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Pay-to Play and the Tiered Internet
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Feb 02, 2006 03:16 PM
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
Crash24 writes "According to an article at The Nation, "industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received." " Tiered internet service may be inevitable folks. Brace yourself.
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U.S. House Rejects Net Neutrality 598 comments
tygerstripes writes "A recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives has led to a rejection of the principle of Net Neutrality from the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (Cope Act), in spite of massive lobbying from prominent businesses. According to the BBC, the bill '...aims to make it easier for telecoms firms to offer video services around America by replacing 30,000 local franchise boards with a national system overseen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'. However, according to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, 'telecommunications and cable companies will be able to create toll lanes on the information superhighway... This strikes at the heart of the free and equal nature of the internet.'"
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Pay-to Play and the Tiered Internet
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Thankfully... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T may be powerful, but they're going to have a hell of a fight if they're going up against Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon.
Re:Titan wars... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.networkboy.net/)
I think I would likely be willing to pay $20-$25 a month for that... (assuming 1Mbps/384Kbps or some such)
-nB
Google isn't going to help you (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday February 23 2006, @02:47AM)
Generally, Google can be said to do great things because they find information that isn't currently being used and then utilize that information at a huge scale. That produces some amazing results. Everyone wins (except for maybe their competitors).
This is a question of policy, not a technical advancement. Some users are being subsidized by other users. Yes, that's you with the P2P client. Probably many Slashdotters are being subsidized by other users today, which is probably why the idea isn't popular here.
However, in terms of efficiency for the industry, it's a good thing. You want to not force people to pay for what they aren't themselves using. My parents barely use the Internet at all -- why should they be forced to pay for the dozens of gigs a month the kid down the block is pulling down? You want to encourage people not to waste bandwidth -- this will help promote network-friendly software and behavior.
Plus, if the tiers get fine-grained enough, they'd be great for techies. Right now, there is a very, very rough-grained tiering currently happening at most ISPs. You have "business class" and "home class". Unfortunately, most techies wind up uncomfortably best fit by "business class" service. They'd like to have multiple static IP addresses, they don't want any ports to be blocked in or out, they don't really give a damn about the ISP's webmail, and so forth. They don't need technical support, and don't really want to subsidize the cost of having some minimum-wage worker repeat -- for the thousandth time -- his troubleshooting flowchart to Joe Sixpack.
The problem is, "business class" service is expensive. Bob Techie isn't actually much more expensive to service than a typical residential user, but he currently gets lumped in with businesses in terms of what he values.
Second, I'm hoping against hope that maybe some ISPs will start offering QoS as part of their tiered packages. That would be *fantastic*. It's in everyone's interest to provide a little extra information that lets routers handle their data more efficiently. If I get, say, 100MB of high-priority data (ToS bit set in the IP header for minimize latency, a la ssh, ftp control, and so forth) a month with my tier, I can get really good performance on the things that I care about -- like, say, playing network games with extremely low latency or sshing into another machine. I don't really care, in comparison, how long it takes my mailserver to shove some mail out. I'm perfectly happy to mark that as "low priority" (or rather, just use software that already does so). P2P software doesn't need high priority, and is there to soak up any available excess bandwidth, and should definitely be low priority.
Re:Titan wars... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.utlemming.org/)
Afterall, with M$, Amazon, Google, all pulling for net neutrality? I would hope it would would stand out a little better.
Fight (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is successful, it will be the single largest "limiting" factor in the online world. What if this was the case 10 years ago? We wouldn't have the plethora of online stores we currently have, that's for sure. Or blogs. Or online games. Or P2P for that matter. Or VOIP. NONE of these "cool" technologies would have ever gotten out of the starting gate.
I could go on an on about how bad of an idea it is but I fear I am just wasting my breath. Until internet access is treated as a utility, this nonsense will continue to go on unchecked.
Re:Fight (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.pkix.net/~chuck/)
However, as soon as you start talking about charging more or less based on which web sites you go to, or which emails you get (and from whom), Internet service *isn't* being treated as a commodity where all connections are essentially just another stream of bits passing by the routers.
Re:Fight (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Saturday February 25 2006, @11:02PM)
http://www.slate.com/id/2135226/ [slate.com]
It basically comes down to "what will the consumer pay." Some people will pay more than others for the exact same service. Either because they've got cash to burn, or because it is more valuable for them.
This is why
Re:Fight (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.stillsound.net/)
Re:Fight (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday December 03 2006, @11:20PM)
Non-discriminatory Net access is not "a strip club", and is becoming more and more of an essential commodity to people-in their education, in their work, in the businesses they run, in the schools they attend.
We already see false advertising from several ISP's, where they advertise a given speed but then severely cap how much bandwidth you can use in a month, not to mention those which advertise "6 Mbps service!", without mentioning, that if you happen to want to -upload- something, it's nowhere near that. At the very least, they should -have- to advertise it as 6 Mbps download/384 Kbit upload, or whatever the case may be. They also should not be permitted to advertise "unlimited Internet service" unless it is, in fact, that-no bandwidth cap, no rules against servers, no other similar garbage. Anything with those restrictions is LIMITED Internet service, and should be required to be clearly marked.
For example, let's take an ISP that offers 1 Mbit/s download, but "caps" the user to 5 GB (or, to make the math easier, 40 Gb) per month. What are they really offering?
Well, first, let's figure seconds in a month. We shall take a 30-day month just for a nice average, even it being February now.
By my calculations, you'd have (30 days) * (24 hours) * (60 minutes) * (60 seconds), or 2592000 seconds, in a 30-day month.
Now, what's your effective speed? Well, to get a "per-second" rating, let's divide the amount of data you can download (40 Gb, in our example, or 40,000,000,000 bits), by that number of seconds (2592000), to get a nice per-second rating.
Will you look at that? 15433, if we round up-or about 15 Kb/s. You can actually shift -less- data, through this ISP, then you can through dial-up! And yet they advertise "2 million times faster then dial-up!" or whatever garbage it is now.
But these people are telling the truth. Really. And they're not going to collude. Really. They've got a great record so far of not screwing over the customer. And you're right too, it only takes maybe half a billion dollars to even have -any- hope of launching a telco startup. I mean, I've got that in my shoebox in the basement, and I'm sure you do too. So I'm sure both of us could just launch a startup tomorrow and be happy as hell.
Oh I wouldn't say so (Score:5, Insightful)
ESPN successfully broght pressure on Cox in a similar manner. Cox didn't want to pay as much as ESPN wanted and so threatened to take ESPN off the channel listings. ESPN in turn let all Cox customers know what was going on. Cox customers got mad and said they'd switch to sat service if this happened, ESPN is still on Cox.
Re:Fight (Score:4, Interesting)
And video confrencing.... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.glasshead.net/)
*Video confencing still has not taken off. Not because of general bandwidth limitations, but because of upload caps.
*Telecommuting is limited due to blocks, throttleing, or "accidental" outages on ports necessary for telecommuters. (Those of us that do telecommute often pay dramatically more to not have artifical barriers.)
I'm sure others could add to the list. It is the video confrencing that pisses me off. The upload speeds are always so much lower than the download speeds in just about every package that you need a package with way more download speed than necessary just to get sub par upload speeds.
I telecommute, and work on projects that very often require team coding. As in two people sitting together looking at the same screen. Screen sharing works, and we are very productive, but sometimes it would be a whole lot easier if I could see the other coders finger pointing at the screen, or piece of paper.
And, before the trolls come out and tell me I should just move closer to my work, and go into the office, keep in mind. My clients and I are saving money, reducing infrastucture costs, saving air quality, while at the same time improving my quality of life as well as that of my family. I think it is good for me, my son, and society that I get to keep my child home with me most of the time instead of shipping him off to spend more time with a daycare provider than he does with his family. I also have no desire to move myself and my family next to an industrial complex.
Re:Fight (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.newspony.com/)
Really? Let Google or Microsoft null route Bellsouth's netblocks and see who really needs whom.
Re:Fight (Score:5, Interesting)
Certainly, there's the possibility that if Verizon throttles your connection and Comcast doesn't, you'll switch to Comcast. But if Yahoo pays Verizon not to throttle their data and Google doesn't, is the average user (ie a non-/. reading, doesn't know the difference between ram and hard drive space, still uses IE 5.0, etc) going to know to switch to Comcast or are they simply going to see that Yahoo is snappy and Google is slow, so use Yahoo? I suspect a bit of both will happen, and unless Verizon loses enough customers that they're losing more money than Yahoo is paying them, Verizon is still going to come out ahead.
(Names used here are just examples and not meant to indicate that one company is better than the other.)
Re:Fight (Score:4, Interesting)
And even less time for them to figure out where you are based on your IP address, and show you very targeted ads to help you find a better provider!
While making money on the ads even.
Believe me, Google has very little to lose in this fight...
Price Fixing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea of competition is that, when Verizon does something stupid that punishes customers, I can go somewhere else. It's a real problem if all the gatekeepers can legally get together and decide to give us all the shaft. And not even to try to hide their cooperation against consumers?! Messed up.
Re:Price Fixing? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Saturday February 25 2006, @11:02PM)
The story of how the Baby Bells FuXx0r3d America is relevant to any discussion involving internet service provided by a telephone company.I honestly wouldn't put anything,/i> past the telcos & cable companies.
They've paid for their legislation & regulation and they'll keep paying up as long as it is cost effective to do so.
Re:Price Fixing? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://emulation.victoly.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday November 30 2006, @06:03PM)
Re:Price Fixing? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Monday October 18 2004, @03:17PM)
Common Carrier, per FCC rule, only applies to voiceband channels less than 64Kbps. You can have all the Common Carrier you want, so long as you go back to Dial-up.
Telecommunications companies don't like Common Carrier restrictions. They agreed to them, years ago, because the Public offered them something in return which they would have been fools to pass up: access to public rights-of-way. (Public. That's right. Stuff you owned that got handed over to Private Companies by the Government; that's a tax. In return, you got the Internet. Fair deal?)
We (the People) could impose Common Carrier rules on broadband providers using public right-of-way facilities through a simple FCC rule change. Companies which own their entire network could still discriminate as they want (as would you, as the owner of all the ethernet in your house) but companies running packets through FCC-controlled spectrum (that's everything) or along public rights-of-way (poles, underground cables along roads, etc) would be required to follow the same rules the phone companies have had to follow for 150 years.
Will that happen? Never. Too many slash dotters who still can't think past the FCC is part of the Government, and everything the Government does is bad, so there's no way I'm going to let the FCC impose their laws on my beloved Internet...
Now, where did I put my remote control and bag of quarters?
Re:Price Fixing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because it's the most suicidal thing the phone companies could possibly do, that doesn't mean they aren't dumb enough to to it.
Re:Price Fixing? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.joystick101.org/)
What the hell do you expect to happen when you let these companies conglomerate all this power without so much as a "Remember Ma Bell"? Of course they're going to screw us over, they're corporations. If it was legal and made them money they would feed kitten entrails to school-children.
Dont forget Encryption (Score:5, Interesting)
The telcos don't own TCP/IP. (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday December 13 2006, @06:43PM)
If the worst case happens and the telcos "destroy" the internet, why couldn't everybody with a wifi card get together over a metropolitan area and create an internet-like ad-hoc wireless network? It would be a little more complex because the nodes would be constantly moving around (so the routing tables would be hard to handle), but in principle it could work, and there would be no "pipe" for anyone to "own". Maybe this afternoon I will do some cocktail napkin calculations to see if this could work, but if anyone has a reference to something similar I'd like to hear about it.
Co-operatives could get together and arrange for microwave links between cities (or, they could buy some of the "dark fiber" that we keep hearing about).
No central servers, no routers, no single points of failure, no central logging facilities, no closed ports
Do you mean.... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday August 26, @06:39PM)
Chicken and the egg (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.thepickupartist.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday January 11 2005, @04:44PM)
I see a future where people don't have "free range" web access or email at home at all. You want the news? Subscribe to it. You want porn? Subscribe to it. Don't be surprised when email and web browsing becomes something you use at the office in a closed inTRAnet system.
Re:Thankfully... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.raybenjamin.com/)
Verizon, back when it was GTE, wrote most of the Telecommunications Act. I don't think that most of the legislators who voted on it knew what was in it. More and more that's the case. It's the companies that write the legislation. The people we send to congress simply don't have the technical expertise and apparently don't make sure they have the staffers that do.
If you ever wonder why you don't have the government you want. You should ask yourself when was the last time you communicated your desires to your elected officials and when did you last vote.
Re:The End of the Internet, for USians (Score:5, Insightful)
New model:
500 power user customers @ $100/month = $50,000
4500 email and light web users @ $50/month = $225,000
New Income: $275K
equitable policy would be okay (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 15, @03:36PM)
Is this possible proposed policy to establish equity? If so, I'm okay with that. I've often wondered that for the same $30/month as my neighbor I can download five of the latest linux distributions, sample 20 or 30 trial software packages (large).
What would bother me, and bother me greatly, would be if they established pricing baselines the cheapest of which match what people pay today. In other words, a money-grab.
People have long paid more money to make more long distance calls, that only makes sense. Why not for heavier internet usage? It makes sense that heavier users pay higher fees.
There also could be additional benefits (assuming this is a fair and balanced idea) -- that being a more moderated approach to internet usage. I don't doubt a significant slice of internet bandwidth is absorbed by indiscriminate downloading and uploading, and streaming. I know I don't think twice about downloading Photoshop Elements to trial for a couple days (~300MB) just because I can. I'm also just as likely to stream my music to whereever I am in the country from my server at my home, again, just because I can. How many others approach the internet in the same way? I'm guessing "many".
If users used the internet as a finite resource (which it is, by the way) the usability of the internet would improve almost immediately and expansion costs and needs would attenuate (my opinion). All of this would help keep costs and increased charges down (again, assuming businesses are here to charge us a fair price).
But, based on everything else I see in business, this may not pass the smell test. Sigh
Re:equitable policy would be okay (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are lucky enough to live in a big enough market you might see some competition. But the majority of us, especially people not living in large markets, aren't going to see any competition.
Now so that you can moderate me down, I'm going to posit that internet service (the pipe) should really be considered an utility and should highly regulated to provide maximum access at affordable rates to everyone (again, not just people in large markets).
Re:equitable policy would be okay (Score:5, Interesting)
But the bottom line is this: ATT/Verizon/etc. do not get to establish these contracts. Their job is to run the network. I want a group of 3rd party ISPs to each independently build their own real time networks and sell the services to customers who can chose amongst ISPs to get the best service. The ISPs will then give the carriers instructions about how the network is to be set up, and pay them for their troubles. The INTERFACE to customers, and to the network, must be public, non-proprietary and transparent, like IPv4 is. Customers must be able to monitor and ensure their contract is being upheld. No proprietary set top boxes or any premises equipment, period.
The guy who owns the wire must stop being the guy who provides the service. That model doesn't work. Further we need to see more REAL competition as much as we can. We can't ever see competition over wires, two or three wires does not a competitive market make. So reduce their role by force, and abstract it.