Australian ISPs Claim Net Neutrality Is an 'American Problem' 363
RATLSNAKE writes "The heads of some of the most popular Australian ISPs were all interviewed over at ZDNet about Net Neutrality. For once, they all seem to agree, and they say it's a problem with the US business model, or the lack thereof. They discuss why they don't think it's an issue in Australia. Simon Hackett, the managing director of Adelaide-based ISP Internode, had this to say: 'The [Net neutrality] problem isn't about running out of capacity. It's a business model that's about to explode due to stress. ... The idea that the entire population can subsidize a minority with an extremely high download quantity actually isn't necessarily the only way to live.' Of course, this also explains why we Australians do not have truly unlimited plans."
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Shock and awe (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you saying that if someone builds a maintenance-heavy canal from a perpetually filling freshwater lake, and charge people a fixed fee to draw "unlimited" water from it, then there would be a problem if a few select individuals decided to build fifteen bakeries and twenty-seven car washes next to it?
I'd even go as far as saying that downloading continuously at max capacity is somewhat immoral in itself, so long as you know that you are using far more than everyone else _and_ that it causes congestion problems. You are like the person founding a car wash next to the canal and saying that the contract stated unlimited access.
I think the ISPs have indeed gotten things wrong, with falling into the "unlimited" trap (inspired by the 'unlimited e-mail' concept?) that is impossible to follow up on, and so only a number of half-arsed and unclear stopgaps are implemented to avoid the inevitable. People should not really have a problem with a monthly download limit of even 100gb, with more expensive tiers above, so long as there isn't a "cash trap" on the other side (i.e. you get a fair warning when approaching). Unlimited download for private individuals is like a product looking for a customer.
The Australians miss the point. (Score:2, Insightful)
At least partly, they don't get it. They are right that it's a business model that we use. It's called "You get what you pay for." As long as that is the case, AND you realize what it is you are actually paying for, then how exactly is this business model about to 'explode'? In a free market competition defines the minimum quality of the products. The broadband companies need to be more clear I guess. When I sign the contract for broadband I am not getting 100% of my theoretical maximum bandwidth or minimum latency 100% of the time. That's just part of the clause. I understand that. I expect that. If you go into it expecting to get those things then you had better damn well be paying a hell of a lot more than I am, because that kind of level of service is just not part of the agreement in a day-to-day contract.
You know what, fuck all of what I just said. It overcomplicates the issue. It's simple: You pay for 'unlimited' usage, and that means you get usage that is as unlimited as the resource permits. It's the only way this sort of resource distribution should ever work. It's fair: if you want to take your share, then go out and take it. But don't sit there and cry that other people are doing what they are paying for. Don't try to get the government involved in something that they should stay the hell out of.
These Australians are wrong.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
whenever conservatives talk about socialized services they seem to conflate problems of government corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and unpopular government with the socialized institution. but you're forgetting that public schools, law enforcement, fire departments, public libraries, roads, post offices, etc. are all socialized public infrastructure. if you really think that having government run infrastructure (in other words, having a government) is a bad idea, then wouldn't it be worse having them run the military, police, and writing laws?
if a country is a true democracy, then its government is merely a mechanism for carrying out the will of the people. i mean, most people like the idea of having free schools, but a single person cannot establish a free education system, so you do it through the government. likewise with roads, libraries, the legal system, etc.
if the government isn't acting in public interest, then that's a whole other fundamental problem that needs to be addressed regardless of whether ISPs should be socialized. i mean, why would a government ISP ignore problems any more than a commercial ISP would? would the gestapo come out and silence anyone who complains? or would they just ignore customer complaints like commercial ISPs do? at least the public has a voice in government, whereas they don't have a voice in private corporations.
all the people i've spoken to who've used public wi-fi access have commented on how great it is and seem quite satisfied with the way it works. there's no reason to think that just because a service isn't run based on corporate profits that it would be inherently inferior.
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It would make sense to me that costs on the network would be regulated to cost-distance acquired for said packet.
That's exactly what we need, having to watch all the time if we're not accidentally browsing transatlantic after we click a link, or chat with someone.
Other smart ideas :P?
Re:I agree, its an American problem (Score:2, Insightful)
and not live under an oppressive government ( or government blessed monopolies )
You got to be kidding! If a business is failing and a government gives it $700bn cash to stay afloat, how is that not a monopoly? I would rather have a government-run ISP than government-run banking and airlines.
You are NOT paying enough to complain, STOP IT (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm getting seriously fed up of this. You are not paying even in the same ballpark of the actual cost of supplying your full connection's worth of bandwidth for an entire month. If you want to use that much bandwidth, buy a leased line. If you don't like that you get more kb/s than you can use all the time, move back to a 56kb/s modem.
Why on earth the US ISPs have tried telling you that you can just use as much bandwidth as you want, for so long, I'll never understand. Comcast's model of "this much, then we write to you, then we cut you off if you do it again" is absurd, doubly so given they don't provide any easy metering, but that doesn't change the reality of what you're paying for vs what you wish your money covered.
Only addresing half the problem with socialization (Score:2, Insightful)
While the sluggish inefficiency of bureaucracy is a problem in terms of quality of service, it's even more of a problem in terms of cost.
Unless you tax the citizenry to heinous proportions, there is only a limited government budget to deal with. That budget should be allocated effectively into programs that, for whatever reason, cannot be provided effectively as anything but a government service. For the most part, this means programs that inherently must run net operating losses in order for the service to be at a price point where the public can take advantage of it (and services that are of great importance to the public). I would call these "minor" market failure points.
If the service is one capable of being profitable at a reasonable price point, then there is no reason to take money out of the pockets of taxpayers to run that system -- they will be able to pay someone else instead of the government, and thereby keep money in the economy rather than in the government coffers. And remember, so long as there is competition without antitrust violations, you DO have a say -- it's called voting with your pocketbook, I believe.
I don't see any reason an ISP would fall in the former rather than the latter category. Then again, I don't see any reason a lot of popular government programs do, either.
NOTE: There are of course other motivating factors (such as keeping dangerous powers out of the hands of the politically unaccountable) that tilt in favor of some services being provided by the government (e.g., military/police), but I just think people often forget the most important reason is that you are having to pay for these services either way. Perhaps you'd pay less per capita if you were just paying directly for the service rather than paying the government to employ bureaucrats to pay some independent contractors to provide the service.
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that this idea undermines one of the main points of net neutrality, to make as many parts of the Internet as free and easily accessible as others.
I agree that P2P is holding us back, and unfortunatley current P2P systems aren't "smart" enough to prefer local connections over long distance ones (which might actually be a trivial fix, but I don't know enough about the inner workings of Bittorrent and others.
Plus, it kind of fits with one of the main truths of the Internet's capacity; demand will always meet or exceed availablity.
Re:What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Have we not learned our lesson from communism? The more power and control of people's lives Government has, the more widespread and pervasive society's problems are. Most problems we encounter are CAUSED by government. The sad thing is that we need government to a certain extent. So, we tolerate some of the problems it causes, but we must keep a watchful eye on government to make sure it doesn't overstep its bounds and we must keep a watchful eye on ourselves and our neighbor, lest they ask government to overstep its bounds.
The Internet is one area that government does not need to interfere with. I pay $50 a month to get unlimited high speed Internet access. If my neighbor wants to save a few bucks, let him get a limited plan for $40. What do I care? What should my neighbor care? There is no need for the government to step in. Ever.
Re:The Australians miss the point. (Score:1, Insightful)
With due respect, I think your missing the point here. What these guys are saying is net neturality has become an issue because US ISP are crying out for more cash to pay for their networks. This itself implys that their business model is flawed. And thats the point about all this. US ISP want someone else to pay for their network. Competition in the US has produced a competitive environment where the US ISP's are not prepared to start charging for a usage based model. And this is the key here. What the Aussie ISP's are saying is you can architect plans that don't affect 95% of the user base and the 3% that use 50% of the resources get penalised. That sounds more like a viable business model to me. (Its like the all-you-can-eat buffet is never a good business model, well not is most parts of the world).
The thing US customers should realise is, US ISP charge their local customers a fixed price for unlimited bandwidth, yet they charge international connections to other countries at volume based pricing. So when US ISP's do start talking about charging either content providers or how dare I say it; start charging their customers a volume based model, There won't be much sympthy. When US ISP start to use a more realistic business model, net neturality will be a thing of the past. As they say, its a US problem, not a global issue.
Re:I agree, its an American problem (Score:3, Insightful)
You may want to look up "monopoly" in the dictionary.
A dictionary is a book that has sentences which describe what an individual word is. You can go to a library or bookstore (they have pages of paper with words written on them, which is the form a dictionary tends to come in). Or search the web for information (probably using Google, which is a good example of an actual monopoly).
When the government loans money to a business to keep it afloat, its usually called a "bail out." It has nothing to do with monopolies. There is an entirely different term for this type of situation.
Do the research, you'll find your answers.
Remember, I believe in you! :)
"problem with the US business model" (Score:3, Insightful)
Recent events indicate that net neutrality isn't the only "problem with the US business model, or the lack thereof". It seems that big business wants the profits privatized (as they should be) but any losses should be socialized.
There is plenty of blame to go around but the majority of the blame rests on the shoulders of big business. By the way, for the companies not incorporated in the US, there are some of the same problems. They are not quite as extreme as in the US but people not living in the US shouldn't feel smug, it could happen to you if you are not vigilant.
Re:You are NOT paying enough to complain, STOP IT (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a common misconception. Bandwidth is actually very, very cheap; if you use your full connection's worth of bandwidth, it costs only a tiny bit more than if you let it sit idle. In order to provide more bandwidth, you need two things: routers and fibers. Routers are cheap. In fact, thanks to Moore's Law, the price per unit bandwidth for a router falls exponentially over time. On the other hand, running new fiber is expensive, because it involves digging, which is both expensive in itself and requires expensive planning (to make sure you don't damage someone else's infrastructure) and bureaucracy (for the same reason). Fortunately, when you install fiber, you can install as much as you want for little extra cost. The problem that the US cable companies are experiencing is that they need to run new fiber to a lot of places, but they would rather put it off as long as possible. But this is a strictly one-time expense; once they've run the fibers, adding more bandwidth just means buying more cheap routers.
Those are counterexamples? (Score:3, Insightful)
whenever conservatives talk about socialized services they seem to conflate problems of government corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and unpopular government with the socialized institution. but you're forgetting that public schools, law enforcement, fire departments, public libraries, roads, post offices, etc. are all socialized public infrastructure.
Good grief, you are using those as examples of socialism working? Lots of people have problems with police departments all over the place, and listing schools there is just short of insanity.
Roads are almost never in good repair, and when is the last you you saw a road crew where you thought "hey, that's just about the right number of people and they are all working diligently".
Public libraries and fire departments are probably at the top of that list as to things that generally work OK - but that's mostly because so few people pay attention to what they spend, you can't say for sure how truly inefficient they may be (especially libraries).
You do realize that in a lot of smaller communities the fire department is local volunteers right? That's not socialism.
Re:Summary (Score:3, Insightful)
They are demanding to pay the same $19.95 as their grandma who only checks her email once a day.
Riiiiiight. That's why I pay $60 for a faster network connection, and why just about every ISP that isn't dialup offers "fast" "faster" and "fastest" packages. Smell that? I think your strawman seems to have caught fire.
The fact is, the ISPs have been using this tired "tiered" argument to sideline the real neutrality debate (note how "speed" and "neutrality" aren't synonyms?), as opposed to facing up to having threatened to block competitors' Voice (or TV) over IP offerings rather than competing, or threatened to hold Amazon, Google and iTunes hostage unless Amazon, Google, and iTunes paid up big bucks.
Re:Ignore the Australians/New Zealanders (Score:4, Insightful)
RTFA = what simon says is that because Australia has download caps it's not an issue.
Which is bullshit because net neutrality isn't really about bandwidth congestion; it's about money and control. The big telecoms want the internet to be more like cable television, and a "tiered" internet is their way of implementing it.
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Having attended both private and public schools, and driven on private roads, and also in areas with privately-run fire departments and security, as a user of FedEx, and video rental stores, project Gutenberg, university libraries (and having read books which were researched with LexisNexis)..
Yeah, I can honestly say that the government-run versions of these have all been inferior.
Re:The Australians miss the point. (Score:3, Insightful)
People should not confuse 'unlimited' with 'infinite'. Everything humans do is finite.
According to the context you agree with when you get the broadband account your account really is 'unlimited'. In the context of broadband it only means that the company is not going to single you out and limit what you can do. That's all it means. There is legal precedence to use this word in this context. It's not fraud of false advertising.
The problem I think is one of defining the value of information. How does one measure the value of streaming video from YouTube against the value of someone researching their family history? Or the value of someone doing a video conference with their son in Iraq against the value of a teenager watching porn?
Clearly this is a much more complex issue than just giving people 'unlimited' transfer.
I'm not really aware of a good solution, but I'll be thinking about it now -- maybe you or someone else can offer an idea?
Re:I agree, its an American problem (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not called a monopoly, but a backup of the American financial system.
When the biggest banks of this country fail and you look in your wallet those plastic cards that you so loving hold will be useless. The mortage on your new house won't go through because hey where is the capital to do it? There isn't. We need these big financial giants to stay afloat.
I am all in support of bailouts with regulations. The deregulation of the financial industry caused this mess. It's time to put them back in their place. It appears most politicians agree with me.
Re:You are NOT paying enough to complain, STOP IT (Score:3, Insightful)
While every fact you list as supporting evidence is true, your conclusion is simply irrelevant for most providers.
Regardless of the actual potential cost of bandwidth, companies are still leasing lines form other companies to make interconnections. Unless we're discussing backbone providers (who still have to make deals with other providers for interconnection), they're having to buy their bandwidth. That's expensive, no matter the hardware cost per bit.
Re:Well.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. My understanding of "net neutrality" is that all packets will be treated identically, regardless of where they came from, or where they are going. It has nothing to do with providing cheap service. It's about not censoring access (such as Comcast giving nbc.com packets low priority).
I know what you mean, there's many different definitions of NN. Yours is essentially the same as mine, if a bit more specific (which is good). When I say free, I meant more free as in speech; it'd be kind of silly to make ISPs non-profit organizations.
It's just the gatekeepers. The ISPs become gatekeepers to the Internet. If you don't deal with the ISPs directly, then it's your local Internet Cafe or Library etc; that become gatekeepers. My point is, NN should be about limiting the number of gatekeepers to deal with, giving everybody one Internet, not just several different versions of the Internet depending on who you're paying or not paying. The Internet Cafe in one city should give you the same Internet as you would get from a home connection in a different city, and so on.
I like your definition of NN, but not all packets are treated equally. Depending on their size and nature, they will be treated different, and not because of third party interference. Whether this actually implies anything about the feasability of NN remains to be seen.
Pricing of finite goods (Score:4, Insightful)
Until someone finds a technical solution that truly allows everyone to have 'unlimited' internet, you have to find some way to ration it.
I'd rather be charged for what I use and not have to worry about ISPs sticking their noses into my data stream and killing traffic they don't like.
Here in oz, I'm on a $A60 plan that gets me 40G/month @ 20 megabits/sec. I don't find that restrictive, I'm not constantly worrying about how much bandwidth I use (as some of the hysterical postings above imply) and I'm not paying for the wankers who download 400G/month of movies they never find time to watch.
Re:Well.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, we see the bandwidth caps here in Oz, and the transatlantic cables are why there's caps and high costs.
No, the reason that we have high costs is because of the Telstra/ Southern Cross duopoly. Telstra are well known for their high costs (for example the NT pays two to three times as much as the rest of the country only because there is one link. Tasmania has even worse problems). Southern Cross provided much needed capacity when it went in but (AFAICS) doesn't compete on price.
Consider this: When Pipe International announced it was building a new cable (PPC-1) and were selling it at a much lower cost to their customers, Southern Cross massively increased it's capacity and Telstra announced they intend to build new fibre. Pipe have stated that they intend to market their cable at approx 30% less for those who sign up now (IIRC). I can only conclude that we are currently paying far to much to the incumbents. Considering that Telstra and Southern Cross have probably paid for the cost of the infrastructure a high percentage of the money they get now is pure profit. Given the impact that Pipe Networks has had in the peering arrangement between ISP's in Australia I have high hopes that they will have just as much of an impact in international transit.
Re:I agree, its an American problem (Score:2, Insightful)
LOL all this coming from someone who lives in a country that's just nationalised half of it's finance industry. People from the USA calling out other people for being socialists are displaying the worst case of cognitive dissonance possible, actually delusional, is probably the more correct term..
Even at the hight of our "socialist experiment" in the '70s we didn't dare touch the banks.
Oh delusional yanks, it wouldn't be so bad if so many of you weren't so blindingly hypocritical.