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."
Been Done (Score:2)
Re:Been Done (Score:5, Informative)
No, this is rather like those night usage electricity tariffs for washing machines, dishwashers, etc...
For home packages the ISP just needs to set a low peak cap during the evening and a high off-peak cap during the rest of the day (e.g. ADSL24 in the UK [adsl24.co.uk]).
Whatever protocol you use (BT, eMule, or HTTP download) doesn't interest the ISP, all they want to do is move non-interactive usage to off-peak times so that interactive usage during the evening works for everyone.
Most users will understand if things are set things out clearly at the start instead of suddenly receiving a fair usage warning e-mails when some mysterious unknown limit is hit. Indeed many P2P users may choose an ISP with this kind of peak/off-peak tariff as they know exactly what they signed up for.
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I moved from freedom2surf/tiscalli/pipex/vodafone whatever the fuck they want to call it this month from an 'unlimited' business account to a limited ADSL24 business account.
They SO badly started to suck my speedtest results werent even funny (I also managed to get bumped down to a home users upload speed and had to fight to get that back, which was the last straw) Fuck I was paying £70 a month for it.
Now... I download as m
Re:Been Done (Score:4, Interesting)
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I am certainly no expert in the BitTorrent protocol but it is my understanding that BitTorrent actually saves overall bandwidth because the BitTorrent client gets a part of a file from the closest copy (of which there are many) instead of the original copy (which could be much farther away, therefore saving hops).
Put another way, if everyone downloaded Hardy Heron using HTTP or FTP instead of BitTorrent, then the impact to the Internet would be much greater.
If my telecom bill was based on traffic usa
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Whatever protocol you use (BT, eMule, or HTTP download) doesn't interest the ISP, all they want to do is move non-interactive usage to off-peak times so that interactive usage during the evening works for everyone.
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Re:Pleasantly surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Here we have a guy in charge of the biggest telecom company in the US, and he actually seems to know what he's doing. More than that, he actually wants to give his customers what they want for a fair price as opposed to being influenced by some lobbying group or external forces.
It seems so obvious but it's been so rare with companies this large recently. I don't expect it to last long (the CFO will probably figure that claiming unlimited access when it's not is still more profitable and override him) but if AT&T does this, they've seriously made me look at them in a whole new light.
It's not *AA (Score:2)
They're trying to not spend as much on bandwidth. It's basic business: their bandwidth is a cost and they want to lower that cost.
What I don't understand is why they don't go to an individually tiered model. Your first 5 or 10GB are at their normal, or even higher, speed, (5Mb/512kb here) and the rest after that are at a fraction of that, but still high speed. Perhaps 1Mb/256kb. Those speeds alone would limit egregious down/uploaders to a more reasonable level, while still being able to operate normall
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I pay for 40G state-based traffic and 40G external traffic at 12Mbps. Once I use that quota, I'm shaped to 128Kbps - usable but annoying.
It definitely dissuades overzealous usage since even banking sites not download at double dial up speed.
How About Low Prices for Very Light Users (Score:2)
They never mean that they are going to reduce the ISP access fees to pennies a month for the people who use their internet access for only about five minutes a day, to read e-mail, etc...
Their computers could be programmed to make these microcharges, but they wo
Racist (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is why (Score:2)
We are going backwards . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We are going backwards . (Score:5, Informative)
And I'm not even in the developed part of Europe, either.
My current connection is 5M/1M, for [6900 HUF = 44.2773 USD].
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Yes, they could make their networks better, but they'll never be as good as the ones in Europe. No matter what, you're going to be p
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Greatly.
Re:We are going backwards . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We are going backwards . (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not only P2P that uses upstream...its everything web 2.0
Maybe we need *ISP 2.0*
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Telecoms are natural monopolies. They OWN whatever lines
they manage to get a right of way into your house. That means
that Telecoms aren't "capitalism" at all. They're each petty
monopolies.
If you are LUCKY, you get to pick between 2 of them.
More likely than not this whole monopoly mindset will infest
their ISP operations.
So you you might be lucky if you
Bittorrent and Usage (Score:5, Insightful)
Sheldon
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It is a perfect way to make sure your users can't use bittorrent protocol by breaking the core method of how the idea works.
Well, Vuze.com and bittorrent.com may teach them another good lesson too if they figure ATT users are only leeching backup seeders of their networks.
AT&T has speed based pricing and they can't ju (Score:2)
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.
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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 think the precedent has already been set. Telcos have been doing this forever, with both landline and cellular calls, and some ISPs offer free/unlimited access to their FTP servers, for example. I don't think it's a stretch to say that traffic that stays on their network gets charged at a lower rate than traffic leaving their network (on the reasonable assumption that they buy their upstream bandwidth). It might be tricky to track it to the switch level, but tracking to the network gateway level should b
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For phones, it used to be that there were at least three different intra-US calling areas. (I'm talking about times when I was actually there to see it, it may have been even more in times past.) You had local, which was usually but not always unlimited. You had an expanded nearby area which got one long-distance rate. You had the rest of the country which got another long-distance rate.
Now it's quite common to have phones which can call anywhere in the US
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If he is, you're still using the network as far as that switch, which is probably in their regional hub, so you're still using as much of the network as you would for anything. Sure, their peering arrangements mean they pay extra for you to send packets to Tokyo, but anyone sending packets from Tokyo to you would also pay them extra throug
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Yeah, things get screwy with DSL, and I was almost hesitant to use that an an example. Just pretend that the switch is in the same city as the DSLAM, would you? :-)
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http://bash.org/?142934 [bash.org]
docsigma2000: jesus christ man
docsigma2000: my son is sooooooo dead
c8info: Why?
docsigma2000: hes been looking at internet web sites in fucking EUROPE
docsigma2000: HE IS SURFING LONG DISTANCE
docsigma2000: our fucking phone bill is gonna be nuts
c8info: Ooh, this is bad. Surfing long distance adds an extra $69.99 to your bill per hour.
docsigma2000:
docsigma2000: is there some plan we can sign up for???
docsigma2000: cuz ther
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How about basing it off of the TTL count of the packets you receive? The TTL is basically a measure of how many hops the packet has made. Since each router that the packet passes through decrements the TTL count, it is a reasonable indicator of how much network infrastructure gets used to deliver that packet to you. Just bill based on the accumulated remaining time to live.
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They already do. Calls to their other customers are free.
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True, but they have to pay proportional amounts for traffic that leaves their network. If their current bandwidth isn't cutting it, the extra doesn't come for free.
Why all the fuss about cost. Should be cheap (Score:2, Troll)
Given that the Internet was designed in large part by DARPA to be cheap and scalable. And indeed, the Internet is just a bunch of wires and switches. And given that even if every user pays just 1$/month, where the hell is all the money going?
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If you look at the amount AT&T, Comcast, Verizon spend on marketing you'll find it comaparable to what they spend on upgrades.
Comcast spends millions on TV commercials to tell you how Comcastic they are.
These companies are government sanctioned monopolies that run humongous bureaucratic hierarchies. They have diminished incentive to be efficient because entry level into the market is so high as to preclude real competition.
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.
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Errata (Score:2, Troll)
In the beginning telcos set up "toll booths" at the content provider level, and you had to pay more depending on how much content people downloaded fr
Enough with the excuses AT&T, build FTTH ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time I ask an AT&T droid about that they make wild claims of Verizon having so much trouble building their network, charging $hundreds to rewire your home, etc, etc. All I know is that my grandmother, in the middle of nowhere, can get FiOS and I, in a major university town, am stuck with U-verse.
Yes, Verizon's stock took a hit when they announced FiOS. I used the opportunity to buy shares for my IRA on the cheap. That's worked out well so far.
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They're behind, and it is their own fault. Verizon made the bold move of deploying fiber all over the place and FIOS is in demand more than any other broadband provider due to the fact that while their local cable companies bitch and complain, cap and throttle... Verizon says... "You need more speed? Well we realize that, and the future is only going to
"A heavy user is not a bad customer" (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just a "public friendly" way for the *AA to get their way without the average Joe having a clue it happened. Make it so expensive to download that its cheaper to buy their crap at the store ( and if you actually do buy it online, you get to pay more ).
They cant stop things via technology, so they will kill it ( and most everything else online in the process ) via monetary.
And you get to pay for incoming spam to boot. Grrr
Use based pricing... (Score:2)
This brought to you by AT & T... i.e the beloved phone company... Some things never change.
Why change plans? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Best Up Side - SPAM reduction (Score:2)
AT&T should try to keep P2P traffic on their o (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is... (Score:2)
It's a free market, let the ISPs do what they want with their traffic but they better tell the consumer *exactly* what is done so the consumer can make a decent decision.
Time warner, ATT, next Comcast (Score:2, Insightful)
Too bad most of you young people don't even remember how bad it was when it was all metered service. ( even in the BBS days, lots had limits on use ) None of the real time communication we have today would have been practical, and downloads, well they were almost out of the question. Trying to get a few files would easily push you over your monthly l
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most people who are idly surfing are watching web video and they're using more than 3Mbits most of the time.
Get with the program my Indian friend.
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Spam (Score:2)
Ya, thats what i thought. Why should they fix it now? It means more revenue for them.
This will raise hosting rates too i bet. No more dinky 5 dollar a month web-pages or mailing lists.
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
bye bye Interwebs. We'll miss the tubes. (Score:2)
Now ISPs and comcast want to alter the deal. They want to offer us less for the same price. This is not acceptable. I signed up for unlimited usage.
I don't think it's fair, ethical, or legal for them to just change the terms without notification or consideration. I'm not paying the same price for such limited usage. Everyone needs high bandwidth, high throughput service now. The IS
Whew! (Score:2)
I switched both my phone and internet to Cox. In return, I'm getting 12mbps down, 1mbps up, and a handful of phone services (3-way calling, call forwarding, and some other services I actually have uses for) and I'm paying 25% les
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.
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A lot of this depends on how wholesale prices work in each country. For example, NZ may work as in the UK, where small ISPs are changed by their upstream ISP by the bandwidth they use but sell access to their home users a flat rate.
This kind of arrangement usually ends in tears; several years back in the UK a lot of modem dialup access companies folded one by one, ADSL seems a little better (if only because they have no hesitation in enforcing usage limits).
I suppose the economics of ISPs in the US is d
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For example, NZ may work as in the UK, where small ISPs are changed by their upstream ISP by the bandwidth they use but sell access to their home users a flat rate.
That's pretty much how it works in the US, too, or at least how it was when I was in the business a few years back. It looks like our wholesale bandwidth is probably a lot cheaper than yours, which again goes back to the idea of market conditions being different everywhere.
In America, I don't think people would be willing go to metered usage when it's always been flat-rate and everything else is going the opposite direction.
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Didn't read the rest, huh? *pats you on the head*
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.
Re:Welcome America (Score:5, Insightful)
now all you website owners cant bitch when I help set up Ad blocking systems at all my friends, family and associates.
we are not paying for your advertisement to come to my screen. Either make it very tiny in bandwidth used, or get used to the fact that many many more people will be using blocking tools to eliminate your ad's.
Re: !Bitching about Ads (Score:2)
Killer point.
Isn't most news text plus static pics? Not counting Must-See footage, all the news accounts for 10% of the usage and the super-interactive ads account for the other 90% ads.
Therefore, under usage pricing, allowing only "low-usage" ads keeps hard-earned dollars in our pockets.
Is this AT&T Exec smart enough to be operating at a meta level, enough to encourage less obtrusive ads?
And consequently (Score:2)
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Bt Broadband (aol-like rip-off):
£16/mo, 5GB/mo, 8 Mb/s
£21/mo, 8GB/mo, 8 Mb/s
O2 Broadband
£7.50/mo, unlimited, 8 Mb/s
Be Broadband (now owned by O2)
£14/mo, unlimited, 8 Mb/s
£18/mo, unlimited, 24 Mb/s (this is what I have, it also has a 3 month contract and static ip which is useful)
For all the above you need to pay £11/mo line rental to BT. There are others such as Virgin, and talktalk where
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AT&T has $150,000/customer ***SURPLUS*** (Score:5, Insightful)
The alternative is being held accountable, and liquidating AT&T to pay the damages, which would prove the point that *every* entity is held accountable TO THE LAW.
If Martha Stewart can go to prison for fibbing while NOT UNDER OATH, why the hell is AT&T getting a pass for it's crime?
Re:Welcome America (Score:5, Insightful)
It is most definately not abusing a service if you've paid for it and are within the rules. If someone sells me a 1 megabit always on connection, it is not abuse if I use it fully 24/7.
If you replace 'abuse' with 'use', your post makes a little more sense. Companies always oversell what they can deliver, and if they screw up, it's up to them to fix it.
I'd guess that in a market which is not dominated by flat rate lines, starting up a flat rate service would be a lot tougher, since you're naturally going to attract the heavy users. In a market in which nearly everyone's on flat rate, companies get all different types of customer.
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The prices they charge now is on the basis that you DON'T use it all the time, thus, they have less bandwidth than what they would need if all were going 24/7, an
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Counter example: Local phone access. Flat rates have worked for that for decades.
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Even with generic usage of flat rate, it was worked on the basis that the longest call would be 3 1/2 minutes; heck, even recently, we used to have $5 STD calls for unlimited time, but has now be capped at max
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Welcome America to what the rest of the world is subject to; we all pay on a usage basis, whether its mobile phone internet or ADSL internet connection. When you make something flat rate - it will be subject to abuse.
Argh. Every single time a usage-based price plan from ISPs is mentioned, someone from Australia or NZ pipes in with, "Welcome to what we already have, better get used to it, it's your only option." There are plenty of locales around the world that have flat rates for internet access with fast speeds and good infrastructure as well. Most of Europe and large parts of Asia being two good examples.
What the hell is with this sadistic desire of Australians and New Zealanders to have the rest of the world s
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Oh, and btw, what we're saying is, "get used to it - the free ride is over".
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As far as "the free ride is over" is concerned, what evidence do you have of this? So a couple of ISPs are experimenting with the idea of per-GB pricing, big deal. Most services are still unlimited in most of the developed world and there is no imminent rush of ISPs moving to other pricing models. Australia and
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In theory... without monopoly.
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Road tolls might be less at night (e.g. London Congestion Charge is only between 07:00 and 18:00).
Anyway, it's free market America, isn't it? If you don't like it, don't buy it!
Re:IDIOTS !! was that too hard ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The ONLY reason the internet is what it is today was the switch away from that archaic pricing structure. ( think CompuServe and the old school AOL ).
This is 2008, it doesn't mean something from 5000 years ago still applies. ( i suppose you also propose we trade chickens for bandwidth? And how about offering a cow before you can get married? )
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They doubled our rates, then sent me a complaint the next month that i was using too much bandwidth.. wtf?
They refused to tell me what the new limit was so i could throttle my router ( there was no limit before ).. then finally admitted there was still no limit and 'just be reasonable'.
If you don't have the bandwidth, don't advertise it as being there to suck customers in. Should be considered bait/swtich.
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I find it odd that comcast has doubled my connection recently while sending RST packets because their network can't handle traffic. Perhaps these companies should advertise and sell what their networks can handle instead of claiming rediculous speeds that they can't provide.
It sounds a lot like the mad rush to provide more and more tv channels. All the providers are doing, cable and satellite, where they have a constant amount of bandwidth but keep adding channels so each channel gets less and less bandwidth allocated. The net effect is that all the channels look like shite - Comcast has 50+HDTV channels but at ~10Mbps each they often look worse than DVD.
Same thing here with the internet side - faster and faster 'connections' but it still the same size pipes, so they have t
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We do. It's called a fuel tax [wikipedia.org].
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Re:IDIOTS !! was that too hard ? (Score:5, Informative)
You do pay for roads by the mile, more or less. Road maintenance is funded via gas taxes, so you pay more for driving more. The alternative model is toll roads, which also charge in proportion to distance traveled.
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Except we don't live in the world of 5000 years ago nowadays. When I want to buy another goat from you, you have to recover the cost of having fed that goat, raised it, cared for it, etc.
What happens when the cost of providing an additional unit to me is practically nil? Why would I be interested in paying you forever for a one time upgrade in hardware/technology that would fix your "congestion" problem
Re: Americans wanting better deals (Score:2)
It dates from the second paragraph of our existence.
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ISPs cant go on offering "unlimited" bandwidth anymore, they really have 3 choices: 1.Tell people that they only get a certain amount of bandwidth per month (i.e. the
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In other words, actually provide what you are selling.
And yes i know technically its effect is capping your actual usage at Xmb a month, but its predictable and your allocation wont run out 1/2 thru the month if you happen to get hit with a DoS or a huge amount of spam. Its 100% p
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Power, water, petrol, gas - they all cost per quantity because someone upstream pays by quantity. Why do you want the internet to be any different?
Over subscription is a balancing act. I'm downloading at the moment, however the business around the block is not (since it's 12am here at the moment). To provide value for money,
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And i really don't care what people *want*, its what has to be done unless you want it *really* bad like the ISPs are proposing. They are overselling and going to make us pay the penalty so they can screw us even more.
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Power, water, petrol, gas - they all cost per quantity because someone upstream pays by quantity. Why do you want the internet to be any different?
Because it IS different. In those cases something is actually consumed. Barring electricity, nothing is actually consumed when you 'use' bandwidth.
This is more like getting a license plate to drive a particular car on the street ( excise tax . It really doesn't cost the state anymore if you drive 10000 miles, or 10000 people drive 1 mile, the road is already there and it costs the same for upkeep. Its a flat rate. Just don't let more people on it then is safe. ( ie. lane restrictions. only in this case, y
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Power, water, petrol, gas - they all cost per quantity because someone upstream pays by quantity. Why do you want the internet to be any different?
Because it IS different. In those cases something is actually consumed. Barring electricity, nothing is actually consumed when you 'use' bandwidth.
Bah, semantics...
Explain exactly how transferring data is not consuming resources, since not only is there upstream bandwidth bills, but there are ISP employees, power (not just for switches/routers, but offices), insurance, advertising, maintenance costs, rates/rent for buildings...
I pay my ISP for 80GB download, my ISP pays 15 cents per megabyte to Southern Cross cable for the link to the US and 14 cents per megabyte to SingTel for the link to Singapore. If I overuse my quota (consume more t
Re:We have this in Australia... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Bend over and take it.
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The slippery slope follow-on to this idea is "shouldn't P2P always be a low priority?"