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Netflix Pushes FCC To Crack Down On Data Caps (dslreports.com)
Netflix hates data caps. The on-demand movies and TV shows service has asked the US Federal Communications Commission to declare that home internet data caps are unreasonable and that they limit customers' ability to watch online video. From an article on DSLReports:Netflix has long has an adversarial relationship with ISPs, and often for good reason. Usage caps on fixed-line networks are specifically designed to protect ISP TV revenues from Netflix competition, allowing an ISP to both complicate and generate additional profit off of the shift away from legacy TV. "Data caps (especially low data caps) and usage based pricing ("UBP") discourage a consumer's consumption of broadband, and may impede the ability of some households to watch Internet television in a manner and amount that they would like," said Netflix in a new filing with the FCC. "For this reason, the Commission should hold that data caps on fixed Âline networks ÂÂand low data caps on mobile networksÂÂ may unreasonably limit Internet television viewing and are inconsistent with Section 706." Netflix's filing comes as ISP's increasingly turn to broadband usage caps to take advantage of the lack of broadband competition in many markets. Fearing FCC crackdown both Comcast and AT&T raised their caps to one terabyte, though many ISPs still cap usage at much-lower allotments. High, low, or somewhere in between, Netflix highlights that there is no good reason to implement caps on well-managed fixed-line networks, despite a decade of ISPs trying to justify the price gouging.
I hate the data cap too, but I don't like the lack of control I have over stream quality - on most devices it looks like it just does some automatic detection.
I much prefer the control in, say, YouTube where I can specify the resolution quality. I'd also like to be able to optimize the stream for audio or prefer certain programs in SD. The kids don't need to watch Pokemon in 4K!
g=
Their official policy is that you have to pay them for TV no matter what. Either you subscribe to TV, or your internet connection is capped, and you will pay them for TV anyway in the form of overages.
Seemed like a pretty good plan "Lets punish consumers and make them pay for our ill-conceived acquisition of Direct TV"
Gee, I wonder why they are losing subscribers.
This will be a continuing problem so long as the people who own the infrastructure also sell services over it.
They almost got this right with the ILEC/CLEC split with DSL. The only problem is that they let the ILEC sell services over the infrastructure they owned.
Don't let the guys who own the wires sell any services and this problem will fix itself.
Personally, if I'm sold a 30Mbps/5Mbps cable/dsl connection, I expect to be able to saturate that channel 24/7 if I want to. ISPs should provision accordingly.
And also the ability to delay or offload content in cache. For example, if your bandwidth is currently funky (as is typical with oligopoly ISP's), then set the play to notify you when the download is complete or the buffer reaches a certain percent complete. A fuller menu would look something like:
Bandwidth and Delay Options:
Quality (higher quality may slow download):
[x] Automatic
[_] High-Definition [rate value here]
[_] Medium [rate value here]
[_] Low [rate value here]
[_] Etc.
Delayed Playback:
[x] Don't play until buffer has ____ seconds of video [with a default but editable number]
[_] Don't play until entire video is cached on your computer, Auto-Play
[_] Don't play until entire video is cached on your computer, Pop-Up-Notification
[_] Don't play until entire video is cached on your computer, No notification (click video window to play when "Ready" indicated)
But companies can argue these kind of options are too confusing to most consumers. Maybe a good UI designer could make them friendlier...
Table-ized A.I.
Adjustable quality would be a nice user control to have, if you're paying for bandwidth, you should be able to decide how much bandwidth to use on what downloads.
If people only knew how little it costs per household for ISPs to provide cable TV and internet service! While no real figures are published, by some estimates it costs most ISPs less than $15.00 a month per household to provide both broadband Internet and cable TV, in some cases less than half of that figure.
Not only should the FCC remove all data caps, prices for broadband Internet service, and cable TV should be capped at $29.95 per month each. Our taxes have paid for the infrastructure for these services, yet we are massively price gouged for these services. One reason that this price gouging goes on is that ISPs have managed to stifle any hint of competition in most locations in the U.S., even buying draconian laws against cities that wish to provide their citizens with reasonably prices broadband Internet and Cable TV services.
I would also like to see the FCC mandate that as long as costumers are paying for their cable TV service, it should be commercial free, as we were promised at the very beginning of cable TV roll-outs!
Except that the problem of cable companies abusing their customers was caused by deregulation.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
When I turned my Uverse equipment in, the guy at the UPS store and I had a good laugh about the huge surge of AT&T equipment getting turned in. I was content with my 12Mb/s internet. It wasn't the fastest, but it was fine. Now I have 50Mb/s cable with a $4/month VPN service and things have been running great for a few months now.
Its costing me less, and I'm getting better service. I should actually be thanking AT&T for making me get off my ass and finally switch.
netflix has thousands of CDN servers around the world inside ISP's networks and at peering locations
Given that Comcast enjoys government granted monopolies in its markets, it seems reasonable for the government to require them to remove data caps.
Of course, the better approach would be to tell Comcast fine, charge whatever you like, but we're going to open all of your markets to competition.
...because people tend to max out their bandwidth all at the same time during the day, creating a headache for network data management. To encourage people to schedule their torrents to throttle back during the day, ISPs should make their data caps only apply during peak usage periods, similar to "unlimited nights and weekends" cell phone plans.
There's a service called NightShift that helps people watch Netflix on bandwidth-constrained connections like dialup. It works by scheduling downloads to occur overnight so they're ready to watch the next day. Netflix could do something similar to bypass time-of-use data caps. "Do you wish to stream this program now or download to watch later? [Stream] [Download]" Then the ISPs might realize that the data caps don't need to apply to overnight downloads.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Oligopolies suffer from similar problems as "big gov't": not enough competition to give them incentive and to give consumers real choices. They historically almost always take advantage of insufficient competition to screw customers: Railroads, oil, cars, computers (IBM, MS), CPU's, telecoms, etc. have shown mass dickery under oligopolies or monopolies.
If there were say 7 or more realistic ISP choices per typical customer, THEN competition could work its magic, Adam-Smith-style.
The biggest road-block to more competition in my opinion is the "last mile problem". It's not realistic nor efficient for every competitor to run wires to every potential customer. It's the main reason Google is dropping out in many areas.
If a gov't utility could set up "last mile" wiring, then multiple ISP's would only have to hook up to centralized routing nodes, not to each house. It's then just a switch. This could invite the competition needed to end most ISP BS such that regulators wouldn't have to get involved nearly as much.
The right conditions have to be in place for capitalism to work right.
Table-ized A.I.
Take it a step further and make "the wires" a public utility company, or at least the last mile, which is where the natural monopoly lives.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
My kids don't care when I drop youtube down to 240 resolution,
Someone calls child care services at once!
Full agreement.
That's not true — "natural monopoly" is a myth. But do find citations supporting your assertion.
Another unsubstantiated claim. Google Fiber was meant to run all of the "last miles" from the get-go — it was not something they realized they have to do later. I explain their lack of wide-spread success by the above-referenced regulation of local governments, but you are welcome to offer citations supporting your assertion(s). Meanwhile, I offer this map as evidence supporting my assertion. They are already offered in the "redneck" parts of the country like Salt Lake City, Charlotte, and Kansas City, while the corrupt locales like Chicago — despite having many more thickly-settled (and thus easy-to-wire) would-be customers — are merely "being explored".
Then instead of the poorly-competing oligopoly, we'll have a bona-fide monopoly — with government policing the Internet traffic. Today I can switch from FiOS to Comcast in a matter of days should I decide to. Bringing about a change to the government-owned service will require months and years of raising awareness and electioneering.
Absence of wrong conditions is sufficient.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I kinda wish it was like the old days of dialup.
You have two bills.
1 for the Infrastructure (Telephone Line)
1 for your ISP
The problem now is they are both the same... I should be able to say choose from Cable/Satellite/Cell/Fiber Optic. Pay x per month for the infrastructure which has its fixed peak speeds.
Then you choose your ISP, who pays so much for caps or no caps, IP Address... Email and any other feature you want and don't want.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They can abuse their customers because... gasp... they have a virtual monopoly granted by the government. Kill all the regs including last mile regs and the free market would kick the shit out of ATT and the other asshats.
It may not have to. But it will — because that's the nature of government.
For example, AT&T "NSA closet" will seem quaint, once all traffic passes government-owned wires. Censoring content crossing government-owned equipment will also become much easier — seriously, would somebody, please, think of the children?! And, yeah, encryption is legal, but, if you use it on publicly-owned wires, the government must be able to decrypt it. And only government-approved (and registered) equipment can be thus connected too. Hasn't the sorry story of public roads taught you anything? Do you think, Internet-access license and uniquely-identifying IDs for your computer(s) will be far behind?
And, of course, instead of violating Terms of Service, (ab)users will be violating laws — feds are already seeking to "curb trolling", owning the last mile to every house will allow them to act on that urge.
No, thanks.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I own an ISP (WISP) that is virtually the only option outside of the two large incumbent carriers, Centrylink and Comast that residential users have. The other CLECs mainly, if not exclusively, sell commercial service. We have seen in the last 5 years demand for bandwidth increase nearly 500% mostly due to video streaming. The cost of the fiber and equipment has come down to be sure, but no where near 500%. So far we have been able to keep providing an essentially unlimited service. However if current trends continue, I'm not sure for how much longer.
Cable companies spend 10x more money upgrading their cable networks every 5-8 years than the cost of a fiber network that won't need to be upgraded for several decades. They're throwing money in the wind. Average cost to install 1Gb/1Gb fiber, $1.5k/house, cost to upgrade an existing cable network from DOCSIS 2.0 to DOCSIS 3.0, $10k/house. DOCSIS 3.1 will be more expensive for anywhere they plan to actually provide the "3.1" speeds, otherwise you're stuck with 3.0 speeds until they split nodes, which is hugely expensive.
That's not even including the ~20% industry average reduction in Op-ex costs going fiber, which is a lot of something that consumes 60% of your revenue.
I disagree. Whenever I had this setup (split infrastructure and internet providers) and I would run into a problem, both providers would just point the finger at the other and do nothing. So I switched to a single company that was responsible for the entire service and they took care of the problem. I have found that having a single party that is responsible, is key to success in many aspects of life.
I will not mourn that which I never had to lose. - Unknown