You're kidding if you think you understand the mobile phone distribution chain. Except for a few rugged individualists willing to pay the full $500 for their phone, the consumer does NOT decide what is in the marketplace.
The phone carriers are the actual customers of the phone makers. It is what they buy, in volume, and what they choose to market and make available to the customer that gets bought. They subsidize the phones they want you to have.
Granted, this is not absolute. Consumers can revolt, backlash, or pay the full nut. But, sadly, the network operators have a greater influence than the consumer overall.
If you doubt me, ask yourself why you don't see free over the air TV receivers (cost $5) in every phone. Why Bluetooth took so long to arrive at Verizon, and was crippled when it came. Why tethering functionality is removed from Android phones when customers finally take possession. Why the Palm Pre didn't sell high numbers.
You guys are stoned. And just two more in a long line of "Google will kill cellular" voices. In fact, I can hear the echoes of you guys in the 700MHz auction: "Google will win and put up free networks." To which I would write "Google is bidding to trigger the 'open requirements' and has no interest, nor any core competency, in running a network." During the Muni WiFi rush, you guys would say "Google will blanket the US with WiFi and is gonna kill cellular." To which I would write, "Wi-Fi does not have adequate range, nor protected spectrum to compete with cellular on a wide-area scale." So, you're still around.
Now, one thing in your favor. If you keep saying it, someday you may be right. I mean, over time, things do tend to change. And I do thing Google is a good company. But for now, you're still wrong.
Google makes pennies on each ad display. Phone bills are $40 - $100/mo. Current devices cost $500. There is a massive disconnect between the revenues and the costs of offering ad-based free cellular service.
Lemme help you out: Let's take Moore's law and say that those phones will cost just $80 by 2015, and the cellular bills will be down to $15/mo. OK, then, that's still too much money for Google to offer it on a ad-subsidized business model.
Why do you think Google can't do customer service well? Because that requires humans, and costs money at a measurable scale. This is one of the problems they found with the Nexus One. Pesky customers expected them to support their product, and that was not cost-effective.
The thing about running a business that earns monies in pennies is that, it truly can add up! However, it means you need to do everything at a massive scale. Huge volumes. And that means, your costs have to remain trivial, or they too will scale out of control.
That's actually a very interesting tangent. If we agree that Netflix pays for their enterprise network services, and the customer pays their ISP for their Internet connection, then:
- There IS a great deal of competition for Netflix's business. They could work with a variety of datacenters, core network providers, and CDNs.
- There is far too little competition for the consumer ISP side of the equation.
Interesting, then, that the lobby effort is directed at screwing the consumers on the non-competitive side...but their feigned anger is about the customers on the free, competitive market side, Netflix.
I mean, you don't hear Level 3 or Akamai complaining about all the bandwidth Netflix uses, do you?
On the subject of my defense of caps, you say I go on and on...and I do...but you'd have to read some of what I wrote if you want to understand it.
I defend tiers and caps as concepts, because there is nothing inherently unfair about them, nor even customer-unfriendly.
However, they can be implemented well, or they can be implemented terribly. Usually, an ISP or telco falls closer to the latter than the former.
Here's a list:
Caps should not be hard caps. If you hit it, you should be able to continue using the Net at acceptable speeds, sufficient for VoIP and 911 calls. Say 128Kbps at least. That's called throttling.
ISPs should be extremely proactive in notifying people of hitting thresholds like 50%, 80%, 90%, 100%. Their data on your current usage should be up to date (they are very weak at this), and you should have tools to tell you where you are (website, plugin, taskbar, widget, SMS, email).
When you hit your cap, they should notify you of your options. They should NEVER block your Internet access. Options should include: buy up to next tier, use throttled speed for billing cycle, buy up for one month, pay per GB for overage.
Overage GB prices should NOT be punitive (i.e. they should be LESS than the price for the first GBs). It should be a volume discount, not a penalty. It should be in increments NO BIGGER than 1GB. They should not force people to buy 30GB of overage when they go over their cap by 2MB.
Caps should go with the billing cycle, not the calendar.
People who use very little Internet should see their bills drop as a result of tiered services. AT&T did this right when they capped the iPhone data plans.
-----
So, my point is, caps CAN suck and be unfair. But caps can also be totally fair, and can help allocate the costs of re-investing in network enhancements to the people who use the network the most. In so doing, the network operators will have better incentive to improve the networks.
And as for your personal ISP, it sounds like the recent changes are fair. They raised your cap by 20GB for $2/mo - that's a good deal (for anyone who uses it...a minor bad deal for someone who uses 5GB/mo). Your overage is $1.50/GB, which is probably near the $/GB you pay for the first 80GB, although you didn't say your rate. Not punitive, though. Your total liability for overages is limited to $50, which is worse than before. Obviously, their trying to make the heaviest users pay more.
"AT&T, Comcast, COX and every other consumer broadband provider out there should be paying Netflix in order to make sure their customers have access to that service."
True. In fact, as a model, let's look at how Comcast and Cox operate as TV Cable networks: How much do they insist ESPN pay them to deliver ESPN TV content to users' homes?
The portion of bandwidth dedicated to upload or download is a deliberate decision. It is a zero sum game. Whatever the technology, the available bandwidth can be sliced between up or down.
Just like a 4 lane highway could be one way north, 1 lane south & 3 north, 2 & 2, 3 south & 1 north, or one way south.
They have allocated it as it currently is because, as you seem to understand, people tend to download a lot more than they upload. That reality is not changing, even with user generated content. Stuff like Netflix and Hulu assure that download is still what people need more of.
Yep. We need more competition. THAT is the right way to keep companies in check.
And don't assume that no capped packages would be sold in a totally competitive market. One would expect greater range of choices to meet customers' needs, some capped and some of which are unlimited. Unlimited would, of course, cost more than the capped ones.
I've seen you around here plenty, you're not this ill informed, is ya?
People who leave their TV on are no more bandwidth "hogs" than people who leave their FM radio on. Or people who leave it off, for that matter. Broadcast signals are sent, and consume the channel whether you pay attention to them or not.
Unicast, or On Demand, or Streaming media uses the channel differently, consuming capacity on the shared network legs for one subscriber's payload.
You'll note, for example, that streaming services like Pandora will throw up a prompt every hour or so with "Are you still listening? We pay for rights and bandwidth to offer you music, so we want to be sure you're still there."
But many ISPs have started to offer capped, not unlimited. Many offer different tiers. And more will go that way. I just hopes the caps are reasonable.
Also, "unlimited" as it is normally sold is still "best effort", so if you're neighborhood is congested, you will experience less speed than sold.
Meh. Sounds to me like the kind of thing that should NOT be patented.
The problem is a known one: "We need to cut this paper, we want to minimize costs, how do we do it?"
And similar solutions would probably emerge if you separately asked a bunch of graduate math students from MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Ecole Polytechnique, an IIT, or University of Waterloo.
If you put out a crowdsource price, like Netflix did for recommendations, you would find many people submitting similar solutions. In fact, the Netflix prize is kinda a very similar challenge. It seems like a very specialized problem, but they had solutions come from around the world, from people approaching it from multiple disciplines, and with similar results. Turns out, the "flash of genius" to solve their problems was really common hard, iterative work.
Why do you insist on such black/white clarity in a world of greys?
The truthful answer to your question is: it depends.
Watch and learn, from two different scenarios:
In a world with short, reasonable patent terms, where only the most inventive, unique ideas were patented, where the patents were narrow, where there was a quick review process, and where those patents were put into the market or were very clear and instructive: Are patents good? Yes.
In a world with long and growing patent durations, where any obvious idea, inevitably part of progress, with overly broad claims, and where a slow review process which assumed validity with injuctive 'relief', where non-practicing entities impeded true innovators, and where patents were deliberately written so vaguely as to be incomprehensible: Are patents good? No.
To make the offer a little sweeter, and the hypocrisy a little more obvious, why not offer money to Sununu or Ford. You see, of course Netflix has an Internet bill...even the average Joe pays $35/mo. Why should Sununu pay somebody's bill? Just because you challenge him, it doesn't show his dishonesty because nobody can see why he has any incentive to accept your offer.
So to make the point, OFFER Sununu $1,000 if he simply pays Netflix's "free" ISP bill. Heck, I'll even go $500 of that if you go the other half.
In fact, why not do a fund-raiser using some of the crowdsource tools you know. Set an upper limit, say $10,000. Then offer Sununu the $10k to pay their bill. Let everyone get involved. Then, it will be more obvious that he is lying if he doesn't take the "easy free money". Netflix might even get involved, or put a grand towards the "prize".
If Sununu accepts (unlikely), but Netflix doesn't get involved, or doesn't accept the money, then we could plan to offer it to the EFF or such. Either way, I think our money will be pretty safe!
The idea is that, for example, if you are an ISP selling Internet connections, there is NO VALUE to that product/service 'in and of itself'. However, because other companies are willingly offering complementary products, like content streams and websites, the "whole product" the ISP offers includes the content.
Thus, the value of the ISPs' product/service is vastly augmented by the contribution of the content services. In short, ISPs owe companies like Google, Pandora, Yahoo, Amazon, and millions more a debt of gratitude for offering compelling services that make it worthwhile for consumers to pay ~$50 for a monthly broadband subscription. If it weren't for these great websites, people would have stayed on their $15/mo dial-up AOL accounts!!
No consumer pays to connect to the middle of the Internet. They pay to connect to another end point, like Hulu. Meanwhile, the content companies are paying for their bandwidth. So we've already got a double dip scenario for the ISPs.
Therefore, the ISPs are charging twice for their service, AND getting a free ride from the content companies who are building their whole service. They should sit down and be quiet.
While I'm generally on the Techdirt side of this argument, you are wrong.
There are bandwidth "hogs", although I don't like to use the negative "hogs" because, like you, that currently is fair use according to their contracts. But there are people who use waaaay more than the average. And, yes, they can "take someone else's bandwidth." That's because for any given time, there IS a finite amount of bandwidth going to your CO or cable trunk line. If one user is using the max constantly, other users will see reduced speeds. I think reasonable caps or tiers of service are a legit, honest way to separate the heaviest users from the lightest.
"Telco's [sic] haven't expanded their hardware." Such bollocks. Why do freelance consumer advocates, such as you, completely ruin their credibility with such demonstrably false lies? Do you have a citation? An educated view? Because, you're totally wrong. How did Sprint go to WiMAX without investment? How did cable ISPs go to DOCSIS 3? How did Verizon offer FiOS? FiOS originally cost $700 per house to connect (after upgrading core functionality). AT&T invested $19 Billion in networks in 2010. So STFU with the "they never invest" nonsense. Network operators such in so many true ways, there is no need to invent false ones.
"so they have oversold their resources".
Yes. That is what all network providers MUST do in order to offer an affordable service. Think of the roads. We don't pave enough roads for everyone to drive at once; we make estimates of future usage, and try to build capacity to handle normal use, and to minimize congestion during peak hours. That is how telecom networks are built. This is not evil, it is engineering.
With all that fail, I can't believe I'm on your side of this debate, but I am.
To your point, Netflix's recommendation engine is a powerful competitor to the classic method of promoting films.
Classic: huge budget production, huge budget advertising, strong-arm control of what plays on the nations cinema screens
Netflix: you liked this, so it is highly likely that you will like that.
Which one do we think is more effective at correctly informing people of, and helping people see films they will like? Gee, I dunno, do you have more faith in collaborative filtering or in advertising?
On the post: Could Google's Motorola Buy To Fend Off Microsoft... Actually Drive More Business To Microsoft?
Re: I still will not buy it
The phone carriers are the actual customers of the phone makers. It is what they buy, in volume, and what they choose to market and make available to the customer that gets bought. They subsidize the phones they want you to have.
Granted, this is not absolute. Consumers can revolt, backlash, or pay the full nut. But, sadly, the network operators have a greater influence than the consumer overall.
If you doubt me, ask yourself why you don't see free over the air TV receivers (cost $5) in every phone. Why Bluetooth took so long to arrive at Verizon, and was crippled when it came. Why tethering functionality is removed from Android phones when customers finally take possession. Why the Palm Pre didn't sell high numbers.
On the post: Could Google's Motorola Buy To Fend Off Microsoft... Actually Drive More Business To Microsoft?
Re: .Re: Google's bigger plan
Now, one thing in your favor. If you keep saying it, someday you may be right. I mean, over time, things do tend to change. And I do thing Google is a good company. But for now, you're still wrong.
Google makes pennies on each ad display. Phone bills are $40 - $100/mo. Current devices cost $500. There is a massive disconnect between the revenues and the costs of offering ad-based free cellular service.
Lemme help you out: Let's take Moore's law and say that those phones will cost just $80 by 2015, and the cellular bills will be down to $15/mo. OK, then, that's still too much money for Google to offer it on a ad-subsidized business model.
Why do you think Google can't do customer service well? Because that requires humans, and costs money at a measurable scale. This is one of the problems they found with the Nexus One. Pesky customers expected them to support their product, and that was not cost-effective.
The thing about running a business that earns monies in pennies is that, it truly can add up! However, it means you need to do everything at a massive scale. Huge volumes. And that means, your costs have to remain trivial, or they too will scale out of control.
On the post: Could Google's Motorola Buy To Fend Off Microsoft... Actually Drive More Business To Microsoft?
Re: Google's bigger plan
Citation, please.
I doubt > 5% of people overlook that.
On the post: Could Google's Motorola Buy To Fend Off Microsoft... Actually Drive More Business To Microsoft?
Re:
Apple got the Samsung Android tablet held up by injunction in Oz and Europe.
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
Re: Re: Re:
- There IS a great deal of competition for Netflix's business. They could work with a variety of datacenters, core network providers, and CDNs.
- There is far too little competition for the consumer ISP side of the equation.
Interesting, then, that the lobby effort is directed at screwing the consumers on the non-competitive side...but their feigned anger is about the customers on the free, competitive market side, Netflix.
I mean, you don't hear Level 3 or Akamai complaining about all the bandwidth Netflix uses, do you?
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I defend tiers and caps as concepts, because there is nothing inherently unfair about them, nor even customer-unfriendly.
However, they can be implemented well, or they can be implemented terribly. Usually, an ISP or telco falls closer to the latter than the former.
Here's a list:
Caps should not be hard caps. If you hit it, you should be able to continue using the Net at acceptable speeds, sufficient for VoIP and 911 calls. Say 128Kbps at least. That's called throttling.
ISPs should be extremely proactive in notifying people of hitting thresholds like 50%, 80%, 90%, 100%. Their data on your current usage should be up to date (they are very weak at this), and you should have tools to tell you where you are (website, plugin, taskbar, widget, SMS, email).
When you hit your cap, they should notify you of your options. They should NEVER block your Internet access. Options should include: buy up to next tier, use throttled speed for billing cycle, buy up for one month, pay per GB for overage.
Overage GB prices should NOT be punitive (i.e. they should be LESS than the price for the first GBs). It should be a volume discount, not a penalty. It should be in increments NO BIGGER than 1GB. They should not force people to buy 30GB of overage when they go over their cap by 2MB.
Caps should go with the billing cycle, not the calendar.
People who use very little Internet should see their bills drop as a result of tiered services. AT&T did this right when they capped the iPhone data plans.
-----
So, my point is, caps CAN suck and be unfair. But caps can also be totally fair, and can help allocate the costs of re-investing in network enhancements to the people who use the network the most. In so doing, the network operators will have better incentive to improve the networks.
And as for your personal ISP, it sounds like the recent changes are fair. They raised your cap by 20GB for $2/mo - that's a good deal (for anyone who uses it...a minor bad deal for someone who uses 5GB/mo). Your overage is $1.50/GB, which is probably near the $/GB you pay for the first 80GB, although you didn't say your rate. Not punitive, though. Your total liability for overages is limited to $50, which is worse than before. Obviously, their trying to make the heaviest users pay more.
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
Re: SOLUTION: Fees for Useful Services
"AT&T, Comcast, COX and every other consumer broadband provider out there should be paying Netflix in order to make sure their customers have access to that service."
True. In fact, as a model, let's look at how Comcast and Cox operate as TV Cable networks: How much do they insist ESPN pay them to deliver ESPN TV content to users' homes?
Wassat you say? They PAY ESPN!!!
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
Re: Re: So, the way to make money...
On the post: Let's Up The Ante: We'll Pay John Sununu & Harold Ford Jr. $1,000 To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill
Re: Re: Re:
Just like a 4 lane highway could be one way north, 1 lane south & 3 north, 2 & 2, 3 south & 1 north, or one way south.
They have allocated it as it currently is because, as you seem to understand, people tend to download a lot more than they upload. That reality is not changing, even with user generated content. Stuff like Netflix and Hulu assure that download is still what people need more of.
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
And don't assume that no capped packages would be sold in a totally competitive market. One would expect greater range of choices to meet customers' needs, some capped and some of which are unlimited. Unlimited would, of course, cost more than the capped ones.
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
Re: Re: Re:
People who leave their TV on are no more bandwidth "hogs" than people who leave their FM radio on. Or people who leave it off, for that matter. Broadcast signals are sent, and consume the channel whether you pay attention to them or not.
Unicast, or On Demand, or Streaming media uses the channel differently, consuming capacity on the shared network legs for one subscriber's payload.
You'll note, for example, that streaming services like Pandora will throw up a prompt every hour or so with "Are you still listening? We pay for rights and bandwidth to offer you music, so we want to be sure you're still there."
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
Re: Re: Re:
But many ISPs have started to offer capped, not unlimited. Many offer different tiers. And more will go that way. I just hopes the caps are reasonable.
Also, "unlimited" as it is normally sold is still "best effort", so if you're neighborhood is congested, you will experience less speed than sold.
On the post: 'What Idiot Wrote The Patent That Might Invalidate Software Patents? Oh, Wait, That Was Me'
Re: Re: Can anyone please give an example
The problem is a known one: "We need to cut this paper, we want to minimize costs, how do we do it?"
And similar solutions would probably emerge if you separately asked a bunch of graduate math students from MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Ecole Polytechnique, an IIT, or University of Waterloo.
If you put out a crowdsource price, like Netflix did for recommendations, you would find many people submitting similar solutions. In fact, the Netflix prize is kinda a very similar challenge. It seems like a very specialized problem, but they had solutions come from around the world, from people approaching it from multiple disciplines, and with similar results. Turns out, the "flash of genius" to solve their problems was really common hard, iterative work.
On the post: 'What Idiot Wrote The Patent That Might Invalidate Software Patents? Oh, Wait, That Was Me'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Why do you insist on such black/white clarity in a world of greys?
The truthful answer to your question is: it depends.
Watch and learn, from two different scenarios:
In a world with short, reasonable patent terms, where only the most inventive, unique ideas were patented, where the patents were narrow, where there was a quick review process, and where those patents were put into the market or were very clear and instructive: Are patents good? Yes.
In a world with long and growing patent durations, where any obvious idea, inevitably part of progress, with overly broad claims, and where a slow review process which assumed validity with injuctive 'relief', where non-practicing entities impeded true innovators, and where patents were deliberately written so vaguely as to be incomprehensible: Are patents good? No.
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
Mike, Raise The Ante
To make the offer a little sweeter, and the hypocrisy a little more obvious, why not offer money to Sununu or Ford. You see, of course Netflix has an Internet bill...even the average Joe pays $35/mo. Why should Sununu pay somebody's bill? Just because you challenge him, it doesn't show his dishonesty because nobody can see why he has any incentive to accept your offer.
So to make the point, OFFER Sununu $1,000 if he simply pays Netflix's "free" ISP bill. Heck, I'll even go $500 of that if you go the other half.
In fact, why not do a fund-raiser using some of the crowdsource tools you know. Set an upper limit, say $10,000. Then offer Sununu the $10k to pay their bill. Let everyone get involved. Then, it will be more obvious that he is lying if he doesn't take the "easy free money". Netflix might even get involved, or put a grand towards the "prize".
If Sununu accepts (unlikely), but Netflix doesn't get involved, or doesn't accept the money, then we could plan to offer it to the EFF or such. Either way, I think our money will be pretty safe!
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
The Whole Product
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_product
The idea is that, for example, if you are an ISP selling Internet connections, there is NO VALUE to that product/service 'in and of itself'. However, because other companies are willingly offering complementary products, like content streams and websites, the "whole product" the ISP offers includes the content.
Thus, the value of the ISPs' product/service is vastly augmented by the contribution of the content services. In short, ISPs owe companies like Google, Pandora, Yahoo, Amazon, and millions more a debt of gratitude for offering compelling services that make it worthwhile for consumers to pay ~$50 for a monthly broadband subscription. If it weren't for these great websites, people would have stayed on their $15/mo dial-up AOL accounts!!
No consumer pays to connect to the middle of the Internet. They pay to connect to another end point, like Hulu. Meanwhile, the content companies are paying for their bandwidth. So we've already got a double dip scenario for the ISPs.
Therefore, the ISPs are charging twice for their service, AND getting a free ride from the content companies who are building their whole service. They should sit down and be quiet.
On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?
Re:
There are bandwidth "hogs", although I don't like to use the negative "hogs" because, like you, that currently is fair use according to their contracts. But there are people who use waaaay more than the average. And, yes, they can "take someone else's bandwidth." That's because for any given time, there IS a finite amount of bandwidth going to your CO or cable trunk line. If one user is using the max constantly, other users will see reduced speeds. I think reasonable caps or tiers of service are a legit, honest way to separate the heaviest users from the lightest.
"Telco's [sic] haven't expanded their hardware." Such bollocks. Why do freelance consumer advocates, such as you, completely ruin their credibility with such demonstrably false lies? Do you have a citation? An educated view? Because, you're totally wrong. How did Sprint go to WiMAX without investment? How did cable ISPs go to DOCSIS 3? How did Verizon offer FiOS? FiOS originally cost $700 per house to connect (after upgrading core functionality). AT&T invested $19 Billion in networks in 2010. So STFU with the "they never invest" nonsense. Network operators such in so many true ways, there is no need to invent false ones.
Here's a citation: http://www.neowin.net/news/atampt-to-invest-up-to-19-billion-on-network-upgrades
"so they have oversold their resources".
Yes. That is what all network providers MUST do in order to offer an affordable service. Think of the roads. We don't pave enough roads for everyone to drive at once; we make estimates of future usage, and try to build capacity to handle normal use, and to minimize congestion during peak hours. That is how telecom networks are built. This is not evil, it is engineering.
With all that fail, I can't believe I'm on your side of this debate, but I am.
On the post: A Response To Felicia Day On How Video Gets Funded In A Fragmented, Digital World
Re: Re: Unions and Actors must go
Classic: huge budget production, huge budget advertising, strong-arm control of what plays on the nations cinema screens
Netflix: you liked this, so it is highly likely that you will like that.
Which one do we think is more effective at correctly informing people of, and helping people see films they will like? Gee, I dunno, do you have more faith in collaborative filtering or in advertising?
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