BBC and ISPs Clash over iPlayer 350
randomtimes writes "A row about who should pay for extra network costs incurred by the iPlayer has broken out between internet service providers (ISPs) and the BBC. ISPs say the on-demand TV service is putting strain on their networks, which need to be upgraded to cope. '"The iPlayer has come along and made downloading a legal and mass market activity," said Michael Phillips, from broadband comparison service broadbandchoices.co.uk. He said he believed ISPs were partly to blame for the bandwidth problems they now face. "They have priced themselves as cheaply as possible on the assumption that people were just going to use e-mail and do a bit of web surfing," he said. ISPs needed to stop using the term 'unlimited' to describe their services and make it clear that if people wanted to watch hours of downloaded video content they would have to pay a higher tariff, he added.'"
Amen (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that consumer protection laws need to be beefed up to protect consumers against the outrageous practices of ISPs.
Managing Free (Score:4, Insightful)
We're in this mess partly because the governments saw fit to grant monopolies to various companies who now behave like monopolies. Raise your hand if you're shocked. We should always be leery of patching bad government with more government, because it's probably going to turn out to be bad government, and then people will want to...
But, yes, your're right, these guys are selling 'Free' stuff and 'free' doesn't exist [bfccomputing.com]. In a non-monopoly position you might assume the customers are fools, but when they have no choice, it could be either. Certainly it's hard to chasten the customer put into this position if he doesn't have choice.
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Now, crawl back under that bridge you seem to live under and play with yourself.
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It's true that there is an innate "Yankee" cultural distrust of government - but to simply assume that's wrong because your personal culture didn't leave you with any such warning is foolish.
There are some very few governments in the world today that seem to work well and generally do good. The necessary but not sufficient requirements seem to be 1.) a rich and well educated populace 2.) a population under 10 million.
But even in those places, there's always a risk that *any* power structure can be co-opte
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I am suscribed to the cheapest package (which costs £18 per month, none less) and can't imagine the anger of guys paying for the more expensive offers and then finding they can
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but now that Virgin took over, the idiots cap your speed after you download more than a very small amount (350MB IRC) in one hour
This is only in effect at 'peak times' which they define as 4pm-9pm. The size of the caps varies depending on your price plan, and is 300MB down or 150MB up for the cheapest, then 800MB/300MB and finally 3GB/1250MB for the most expensive. It's slightly irritating, but the worst part was how sneakily they introduced it. I was rate limited a few times in this way before discovering the cause. At the throttled speed, iPlayer is unusable.
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Re:Amen (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Amen (Score:5, Insightful)
But let's be honest here. For years now, geeks have been pretending that bandwidth is an unlimited resource. We've had huge ranting flamefests on Slashdot whenever anybody suggests that you should pay a per-packet charge for your data, or that you be restricted for re-selling your packets. That's not the only reason ISPs have to pretend that they're selling unlimited flat-rate access, but it's a big one.
Let's examine the choices here:
And don't say, "they can just build up so that there's enough bandwidth in case everybody wants to use the system at once." No telecom network operates on that basis. If it were feasible, the landline phone system wouldn't crash every time there's a natural disaster and everybody runs to the phone to see if Aunt Bee is OK.
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Require ISP to specify caps and fees for being allowed to exceed them. That's probably the most practical approach, and certainly one most users could live with. But as I said, geeks have always resisted this model.
Maybe for American geeks, but Australian geeks have [ii.net] had [on.net] quota [peopletelecom.com.au] systems [aapt.com.au] for years and it works perfectly well. The last unlimited account I had was a dialup account in the early 2000's (iiNet Explorer), but even unlimited dialup is something of a rarity these days. There are a handful of providers offering unlimited downloads on low-speed ADSL connections (usually 256kbit), but the vast majority of ADSL plans give you a fixed amount of downloads per month at a fixed price. For home accounts, exceeding your
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When they advertise it, there's a tiny little line in eggshell-on-white that says something like "Figures based on maximum performance. Performance not guaranteed" or some shit like that.
Re:Amen (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Amen (Score:4, Informative)
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You realised it.
Marketing isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The BBC pays for upstream bandwidth. Consumers pay for downstream bandwidth. But ISPs don't actually have the bandwidth they're selling, so they want the BBC to pay as well for the bandwidth consumers already paid for. It's ridiculous.
Re:Marketing isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
that is exactly what is going on, it is extortion. i am not one for BIG government regulation but there needs to be oversight of some sort, because if not then both the websites that serve news and other content and the customers will be squeezed by the ISPs because they have the keys to the tubes...
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if you look at the problem - the obvious solution for content providers and users is to switch to a diffrent provider that doesn't do this. and i am sure 90% of the people here would agree and switch to a diffrent provider if they where honest and did the right thing and constintly built their network.
but you can't switch.. the choices you have are slim and t
Re:Marketing isn't the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
And that is that the BBC effectively threatened to put out of buisness any ISP that dares to try to throttle its iPlayer service by 'naming and shaming' any that do, and suggesting that all other content providers do the same.
I imagine that having trailers appear on bbc tv saying "and you can also watch this episode again via iPlayer (except on the following ISPs)" is going to be pretty damaging to business.
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Re:Wait for failure before bringing in government (Score:4, Insightful)
Most customers don't have any idea how the internet works. And that's fine. It's a big complex system, and really they only need to know enough to get by. The problem is that ISPs can use that lack of understanding to abuse customers like this. It's what makes the net neutrality issue such a serious one.
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>Sure the ISP can send a bill.
A rhetorical question, or better still a "strawman" of your choosing that has nothing to do with the issue discussed.
If you are going to drag in the "regulation" boogeyman of the libertarian, consider that cartel-like collusion is the OPPOSITE of a free market machine.
The ISP's are PERFECTLY capable of selling "metered" service by the megabyte to the consumer. This is a fact, and no one decries such
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Re:Marketing isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't know of any p2p systems that do this. It's theoretically possible but probably isn't worth the extra effort in practice. If p2p systems were much more widespread and you could therefore have a good chance of there being a piece of your file in your neighbourhood, then it might be, but I don't think that is the case at the moment. In any case, it's the last mile that's the problem so it doesn't matter wh
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I think the people interested in Net Neutrality need to use international mail as an example.
Caching not a solution (Score:2)
"There has been talk, for instance, of the BBC bringing their servers into the loop as a way of lowering the backhaul costs," he said.
But Mr Gunter [from ISP Tiscali] said he was not convinced this would help.
"I have heard that the BBC is working on building a caching infrastructure so that storage devices can go on an ISP's network but even if it goes ahead it doesn't save costs on the backhaul network," he said.
The solution, brought to you courtesy of "Geoff Bennett, director of product marketing at optical equipment maker Infinera" is for ISPs to upgrade the 2nd mile.
Does anyone other than the ISPs think that having content producers chip in is a good idea?
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Why isn't it treated lake any other utility? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why isn't it treated lake any other utility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's a bad example, but it's also a bad idea.
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The site that has all the ads and big images and videos already pays their own provider to move all that content into the cloud. So each end (web site on one end, viewer on the other) are paying for their respective bandwidths. It's not right that one end should go over to the other customer and demand a double payment.
The suggestion is that consumer grade accounts could be set up that charge by the megabyte actually downloaded. If you don't want to see all those images, turn images off in your browser,
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The people who waste bandwidth on them by not installing something like adblock.
Re:Why isn't it treated lake any other utility? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It doesn't solve the problem to date of ISPs implying a service is unlimited when it's not, but it's not really meant to. At that point, everyone will know where they stand. Pe
Re:Why isn't it treated lake any other utility? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why isn't it treated lake any other utility? (Score:4, Insightful)
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http://www.shaplus.com/bandwidth-meter/index.htm/ [shaplus.com]
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i personally like netlimiter's free netlimiter 2 monitor [netlimiter.com]. it'll show you your transfers for time periods ranging from hour-by-hour to over the past year and you can also track transfers by each application, so you can see how much is used by web browsing, how much by torrents, how much by WoW, etc.
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The reason we shouldn't do the same thing for ISPs is because it's not in sync with the way their
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Re:Why isn't it treated lake any other utility? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a house. I rent it out.
It doesn't matter if I rent it to someone with a family of 2, or a family of 5, it still costs me the same amount of annual maintenance, because I only have one house.
It doesn't matter if you're never home, or never leave, it still costs me the same amount of annual maintenance.
Line costs are like a house. You add up the capacity, you divide it by the amount of capacity you promise people, that's how many people you can support on your service. You divide your annual costs by that number, add a percentage for profit, and that is how you should price your services.
Now, as far as adding capacity, that's like building another house. It lets you get more customers, it doesn't make your existing customers more expensive to service.
The reason that the ISPs are having trouble is because their business model is based on fraud.
The fact that this fraud is normalized to the point that people consider it business as usual doesn't change the fact that they were fraudulently selling capacity they didn't have to deliver.
At the end of the day, they were renting the house out to several people at once, in the hopes that they would all be business travelers who are hardly ever home and there would always be an empty house when they needed it.
Now, all those business travelers are retiring all at once, and the fraud is being revealed.
This is the current ISPs business model. This is why they are throwing a fit.
When you get right down to it, it shouldn't be the responsibility of the public to eat the cost of their line improvements. They've been making large profits on false pretenses, and it should be those profits that are used to build the lines and rectify the situation.
Re:Why isn't it treated lake any other utility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Forcing networks to support the theoretical peak usage is silly, just as sill as expanding all interstates to 10 lanes in each direction so that traffic can flow more smoothly during evacuations etc. The cost of such plans is just too high compared to the gains we'd have by it. In fact, the cost of not oversubscribing bandwidth would price internet access to the point where most people might have a dialup connection. If you keep up the comparison, imagine if we kept going on this peak theoretical usage, and said that this peak theoretical usage had to work anywhere. Well most internet traffic is fairly local (same city, state, country, etc). What if ISPs were required to have the same bandwidth between chicago and new york as they have between chicago and shanghai. If you consider these massive links, we just wouldn't have anywhere near enough bandwidth.
Phil
Because it sucks for entertainment. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would
Internet access is flat-rate or nothing for me.
Haven't we been here before? (Score:5, Insightful)
It made their product a niche product and eventually ALL of those companies abandoned that billing scheme in favor of unlimited pricing. Guess what happened? The internet hit critical mass BECAUSE they changed to "unlimited" monthly plans.
So now, in 2008, we are looking back into metered service? Good luck with that. My gut tells me "the people" will reject it. Just like they did back in the 80's and 90's. As soon as someone (Netzero) offered all you can eat for one price....the other competitors started bleeding customers. It will be the same this time around.
People don't want to look over their shoulders or monitor their usage. They do it for cell phones because they have to (no other choice). Not true for ISP's.
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Doubtless they'd charge a flat rate, especially if they were to implement such a system now. People are used to being charged a flat rate so they aren't necessarily going to expect a change.
On top of that rate they will then charge for usage. But instead of charging a reasonable amount per Mb, or whatever metric they choose, they'll extort the user on the level mobile service pro
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Personally I think that's a fair deal (although I do get my connection for free, so
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what i find funnier is how these european countries like to brag about their broadband penetration, but then crumble when people actually start to use it, b/c they never really had the infrastructure necessary.
Please don't throw all of us Europeans together. This article is focused on the Brits (note the reference "the whole UK broadband industry"), who from what I can tell have always tended to lag behind somewhat. The ones you're most likely referring to would be the Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
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How stupid do those ISPs look now (Score:4, Interesting)
At the very least they look incompetant having so woefully underestimated the needs of their customers and over estimated their services.
At the worst they look crinminal for misselling a service and now they're getting outted by these services that have outed them.
If the users are over using their bandwith as given to them in their contracts then give them the surcharge or cut them off. The BBC has payed for their bandwith so there's no reason to get angry there. Frankly this has been an amazingly long time coming and we can only hope that people pick up and start class action suits for these shady business practices. Personally when I have my 8 meg connection which was sold to me via the internet on this BT page "BT UNLIMITED INTERNET UP 8Mb CONNECTION" and several times hearing them claim "Unlimited Downloads" I don't expect to record a graph of my conneciton speeds dropping during peak times to maybe 32KB/s, it's just not acceptable.
When I phone my friends up during peak times I don't get to say fewer words per second, so why is my internet connection any different?
peak phone usage (Score:5, Insightful)
Under an endpoint driven QoS scheme, if millions of consumers all try to watch the latest BBC special at once, most of them will get the "all connections busy" error. They can then wait (like with POTS), or just start up a bittorrent so that the show will be stored locally when they come back later.
The key to ethical QoS schemes is that the endpoints should do the tagging, *not* the ISP. The ISP should just charge for the tagging. Currently, the ISP decides which kinds of traffic are "unacceptable" and throttles them. That is unacceptable. QoS can make the internet work at least as well as the POTS network.
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"Stop letting people use the bandwith we sold them!"
It's even worse than this! It's, "Make the BBC pay for the bandwith that we already sold to our customers."
Which, of course, means, "Subsidize our cost across the entire population, regardless of whether they use our service, because it's their collective TV licence fees which pay for the BBC."
Nice, isn't it? They missell a service, then charge THE ENTIRE COUNTRY for it, rather than just up the rates for their customers.
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Suddenly bandwidth starts to cost the amount the ISP think you might use, rather than the amount they think you will use. You get broadband for $20 a month for 10Gig transfer? Imagine it jumping to $50 a month as the ISP charges you for the increased capacity they have to buy at peak time.
So the class action would be a disaster, but so would the pitchfork approach - the ISPs are in such a market that competition has reduced their prices
Over-selling (Score:2)
Yeah, right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see if I've got this right.
Consumers upgrade to high-speed internet. They pay for it.
When they actually start to use it, the ISPs start bitching about bandwidth and demanding more money.
...laura
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Same idea. 100% marketing, 0% quality, 1% actual service.
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"Great", they thought, "let's just keep doing this. No need to pressure BT to reduce backhaul prices or modify the charging structure."
Meanwhile, everybody with any clue in the industry was predicting that video and P2P would be the next big thing.
The ISPs de
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"Arggh, a killer app! Kill it!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine that you're selling product X. The lovely BBC comes with an application that encourages lots of people to use lots of X. Fantastic! Coke and hookers all round!
Unless you've come up with some sort of freakish business model which relies on people paying for lots of X without actually using it. In which case, well, you're probably fucked.
Good.
What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Each subscriber pays for his little tube, and the BBC pays for it's tube big enough to carry 300 Benny Hill streams.
So what's the problem? Why are ISPs bitching?
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Each subscriber pays for his little tube, and the BBC pays for it's tube big enough to carry 300 Benny Hill streams.
So what's the problem?
That 300 people are watching Benny Hill?
New Google App Engine Proxy Saves British ISPs (Score:5, Funny)
LONDON (AP) -- Google Apps today announced its first big hit: an AsciiArt video streaming proxy aimed at struggling British ISPs.
Coded by a Melvin Haymeggle, a young college student, in a little under 18 hours, the proxy uses the open-source video player MPlayer [mplayerhq.hu], and the video display library aalib [sourceforge.net], to convert streaming video on-the-fly into ASCII art [liquidweather.net].
"At first it was just a joke between me and a few friends," said Haymeggle. "Me and my roommates used it to mess with people leaching our wireless to watch porn. But then Google App Engine [google.com] was announced, and we figured it would be fun to write up some Python bindings for it."
The announcement comes at a perilous time for British ISPs, who have been struggling to come to terms with the increased demand for on-demand video as a result of BBC's iPlayer.
"We were shocked -- shocked! -- to realize that new Internet applications result in increased use of resources like bandwidth," said Charles Freskell, a spokesman for the British ISPs Association. "We were on the verge of sending a bill to the BBC when this proxy came along."
"Of course, we're still going to be monetizing content ruthlessly [slashdot.org]," he added quickly.
The application quickly and seamlessly converts the iPlayer's 1024x960, 24-bit colour, 30 frame-per-second video stream into an 80x25, 8-bit greyscale, 4 frame-per-second video stream. It is estimated that the proxy will save over 9 petabytes per furlong-fortnight.
Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman could not be reached for comment. "He's just mad that everyone has forgotten this was available in Emacs since 1997," said a source close to the open source figurehead.
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What if ... (Score:2)
What if the ISP that provides BBC with bandwidth for all that video wanted to charge all the broadband users for the cost of extra capacity for having caused BBC to use what BBC is already paying for?
Reinvest Your Profits (Score:4, Insightful)
When ISPs ask "who's going to pay for new infrastructure?", the answer should aways be "you are, in the form of reinvesting your profits into new development, like every other business does, you useless fracks". The "useless frack" part should be put at the end of most statements when dealing with government-mandated monopolies.
Utter foolishness (Score:4, Interesting)
Today, ISPs pay for bandwidth resources. They are indeed responsible at some level of compensation for how much they are sucking down from elsewhere on the network. Then they have their own infrastructure to contend with. Let's ignore for a moment that their infrastructure isn't quite up to the task of 10x (or 100x) increases in demand.
The ISP suddenly is sucking down 10x more stuff than they were before. This upsets all sorts of nice balances they have worked out with peering arrangements and the like. So, now the folks they are sucking it down from - higher tier carriers - want them to pay fro all this extra bandwidth. What, did you think they just plugged in and got whatever they wanted?
Next we have the problem that for the last 10-15 years or so the Internet has been defined by web surfing and email and not much else. Sure it would have been nice if a few ISPs had been forward-thinking enough to build out 10x the capacity they needed to operate. You know, just in case some need came along. Suprisingly, this isn't a very effective way to operate a business.
Finally, in the US (and I suspect elsewere as well) the Internet has grown to the proportions it has primarily because it has been incredibly cheap. What started out as $25 a month for dial-up became $15 a month for DSL. Were these prices sustainable in the face of increased usage? No. Heck, they were sustainable in the face of any usage at all because it was to build market share and prove to the investors that this "Internet" think actually was something people were interested in.
Today, you have businesses paying $400 a month for a T1 circuit that is 1.5Mb while home users are paying $50 a month for 15Mb. The home folks are getting a deal based on the bandwidth not really being used. If you were paying for guaranteed bandwidth capacity, like the business with the T1 is, you would be paying lots more. Probably not $4000 a month (10x a T1) but no way would it be $50 or even $100 a month. Expecting to have 15Mb access 24x7 for $50 a month will get you disappointed. Badly.
The reality of the situation in the US today is that the costs are finally beginning to come down a little - like maybe $300 for that T1 instead of $400. But on the consumer front if the ISPs can't justify shared bandwidth where the average use is far far less than the possible maximum, today's pricing isn't going to hold. At some level there is a cost-per-Mb that isn't going to go away. If you want to be assured of 15Mb access with 15Mb being used constantly you are really going to have to pay for 15Mb. Today, you are paying for something more like 0.005Mb and the providers "know" that is the real level of utilization.
When the level of utilization changes, they are going to have to eventually upgrade the system. Eventually. This isn't going to happen overnight because of the costs involved. Should they have done it before? Maybe. But as of a couple of years ago the majority of use was still email and web browsing and everyone was happy with their 0.005Mb slice of the pie.
I'd bet on people getting more access capability but not a lot more total capacity in the near term. That means things like 20Mb bandwidth that bogs down a lot at peak times and caps on total utilization. I'd also bet on some big price changes coming down. You want to download 20Gb a month at 15Mb/sec? Sure, but you are going to pay. And start paying a lot closer to what dedicated bandwidth costs businesses today.
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The problem at least in the UK is that 2-3 years ago most people were on 0.5MB ADSL and that was good enough for email and surfing for most people.
The ISPs then had a new product to sell - ADSL2, with speeds up to 8 Meg, and they advertised it like crazy and they promised Dad could read ema
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If people weren't using it, then they wouldn't pay $1 more for 15 Mbps over 1 Mbps. Why are they offering such high speed packages?
The irony (Score:5, Insightful)
But as soon as people do just what the service was explicitly advertised to do...the ISPs all start bleating.
I don't have any sympathy for them. They did it to themselves - they set the expectation you could use broadband to watch video, why are they acting all surprised when people do just that?
Re:Common Sense is asking too much... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly. I pay more for my work connection than my home one, despite the fact that it's at best a quarter of the speed, and the reliability is the same.
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$30 for a megabyte is a bit high.
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You're missing a unit. Is that per month?
OK, so if I get 12 mbps speed, which is what is needed for high definition video in real time, you're going to charge $360 per month? It seems like your network isn't ready for 2009. Oh wait, it's still 2008. I guess you have another year.
Just because all your customers already pay so much for so little now, because that's all you offer, does not justify keeping things at this level in the future.
You mention a measly 1.5 mbps. Someone wanting to download a 2
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the only way you'll get lower is by committing to a few hundred mbits/s/month
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$360/month for a guaranteed 12Mbps line is damn good. That 10-15Mb/s downstream CableCo X offers is nothing but burstable bandwidth, meaning that they promise you nothing but the line itself. In short: "Up to 15Mb/s".
Residential ISPs (at least in the US) typically oversell
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How's that work? You charge them based on an average over time or is it like 95th percentile billing? Why not just charge them per bit of transfer?
Re:Common Sense is asking too much... (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest of the bandwidth hogs point to the 'unlimited' marketing. Until the marketing of the service changes (and people are told about their limits and are capable of measuring them), you're still going to get grief.
Re:Common Sense is asking too much... (Score:5, Insightful)
the ISP's sold me bandwidth on false assumptions that I wouldn't use it all, all the time. If they didn't plan properly then that's their fault when i do start to use all the bandwidth all the time.
Re:Common Sense is asking too much... (Score:4, Insightful)
ISP's are ultimately going to have to go to a model like cellphone contracts. 100 GB per month (or whatever). After that your bandwidth drops off or you pay for the overage, depending on your plan. Carry-over MB's and all. At least that's nominally fair. And maybe for those non-downloaders, there'd be a really low-cost, low volume plan.
Re:Common Sense is asking too much... (Score:5, Insightful)
$10 - base charge (infrastructure maintenance, etc.)
$2/GB - first 10GB
$1/GB - next 100GB
$0.75/GB - anything over 110GB usage
There ya go. Cheap for people using low bandwidth. Not exuberant for people using lots of bandwidth. Adjust prices accordingly per region and then don't bitch (either customer or ISP) that they don't have money for bandwidth.
Going back on topic, BBC *pays* for the use of bandwidth on their side. If ISP "can't cope with demand", it is not BBC's problem. And BBC should post blacklisting messages for customers connecting from ISPs that throttle their service, and suggest ones that do not. But then UK has one of the crappiest service from what I can read on forums like for EVE Online. Like people wanting to play a low bandwidth game like EVE can't connect because Tiscani choses to shaft them - http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=553090 [eve-online.com]
What is the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Full bandwidth until 10 GB limit.
128kbps after limit is reached.
Reset each month.
The numbers are just pulled out of the air. You'll want enough GB than most people will never hit it, making the plan infinite for all practical purposes. They can keep their computers turned on every day, all day. No surprises, no huge bill suddenly happening because they passed the cap. Even if someone get some malware maxing
Re:Common Sense is asking too much... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless the webpages are megabytes each there is. But that's not the point.
The point is the rate of information consumption. A large webpage (say, a few hundred k) will take longer to read than will the same amount of movie file. If the video rate is high enough, a few hundred kilobytes will pass in a few seconds or less.
The funny thing is that before the days of HD video, the ISPs sold their 'faster-than-dialup' service as 'fast' and 'unlimited'. I'm not sure why they put 'unlimited' in there, but they're paying for it now. I for one have no sympathy
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the whole "unlimited internet access" was all to make people think it was infintly greater than their by the min dialup service.
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Personally I've been upgraded two times without even asking for it. From 2.5 to 8 to 24mbit. While it's 'nice', it's by no means necessary, and I can certainly wait for background downloading of whatever data I want. So I place the blame solidly on the ISP; if you don't want the usage levels, then cap the bitrate. I want a fixed price, but I could certainly live with a 4-8mbit connection.
But if the DSL
Re:Common Sense is asking too much... (Score:4, Insightful)
If their ISP is advertising "unlimited bandwidth" they shouldn't have to understand the concept of bandwith. All they should have to know is that they can have as much of it as they want.
The ISP, OTOH, doesn't understand the concept of "telling the truth."
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No, I don't want petabytes of storage, or zetabytes of bandwidth. I use between 15GB and 100GB of "bandwidth" per month. Storage? zilch.
Now, I have 60GB per month with an overage charge of $2/GB. As to SPEED... As long as its reasonable, I frankly don't care. What is reasonable? 6 Mbps to allow download Standard Definition TV at "real time" rates. Of course,
Re:Common Sense is asking too much... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe *you* aren't using the storage yourself but it takes a lot of space on the government's servers to index and cross reference your 100GB of browsing habits.
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Re:Common Sense is asking too much... (Score:5, Insightful)
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