AT&T Embraces BitTorrent, Considers Usage-Based Pricing 279
Wired is running a story about AT&T's chief technical officer, John Donovan. He contrasts his view of BitTorrent and P2P in general against the controversial policies adopted by other ISPs. Donovan also explains why AT&T is considering usage-based pricing, citing the cost of network upgrades which only affect a small number of users. AT&T is expected to test the new pricing scheme later this year, which should give them plenty of time to see how Time Warner's customers respond to the idea.
"'I don't view any of our customers, under any circumstances, as pirates -- I view them as users,' Donovan said. 'A heavy user is not a bad customer.' What he wants to do is gently encourage more efficient usage of his network, and usage-based pricing may be one of the ways that happens. Such measures may not even be necessary, as Donovan admits that users self-adjust their habits to take advantage of off-peak times. For instance, he said, BitTorrent on the company's network peaks around 4 a.m., when other traffic is at an ebb. Overall P2P traffic accounts for about 20 percent of the network's usage, Donovan said."
Welcome America (Score:1, Interesting)
In New Zealand we have already have experimented with flat rate; around 10 years ago there was cable internet setup for $90 per month, flat rate, unlimited internet - under the Chello brand. Within months the network was crippled, people were barely downloading above dial up speeds.
Fast forward to 1 years ago - Telecom tried the same thing again; flat rate internet with traffic shaping. Again, even with all the maneuvering they did - it was killed off because people abused the system.
People here go, "well, upgrade the network" - explain to me why they should keep upgrading the network at a frantic pace and never making enough money to recoup the infrastructure costs. Telecoms are businesses, they invest, they make their money back (with profit) then upgrade the network again. The abuse of the network which flat rate plans do simply result in unsustainable traffic growth.
Not *totally* awfull (Score:5, Interesting)
To a point, I don't think that's a terrible idea. What I do have a problem with is the technical difficulties behind actually doing it fairly. For example, suppose I'm sharing files with my next-door neighbor, and our packets are never going farther than the first switch we have in common. Should I be billed the same as someone streaming gigs to Tokyo? Of course not, but that's probably not technically possible to accurately track without massive hardware upgrades, and even then it sets a bad precedent of charging extra depending on destination.
I'm not sure what to think on this one. I mean, they're acknowledging that they can't offer unlimited access, which we all knew anyway but is nice to hear them actually say. And yes, P2P probably is costing them lost of money. I don't think variable pricing is the answer, though, and I don't think their customers will either.
My Sad theory is : (Score:1, Interesting)
ISP provides me with a rental car, and I pay
for the gasoline.
It is NOT for the ISP to tell me where to drive
or how many times I can drive to a given location.
When they sell me unlimited gasoline(bandwidth) it
becomes none of their business where I choose to
use the gasoline. I may make many cross-world trips,
it is none of their business where I go.
Now it seems like they want to control my driving habits.
Fsck That. Yeah, the DSL/Cable Modem is the car. Duh!
Re:Welcome America (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently your telecoms are horribly run if they can't manage to make a profit off of Internet access. In America, many (most?) ISPs are small private companies who receive no federal subsidies at all, but still turn enough profit to keep growing and offering new services.
The fact that your local companies are incapable of doing so says that 1) they're all dumb, every single one, or 2) there are market forces there that we don't have, so your whole premise is inapplicable here.
Re:Welcome America (Score:5, Interesting)
Though there used to be some a couple of years ago, mainly for people switching from dialup to dsl thinking they wouldn't use more than 1Gb per month. Which would have been true if their surfing habits didn't adapt to the always on mode.
Here's the real problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Give me one fat pipe, and let me choose which VOIP, IPTV, and ISP companies I wish to deal with.
Re:Welcome America (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:IDIOTS !! was that too hard ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Been Done (Score:4, Interesting)
Ease of Network upgrades vs. PC upgrades (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was working in telecom, network upgrades (and maintenance) could be ferociously hard. If you wanted to upgrade the link between two co-location facilities, besides the problems of running the lines, you could run into issues if you needed to upgrade your networking equipment at either end -- suddenly, you had to stock new on-site spares, make sure the technicians were prepared, deal with power, space, and cooling issues. (If you needed to replace your current router with a newer router that was physically bigger, there had to be rack space available for it. If it needed more power/cooling, that had to be available. If space/power/cooling wasn't there, *someone* had to pay for the upgrades, or you had to move to a new facility and re-home all the network connections there. Not trivial and just the man-hour costs could be huge. (And in some places, the co-locations were subject to union rules, which placed additional restrictions on work.))
(Actually, for some network facilities, the fields would refuse to go without a security escort, because they weren't going to be responsible for driving trucks full of valuable equipment into some areas and leaving them outside while they worked inside. That increased the cost noticeably.)
Most of the business plans (at the time) assumed that equipment would be paid off over a period of years, not months. People would be expensive new telecom gear and plan to pay it off over the course of three or four years so they could set their monthly rate to customers at X, rather than try to pay it off in one year by charging customers more -- the lower prices/competition may have appeared great to the customers, but once the rush of entrants into the ISP business died out and people stopped pumping money in, the equipment upgrades got stalled because business realities demanded that the providers pay off the old equipment first.
So providers had gone in with models saying they would buy equipment for their networks, charge customers X amount, and, say just for kicks, maybe 5% of that amount went to paying off equipment. Of course, every time there was an unexpected cost, or they had to lower their rates to stay competitive, less money could be used to recoup their capital expense in hardware, which meant they couldn't afford to upgrade. (Of course, at a certain point, some couldn't afford to not upgrade, either, and self-destructed.) So the 'life span' of old equipment kept going because no one could raise rates due to the competition, who also couldn't for the same reasons, and new entrants coming in with fresh capital/investments that kept the rates of the moment low. The 'rapid advances' in technology were in part due to the money being poured into the marketplace (investment of one sort or another), *not* the success of the business models. Once the party was over and the reality of the bills hit, a lot of the upgrades stalled pretty hard.
It's not that Moore's Law hasn't affected the cost of providing bandwidth, it's that people are still struggling with buried (sic) infrastructure costs from previous technology. If you feel you are paying 2004 prices for 2004 technology, network-bandwidth-wise, rather than the equivalent 2008 price/performance, it's because you probably are, because the 2004 technology is still getting paid off.
(Let's say that, oh, I could get a 48 port DSLAM for $2400, or $500 a port. So just to recoup my capex on buying that sucker, I need to make $500 per port. If I can throw $10/port a month at the hardware cost, that's 50 months, or over four years until I can justify upgrading it. It can be surprisingly
Re:We are going backwards . (Score:2, Interesting)
We need regulation in the telcom industry. We have tried to let them be but obviously they have crossed the line. I believe in capitalism..but monopolies are the bain for capitalism. The whole purpose of capitalism is that "the market rules" and for companies to compete. Guess what if theirs a monopoly than it is no longer capitalism it is a form of communism in itself. We are being ruled by singular entities.
Re:We have this in Australia... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Welcome America (Score:1, Interesting)
So the answer is, yes, ISPs do make good money, but they require quite a large chunk of change - and a lot of advertisement - to get started. However, as I mentioned above, any small, second tier ISP does not have any real "cost" for bandwidth. We buy a certain amount from a first tier ISP and pay them a certain price for it, and use anywhere from 1 bit an hour to whatever our limit is. There is no such thing as a FAP that has become infamous on satellite systems or this crazy idea of metered bandwidth. The only true way that we limit bandwidth is the technology itself - everyone on our network has a private IP address and we open ports for no one. The only exception that we have is that we do sell private IPs but in that case we do an inbound IP forward, not giving them an actual IP address, and their outbound continues to come from a randomly chosen IP out of a pool of about 50, which with Bittorrent still kills their upstream. Therefore, the technology itself kills any decent BT speed because no ports are open and BT won't go very fast if it can't make a point-to-point connection stay open.
Anyhow...I don't know that I actually had a point with this post (I'm monitoring about 4 servers and watching a movie, so my train of thought is kinda haphazard ATM) but I just thought you might all want an insider's view.