A Layman's Guide To Bandwidth Pricing 203
narramissic links to IT World's A Layman's Guide to Bandwidth Pricing, writing "Time Warner Cable has, for now, abandoned the tiered pricing trials that raised the ire of Congressman Eric Massa, among others. And, as some nice data points in a New York Times article reveal, it's good for us that they did. For instance, Comcast says it costs them $6.85 per home to double the internet capacity of a neighborhood. But the bit of the Times article that we should commit to memory is this: 'If all Time Warner customers decided one day not to check their e-mail or download a single movie, the company's costs would be no different than on a day when every customer was glued to the screen watching one YouTube video after another.'"
NYT quote is a bit unfair ... (Score:5, Informative)
So the reverse is also true - if every customer decided to say, watch grass grow [watching-grass-grow.com] one day, the costs are also the same!
This is exactly why Tony Werner, Comcast chief technical officer said they engineer for the peak hour. Having said that, it would be nice to get 160mbps for $60/month (as in Japan) ... although
I always find it disappointing that almost all of these stories focus
on the download speeds and ignore the upload speeds which are
at least of interest to folks such as /. readers.
I look forward to my new $13.7 (Score:5, Informative)
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/congressman-to.html [wired.com]
Write your congressman to support this bill
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml [house.gov]
Get it passed.
Re:NYT quote is a bit unfair ... (Score:5, Informative)
Could there be another reason? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:no transit/upstream? (Score:2, Informative)
Does this just mean that Time Warner is big enough to only have settlement-free peering instead of paying anyone else for connectivity, or does it mean that their connectivity is priced by pipe size rather than data transfer?
No, they purchase transit from Level 3.
Re:NYT quote is a bit unfair ... (Score:3, Informative)
Cable systems in the United States use the same technology and have roughly the same costs. Comcast told investors that the hardware to provide 50-megabits-per-second service costs less than it had been paying for the equipment for 6 megabits per second.
They are wining that they aren't making enough, even though upgrading the equipment is cheaper? Something's not right here....
Oh, yeah. Here it is:
By contrast, JCom, the largest cable company in Japan, sells service as fast as 160 megabits per second for $60 a month, only $5 a month more than its slower service. Why so cheap? JCom faces more competition from other Internet providers than companies in the United States do.
Competition. They have a monopoly, so if they can push it, why not? I can see dollar signs in their hair [dilbert.com]. I'm not going to say lots of regulation is the key here, but how about forcing them to let competitors use their networks? Competition is good for the consumer.
Re:NYT quote is a bit unfair ... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think there is anything wrong with the idea on principle, however TWC was clearly trying to restructure their internet market to protect their cable tv business. A dollar a gig is laughable.
Any sort of tiered pricing would have to accurately reflect cost and network usage...Being charged the same for peak and non-peak is ridiculous, as we've already established that all their costs are about meeting the peak.
Geeks being geeks, off peak usage is where the bulk of our traffic will already end up...Mom and pop will be in bed at 9:00 when the raids and the massive porn downloads begin.
Re:NYT quote is a bit unfair ... (Score:5, Informative)
Except that power companies charge by the unit. So do water companies. This is fine, because it costs money to create a KwH, and the price of delivering more KwHs rises as more KwHs are delivered, as it costs real energy and money to pump water.
Internet is flat-rate, and should be, IMHO because it represents nothing real. Although it costs something to provide infrastructure for more demand, once that infrastructure is created, the cost of delivery is very near zero.
Here's an experiment, in case this isn't absolutely clear:
1) Buy/borrow a 2 Kilowatt gas generator. Start it up, and run it for 1 hour with no load. Note how much gasoline it burns. This represents the energy used to overcome internal friction. Then run it for 1 hour with a 1,500 watt blow-dryer running continuously. Note how much gasoline it burns. You'll be surprised at the difference in fuel consumption!
2) Get a Gb switching hub, 2 computers, and an amp-meter. Plug the computers into the wall, plug the switch into the amp meter. Note the power usage of the switch with no load. Then set up a load where you are using 1 Mbps of traffic between the two computers, and note the Amp load. Then try 10 Mbsp, 100 Mbps, and 1000 Mbps. You'll notice that the amperage (for most switching hubs) climbs very little as you do so, and that the total power consumption is insignificant.
* * *
So bandwidth usage represents nothing "real". There isn't a significant energy or material consumption per bandwidth unit. After the cost of infrastructure, and a small fixed cost for powering the equipment, the cost of delivering 1000 Mbps is only marginally higher than the near-zero cost of 1 Mbps. There *is* an infrastructure cost that needs to be amortized over the life of the connection, and this represents the vast majority of the true cost of bandwidth.
It's just idiotic that the Nation responsible for building the Internets in the first place is so far behind other industrialized nations for using it!
Ha ha ha ha (Score:4, Informative)
If you believe that you can get 3.6Mb/sec on a 3G phone continuously, you are in for a rude surprise. You can get this in short bursts but you can't get anywhere near that for longer period of time. How many phones are competing for the same bandwidth? 100? More like 500. Do you really believe any cell site has a 1.5Tb/sec connection?
No, you get your 3.6Mb/sec for about a second and they you wait for everyone else's phone. Fortunately, you get most things done in under a second and you aren't looking for a continuous high bandwidth connection. Because if you were, you'd be disappointed.
Light at the end of the fiber tunnel? (Score:3, Informative)
"Cable systems in the United States use the same technology and have roughly the same costs. Comcast told investors that the hardware to provide 50-megabits-per-second service costs less than it had been paying for the equipment for 6 megabits per second.
Questions about the speed, availability and affordability of Internet service in the United States will be central to the study Congress has required from the Federal Communications Commission next year. And cable and phone executives are worried that the commission may call for more regulation of Internet service, which currently is free from any government price controls."
This industry is screaming for more regulation and competition. They have had a stranglehold on the market for well over 10 years and it shows in the exploding cable and internet costs. Burn the MOFO down!
Re:NYT quote is a bit unfair ... (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong...Karl Benz from Germany invented the Automobile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile [wikipedia.org]
"Although several other German engineers (including Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, and Siegfried Marcus) were working on the problem at about the same time, Karl Benz generally is acknowledged as the inventor of the modern automobile."
Re:NYT quote is a bit unfair ... (Score:3, Informative)
That's great, you've created an intranet and demonstrated it's pricing. Now, of course, try to get a peering agreement with a tier-1 ISP so that your bits can travel to and from the internet at large. Try one month at 10 Mbps and another at 1000 Mbps and see if your bill changes.
I already do this, in effect. My company has a private hosting farm. We pay a flat rate for our redundant Internet connection at a top-notch hosting facility. It doesn't matter to us how much we use it, because the price is the same either way - the bill doesn't change.
Do I get a cookie now?
Re:NYT quote is a bit unfair ... (Score:2, Informative)
It's cheaper to provision for extra bandwidth in a colocation center [wikipedia.org] than at a residence or neighborhood. Whether it's $0.90 cheaper is another question, but you certainly shouldn't judge the cost of residential bandwidth by the cost of colo bandwidth.
Re:NYT quote is a bit unfair ... (Score:2, Informative)