Now, Apparently It's Not Just Content Providers That Are Getting A Free Ride On Broadband Networks, But Consumers Too
from the my-$70-per-month-DSL-bill-doesn't-agree dept
One of US telcos' favorite talking points is the "free ride" that Google and other content providers get on their networks. It's fundamentally wrong, since Google and others obviously pay their bandwidth bills, but it's also conceptually flawed, as telco execs seem to think it's their networks, rather than the content which travels over it, that consumers value. The stupidity isn't bounded by this country's borders, though, with the head of a UK broadband-via-satellite provider saying that "Neither consumers or providers are bearing the cost" of data traffic over broadband networks. With that, we'd like to extend our usual challenge to the exec: if neither consumers or content providers are paying, how about paying their bandwidth bills for a month?The exec contends that broadband providers will all eventually move to usage-based pricing, and in a letter to the Financial Times, says that when they do, "content free loaders will suddenly find that demand falls dramatically". Perhaps it's just a typo, and he meant to say "broadband providers will suddenly find that demand falls dramatically"? Once again, the exec fails to understand that people don't buy network access from his company just for the sake of it, they buy it for access to content. If he, or any other provider, starts putting walls up between consumers and the content they want to access, whether through walled gardens or usage-based pricing (really just a code word for "much higher fees"), they will reduce the value of their customers' connections, and subsequently what they'll pay for it. So if the end result of a shift to usage-based pricing is decreased usage -- and subsequently no real change in providers' revenues -- what good is the shift?
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Re:
But even then, more legal content flows through the wires than illegal content.
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Um.
It IS.
You're right, it's not rocket science. It's so simple, that that's how it works.
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The transfer of a 1GB file does not take "2 or more gig." Let me school you in computer science with the use of an analogy.
You know how your mom gives you a sack lunch every morning before you run off to kindergarten? Has she ever handed you lunch and then ... I guess magically maybe ... there are suddenly two lunches? No, when she hands over your sack, it is transfered from her to you. At no point are there two lunches.
Even if she gives it to your dad and then he gives it to you ... still only 1 lunch.
Even if she gives it to your dad and he drops it off with the school secretary who gives it to your teacher who gives it to you ... still only 1 lunch.
There may be many hops, but it is never more or less being transfered.
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Ok, you're simply factually wrong about this. The amount of data moved was 1 gig, so by definition the bandwidth used was 1 gig. That each person paid for their leg of the journey doesn't enter into it.
"connectivity is paid for at both ends. stuff doesnt just magically appear from nowhere."
You're the one positing that the data magically doubled somewhere in transit.
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Counting bandwidth
I'll try and break this down for the edification of anyone that happens across this thread in the future.
Scenario 1 (download from central server):
- Server owner pays ISP X for a net connection
- Client A pays ISP Y for a net connection
- Client A downloads 1 Gigabyte file from Server
- Client B pays ISP Z for a net connection
- Client B downloads 1 Gigabyte file from Server
ISP X has sent 1 gigabyte each to ISP Y and ISP Z
Total bytes transferred: 2 Gigabytes
Each ISP has been paid by one end user, inter-ISP transfers are accounted for under whatever peering arrangements are in place.
Scenario 2 (peer-to-peer transfer):
- Server owner pays ISP X for a net connection
- Client A pays ISP Y for a net connection
- Client A downloads 1 Gigabyte file from Server
- Client B pays ISP Z for a net connection
- Client B downloads 1 Gigabyte file from Client A via P2P
ISP X has sent 1 gigabyte to ISP Y
ISP Y has sent 1 gigabyte to ISP Z
Total bytes transferred: 2 Gigabytes
Each ISP has been paid by one end user, inter-ISP transfers are accounted for under whatever peering arrangements are in place.
So, two downloads of a 1 gigabyte file result in 2 gigabytes being transferred across the internet, regardless of whether the second download is from the original server or from a different client that had already downloaded the file.
P2P vs central dowload *does* make a difference when it comes to ISP peering arrangements and the bandwidth requirements for the server provider, but those have to do with the *distribution* of the data traffic rather than its overall volume.
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The Blond leading the Blond...
No. You better not.
The whole point of modern file sharing software is that you UPLOAD as well as download. Download bandwidth is increased by aggregating everyone's capacity. This uploading is why modern P2P software is dangerous to the end user: you will get pinched for not just downloading stuff but for "distributing" it as well.
I think 60 minutes had a nice animation of BT that you should hunt down and watch.
I could certainly turn off uploading in BT. However, that would make me a leech. That's being even more anti-social than being a pirate.
Most people aren't saavy enough to turn of the downloading part of their P2P client.
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You mean me torrenting Ubuntu was just a dream then?
I'd better get this news out to the linux only torrent sites so they can wake up!
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Ah, I see what you're saying now.
Leaving aside the idea that P2P is used exclusively for "illegal" content - which is completely false - there's still a serious flaw in your argument.
When you use torrent software, what you're really doing is sharing the bandwidth. Rather than all the bandwidth being the sole burden of the provider, it's spread out between the provider and all the users.
In other words, outlawing distributed filesharing methods (like torrents) would actually increase bandwidth usage.
This is why torrents are the preferred distribution method for Linux distributions.
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PTP is more efficient. It allows the content to come from closer locations and from multiple pipes. More content ending up on PTP would decrease their costs significantly and make the entire network more reliable.
Network providers should be touting PTP as a way to speed up their networks and reduce traffic.
I know for a fact that cable providers understand this. One of the major US cable companies considered using PTP for on-demand programming so they could offload traffic from their systems and get it to run from your closest neighbor's house (who had recently watched the same content) directly to yours.
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assuming you are talking about seeding once a download finishes, it's pretty tough to hit a 2.0 ratio (2 mb uploaded for every 1mb pulled down) unless you are seeding something rare and popular (like a 0day release), and even then, whomever you are seeding to is paying for their bandwidth as well.
it can take months to break even on a big download, which is why all the FAQ's on private trackers tell you to wait and download big releases from public trackers.
eliminating p2p communications would cut a great deal of bandwidth off of each ISPs bill without reducing any of the free and legal content online.
based on my smoothwall statistics, i have pulled down 89gb of data in the 35 days my router has been up. i have uploaded 45gb in that same time for a total of 134gb of transfer. i have DSL and i pay $40 a month for 5mbit down and 1mbit up. i never see those speeds, but that's another story. i download gobs of stuff via bittorrent plus my family streams stuff from netflicks, plays xbox live, steam, and a couple of MMO's, plus i have a VOIP phone systems with 3 trunks in addition to the POTS telephone line. with all of that stuff, i would say my connection is maxed out pretty much 24/7.
i also have a linode hosted virtual private server that i pay $20 a month for and get 200gb of transfer each month. now, assuming that linode sells me transfer at cost (which i doubt) and that they don't charge me anything for the VPS itself (which i also doubt), then the linode price for bandwidth is 10gb per 1$.
let's compare that to the $45 per month i spend on DSL for 134gb of transfer, which comes out to 2.97gb per 1$. now, i know the phone company has other costs besides bandwidth, but is a 3 fold markup compared to a datacenter really justified?
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Conventional download of 1 GB file: 1 GB downloaded by recipient, 1 GB uploaded by content provider.
P2P download of 1 GB file: 1 GB downloaded by recipient, 1 GB uploaded by peers.
Either way, a total of 1 GB of content is transferred over the central network. However, most P2P applications are optimised to prefer "local" (i.e. same ISP) peers, so the providers are actually better off since transfers will typically require less upstream bandwidth.
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yeah, wires that were run with government subsidy. wires that i have to pay an additional $25 a month for telephone service in order to access. not really seeing the hardship for the phone company here.
if the phone company can't handle me using their service, how is that my problem?
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I also send videos back and forth to myself all the time for work. I'm pretty sure that isn't illegal.
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2: Most ISPs provide a much higher download speed than uploading. Last time I checked my connection, I was getting about 11mbps down and less than 350kpbs up...yes, that's KILOBITS per second on the upload speed.
3: When advertising their "unlimited" internet connections, at no time do ISPs even hint that users are not allowed to both download and upload at the same time. Perhaps the ISPs should be schooled as to the meaning of "unlimited" before their next round of advertising.
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Re: Wow
Have you considered some bismuth subsalicylate? That'll help your assumptions to be more regular...
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Re: Re: Wow
Haha
At least you didn't use the 'D' word... 'It's his stomach, OK??!?!'
p2pp (extra p for added effect) is killing the every-industry! stop updating your WoW client already!
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: /
Poor AC's aren't too swift, apparently.
; P
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Bandwidth costs for large providers are far from astronomical. They're in the range of "negligible". For you and I, $30k or $100k a month might sound huge. However, for a company that makes tens millions a year at a minimum? Quite a piddly business expense.
This is just whining that they can't double dip. Remember that they're complaining while deliberately monetizing users who go to their websites via clickstream/impressions/ads.
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What ISPs want is to triple or quadruple dip: I pay for ISP service, Netflix pays for their net connections. Then I should give the ISP a surcharge if I download a Netflix movie, and Netflix should give the telco a cut of their revenue. That's fair in a lobbyist's world.
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Re: P2P
Okay, lots of P2P users are infringing. Lots of others are downloading Linux distros or NIN tracks that Reznor made public.
But by far the highest bandwidth users are folks who watch Hulu, or listen to music on MySpace, or watch the latest Lolcat video on YouTube. You know, the perfectly legal things that nearly everyone does every day.
None of that means that anyone is "freeloading." Whether you're infringing or not, you're still paying your broadband bill.
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Seriously, is there a single competitive industry where companies who are very profitable and provide poor customer service get to whine about how they could be making more?
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See the pattern: [Insert category] industry. Try tourism, construction, or any other.
It's either cognitive dissonance or a complete disregard for consumer reality. But when has that ever gotten in the way.
It is the last resort for the middle class family: incorporate.
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1)Most, though admittedly not all, people access the internet via an ISP for which they are paying.
2)If they're paying for internet access, and they're not breaking any laws, who cares what or how they download? Caveat: a lot of laws need to be changed; moving on.
3)Syntax fail: how does one pay for content ILlegally? Why are they PAYING for FREE content?
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In case it still isn't clear from the other responses, if Bill and Tom both download the file, it gets transferred twice no matter what. The only difference is whether it gets transferred once from filesite.com to Bill and then from Bill to Tom, or if both Bill and Tom download it directly from filesite.com. There is no increase in demand when it's transferred using P2P.
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i payed to transfer.. he payed to receive
or (can you believe it?!)
he payed to transfer, I payed to receive
who's freeloading?
Please provide an example of this magical, freeloading land you live in.
your last point has nothing to do with the article. shill.
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let me break this down for you:
i upload a 1GB file. you download that 1GB file.
i pay comcast to access the internet. you pay time warner.
that's like a whole terabyte of data and disney and AT&T don't make a dime. why is that so hard for you to understand?
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1 gig is 1 gig and it doesnt matter which direction its going. by paying your monthly services fees you are paying for the bandwidth.
and nice trolling there with trying to make the conversation about illegal activity when that has nothing to do with the conversation.
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Re: double demand
- Did you mean to say ... "downloaded and shared again" ???
"access to free content they dont want to pay for legally"
- I have to now pay for things offered for free ?
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Did you know that some people's flights don't go directly where they are headed and so they have to go somewhere in between? I bet there are people everyday going to and from 4, 8, even 12 places - and they only paid for their $1,200 ticket once. What a bunch of freeloaders.
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As it turns out, the traveler actually WANTED to go to that TO destination. They had fun experiences, and spent money there.
1) Shouldn't the airline get supplemental payment for the fact that the traveler had fun experiences at the destination (content). That could not have happened without the airline, so they should get remuneration.
2) The traveler spent money while away. Those businesses made revenue OFF THE BACK AND TOIL OF THE AIRLINE without paying a cent. Shouldn't the airline get a cut of any hotel or restaurant revenues made off the traveler they brought there.
Thanks. Just thought I'd drop in and provide more Ed Whitacre logic.
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Everyone pays to get connected - this is the carriers business model - no one is online totally free. we all pay -Their fees are based on what they can get away with and have a profitable business. - now we all know carriers are lazy, cheap and have some 1920's business model - heck I would be surprised if the top execs even knew what they do..
just another way to make us think they are doing us a favor buy overcharging use each month an providing the minimum bandwidth they can get away with.
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Unfortunately (for them), broadband providers can't use vague excuses like 'trouble in the middle east' to arbitrarily raise prices.
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I know which provider I'd choose every time.
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The former presumes that the end user is paying nothing. Zero. Does not pay a bill each month.
The later is an argument that each user is not paying ENOUGH to pay for his individual usage. That he is paying less in fees than is the actual cost of his actual usage.
This is not untrue. However, everything is subsidized. It could be said that a cable user is not bearing the cost of what it costs the provider. However, that "loss" is subsidized by advertisers, paid programming, licensing deals, etc.
But in the end, yes, they are making excuses to have the government subsidize them even more, and to jack up the bills of the consumers.
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Have you checked AT&T's yearly earnings report for 09?
I call shenanigans on the claim that they are undercharging.. both on the mobile and wired networks.
If they want more money from me out of pity, it would be a good start to stop having "best profit ever!" year after year during an economic downturn.
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Re: Paying for your connection
Based on what they reduce your charge if you have Internet and Cable TV, that Provision Cost is in the $10-$15 range. Once you have more than one service on the link, the connection cost has been paid by the charge for the first service. Thus if I have both and get a $10 discount, that $10 is the ACTUAL cost of the connection. Thus a $55 fee for the Internet is $45 for the Internet Service and $10 for the connection. If it costs them more than $45 for the Internet Service (and it is much less) the $55 fee would be higher.
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Bill & Keep and the real aim of the telcos
The truth is that telcos wish to forget, when it's useful for them, the working, in force model "Bill & Keep" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_keep, according to which at the networks interconnection each telco pays its side of the network.
This implies that they can require payment to only one of the subjects: either the customer of their access network or the customer of their transit network. Not necessarily a content provider belongs to those categories (surely not Google).
If the cost of the transit could vary according to the size of the object, the time needed for the object to reach the receiver, the distance and/or any other parameter, we would have a carrier (the telco) which interferes with the object, i.e. a discriminatory carrier. This is exactly the aim of such declarations of "Google free rides" and similar nonsense: to create the framework to justify a discriminatory behaviour (some would say non-neutral) in order to predate the economic revenues both of the sender and the receiver.
If this idea were to infiltrate the minds of the policy makers, a telco could freely decide, whenever there's a party which is raising a substantial income from its commercial activities on the Internet, to discriminate that party's contents (deprioritization, filtering, blocks etc.) in order to force the party or the end-user or both to donate part of the income, in the form of an "additional tariff", to the telco itself.
In this way, a telco potentially can become an "imposed commercial partner" of any and each economic activity on the Internet.
In the European Union such practices are at the moment impossible to be implemented (they would violate the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, artt. 102 and 103, for anticompetitive practices, and would also raise some serious problems with e-commerce Directive (2000/31/EC) and Access & Interconnection Directive (2002/19/EC)) but there's no doubt that there's a lot of pressure to find alleged "loopholes" which tend to justify a discriminatory, non-neutral behaviour. It is important to inform and raise awareness on the policy makers, on both sides of the ocean, about this sinister plot.
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Re: Bill & Keep and the real aim of the telcos
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Re: Bill & Keep and the real aim of the telcos
a.k.a. Ransom (o secuestros)
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When you pay the CableCo or TelCo for your broadband, you get two pipes, one up and one down. The downstream pipe (to your computer) is generally much faster than the upstream pipe. That's one of the big reasons P2P *sux* . But you pay for it. Both ways, whether you use it or not.
Trust me, every single broadband company out there knows there are no freeloaders on their networks. EVERYONE pays for bandwidth whether they use it or not. The gross majority of users never come close to stressing the network. Even high-cap users shouldn't really be a burden. This is just another attempt at getting people to pay a lot of money for nothing.
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Why should Grandma pay the same amount for the little bandwidth she uses up every month while a file sharer uses up 1,000 times the bandwidth while paying the same bill?
Of course, I don't ever expect Grandmas bill to actually go down.
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We can complain all we want and try to show them how to make more money and serve their customers better, but let's face it: they aren't going to change.
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I get it free
Happy Earth Day!
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Re: I get it free
I think you can judge by the rate of expansion just how successful it was.
Google has since moved on to the 700MHz spectrum auction, and now Google Fiber. I applaud their willingness to throw the pasta at the wall and see what sticks, but Muni Wi-Fi most certainly did not.
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Good way to kill cloud computing too.
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Download quotas
Go over quota for the month and you have to live with a slow, dodgy connection until you hit your monthly quota reset.
Then again, maybe the Australian ISPs just have us all conditioned to accept that way of doing things *twitch*
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Re: Download quotas
It's not our consumption habits that are the problem, it's the ISPs' lack of will to update the networks to support it and compete with the rest of the world that has left us behind in terms of internet connectivity. They still think the internet is only for web browsing, email, and "Windows Update". The internet is more than just the world wide web. It's a network that carries communications of numerous protocols and devices.
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What?
And for the love of Pete $65US is not very cheap for 4 meg down / 512k up
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Re: What?
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Problem here...
I do have a solution though - since essentially the internet is controlled by the Government any company that wants to charge content providers AND users for simply using the internet through them should be REMOVED from the internet. That way no one elses content goes through their network.
Let's see how much business they get without access to content.
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why in hell..
As a consumer, what doers my monthly internet bill pay for? I pay for an unbridled, unblocked connection to the internet. How I use it or what I do on it is ONLY my business.
To me this is just the left behind telco's attempt to wring money out of an old, bad business plan.
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who pays for the upgrades
The internet changed when video streaming became common and cheap to send and receive and store. In the past the internet was e-mail and static web sites now you can watch TV/movies over your internet. You may be paying the same amount based on your speed but you are downloading more and more. If each of your neighbors does the same thing unless the pipe you are on was designed to handle every connection running at top speed at the same time (which is doubtful) then when enough customers using the pipe max out its capacity the ISP has to upgrade or have unhappy customers. The ISP is not bringing in any more revenue but their expenses may be doubling. The customer and content providers have change the game but the the ISP is stuck on revenue based on speed which is connected to usage but not the same thing. So one side of the equation has changed but the ISP cost side is not allowed too.
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Re: who pays for the upgrades
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Re: who pays for the upgrades
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easy solution
HAHA
stupid ISP of the year award will gooooooo tooo
and maybe if we have William shatner as prime minister as he says he'd like ot we could fire some phasors at some of these KLINGON'S trying to invade our federation
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No, monopolists always serve higher prices and less aggregate output than competitors. The solution is competition, plain and simple. Enough of this monopolist nonsense that the U.S. and U.K. insist must be the case adn that every other country has proven to be wrong.
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In a 'traditional' download the company, let's call them A, pays per gb of data transfered to their users. Users are on a flat monthly rate so they don't pay extra for the download.
So the isp's get paid alot from company A and a little (well a lot) from the users of company A's data.
In p2p the company uploads less data and so the isp's get less from company A but the same from the users of company A's data, so they get less.
Now remember this is an industry and in industry any time they make less money someone is stealing from them.
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In a 'traditional' download the company, let's call them A, pays per gb of data transfered to their users. Users are on a flat monthly rate so they don't pay extra for the download.
So the isp's get paid alot from company A and a little (well a lot) from the users of company A's data.
In p2p the company uploads less data and so the isp's get less from company A but the same from the users of company A's data, so they get less.
Now remember this is an industry and in industry any time they make less money someone is stealing from them.
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How is it...
With the advent of the BBS systems, there were thousands of lines getting pounded with 24x7 usage and yet I'd never heard of any of them being kicked off for over-usage.
Am I missing something?
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Re: How is it...
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Re: How is it...
And remember that many BBS or ISPs had per-minute pricing for dialing into the modem pool, for the desired effect of keeping people from staying on too long.
Cipher-0, you can't just invent history and state it as if it happened that way. Maybe you never heard of anyone being kicked off for over-usage, but maybe you were not even there at the time.
In that time, the telcos didn't boot you because they had sold the "unlimited use" local lines. But they did suffer and complain that the usage of these geeks was consuming more resources than they had expected. The upside for them was many people bought second phone lines for modem use.
What's most disappointing is that the telcos seem to have learned nothing from the experience. They went out and marketed their DSL as "unlimited" again, and now we find them making the same complaints as 1990. Fool you once, shame on me. Fool you twice, shame on you.
Bottom line: make something unlimited, and some people will ALWAYS use it way more than you want/expect. Either deliver and shutup, or stop marketing it as unlimited.
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P2P bandwidth hoogging and cost shifting
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pay me and my other end users our fees for using our data for your commercial profit "usage-based pricing " model
its MY copyrighted datastream your companies ISP network is profiting from when you move over to your wanted "usage-based pricing model" and strat charging my visitor per Mbit transfered.
so sign the commercial contract and PAY ME MY required Commercial rate per bit at 200% per "bit" the rate You are charging my visitor per "Byte" payed in cash per per every 24 hours with a compound intereste rate plus all costs charge per day, for late payment OR face Criminal charges of Commercial Piracy of content, illegal creation of "derivative works" for commercial profit etc, without a licence and potentially other related directives/laws for content YOU dont OWN.
ALL RIGHT RESERVED as per the auto copyright and related laws given to every single content creator on the planet including end users unique datastream content creation.
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