chunk, Disney/ABC took a good portion, etc. I'd love to see a recent breakdown if anyone has one.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
So it's only ok when you do it, then? What a hypocritical joke. I have a better idea: just focus on providing the most reliable bandwidth on the network for your customers as possible and let them provide the content.
Cable companies have been gouging customers for decades (high prices, low speeds, low quotas, even worse in Canada), they're trying to extort streaming services. They're afraid of competition and are doing everything they can to stop them instead of competing.
The problem is ISPs are also TV providers in most cases, something that should never have been allowed. Of course they'll try to protect their TV business. Here in Canada (Montreal), Both Bell and Videotron sell internet and TV services, why do you think they have such ridiculous quotas? 60GB is not that much, especially when watching Netflix.
ISPs should welcome those servers since it will cut down on traffic, not charge Netflix.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Yeah, i don't see how their supposed 'netflix is going to extort us' scare is supposed to work. Everything I remember about how the internet works pretty much invalidates the idea.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
I must be missing something - you are unable to provide the bandwidth you advertise to your end users and you are complaining that the companies they are requesting data from are at fault? This is the same as saying that the concert at the stadium is at fault for the traffic backups. Wouldn't the fault be more with the road providers? Especially when the concert people are saying "Hmm, we know this is possibly a problem - we can put a live hologram local to your people so they don't have to get on your roads" and instead of saying "yes", you say "no, it's all your fault we can't provide it". Your end-users are your customer - and should you start throttling because you're unwilling (or unable) to provide the bandwidth, they are well within their rights to nail you to the wall for failing to provide SLA data throughput if it is correctable by you.
Other customers are demanding other bits and they don't wan't to pay more to feed others hunger for back to back streams of game of thrones.
Thats your problem. You over sold service and can't provide what you sold.
Its a poorly designed system and its not the isp's at fault its the netflix don't understand how to do things efficiently.
Actually they do, which is why they'll colo a rack for you for free, or peer with you at any major pop, for free.
The poor design is yours. You're just a shitty ISP.
it uses almost as much bandwidth as our customers use. Thats straight from netflix. Its crap on top of crap with them.
Bullshit. Its a local cache, exactly what you were demanding they do originally. You're clueless.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I think they're looking at how cable companies have to pay content providers to broadcast their content.
Disney, ESPN, CNN, etc all charge the cable company for their content. If the cable company doesn't pay, then their customers don't get the channels.
Will this happen with websites or Netflix? It doesn't seem possible, yet it's hard to know just where all this is going.
Consider facebook. What would happen if suddenly facebook demanded an ISP pay them for access by the ISP's customers? Who would the customers blame? Would they simply give up on facebook or would they hound their ISP to pay up?
Disney, ESPN, CNN all charge customers directly on the Internet, as does netflix.
If they started charging comcast/timewarner/cox/whoever for Internet services they would be double dipping. This cost would certainly be passed on to users who would be unhappy to be paying twice for the same service.
Facebook charging an ISP would also be passed on to the customers, at which point customers would protest. No one will knowingly part with money for Facebook. They'll stop using it before paying for it (knowingly). They'll pay for it by giving Facebook their data and tons of ads, but parting with cash so you can see someones dog chase its talk or lolcats not so much.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager