Deutsche Telekom Dumps Net Neutrality; Will Limit Bandwidth For Competing Video & Voice Products
from the net-neutrality-is-for-other-people dept
It appears that Deutsche Telekom has decided that it can and should ignore the basic principles of net neutrality. It is setting up limits on how much traffic its customers can use, and saying that competitors' video products will automatically be throttled to 384k, which makes them basically useless. But, of course, this throttling does not apply to Deutsche Telekom's own video offerings.The data traffic generated by the use of Telekom' own IPTV platform Entertain won't be attributed to the volume integrated in the tariffs. "With Entertain, customers book television. We will therefore ensure that they will not suddenly sit in front of a black screen," explained Hagspihl. Also, voice telephony through Telekom's fixed line subscription will be excluded.But... competitors? Well, too bad. This is a fairly bold move by DT. Of course, telcos have long wanted to do this, trying to force people and lock them in to their own (often overprice and underpowered) services, but to directly punish competitors is a pretty blatant statement by Deutsche Telekom that it thinks it can get away with this because of its dominant position in the market. Of course, if I'm a Deutsche Telekom customer, I'd be incredibly pissed off that Deutsche Telekom is basically telling me that I'll be penalized for using other video or voice services, even if they're better. Yes, those competing services will work fine beneath a certain traffic level, but people don't realize just how much data they often use these days -- especially when you're talking about bandwidth-heavy video.
Deutsche Telekom's explanation for this is almost entirely bogus.
"We want to continue offering our customers the best network in future into which we invest billions of euros. However, constantly increasing bandwidths can't be financed through constantly dropping prices. We will have to charge customers with very high data consumption more in future," said Michael Hagspihl, managing director marketing at Telekom Deutschland.First of all, broadband remains an incredibly profitable business, and while the telcos love to make these claims, they're simply not supported by the data. They're making money like crazy on their existing networks, and although keeping up with the growth in bandwidth does require some investment, it's easily affordable under the current structure. What this is about is exactly what everyone knows: killing off competitors, limiting the market from disruption and trying to control these other services, like video and voice, so that people are forced into using Deutsche Telekom's own services.
In fact, Deutsche Telekom's CEO more or less shows off the standard hubris of telco execs these days, believing that the only thing that's important on the internet is his network, and everything else you get is only because of him:
"Without our telecommunications networks and modern primary products there wouldn't be any online services coming from Google or Apple," [Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene] Obermann told the Deutsche Presse Agentur.Uh, I think you mean that without your monopoly power over the network people wouldn't have to use your lines to reach those services, which is what they really want. The "value" here that people get isn't Deutsche Telekom. They supply the pipes. The value is in all of the various services available, and Deutsche Telekom is trying to make those useless... oh, unless, those service providers want to pay up. It's the same old net neutrality story. The telcos overvalue their networks and they try to get paid twice for the same thing. They want customers to pay to reach Google and Google to pay to reach the customers.
Thankfully, the German government isn't too keen on where this is going:
Economic Minister Philipp Rösler voiced concern in a letter to Telekom's CEO Rene Obermann on Wednesday, a copy of which Spiegel Online obtained.Deutsche Telekom has its dominant position in the market because until not that long ago it was the state owned telecom provider. Trying to block out competitors with bogus excuses and limitations for consumers certainly seems like a pretty big abuse of that position.
In the letter, Rösler warned of possible restrictions for "flat rate" customers. He said Federal government and consumer protection authorities would "follow very carefully further developments in relation to the varying treatment of Telekom's own services, and that of others, in terms of network neutrality."
Federal Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner also criticized the new policy in an interview with Spiegel Online. "At first glance, progress for the customer can not be seen," she said. "Limiting flat rates is certainly not consumer-friendly," the Bavarian conservative CSU minister said.
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Filed Under: germany, net neutrality
Companies: deutsche telekom
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The company I work for would not be able to operate as effectively, that's for sure.
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Re: Actually, Mike got it wrong: this about data caps.
2nd point, VPNs have NOTHING to do with this, NOR will they get around the data cap. Yet again, VPNs won't save you.
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Re: Re: Actually, Mike got it wrong: this about data caps.
They will be limited to 384K once they use up their cap which is at 75GB to 400GB per month, depending on the plan.
Since the average usage is 15GB to 20GB, this will affect very few extremely high bandwidth users.
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Re: Re: Re: Actually, Mike got it wrong: this about data caps.
[Citation needed]
And NO, an official Telekom statement on this is NOT considered unbiased.
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Re: Re: Re: Actually, Mike got it wrong: this about data caps.
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Re: Re: Actually, Mike got it wrong: this about data caps.
So f**king what?
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Re: Re: Actually, Mike got it wrong: this about data caps.
He won't bother about the problems this will cause, the damage to competitors and the monopoly position that's sure to be abused. No, he has a convenient excuse so all's OK!
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Love to see the people rise and take care of Business.
Bring on the Revolution and Power to the People !
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Oh, it's terrible! -- Until look at numbers Mike left out.
I'd say a WHOPPING 400GB! But even 75GB is LOTS. -- I fall into the "average" range, by the way, and that's actually too much. -- If to the allowed levels, you NEED some limits on your habits. Won't harm you, nor will NOT having a third slice of pie.
And eventually any network will be saturated, so it's wise to think ahead. Everyone can't have all the bandwidth they want. ("Unlimited" for fixed price is one of Mike's fondes notions.)
Anyhoo, as usual Mike gives advice on how to run a nation-wide telecom, without of course ever having actually run anything besides this blog.
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OOTB: Always the corporate apologist.
The problem is that services aren't being treated equally. The streaming version of Netscape is having it's air supply cut off by this Microsoft wannabe.
The problem is that the monopoly is favoring it's own services over that of it's rivals.
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Re: OOTB: Always the corporate apologist.
IT'S JUST A DATA CAP. LIKE THE ONE I HAVE.
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OOTB: Always the corporate apologist.
It's the last mile bandwidth that poses any real challenge.
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Re: Oh, it's terrible! -- Until look at numbers Mike left out.
If this dude didn't have a brain in his head he would lonesome.
Nigel
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Re: Re: Oh, it's terrible! -- Until look at numbers Mike left out.
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Re: Oh, it's terrible! -- Until look at numbers Mike left out.
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Re: Re: Oh, it's terrible! -- Until look at numbers Mike left out.
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Re: Re: Re: Oh, it's terrible! -- Until look at numbers Mike left out.
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Re: Oh, it's terrible! -- Until look at numbers Mike left out.
Says the failure who's only credit is ShillTroll(tm) ranting on said blog site.
Which also makes you JUST AS UNQUALIFIED to post on the subject as Mike, per your own argument. QED.
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Re: Oh, it's terrible! -- Until look at numbers Mike left out.
I'm using around 100Gb per month with streaming videos. My ISP has data caps in their policy but if they chose to enforce ppl would probably get mad because any 1080p usage will eat most of the monthly cap in less than a week. Actually it could be as fast as 2 days if you watch around 3 movies. I almost use all of my 2Gb cap on my phone and I've never downloaded anything infringing via that connection...
A loopy tour into ootb's clueless fantasy world indeed.
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Re: Re: Oh, it's terrible! -- Until look at numbers Mike left out.
In his tiny little head, "lots of traffic" = "lots of downloads" and "downloads" means the same as "piracy". Both of these are of course fallacies. Traffic has many components, with streaming being the most bandwidth heavy. Someone streaming 2 movies a day on Netflix may consume significantly more bandwidth than someone torrenting a single movie every day, yet in ootb's head only the downloading counts. If you consider downloading alone, some games on legal download services are in excess of 10Gb each, and some services require regular patches of up to 1Gb or more, which DLC is often multiple gigs, not to mention the bandwidth requirements of online gaming. Yet he'll also discount these as well.
While dismissing these perfectly legitimate high bandwidth uses, he's not only denying current reality, but the future as well. New consoles are placing a great emphasis on online use and purchases. Netflix are looking at offering 4K streaming, as are Apple, and YouTube already supports it. More and more people are using more and more devices, meaning you can be having 4 members of a household streaming a movie in HD at that same time over the same connection on a regular basis.
Anyone with half a brain can see that bandwidth requirements are going to increase exponentially as new hardware and services require more of it and those services become more commonplace, yet these idiots are going "well *I* don't need that much bandwidth *now* so it down't matter". It's a failed argument before they even start.
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Monopoly trolling...
The "willing to pay part" automatically makes it not net neutrality.
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Don't kid yourself. R�sler is a joke and the government will fold on this as they ahve with the Leistungsschutzrecht.
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Pipes paid for with public money, one might add. I'm not quite sure how they ended up in the sticky hands of the Deutsche Telekom corporation. I guess it made sense to someone, somewhere.
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Like most national telephone companies, DT was a publicly owned monopoly until it was privatised in the last few decades. Just as with, say, BT in the UK or Telefonica in Spain, they still maintained a defacto monopoly until real competition was able to appear, though I'm not sure how truly competitive the German telecoms market is at the moment. But, whatever infrastructure was paid for by public money will be in their hands because that's probably who installed them to begin with.
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Source below - in German but google translate does ok with German pages -
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/internetprovider-telekom-bremst-nicht-als-einziger-a- 896606.html
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Ooof
I know they do various slightly dodgy tactics to keep their monopoly. For example, when you want to get a new internet connection - all of the ISPs you speak to say they can install in ~6wks except T-Com who can install in 2wks (They also own the phone lines I believe so all the ISPs have to use them anyway).
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