France Telecom Accused Of Holding YouTube Videos Hostage Unless It Gets More Money
from the more-peering-disputes dept
An interesting post from broadband news reporter Dave Burstein argues that anti-trust regulators in France may have basically enabled France Telecom to hold YouTube videos hostage unless Google backbone partner, Cogent, pays more money:Millions of French netizens discover their YouTube streams sputter and die or never begin in the first place. Other video services, including TF1, are also struggling. The effect varies, sometimes randomly and sometimes by time of day. Respected consumer organization UFC-Que Choisir found between 20% and 50% of users surveyed online had problems.The details suggest that this isn't so much a "neutrality" issue as a peering dispute. In fact, it actually sounds somewhat similar to the Level 3 / Comcast dispute from a few years back. In that case, Level 3 was providing service to Netflix, and Comcast worried about the big influx of traffic. Comcast (like France Telecom) demanded that Level 3 pay up for delivering it extra traffic. The bit that's interesting here is that French regulators got involved and said that this was legal in this case, though they're worried about the lack of transparency.
Again, the existing connection remains and much of the traffic gets through. But Net traffic always grows and without regularly adding additional capacity many - not all - streams are blocked. French networks, with France Telecom in the lead, are refusing to accept growing traffic from Cogent, a major backbone carrier that services Google. They demand payment to accept all the streams their customers request. The independent French competition authority (Autorite de la concurrence) on September 20 approved the charging plan, leaving no doubt this is neutrality dispute.
Of course all this does is show, yet again, how the internet's interconnectivity through peering arrangements is increasingly under pressure as certain broadband players become more powerful. And, unfortunately, the public (and their YouTube videos) may be at risk.
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Filed Under: content, disputes, france, net neutrality, payment, peering, youtube
Companies: cogent, france telecom, free, google, youtube
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Problems
The other 50-80% only partially completed the online survey before their connections dropped, so they weren't counted.
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sorry. went off into cloud cuckoo land for a couple of minutes!
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Shouldn't France Telecom be going after it's own users instead of Cogent to collect enough revenue to maintain its infrastructure to which France Telecom's customers are directly connected?
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Ant to solution is ...
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New ISP?
They'd siphon away France Telecom's subscribers in a heartbeat.
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Re:
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Google refuses to pay and eventually just doesn't service France at all. Even then the internet traffic won't go away people will just connect to different services and bog down the french networks on a different pipe.
Either they invest in better infrastructure or disconnect france from the rest of the world.
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Re: Ant to solution is ...
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2nd French ISP to "block" YouTube
Free (the once alternative ISP breaking the rules, that just released an adblocker directly in the box) has been reported for months by its users to do the same.
Following the newspapers (and the "pay for links"), they're all after Google in a way or an other, requesting more money to stop their declining business models...
A pity or a shame, can't say yet...
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A push for tiered pricing?
If the local ISP doesn't have the bandwidth to handle the large loads on their network:
- what prevents them from upgrading?
- what prevents them from innovating? e.g. why can't France Telecom work with Google or others to "house" data closer to the consumer? - Is this youtube/google saying no or France Telecom saying no to efficiency?
- is a lock in to a current business model preventing alternative business models from moving forward?
Is this a move from ISPs (we already know the answer) to push for data caps, tiered pricing and mint money based on poorly designed and implemented business models?
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Re: Re: Ant to solution is ...
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Re:
If there were even two choices (assuming they aren't colluding on such things) pissing off their customers by blocking content they are requesting over they connection they paid for, is likely to make them go elsewhere. Which would in turn decrease the amount of traffic said peering provider sends them. Basically under any competition at all, their actions would be lose/lose.
This sort of a move strikes me as extremely short sighted even for a monopoly.
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Re: Re: Re: Ant to solution is ...
How do you order that?
Me: I'd like the lost bread, please.
Waitress: Umm...we don't know where it is.
Me: But I'd like some.
Waitress: Sorry, if we find it, we will bring it to you.
Me: Isn't it just bread if you have found it?
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Peering vs Transmitting
Do you know for a fact that a peering arrangement between Cogent and France Telecom is involved? It's not a peering arrangement unless each of them is effectively the other's customer with respect to network access.
An ISP can't tap into another ISP's network without permission. If each of them has a direct connection to the other (that is, they are peers), then any dispute between them is a contractual issue. If, on the other hand, there's a third ISP between them, that makes it a neutrality issue and not a peering arrangement issue.
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Peering vs Paying
This also naturally balances out the ecosystem costs and makes sure people don't manipulate the system by bouncing between ISPs each month, inefficiently driving and abandoning infrastructure/interconnect costs for ISPs.
As far as "customers requesting the traffic", that is rhetoric used by CDN companies. In fact their customers are paying them to send the traffic and they are responsible to bear some of the network growth costs. What they want is to CHANGE THE INTERNET FINANCING MODEL by giving them free network costs. This is what is new... this is what the issue really is.
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Re: A push for tiered pricing?
Same thing goes with peering.. if the relationship is fair and balanced that is peering... if it is highly imbalanced as far as network investment, their should be some basic compensation.
The other challenge is the massive changes that can take place. Content these days only comes from a few CDNs. Their ability to shift the path and performance of their traffic can cause massive investment requirements and disruption. Suddenly using Cogent this month, Level 3 the next and off to Telia after that. Each change becomes a "peering dispute" due to the cost to enable these moves. Peering/Transit Arbitrage is bad for the Internet at these scales.
This is NOT Net Neutrality... It is a cost shifting designed to drive ISPs to bear all future cost of transit growth away from CDNs and major content sources
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Re: Re: A push for tiered pricing?
FT saying Cogent needs to pay for the increase / imbalanced demand vs having their original balanced "free" relationship.
Cogent seems to get in these spats alot. Cogent vs Sprint, Cogent vs Level 3, Cogent vs Teleglobe, and prior FT issues....
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Network Growth Costs
CDN companies already bear some of the network growth costs by paying the various ISPs who offer connectivity to them. The idea that CDN companies aren't paying their fair share is nothing less than complete bullshit.
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Re:
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neutrality dispute
ruben
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