We must ensure ISPs don't stop the next Google getting out of the garage
guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk
I read a couple of UK nonpolitical blogs, and I find astounding the willingness to compromise what we in the US consider basic rights, like freedom of speech or unfettered telecommunications. I dont like a world with the worst of US IP policy and European speech, privacy and communications policy.
So what should the ISPs do? Time Warner's recent foray into metered billing was obviously moronic. Customers shouldn't be penalized beyond their monthly payment for usage. Their plan also didn't do anything to reduce congestion during peak traffic hours.
I think the onus should be on the ISP to make sure that they can actually deliver the rates that they are advertising, which are clearly far too high. The customer shouldn't get screwed just because the ISP can't manage the oversubscription rate that it wishfully dreamt up.
In this scenario, advertised rates would have to drop substantially, but it means that the customer, not the big media partner, decides on his own quality of service.
This is basically how it has worked for business class circuits for all of eternity. I guess I don't understand why they can't apply the same pricing model to ordinary consumers.
Grandma wants to video chat! She doesn't know how much bandwidth it uses! POOR GRANDMA!
Grandma wants to run the air conditioner! She doesn't know how much power it uses! POOR GRANDMA!
Maybe grandma should learn, eh?
This can't be repeated enough when commenters -- as the above one did -- make such disingenuous arguments.
I don't get the opposition to metered billing. You want unlimited use of a resource, but you don't want the provider to put conditions on how it used? With metered billing I have a reasonable expectation of getting what I paid for - ie. net neutrality. If my ISP broke net neutrality, it would mean that some of my gigabytes were intentionally served more slowly despite my paying the same price for them as any other gigabyte.
If my ISP wants to give preferential treatment to a particular site, it can do so in the form of financial discounts on the cost of using that site (which happens with content hosted by the ISP's own servers), all without affecting the speed of packets that I paid full price for.
You can get a 100Mbs connection in Sweden for $11 a month. Or I can rent a server with 1TB per month of transfer for $60 a month.
Should be a clue to you that the ISPs are lying. And before anyone brings up the old canard about "last mile, blah blah," the marginal cost of a new subsriber is about $25-$30 a month.
Amazing to me how some people love to justify their own getting ripped off.
I agree with you that costs to Virgin Media should be quite low, as they own all of their infrastructure and most of it has been in place for 20 years or more.
The problem for the ADSL ISPs in the UK is BT. There are some IPSs which have installed their own equipment in BT's telephone exchanges and hence only pay BT for use of the 'last mile', but most of the ISPs in this country have to pay BT for not only the 'last mile', but also for the hundred or so miles before that. BT charges the ISPs based on how much bandwidth they consume, so for the majority of Internet users in the UK, the amount of bandwidth they consume is an important cost to their ISP.