The biggest threat to the Internet since EMPs
I’m angrier than a bull in a Communist china shop over a recent trend amongst ISPs towards metered payment schemes (use BugMeNot for access). I wouldn’t mind so much if they were charging market rates, which would be between 5 and 10 cents a gigabyte, but instead they’re going for outright extortion and charging one dollar per gigabyte. So instead of using their current revenue and building out their infrastructure to handle expected increases in traffic in the future, which is what they should be doing, they’re hoping to cut utilization by charging more, and thus ramp up profits while slowly choking our Internet to death.
This stupid pricing scheme has the potential to deal long-term damage to the Internet. There’s so much potential for over-the-net distribution of content (including high-def video and video games) that hasn’t quite materialized yet, and won’t ever if customers are charged so much for Internet access. The cost of “renting” a DVD-quality movie over the Internet doubles at $1/GB pricing levels. It’s obscene. The United States was the world leader in Internet adoption for so long, but now we are falling hopelessly behind. ISPs in many nations (including Finland and South Korea) now offer connections that absolutely put ours to shame, like 50 Mbps symmetric for less than what 8/1.5 Mbps costs here. And we only have our money-grubbing, monopolistic communications companies to blame.
If you find yourself stuck with metered Internet access that charges unrealistic bandwidth rates, don’t put up with it. Complain. Loudly. Change your service to anything else that’s available in your area. And if you’re a big torrent user like I am, you may find it cheaper to buy a business-level unlimited connection than to pay $1/GB. To bring the costs down a good bit, share it with your neighbors over WiFi. Just don’t let them pillage the future of the Internet for the sake of making a quick buck.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:57
Funnily enough, this could all be avoided if these ISPs would simply charge the 5% or less that is taking more than their fair share of the bandwidth for a business license.
They’re saying that for most people these types of changes will be transparent, but like you mentioned, digital distribution is just now beginning to take off. Steam, for instance, is set to revolutionize the way games are bought, downloaded, and updated.
However, given that it’s corporate interests that are causing these problems, perhaps companies that do digital distribution will “sponsor” the ISPs to keep download limits open. If not, those companies probably will get owned quite readily once all the ISPs have jumped on the “more money, less work” bandwagon.
Like I said before, corporations are evil. Prove me wrong. :]
June 18th, 2008 at 14:08
Stop with the sensationalist headlines. Didn’t you ever hear of the boy who cried wolf? Bandwidth metering is the norm, not the exception, in just about every form of communication prior to high-speed Internet. Think postage stamps, phone calls, cell phones, Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL, and, in all likelihood, the webhost for this blog. Back in college, two years ago, we had a 5 GB/day outbound limit, enforced by warning emails and then throttling if the person couldn’t self-regulate. Personally, I’m looking forward to truth in advertising, and think there is a place for metering among some consumers.
Yes, unmetered bandwidth is better, and there absolutely should be a consumer choice — not to mention a decoupling of line providers from ISPs, like DSL is supposed to have, and fiber should have but doesn’t. This is why I really want to get my next connection from Speakeasy, regardless of extra cost. But these are issues that have to be considered in the larger context of ISP regulation, at which the government has failed spectacularly. Instead, the FCC’s chairman is vehemently pushing horrible ideas like a free, nationwide, heavily-censored WiMAX network to be built at taxpayer expense.
June 18th, 2008 at 14:30
Where you see sensationalist, I see snarky. You have to keep your tongue at least partially in your cheek while reading this blog, headlines especially. Otherwise it’s just no fun to write!
I believe I have a more nuanced view on this than most people on the likes of Digg, who instinctually seem to outright reject the very notion of bandwidth metering. They don’t seem to realize that all of the upstream providers pay for their bandwidth in a metered fashion, thus asking the end users to do the same is actually fair. What I’m objecting to is the obscene rates that the ISPs seem to want to be charging. $1/GB is ridiculous, and will kill a sizable number of future applications that the Internet will otherwise have been used for. This really is a large risk to the Internet. ISPs really should be improving their networks in preparation for handling the traffic of the future rather than trying to throttle down based on the traffic numbers of the present.
The reason the government has failed spectacularly at ISP regulation is that they haven’t really even been trying. These people in charge have been bought and paid for by the telecommunications companies. Seeing the current FCC properly regulate the telecomms companies would be like Ed McMahon cracking down on illegal blows in WWE; not gonna happen.
June 18th, 2008 at 16:17
Keep in mind that most of the end-user ISPs are already doing bandwidth metering. However, instead of having a clear, concise policy, they just randomly nuke people who exceed the nebulously defined threshhold that they’ve decided is “too much”. Given a choice between that and having clearly-stated enforceable limits, I’ll take the clearly-stated enforceable limits, thank you.