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Google accused of YouTube ‘free ride’
- DarkShikari 17y agoThese people operate on some sort of bizarre moon logic. Youtube doesn't "eat up your ISP's bandwidth", your customers eat up your ISP's bandwidth by using Youtube. If electricity usage followed the same argument as they give, power plants would be at fault for their electricity being used. Of course, your customers can't always easily be extorted for hundreds of millions of dollars, while (they think) Google can.
- axod 17y agoProblem is that ISPs hate it when you actually use bandwidth. I got an email from my ISP - BT, to say that I'd used 80GB of transfer for March, and that if I went to 100GB, I'd have my speed capped for the next 30 days. This is on their (and I quote) "UNLIMITED" plan. bleurgg
- DarkShikari 17y agoOf course. But normally ISPs take it out on their customers, as opposed to taking it out on the services their customers use. Most likely the problem is that they now can no longer blame the problem on "bandwidth hogs"--with everyone using Youtube, everyone uses the bandwidth that you advertised to them.
- axod 17y agoThey certainly took/take it out on filesharing/p2p also though. I think they generally take it out on anything that eats bandwidth for them. It's sort of ironic, since they have specifically sold the benefits of broadband ADSL as being able to watch movies, etc and now they complain people are actually doing that ;)
- swombat 17y agoI think it's doubly ironic. If the Telcos feel they can charge Google for carrying its bits, then perhaps they should pay all the newspapers, blogs, etc that are providing all their content to those telcos for free. Over the last 20 years, Telcos have made humongous profits selling internet access to content that they didn't have any hand in producing. Meanwhile, the newspapers are going bust. People keep talking about saving newspapers by introducing paywalls and such. There's already a paywall: it's the internet access monthly fee. Take the money out of there.
- axod 17y agoI was with you up to the last crazy socialist sentence. If the newspapers can't survive, (I for one still like reading my daily non-electronic paper), let them die. ISPs should simply be a pipe. Nothing more, nothing less.
- swombat 17y agoOh, I agree - I don't think that should happen. I just think that it's an uneasy "let's keep our eyes closed" arrangement to begin with. If the Telcos want to open their eyes instead, they might find they have a lot more to lose than to gain. Ditching Net Neutrality will cost them a whole lot more than it will gain them, as soon as content providers realise that actually, the providers should be paying them, not the other way around. I mean, if Telefonica wants to block access to youtube, why should Google stop them? Fine. Block it. And lose 80% of your customers overnight. If Google wanted to play this game, they should be asking Telefonica to pay them money. It's not a long step from this to having bloggers, newspapers, etc, organise in collectives that can charge telcos for "access to every newspaper on the web" or "every blog on the web".
- thefahim 17y agoISPs (Comcast, ugh!) have monopolies in a ton of areas in the states. Block YouTube and it'll lose 80% of it's traffic overnight, not the other way around.
- dsplittgerber 17y agoYears ago, I saw lots of "unlimited" cell phone plan commercials in London, every single one being subject to "fair use". How come it's that common in the UK? I think there are close to none "fair use" plans in e.g. Germany. Why the local differences?
- axod 17y agoI think "unlimited" is just a word that gets people to buy something. It's not economical to actually offer something with unlimited anything. Even if you buy a dedicated server with "unlimited" transfer, it'll be limited by the connection speed - eg 10mbps uplink "unlimited bandwidth" works out at less than 5TB total transfer per month. Same with the magic word "free". You'll often see that used such as "free mobile phone (small print: when you sign up to a contract at £19/month)" etc. Are there true unlimited plans in Germany that aren't subject to any limits then?
- dsplittgerber 17y agoFor internet at home, I think so. Just checked the legalese for the #1 provider (Deutsche Telekom) here, found no wording relating to "fair use". Internet at home is extremely competitive here, though. Lots of different delivery methods (tv cable, telephone cable etc), unlimited internet + landline calls for ~30 EUR/month or less. For mobile internet, it's a whole different story, obviously. There are all kinds of caps. I think 'unlimited' should mean unlimited. But I agree, introducing caps sadly makes business sense for some companies.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- seles 17y agoThis is what at&t/apple does with their 'unlimited' iphone subscription. It might be unlimited but they try their best to stop you from using any actual bandwidth (tethering etc.) Google has had to take a lot shit lately from non free speech and non free market ideologies.
- sadiq 17y ago
- some1else 17y agoThis just shows that telco's won't solve a thing by capping bit-torrent traffic. What they need to do is stop charging too little for the bandwidth and improve their infrastructure to support the market they expanded to.
- Retric 17y agoBandwidth is not a major cost for most large scale ISP's. The real problem is there is only so many way's for ISP's to cut costs and pissing off the customers that most use the service is unlikely to cause them to quit because they don't have any choice.
- rbanffy 17y agoThis may drive up the prices to a point an ISP can profit from moving bits from A to B.
- Retric 17y agoISP's already profit from moving bit's from A to B. They want to make as much profit as possible. ISP's have the same basic problem as the airlines. They are selling a commodity service that requires high capital costs and have little to differentiate themselves with. The only way to increase profits is to drive down costs because they can't offer much outside of "fat pipes".
- rbanffy 17y agoMost ISPs earn much more from value-added products like anti-viruses and other security programs.
- PostOnce 17y agoThis is completely irrelevant but I quite enjoy the phrase "bizarre moon logic". Kudos for coining it.
- lsb 17y agoThe ISP's logic of people paying for getting bits as well as people paying for receiving bits gets you (in America) text messages that are $0.20 to send, and $0.20 to receive.
- meroliph 17y agoI believe this is more related to some of the peering relationships Google currently has. While it was a good idea to peer with Google in the past to benefit your customers, right now they are probably upset that their free peering arrangements are putting quite a bit of stress on their networks and it is quite understandable to want to start charging some money.
- charliesome 17y agoThis is quite a good argument. If they have entered into a peering agreement then Google is freeloading off their services. However, an agreement is an agreement and the telco can't just pussy out because it's turned sour for them
- kierank 17y agoThen they should cancel the peering agreement and pay transit charges to reach Google...and also reduce the quality of service that the customer receives when watching Youtube. Most peering agreements are relatively informal anyway. For the larger providers reaching Google through transit routes, such transit would jeopardise other peering relationships which rely on traffic being balanced.
- mcherm 17y agoIf they were complaining about peering relationships, that would be just fine. Renegotiate the peering relationship! Perhaps instead of true (free) peering (what most telecoms have with Google, perhaps they should be paying Google something.
- Asa-Nisse 17y agoFine, the telecoms can start taking payments from their customers to access youtube then. Lets see how many customers they'll get with that kind of deal. We (the users) already pays for the networks. This article is complete bullshit.
- c1sc0 17y ago"Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to “dumb pipes”" : yes Google, PLEASE do us that favor. Telecom's business should be to transport bits from point A to point B, nothing more, nothing less.
- viraptor 17y agoThat's an interesting quote: "Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to “dumb pipes”". I wonder what description would they prefer now - especially what do they want to offer above the "dumb pipe" standard?
- nazgulnarsil 17y agothe telcos don't want the public to perceive them as "dumb pipes" because fungible commodities are subject to much fiercer competition.
- mcherm 17y agoNews Flash: telecom company whines "Our customers pay us every month to allow them to connect to YouTube, but YouTube is owned by Google, who is rich, and Google isn't paying us anything on top of what our customers pay us. Boo hoo hoo!"
- kierank 17y agoMr Alierta said that if no revenue sharing agreement was possible between the internet search engines led by Google and the network operators, regulators should supervise a settlement. This is what strikes me as disturbing. Peering has been one of the success stories of an unregulated internet infrastructure in contrast to the hugely complicated PSTN system with all manner of complicated charging schemes. In this instance getting regulators involved would almost certainly complicate things. Bureaucrats won't understand the myriad of informal relationships that underpin the peering that runs the internet.
- adolph 17y agoPeering strikes me as akin to free trade between countries. Can peering relationships survive large imbalances? If packets were trade and peering relationships borders, who are the net exporters and importers?
- 9point6 17y agoDumb Pipes? No. They're a series of tubes.
- jonknee 17y agoIf either party should be paying it should be the telcos. No one needs to pay for monthly Internet access without content to access. They'll find that out the first week they drop Google.
- dkokelley 17y agoAren't the telecoms hitching a free ride? I mean we all upload our videos to YouTube and Google so graciously hosts them for us, but the telecoms get to charge fees to their customers who want to watch these videos. Google should ask for some compensation for providing the content the telecoms need in order to sell their services. Here are some quotes that have been changed to reflect the same logic applied the other way: “These guys [telecoms] are using the content and they don’t pay anybody.” "Let’s see the development of digital society in terms of the winners and the victims. And today, there is a winner who are the telecoms. There are victims that are content providers, and to a certain extent, YouTube. We cannot accept this." *Bolded items have been changed. Honestly, that's the same logic being used in the opposite direction. I could do this with almost every quote in that story.
- adolph 17y agoI read the paper version of this and the other articles on the page had a similar bizarro-world quality to them. It took some time to see some logic to the ISP POV, which I think the article doesn't do justice. Forget for a moment any notion of fairness or the traditional arrangement of customer > ISP > Internet as a whole. Take a look at the arrangement in terms of value transfer (give) and extraction (take). The consumer-oriented ISPs give network connectivity (and maybe some other ancillary services such as an email account, anti-virus, NNTP, etc.) and take money from customers. Google gives content (search may be more important to users, but content such as video is the focus in this case) and takes eyeballs on ads. There is no formal connection between Google and the ISPs. There are two important informal connections: 1. Without Google (or other similar entities), the product of the consumer oriented ISP would be much less valuable to the customer. 2. Without the ISPs, Google has no way of giving its content or taking its eyeballs on ads. At present, the ISPs perceive an asymmetry in revenue between [them and the consumer] and [Google and the consumer]. They are interested in connecting the dots from Google to the ISP in a more formal way. The only question is who has more to lose by pursuing their point. Google can't take value from the customer without the ISPs. The ISPs' will offer less value to the customer without Google. Will an ISP without Google provide enough value to the customer to justify operating that way? The relationship between each entity is not totally unfettered. The regulatory environment must also be considered. If the ISPs annoy the customers too much, there may be regulatory change (such as Network Neutrality, etc.). This in of itself may be good or bad for the ISPs and their complaints and threats regarding Google may be a diversion for the purpose of increasing their government supported monopoly power.