Twitch To Shut Down in Korea Over 'Prohibitively Expensive' Network Fees 44
Twitch, the popular video streaming service, plans to shut down its business in South Korea on February 27 after finding that operating in one of the world's largest esports markets is "prohibitively expensive." From a report: Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said the firm undertook a "significant effort" to reduce the network costs to operate in Korea, but ultimately the fees to operate in the East Asian nation was still 10 times more expensive than in most other countries. The ceasing of operations in Korea is a "unique situation," he wrote in a blog post.
South Korea's expensive internet fees have led to legal fights -- streaming giant Netflix unsuccessfully sued a local broadband supplier last year to avoid paying usage charges, but Seoul's court ruled that Netflix must contribute to the network costs enabling its half-billion-dollar Korean business. Twitch attempted to lower its network costs by experimenting with a peer-to-peer model and then downgrading the streaming quality to 720p video resolution, Clancy said. While these efforts helped the firm lower its network costs, it wasn't enough.
South Korea's expensive internet fees have led to legal fights -- streaming giant Netflix unsuccessfully sued a local broadband supplier last year to avoid paying usage charges, but Seoul's court ruled that Netflix must contribute to the network costs enabling its half-billion-dollar Korean business. Twitch attempted to lower its network costs by experimenting with a peer-to-peer model and then downgrading the streaming quality to 720p video resolution, Clancy said. While these efforts helped the firm lower its network costs, it wasn't enough.
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Shut up AC, not only are you wrong, but you are dumb too.
https://www.dictionary.com/bro... [dictionary.com]
Transit vs Peering (Score:3)
Now the internet providers in South Korea will learn (to their detriment) how large Transit Fees [wikipedia.org] can get. Should have been happier providing Twitch the bandwidth. Transit companies usually aren't too reasonable.
ISPs base their entire business on the idea that consumers won't actually use the bandwidth they're contracted to get. They try and pass it on to the business customers. When this runs into problems, you see crap like this.
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Fundamental underlying assumption: local ISPs don't just degrade service that is too expensive.
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Korean networking is shit (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're in Korea and you're going to a website thats hosted on a server IN Korea, your traffic can actually get routed via the USA.
Because peering relationships between the network providers is that bad, your ISP and the webservers network provider might not have a direct route inside the country.
And this is what Koreans pay top dollar for.
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No kidding... I tried pinging a .kp host in 1953 and I'm still waiting for the response. Worse latency ever.
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That's just the normal East Asian thing. Outsiders don't get to ever be the part of the local culture and people, in both good and bad.
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Sure thing Luckyo. Korea has a whole separate Internet infrastructure they reserve for Non-Koreans to use while in Korea. And it's better than the version they give themselves *for reasons*.
Did you not read before posting? It's the same internet infrastructure, but Koreans will be far more likely to access Korean websites than would someone who was living there but not Korean. When accessing Korean websites while in Korea, the poor peering between ISPs often results in the traffic being routed out to the US and back to Korea. Meanwhile, when accessing a US website while in Korea, the traffic is routed out to the US still, but that's where the site is, so it's 1/2 the distance (faster WRT laten
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And this is what Koreans pay top dollar for.
500mbit broadband costs around $25USD / month. That's not top dollar. You're not making the argument you think you're making.
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Top dollar? A bit of research suggests that South Koreans have a range of providers, starting at around $15 and going up to $40 a month for the fastest speeds.
From what I understand the routing issues are mainly just the telecom companies being dicks and trying to extract as much money from other businesses. Consumer broadband prices seem to be relatively low.
It will get worse (Score:4, Interesting)
ISP's want to double dip, because they are greedy and liars.
The problem work Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore is that their internet service outside the country is insanely expensive because they have to go over trans-pacific cables, which are cables that Google and Amazon do not own, and seemingly can't negotiate peering through. They previously were partnering with the telecoms. Guess the telecoms decided to stab them in the back.
As for Twitch, Korea is the king of e-sports, and all the league of legend and overwatch traffic is 5x higher from korea than it is for english-speaking countries combined.
While I don't really believe that Twitch can't afford it, I do believe that the they doing this to gain sympathy, or outrage from Korean streamers and their fans, because if Twitch closes, Youtube is next.
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> all the league of legend and overwatch traffic is 5x higher from korea than it is for english-speaking countries combined
Wow ... are they turning this into an "angry young men" problem for the Korean government to deal with?
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First of all, Korea is the land of angry middle aged women, not angry young men. Look up Korean feminists. They're so incredibly misandrist, racist (against Korean men) and vocal, last major elections in South Korea were about how much they should be removed from public life. Public voted for maximum removal.
On the other point, Korea has a lot of streaming services, including gaming services, like AfreecaTV. This isn't anglosphere where choices are twitch or youtube (with tiktok actively trying to challenge
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You're talking about South Korea. "Recent World Economic Forum and United Nations reports rank South Korean gender empowerment among the lowest in the developed world." It was only in 2005 that families were no longer registered as belonging to the male head of the family. It's the same country that has serious issues with rape, pedophilia and basically defined the term "upskirting".
I'd say feminists in South Korea have a point, and the elections merely prove that point.
Source: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/ [wilsoncenter.org]
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Have you tried reading local rather than anglosphere progressives projecting on their ideological bretheren abroad?
The country only had the last main election being won and lost on subject of utter awfulness of Korean feminists.
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As for Twitch, Korea is the king of e-sports, and all the league of legend and overwatch traffic is 5x higher from korea than it is for english-speaking countries combined.
Googled twitch users by country indicate a different conclusion. For example, this page [visualsbyimpulse.com] shows the following twitch users by country:
#1. US & Canada – 93 Million
#2. Brazil – 16.9 Million
#3. Germany – 16.8 Million
#4. United Kingdom – 13.4 Million
#5. France – 11.3 Million
#6. Spain – 10.5 Million
#7. Russia – 10.5 Million
#8. Argentina – 10 Million
#9. Mexico – 9.2 Million
#10. Italy – 8.3 Million
#11. Turkey – 7.5 Million
#12. South Korea –
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#1. US & Canada – 93 Million
93/370 = 25%
#12. South Korea – 6.7 Million
6.7/52 = 13%
Even by proportion of users US/Canada is higher than S. Korea.
Is everyone that uses Amazon Prime for delivery automatically considered a Twitch user?
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LoL and OW are != to Twitch streaming.
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It's not the content providers who should be paying for the traffic, it's the users/consumers. If it's that expensive, pass the costs to the consumer.
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It's not the only economic model for media. It's just the latest.
Television and Radio stations provide content and pay all the distribution costs.
It's possible that a better model would be splitting the cost between producer and consumer. I don't know
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The cost of running a transmitter is far far less then building a global network.
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Twitch is supposedly in very poor shape. It's serving mainly livestreamed video so they don't have time to do a lot of processing on it to shrink file size, and they have to manage latency very carefully. That makes it one of the most expensive things you can host on the internet.
At the same time news from the insiders on the site for a while has been "Amazon execs really don't like us being loss leaders and pushing us hard to cut costs".
Power analogy (Score:4, Interesting)
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No, it's charging you for the cost of providing power to your house from the power station and charging Twitch for the cost of getting power from their building to your power provider.
Twitch to you is 1000 miles, and the ISP wants to be paid for the 900 miles from Twitch to the ISP and to charge the customer for the 100 miles from the ISP to their house.
Where it's a problem is where routing is so bad you're paying for more miles than is necessary.
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Unless my ISP is also Twitch's ISP, why do they have any claim over Twitch's traffic? They're paying their ISP, who is connected by various transit agreements to my ISP. If my ISP is unhappy with the transit agreements, they can renegotiate them. If they're unhappy with the traffic that I have caused to be on their network, they can talk to me. They have no reason to be talking to Twitch.
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Twitch is already paying their ISP. You are already paying your ISP.
Now your ISP wants Twitch to pay them as well.
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Charging Twitch for bandwidth is like charging you AND the manufacturer of your blender for its power consumption.
That might actually happen in some sense, since we need manufacturers to reduce the power consumption of their devices to help with net zero. You can either ban high power devices (the EU has done that before, e.g. with vacuum cleaners) or you can allow them to be sold but with some kind of tax to make them less attractive.
Before someone says this will result in worse products, it actually made vacuum cleaners better. In Europe there was an arms race to waste as much power as possible, because consumers equ
Follow the money (Score:2)
Who's making money in the Korean market? Are the ISPs very profitable? Are ISP monthly charges very low? Or is there some networker coining it?
The event raises hard questions about the cost of bandwidth. There's a perfectly respectable case for ISPs to charge big bandwidth gluttons such as Netflix for giving access. But this should be reflected in very cheap basic charges. Indeed there's a logical argument that the ISPs need to be regulated as utilities to resolve these complexities - though given the gener
regulated as utilities is needed for metered billi (Score:2)
regulated as utilities is needed for metered billing. As you want the state to be able to check that the meter is fair.
just think if the gas station billed you based on how many times the attendant said mississippi and there was no meter.
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Double dipping (Score:2)
Why Net Neutrality Is Important (Score:2)