11 ms·

An update on Twitch in Korea

225 points by zeroCalories 3y ago

zeroCalories 3y ago
10x for data seems insane. Wondering if anyone has more context on what these costs are, and why they're so high.
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/08/17/afterword-korea-s-challenge-to-standard-internet-interconnection-model-pub-85166 https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/08/17/afterword-korea-s-c...
  - goles 3y ago
    The comment about helping migrate streamers and their communities to another platform stood out to me in the OP. But presumably Korean streamers and viewers came to Twitch because they offer a superior service or reach or ad rate. Do the Big 3 telecom providers have a at least somewhat comparable service to Twitch or is this more or less the end of some of these channels and communities people have spent a ton of effort to build?
    - lifthrasiir 3y ago
      No. They did try with OTT services with some success, but no comparable live streaming services exist AFAIK. Rather conveniently though, Naver, the biggest portal service in Korea, announced a game streaming service set to be released in 2024. I guess Naver did know something about a windup of Twitch in Korea months ago?
      - HDThoreaun 3y ago
        Is afreeca not a korean twitch?
        lifthrasiir 3y ago
        Afreeca is not associated with telcos.
        goles 3y ago
        Afreeca has an interesting controversy section on their Wiki[1] detailing various social problems. It has a somewhat ominous last line about South Korean attitudes towards personal broadcasting platforms from here[2]. Apparently South Korea is also one of the few countries where Pornography is illegal. But I saw conflicting accounts of who supports that politically and if it's really just a barrier for non-VPN traffic. Knowing the age demographic that Twitch can attract, and that Twitch has very popular Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches[3] and Just Chatting[4] sections. I'd be curious if that perspective has an element in wanting streaming and internet service generally in the hands of a few companies, and not American ones. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AfreecaTV#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AfreecaTV#Controversy [2]https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/media/835746.html https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/media/835746.html [3]https://www.twitch.tv/directory/category/pools-hot-tubs-and-beaches https://www.twitch.tv/directory/category/pools-hot-tubs-and-... [4]https://www.twitch.tv/directory/category/just-chatting https://www.twitch.tv/directory/category/just-chatting
        lifthrasiir 3y ago
        > Apparently South Korea is also one of the few countries where Pornography is illegal. Which is incorrect, though it is commonly framed by majority male-dominated communities. Korean law distinguishes pornography 성인물 from obscene material 음란물 and only legalizes pornography, and it's true that the line between them is quite blur, but most pornographic works are not considered obscene and can be legally imported if there is a demand. The actual reason for these kind of complaints is that, most non-obscene pornographic works are already available and only considered illegal because of the copyright violation. People want a free porn, easy ways have been blocked for the obvious reason, and they say something about the freedom of expression but still don't want to pay for them. This absurd argument makes actual changes much harder. > I'd be curious your thoughts if that plays an element in wanting streaming and internet service generally in the hands of a few companies, and not American ones. I doubt Afreeca will be able to capture most streamers in exile. In fact it's clear to me that most will just go to YouTube, because when Twitch gave up with clips and stream archives, many if not most streamers moved them to YouTube instead. Naver's new service may find some niche but it's unlikely to match YouTube's existing offers.
    - TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
      One of the Korean alternatives to Twitch is AfeeecaTV, and it's already used by a lot of prominent players.
      - belltaco 3y ago
        I think AfreecaTV avoids fees by being P2P.
        throwaway290 3y ago
        I'm sure the service is still liable for traffic generated so if you are P2P and don't pay up to mandated monopolies you'll be blocked. Per the article, Twitch tried being P2P but it's still expensive.
  - zeroCalories 3y ago
    Thanks. It doesn't immediately seem like charging the person sending traffic is a bad idea, as theoritically the costs should come out the same, so this seems like it's primarily an issue with regulatory capture. The article also mentions that Korea hasn't been investing in their infrastructure, but I find it hard to believe they're really that far behind every other country. Really sad that it seems like Korean users will be cut off from major platforms.
    - stefan_ 3y ago
      You don't believe it's a sign of a failed market when an ISP charges both their customers and companies like Twitch for the same data transfer?
      - zeroCalories 3y ago
        South Korean ISPs may have market failures, but it seems like in this case they wouldn't be able to do this without the regulation. This is all guessing based on context, but it seems like they don't want to play the risky game of blocking traffic, so companies could just ignore any bill they get sent. By having this regulation they can send a bill and have the courts enforce it if the company wants to do business in South Korea.
      - kijin 3y ago
        I don't deny that this is double dipping, but our intuitions about double dipping might not be universal. For example, in America, it is taken for granted that you pay for both incoming and outgoing calls. Koreans, on the other hand, would find it preposterous. Why should the callee pay, when the caller is already paying for those minutes? It's the same situation, but reversed.
        nitwit005 3y ago
        Do you imagine people approve of having to pay for incoming spam calls? The idea is near-universally disliked, excepting telephone companies and politicians.
        deleted 3y ago
- rsingel 3y ago
  ISPs have termination monopolies. They can charge what they like to reach their because there is literally no other path to them. Termination fees lead to high prices and weird arbitrage games. The long distance phone system works this way, which is why it's still like $5 a minute to call India from the US, and "free conference call" systems set up in rural areas to juice incoming call revenue.
Rebelgecko 3y ago
The timeline is a bit confusing to me, since it only talks about disabling monetization for Korean users. Will they eventually be blocked from the service entirely?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  I imagine Twitch will stop operating Korean CDNs. It wouldn't make much sense to geo-block all Korean IP addresses, but with minimum service I expect Korean viewers to drop off pretty quickly. If the networks are as badly configured as the internet articles claim they are, foreign internet uplinks wouldn't be able to sustain decent quality video streams for very long. VPNs and such will always allow Koreans to watch Twitch content, but by taking money or paying out revenue, Twitch as a company would create certain expectations of service. Now, with no special effort put into Korean service, I expect Twitch to become essentially useless. Perhaps the Korean localisation team will slowly let more and more untranslated English strings slip into the UI, though they may decide to keep the Korean translations for the benefit Korean minorities outside of Korea.
- bastard_op 3y ago
  Service providers like anywhere, net neutrality be damned, run Deep Packet Inspection boxes that have no other purpose in life but to negotiate down your connections for whatever you do the ISP finds egregious. For video, they generally reduce the video quality throughput, eventually reducing bitrate, causing buffering, and generally making your experience miserable unless Twitch, Youtube, etc pay the providers NOT to on behalf of their users. Cellcos particularly do this a lot to reduce quality so people aren't trying to watch 4k streams on a phone just because they can, it'll negotiate them down to what they feel is an acceptable like 480p, usually with some clause hidden in the fine print of your contract about acceptable use. South Korea simply legitimized all their ISP's doing so, as much as Ajit Pai did repealing net neutrality for American ISP's as their puppet under Trump.
  - ftth_finland 3y ago
willio58 3y ago
I wonder why Korea costs so much more for Twitch to run their service. Really interesting that they even experimented with peer-to-peer to solve it. Would like to see a write-up of why that didn't work. Honestly not even sure how that would have worked in the first place with live streaming. I guess you just inherently accept a lot more latency in trying to save money?
- SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
  I'm going purely off memory, but I recall vaguely that in Korea there are charges for the "push" side of network use, as well as the "pull" side. I can't recall if this is a government thing, or an ISP thing, or a confluence of both working together. I seem to recall Netflix becoming frustrated about this at some point. Maybe someone can find more info, since I'm replying on a device that makes actually looking this up a little tricky.
  - kijin 3y ago
    In Korea, broadband consumers only pay for the size of the pipe (100Mbps, 500Mbps, 1Gbps, etc.) and not for transfer. It's been like this for the last 20+ years. Even mobile carriers have "unlimited" plans. Short of outright collusion, nobody would dare comes up with a different pricing structure. Everyone would flock to a competitor! Moreover, the population is shrinking. The ISPs have little hope of increasing revenue from the "pull" side, which probably explains why they keep trying to pile charges upon the "push" side.
    - fomine3 3y ago
      It's common for consumer internet in many countries. What's different in Korea, dominance?
      - Xelynega 3y ago
        Market dominance is probably the reason. Canada had crown ISPs that offered unlimited data plans, so telcos has to do the same to compete and the idea of a fixed cap internet plan is rodiculous. When mobile data became popular there were no crown telcos anymore(other than SaskTel) so the prices started ridiculously high and were never brought down(other than in Saskatchewan)
stephenitis 3y ago
Wow Korea's gaming market is a economy in it's own. I recently watched the opening ceremony for the finals and it blew me away how much effort went into the production for this event. Worlds 2023 Finals Opening Ceremony https://youtu.be/AH8A79BrTEY?si=x5K0GcO-lrS89XEl https://youtu.be/AH8A79BrTEY?si=x5K0GcO-lrS89XEl
- arcdigital 3y ago
  That's just how Riot does Worlds now, it's not specific to Korea. I was at last year's Worlds in San Francisco and it looked like it had a similar production value.
- belltaco 3y ago
  This was a great outdoor set and stage for the finals of an Overwatch tournament over 5 years ago. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/162821713?t=0h11m0s https://www.twitch.tv/videos/162821713?t=0h11m0s
- ggregoire 3y ago
  Twitch shutting down in Korea will most likely not stop Riot Games to keep hosting the World Championship in Korea. Also, from what I understand, Twitch is marginal in Korea, since they have their own alternative streaming platforms.
  - stephenitis 3y ago
    after some discussion with my friends I agree this seems to be the case
    - houston_Euler 3y ago
      I'm sorry this is irrelevant to the current discussion, but you replied to one of my comments a couple weeks ago, and I can't reply there, so I'm leaving a response here. Regarding Sam Altman's Long-con at Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/comment/cszwpgq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/comment/c... Click "Single Comment Thread" to get the context of his comment.
belltaco 3y ago
From what I can tell, it's related to network usage fees from ISPs, i.e basically anti-net neutrality. From a year half ago: From https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220421000740 https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220421000740 > YouTube threatens to cut down investments in Korea over ‘network usage fee’ bill >Proposed revisions will require global content providers to pay network fees to local Internet service providers > The planned revision to the Telecommunications Business Act -- also known as the ‘network usage fee’ bills -- would require global content providers to sign mandatory contracts with local Internet service providers such as KT and SK Broadband to standardize obligations to pay fees for using their networks And from: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/skorea-broadband-firm-sues-netflix-after-traffic-surge-squid-game-2021-10-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/skorea-broadb... > South Korean Internet service provider SK Broadband has sued Netflix (NFLX.O) to pay for costs from increased network traffic and maintenance work because of a surge of viewers to the U.S. firm's content, an SK spokesperson said on Friday. > The move comes after a Seoul court said Netflix should "reasonably" give something in return to the internet service provider for network usage, and multiple South Korean lawmakers have spoken out against content providers who do not pay for network usage despite generating explosive traffic. Twitch also deleted recorded VOD content of Twitch Korean streamers last year for what they said was a different regulation: https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1590532134011564032 https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1590532134011564032
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  > The move comes after a Seoul court said Netflix should "reasonably" give something in return to the internet service provider for network usage, and multiple South Korean lawmakers have spoken out against content providers who do not pay for network usage despite generating explosive traffic. Why not charge the end user? That seems like it would be more fair, easier to implement, and require no regulation. Makes it seem like they have other motives.
  - kijin 3y ago
    > Why not charge the end user? The entire country is a single market, with 3 major cellular carriers and a handful of broadband carriers all competing for the same population. The competition is so cutthroat, they even publish monthly reports of which ISP stole how many customers from whom. Obviously, no ISP wants to be the first to charge the end user more, or become known as the one that throttles YouTube, and risk losing hundreds of thousands of customers in an instant. Much easier to make the whole thing look like a business disagreement. Note that it is always SK Broadband that whines the loudest about foreign video streaming platforms. Other ISPs like KT are sitting on bigger undersea cables, so they can afford to absorb much more bandwidth without resorting to reputation-destroying surcharges.
TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
Pure speculation, but I wonder how much of this is done in an attempt to push out Western companies in favor of Korean companies. All of the large telecoms in Korea sponsor eSports teams, they probably want to develop local services and stimulate their own economy. Beyond that, it's much easier to control or assert political pressure on a local company, while Twitch is known for being notoriously unreceptive. I watch competitive StarCraft 2 and Brood War, both of which only provide the highest quality stream through AfreecaTV. This isn't something I've looked much into, but I swear that AfreecaTV also has a way better bitrate and encoding than what you get with unpaid YouTube. This post leaves me wondering about YouTube's relationship with Korea. Someone mentioned Worlds 2023, which was dual streamed on Twitch and YouTube Live.
- dj_gitmo 3y ago
  I think protectionism is probably the reason. According to this article, on of the proponents is SK Telecom, of “SK Terran” fame. https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-netflix-under-scrutiny-south-korea-over-network-fees-2022-10-21/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-netflix-under-scru...
  - morkalork 3y ago
    When I think of protectionism, I think of things like the agriculture and aerospace industries for the sake of food and national security. What is the strategic benefit of game streaming? Does loss of that industry represent an existential national threat??
    - gloryjulio 3y ago
      Both India and China have protectionism. China is the most obvious case where most typical US tech companies are banned
    - jhanschoo 3y ago
      Entertainment and the infrastructure that delivers it is an important pillar of soft power.
greyface- 3y ago
It's interesting that they're using the Twitch name rather than Amazon to announce this. The Twitch ASN (which, incidentally, is present at 3 Seoul IXPs) was renamed to "Amazon IVS" post-acquisition. https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/46489 https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/46489
- ejj28 3y ago
  The streamers and viewers that will be affected by this are Twitch users, not Amazon users, so of course it makes sense that this is Twitch announcing it to their userbase and not Amazon.
- etc-hosts 3y ago
  Customers of the Amazon AWS service AWS IVS will not be affected. Customers of Twitch will be affected.
dj_gitmo 3y ago
Why are Korean network costs so much higher? In the aughts Korea was famous for its internet infrastructure. How do other streaming services survive there? EDIT: I’m guessing this is related https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-netflix-under-scrutiny-south-korea-over-network-fees-2022-10-21/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-netflix-under-scru...
- catlover76 3y ago
  What was the argument for assessing the fees? A lot of internet traffic is to them, so they should pay South Korean telecom companies/ISPs because...?
  - elliewithcolor 3y ago
    They do. You either pay Transit pricing or have settlement free peering (as in everyone pays his costs and the data exchange is free; as long as certain requirements are met). Thing is: charging the data center/content provider above global average pricing and also charging the end customer for the same service again.
- guu 3y ago
  Netflix made a deal with SK Broadband[0] after they were sued[1]. [0]: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/sk-telecom-sk-broadband-and-netflix-establish-strategic-partnership-to https://about.netflix.com/en/news/sk-telecom-sk-broadband-an... [1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/skorea-broadband-firm-sues-netflix-after-traffic-surge-squid-game-2021-10-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/skorea-broadb...
- laborcontract 3y ago
  Korea, pound for pound, has to be one of the most poorly legislated technology states in the world. Everything is in absolute bizarro land in Korea when it comes to technology. Here are just a few of things I’ve encountered in Korea: - You have to have a phone number to sign up for any type of account. (Hasn’t discouraged any toxicity either.) - Foreigners can’t use things like delivery apps because they can’t make accounts due to the phone number thing or they can’t use their international credit cards. - Most people own windows PCs because in order to do any banking in Korea you have to install software that is tantamount to the bank’s spyware on your computer. - All mobile phones have non-mutable shutter sounds. - Location services like find my iPhone are banned. - cellular data usage costs an arm and a leg, making free WiFi a necessity at any business - The quality of FaceTime calls is extremely throttled. For the longest time FaceTime just didn’t even work. KakaoTalk video calls never had that problem. - contactless pay via Apple Pay was only introduced this past year You’d think Korea would be bleeding edge when it comes to technology it’s far from a technocracy, It’s just a stumbling, bumbling, corrupt state that can only get out of its own way to clear space for the large conglomerates. I feel so sad for the Korean people. What should be a thriving, entrepreneurship-driven economy is the exact opposite - an oppressive, corporatist hole that sucks up peoples economic dreams and emits zero-sum, despair-driven ambition.
deleted 3y ago
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Analemma_ 3y ago
Every time the topic of net neutrality comes up here, the anti-NN crowd says “all the pro-NN points are just scaremongering, there’s no evidence that any of that bad stuff about ISP favoritism would actually happen”. Well, here’s the evidence. Korea doesn’t have NN, and now Twitch is pulling out (and YouTube is halting investment, according to one sibling comment) because the ISPs gouged it to death. Net neutrality should be mandatory and non-negotiable.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  Twitch is pulling because transit is ridiculously expensive. What good would net neutrality be for Twitch if they could not afford transit.
  - jinxedpenguin 3y ago
    Because transit is expensive due to peering fees that Korean ISPs charge? Net Neutrality rules in 2015 did govern peering (but not nearly as much as other aspects of the internet).
  - rsingel 3y ago
    It's not transit. Transit is about taking your data across a network to some other network or networks. These are access fees aka termination fees demanded to deliver data to a networks own customers on net. Net neutrality bans access fees as a kind of blocking and throttling. Twitch's servers almost certainly directly connected with the three largest ISPs in Korea. And Korea has a regulation that requires them to pay those networks and it looks like the fees that were demanded were way too high. And that's what you get in an economic system where monopolists (ISPs have a terminating monopoly over there) are allowed to set prices.
    - charcircuit 3y ago
      >It's not transit Transit costs 10x what it costs elsewhere. You can't just neglect a 10x price increase when the cost sending video to users in the bulk of the expense of offering twitch in korea
xyst 3y ago
Wow, you would think that Amazon would just foot the internet bill for a company they now own. Especially since they basically own most of the infra. I guess all it takes is a “10X” surcharge on fees to make even a multibillion dollar company weak at the knees. I wonder if this is really just a chess move in Amazon’s playbook to get Korean government to bend the knee. Raise awareness of how bad it is to operate in Korea. Threaten to cut services from country due to how prohibitively expensive it is. Korean citizens become outraged and put pressure on govt. Govt either bends to pressure from public or continues to bend for big ISPs. Government is doomed either way. Public is fucked. Only winner is Amazon or Korean ISPs.
- Xelynega 3y ago
  What does "prohibitively expensive" mean for a company that's largest cost is paid to its parent company at a rate completely decided by the parent company? Wouldn't anything that decreases the profit of twitch in South Korea be "prohibitively expensive" for an organization who's goal is to profit?
deleted 3y ago
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jinxedpenguin 3y ago
Actually found a pretty good source on what the Korean rules are (hint - it is about paid peering). This is somewhat biased (it's from a Spanish telecom - actually editing this again, the style choice + date formatting makes me think it is from a Korean trade group/telecom but the only source I can find for this is Telefonica. Likely from the Korean telecom industry itself...). Just haven't really seen a comment linking to anything substantial about the actual plans/rules/etc in Korea. https://www.telefonica.com/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/06/Myths-and-truths-about-Korean-IP-Interconnection-in-overseas-reports.pdf https://www.telefonica.com/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/202...
- resolutebat 3y ago
  The accompanying blog post makes it clear that this is from the Korean Telecommunications Operators Association, and has the explicit goal of "debunking" "myths" (read: inconvenient truths) about Korean telcos. https://www.telefonica.com/en/communication-room/blog/myths-and-truths-setting-the-record-straight-on-the-south-korea-case/ https://www.telefonica.com/en/communication-room/blog/myths-... Here's the Internet Society brief they appear to be responding to: https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2022/05/old-rules-in-new-regulations-why-sender-pays-is-a-direct-threat-to-the-internet/ https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2022/05/old-rules-in-ne... (summary) https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2022/internet-impact-brief-south-koreas-interconnection-rules/ https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2022/internet-... (full doc)
- rsingel 3y ago
  Telefonica's blog is amazing. They come out and say the outrageous things giant telecoms believe: that internet service should be 1) people pay them and then they get to connect to 2) the select group of websites and services that also pay telefonica. There's a very good reason that the U.S. net neutrality orders banned these kinds of fees starting in 2010, and again in 2015. California's net neutrality law also bans access fees
- Joking_Phantom 3y ago
  A corrupt Spanish organization, trying to support a corrupt Korean organization, only brings more credence to the argument that SPNP was a bad idea.
vermilingua 3y ago
As an aside, isn't the name of the country South Korea? Has something changed that the preferred name is Korea?
- zoky 3y ago
  The official name of the country is the Republic of Korea. However, it’s common to drop descriptors such as “Republic of” from country names, leaving only “Korea”. South Korea is an informal name, used only when it’s necessary to disambiguate from North Korea (officially, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), which in this case, it isn’t.
xpressvideoz 3y ago
I blame Twitch's laziness. There is a competitor of Twitch in South Korea, namely AfreecaTV, and it is highly profitable. Why is AfreecaTV sustainable whereas Twitch is not? Because Twitch hasn't altered its business model while operating in the Korean market. The same network cost applies to both AfreecaTV and Twitch, so there can't be a fundamental restriction keeping Twitch from being profitable in South Korea. One thing that makes AfreecaTV profitable is that it charges a fee for every donation happening in the platform. Twitch does not. AfreecaTV also uses a P2P network to reduce network cost. These policies may make the users and the streamers a bit annoyed, but it is still infinitely better than abandoning the service.
- RCitronsBroker 3y ago
  Twitch being unprofitable is a smokescreen. After acquiring Twitch, Amazon gutted it of its infrastructure IP and transferred it to a subsidiary of AWS. Amazon can now decide how much they want to charge Twitch as an entity for the AWS services they now need, that’s where the unprofitability comes from.
jmyeet 3y ago
Here's some context: when Amazon bought Twitch, it basically took that IP and created Amzon Interaction Video Services ("IVS") [1] as a live streaming solution within AWS. IVS is also the basis for Kick. Amazon and Twitch frequently talk about how Twitch is unprofitable and use it as an excuse to increase ad density. lower creator rev share, etc. Thing is, their unfprfitability is largely an accounting trick. Let's asy the compute cost for a stream is $50 and the ad revenue is $80 but there are two points in between: IVS and Twitch. Amazon could charge $50 for IVS and Twitch is super-profitable. Amazon could charge $90 for IVS and Twitch is losing money even though IVS is hugely profitable. The reason I bring this up is that I'm skeptical about Amazon's claims of Twitch in Korea being unprofitable just like I'm skeptical of all of Amazon's statements regarding Twtich profitability. South Korea is a developed nation with robust netowrk infrastructure. I doubt egress bandwidth from South Korea is particularly expensive. If it is, Amazon is a large enough company to solve that with their own backhaul. AWS has a region in South Korea so encoding shouldn't be an issue. In the last 2-3 years we've had a slew of reports from the likes of CVS and Walmart blaming theft on unprofitability in closing stores. This was and is a lie. It's used to mask rising costs, poor inventory management and bad execution. So when I see an announcement like this I really have to ask "what failure is Amazon/Twitch really hiding?" because I'm convinced there is one. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/ivs/ https://aws.amazon.com/ivs/
- rsingel 3y ago
  It's not the actual cost. It's the Korean regulatory requirement that sending networks pay. That's why Cloudflare moved most CDN content out of S. Korea to Japan, and why Facebook did the same, and why Netflix sued SK Broadband. The demanded fees are outrageous.
  - Xelynega 3y ago
    Why are they outrageous? I've yet to see a reason that Netflix/twitch/etc. having to pay for the infrastructure they profit massively from is a bad thing. If they have to pay a larger share, it means that services that don't use as much can be charged a much more reasonable rate.
andrewstuart 3y ago
>>> our network fees in Korea are still 10 times more expensive than in most other countries What exactly are "network fees" in this context?
- rsingel 3y ago
  Basically, if a Korean subscriber to a broadband network requests data from your app and you send it, you have to pay that person's ISP. It's a terrible economic model that punishes peering. Cloudflare and Facebook moved most of their servers overseas to Japan. It's been a long running sh*t show, with lots of lawsuits between Netflix and S. Korea's biggest telecom. And unfortunately EU Commissioner Thierry Breton wants to bring this model to the EU.
  - Xelynega 3y ago
    > It's a terrible economic model that punishes peering. Isn't that how most international trade agreements work? You either have to pay the taxes to manufacture in the country of origin, or you have to pay the import fees for importing it. I don't understand what benefit I get as a consumer or small developer from not having models like this. If Netflix is generating 32b in revenue and using a significant amount of bandwidth, shouldnt they have to pay for a larger portion of the infrastructure?
    - viceroyalbean 3y ago
      Netflix is paying for the infrastructure because for every byte that Netflix "pushes" there is a "pull" side who is paying for their residential internet access. What is the consumer paying the ISP for if the ISP is charging every service that the consumer is using more money separately?
rsingel 3y ago
This is probably the first service ever to be effectively shut down in a country by anti-net neutrality policies. This is the model know as sending party network pays (the same model that led to international telephone calls costing $5 a minute), and it has terrible incentives. Unfortunately, Europe, Brazil and India are all looking to emulate Korea's requirement that online services pay ISPs. It's particularly bad in the E.U. where Commissioner Thierry Breton, a former telecom CEO, wants to shove it through despite overwhelming opposition, including from the EU's top telecom regulators (BEREC).
- Semaphor 3y ago
  > It's particularly bad in the E.U. where Commissioner Thierry Breton, a former telecom CEO, wants to shove it through despite overwhelming opposition, including from the EU's top telecom regulators (BEREC). How would it then get through parliament?
  - the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
    The ISPs are lobbying for this for years. They see that 90% of traffic is a handful of services like Netflix and co. and they feel entitled to charge those something. You only need to convince a handful of bureaucrats of that idea.
    - Semaphor 3y ago
      You need to convince a decent chunk of Parliament, not just a handful.
      - Exoristos 3y ago
        No, only the pols in charge.
        f_devd 3y ago
        Well you need to convince someone in the Commission to raise the proposal (the easy part), and then you need to convince a majority of parties 300-350 people to vote in favour of the proposal in Parliament, and do the same in the council (member countries national leaders).
andrewstuart 3y ago
The big Internet companies should probably all pull out of South Korea to send a message to the rest of the world about the outcomes of net neutrality.
ookblah 3y ago
i'm going to guess that this is korean protectionism at work under the guise of valid regulation. look at the Apple location services, google maps, uber/lyft, etc. basically any industry that could have a "home grown" version gets some preferential treatment through some bs law or national security. for better or worse, chaebols own korea.
thriftwy 3y ago
Interestingly enough, they still run in Russia, where the market was probably the fraction of that of Korea, and now they neither run any ads nor have a painless paid subscription process.
tasubotadas 3y ago
What about good old switcheroo logic where telecom needs to pay to be able to offer netflix and twitch to its users?
NanoYohaneTSU 3y ago
I'm curious about the operating costs. It seems like Twitch should be losing money, as YouTube does, but because Google/Amazon are gaining other non-monetary benefits that eventually become profits in other services, they keep them alive. In order to help this they make all kinds of deals with governments. What I am getting at is without more information, I can't really tell if this is a good or bad thing. Companies that aren't profitable and use government to stay afloat should go out of business.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
KomoD 3y ago
I'm curious why peer-to-peer didn't work out for them

225 points by zeroCalories 3y ago

zeroCalories 3y ago

10x for data seems insane. Wondering if anyone has more context on what these costs are, and why they're so high.

Rebelgecko 3y ago
https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/08/17/afterword-korea-s-challenge-to-standard-internet-interconnection-model-pub-85166 https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/08/17/afterword-korea-s-c...
- goles 3y ago
  The comment about helping migrate streamers and their communities to another platform stood out to me in the OP. But presumably Korean streamers and viewers came to Twitch because they offer a superior service or reach or ad rate. Do the Big 3 telecom providers have a at least somewhat comparable service to Twitch or is this more or less the end of some of these channels and communities people have spent a ton of effort to build?
  - lifthrasiir 3y ago
    No. They did try with OTT services with some success, but no comparable live streaming services exist AFAIK. Rather conveniently though, Naver, the biggest portal service in Korea, announced a game streaming service set to be released in 2024. I guess Naver did know something about a windup of Twitch in Korea months ago?
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      Is afreeca not a korean twitch?
      - lifthrasiir 3y ago
        Afreeca is not associated with telcos.
        goles 3y ago
        Afreeca has an interesting controversy section on their Wiki[1] detailing various social problems. It has a somewhat ominous last line about South Korean attitudes towards personal broadcasting platforms from here[2]. Apparently South Korea is also one of the few countries where Pornography is illegal. But I saw conflicting accounts of who supports that politically and if it's really just a barrier for non-VPN traffic. Knowing the age demographic that Twitch can attract, and that Twitch has very popular Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches[3] and Just Chatting[4] sections. I'd be curious if that perspective has an element in wanting streaming and internet service generally in the hands of a few companies, and not American ones. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AfreecaTV#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AfreecaTV#Controversy [2]https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/media/835746.html https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/media/835746.html [3]https://www.twitch.tv/directory/category/pools-hot-tubs-and-beaches https://www.twitch.tv/directory/category/pools-hot-tubs-and-... [4]https://www.twitch.tv/directory/category/just-chatting https://www.twitch.tv/directory/category/just-chatting
        lifthrasiir 3y ago
        > Apparently South Korea is also one of the few countries where Pornography is illegal. Which is incorrect, though it is commonly framed by majority male-dominated communities. Korean law distinguishes pornography 성인물 from obscene material 음란물 and only legalizes pornography, and it's true that the line between them is quite blur, but most pornographic works are not considered obscene and can be legally imported if there is a demand. The actual reason for these kind of complaints is that, most non-obscene pornographic works are already available and only considered illegal because of the copyright violation. People want a free porn, easy ways have been blocked for the obvious reason, and they say something about the freedom of expression but still don't want to pay for them. This absurd argument makes actual changes much harder. > I'd be curious your thoughts if that plays an element in wanting streaming and internet service generally in the hands of a few companies, and not American ones. I doubt Afreeca will be able to capture most streamers in exile. In fact it's clear to me that most will just go to YouTube, because when Twitch gave up with clips and stream archives, many if not most streamers moved them to YouTube instead. Naver's new service may find some niche but it's unlikely to match YouTube's existing offers.
  - TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
    One of the Korean alternatives to Twitch is AfeeecaTV, and it's already used by a lot of prominent players.
    - belltaco 3y ago
      I think AfreecaTV avoids fees by being P2P.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        I'm sure the service is still liable for traffic generated so if you are P2P and don't pay up to mandated monopolies you'll be blocked. Per the article, Twitch tried being P2P but it's still expensive.
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  Thanks. It doesn't immediately seem like charging the person sending traffic is a bad idea, as theoritically the costs should come out the same, so this seems like it's primarily an issue with regulatory capture. The article also mentions that Korea hasn't been investing in their infrastructure, but I find it hard to believe they're really that far behind every other country. Really sad that it seems like Korean users will be cut off from major platforms.
  - stefan_ 3y ago
    You don't believe it's a sign of a failed market when an ISP charges both their customers and companies like Twitch for the same data transfer?
    - zeroCalories 3y ago
      South Korean ISPs may have market failures, but it seems like in this case they wouldn't be able to do this without the regulation. This is all guessing based on context, but it seems like they don't want to play the risky game of blocking traffic, so companies could just ignore any bill they get sent. By having this regulation they can send a bill and have the courts enforce it if the company wants to do business in South Korea.
    - kijin 3y ago
      I don't deny that this is double dipping, but our intuitions about double dipping might not be universal. For example, in America, it is taken for granted that you pay for both incoming and outgoing calls. Koreans, on the other hand, would find it preposterous. Why should the callee pay, when the caller is already paying for those minutes? It's the same situation, but reversed.
      - nitwit005 3y ago
        Do you imagine people approve of having to pay for incoming spam calls? The idea is near-universally disliked, excepting telephone companies and politicians.
      - deleted 3y ago
rsingel 3y ago
ISPs have termination monopolies. They can charge what they like to reach their because there is literally no other path to them. Termination fees lead to high prices and weird arbitrage games. The long distance phone system works this way, which is why it's still like $5 a minute to call India from the US, and "free conference call" systems set up in rural areas to juice incoming call revenue.

Rebelgecko 3y ago

The timeline is a bit confusing to me, since it only talks about disabling monetization for Korean users. Will they eventually be blocked from the service entirely?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jeroenhd 3y ago
I imagine Twitch will stop operating Korean CDNs. It wouldn't make much sense to geo-block all Korean IP addresses, but with minimum service I expect Korean viewers to drop off pretty quickly. If the networks are as badly configured as the internet articles claim they are, foreign internet uplinks wouldn't be able to sustain decent quality video streams for very long. VPNs and such will always allow Koreans to watch Twitch content, but by taking money or paying out revenue, Twitch as a company would create certain expectations of service. Now, with no special effort put into Korean service, I expect Twitch to become essentially useless. Perhaps the Korean localisation team will slowly let more and more untranslated English strings slip into the UI, though they may decide to keep the Korean translations for the benefit Korean minorities outside of Korea.
bastard_op 3y ago
Service providers like anywhere, net neutrality be damned, run Deep Packet Inspection boxes that have no other purpose in life but to negotiate down your connections for whatever you do the ISP finds egregious. For video, they generally reduce the video quality throughput, eventually reducing bitrate, causing buffering, and generally making your experience miserable unless Twitch, Youtube, etc pay the providers NOT to on behalf of their users. Cellcos particularly do this a lot to reduce quality so people aren't trying to watch 4k streams on a phone just because they can, it'll negotiate them down to what they feel is an acceptable like 480p, usually with some clause hidden in the fine print of your contract about acceptable use. South Korea simply legitimized all their ISP's doing so, as much as Ajit Pai did repealing net neutrality for American ISP's as their puppet under Trump.
- ftth_finland 3y ago

willio58 3y ago

I wonder why Korea costs so much more for Twitch to run their service. Really interesting that they even experimented with peer-to-peer to solve it. Would like to see a write-up of why that didn't work. Honestly not even sure how that would have worked in the first place with live streaming. I guess you just inherently accept a lot more latency in trying to save money?

SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
I'm going purely off memory, but I recall vaguely that in Korea there are charges for the "push" side of network use, as well as the "pull" side. I can't recall if this is a government thing, or an ISP thing, or a confluence of both working together. I seem to recall Netflix becoming frustrated about this at some point. Maybe someone can find more info, since I'm replying on a device that makes actually looking this up a little tricky.
- kijin 3y ago
  In Korea, broadband consumers only pay for the size of the pipe (100Mbps, 500Mbps, 1Gbps, etc.) and not for transfer. It's been like this for the last 20+ years. Even mobile carriers have "unlimited" plans. Short of outright collusion, nobody would dare comes up with a different pricing structure. Everyone would flock to a competitor! Moreover, the population is shrinking. The ISPs have little hope of increasing revenue from the "pull" side, which probably explains why they keep trying to pile charges upon the "push" side.
  - fomine3 3y ago
    It's common for consumer internet in many countries. What's different in Korea, dominance?
    - Xelynega 3y ago
      Market dominance is probably the reason. Canada had crown ISPs that offered unlimited data plans, so telcos has to do the same to compete and the idea of a fixed cap internet plan is rodiculous. When mobile data became popular there were no crown telcos anymore(other than SaskTel) so the prices started ridiculously high and were never brought down(other than in Saskatchewan)

stephenitis 3y ago

Wow Korea's gaming market is a economy in it's own. I recently watched the opening ceremony for the finals and it blew me away how much effort went into the production for this event. Worlds 2023 Finals Opening Ceremony https://youtu.be/AH8A79BrTEY?si=x5K0GcO-lrS89XEl https://youtu.be/AH8A79BrTEY?si=x5K0GcO-lrS89XEl

arcdigital 3y ago
That's just how Riot does Worlds now, it's not specific to Korea. I was at last year's Worlds in San Francisco and it looked like it had a similar production value.
belltaco 3y ago
This was a great outdoor set and stage for the finals of an Overwatch tournament over 5 years ago. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/162821713?t=0h11m0s https://www.twitch.tv/videos/162821713?t=0h11m0s
ggregoire 3y ago
Twitch shutting down in Korea will most likely not stop Riot Games to keep hosting the World Championship in Korea. Also, from what I understand, Twitch is marginal in Korea, since they have their own alternative streaming platforms.
- stephenitis 3y ago
  after some discussion with my friends I agree this seems to be the case
  - houston_Euler 3y ago
    I'm sorry this is irrelevant to the current discussion, but you replied to one of my comments a couple weeks ago, and I can't reply there, so I'm leaving a response here. Regarding Sam Altman's Long-con at Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/comment/cszwpgq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/comment/c... Click "Single Comment Thread" to get the context of his comment.

belltaco 3y ago

From what I can tell, it's related to network usage fees from ISPs, i.e basically anti-net neutrality. From a year half ago: From https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220421000740 https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220421000740 > YouTube threatens to cut down investments in Korea over ‘network usage fee’ bill >Proposed revisions will require global content providers to pay network fees to local Internet service providers > The planned revision to the Telecommunications Business Act -- also known as the ‘network usage fee’ bills -- would require global content providers to sign mandatory contracts with local Internet service providers such as KT and SK Broadband to standardize obligations to pay fees for using their networks And from: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/skorea-broadband-firm-sues-netflix-after-traffic-surge-squid-game-2021-10-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/skorea-broadb... > South Korean Internet service provider SK Broadband has sued Netflix (NFLX.O) to pay for costs from increased network traffic and maintenance work because of a surge of viewers to the U.S. firm's content, an SK spokesperson said on Friday. > The move comes after a Seoul court said Netflix should "reasonably" give something in return to the internet service provider for network usage, and multiple South Korean lawmakers have spoken out against content providers who do not pay for network usage despite generating explosive traffic. Twitch also deleted recorded VOD content of Twitch Korean streamers last year for what they said was a different regulation: https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1590532134011564032 https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1590532134011564032

zeroCalories 3y ago
> The move comes after a Seoul court said Netflix should "reasonably" give something in return to the internet service provider for network usage, and multiple South Korean lawmakers have spoken out against content providers who do not pay for network usage despite generating explosive traffic. Why not charge the end user? That seems like it would be more fair, easier to implement, and require no regulation. Makes it seem like they have other motives.
- kijin 3y ago
  > Why not charge the end user? The entire country is a single market, with 3 major cellular carriers and a handful of broadband carriers all competing for the same population. The competition is so cutthroat, they even publish monthly reports of which ISP stole how many customers from whom. Obviously, no ISP wants to be the first to charge the end user more, or become known as the one that throttles YouTube, and risk losing hundreds of thousands of customers in an instant. Much easier to make the whole thing look like a business disagreement. Note that it is always SK Broadband that whines the loudest about foreign video streaming platforms. Other ISPs like KT are sitting on bigger undersea cables, so they can afford to absorb much more bandwidth without resorting to reputation-destroying surcharges.

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago

Pure speculation, but I wonder how much of this is done in an attempt to push out Western companies in favor of Korean companies. All of the large telecoms in Korea sponsor eSports teams, they probably want to develop local services and stimulate their own economy. Beyond that, it's much easier to control or assert political pressure on a local company, while Twitch is known for being notoriously unreceptive. I watch competitive StarCraft 2 and Brood War, both of which only provide the highest quality stream through AfreecaTV. This isn't something I've looked much into, but I swear that AfreecaTV also has a way better bitrate and encoding than what you get with unpaid YouTube. This post leaves me wondering about YouTube's relationship with Korea. Someone mentioned Worlds 2023, which was dual streamed on Twitch and YouTube Live.

dj_gitmo 3y ago
I think protectionism is probably the reason. According to this article, on of the proponents is SK Telecom, of “SK Terran” fame. https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-netflix-under-scrutiny-south-korea-over-network-fees-2022-10-21/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-netflix-under-scru...
- morkalork 3y ago
  When I think of protectionism, I think of things like the agriculture and aerospace industries for the sake of food and national security. What is the strategic benefit of game streaming? Does loss of that industry represent an existential national threat??
  - gloryjulio 3y ago
    Both India and China have protectionism. China is the most obvious case where most typical US tech companies are banned
  - jhanschoo 3y ago
    Entertainment and the infrastructure that delivers it is an important pillar of soft power.

greyface- 3y ago

It's interesting that they're using the Twitch name rather than Amazon to announce this. The Twitch ASN (which, incidentally, is present at 3 Seoul IXPs) was renamed to "Amazon IVS" post-acquisition. https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/46489 https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/46489

ejj28 3y ago
The streamers and viewers that will be affected by this are Twitch users, not Amazon users, so of course it makes sense that this is Twitch announcing it to their userbase and not Amazon.
etc-hosts 3y ago
Customers of the Amazon AWS service AWS IVS will not be affected. Customers of Twitch will be affected.

dj_gitmo 3y ago

Why are Korean network costs so much higher? In the aughts Korea was famous for its internet infrastructure. How do other streaming services survive there? EDIT: I’m guessing this is related https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-netflix-under-scrutiny-south-korea-over-network-fees-2022-10-21/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-netflix-under-scru...

catlover76 3y ago
What was the argument for assessing the fees? A lot of internet traffic is to them, so they should pay South Korean telecom companies/ISPs because...?
- elliewithcolor 3y ago
  They do. You either pay Transit pricing or have settlement free peering (as in everyone pays his costs and the data exchange is free; as long as certain requirements are met). Thing is: charging the data center/content provider above global average pricing and also charging the end customer for the same service again.
guu 3y ago
Netflix made a deal with SK Broadband[0] after they were sued[1]. [0]: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/sk-telecom-sk-broadband-and-netflix-establish-strategic-partnership-to https://about.netflix.com/en/news/sk-telecom-sk-broadband-an... [1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/skorea-broadband-firm-sues-netflix-after-traffic-surge-squid-game-2021-10-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/skorea-broadb...
laborcontract 3y ago
Korea, pound for pound, has to be one of the most poorly legislated technology states in the world. Everything is in absolute bizarro land in Korea when it comes to technology. Here are just a few of things I’ve encountered in Korea: - You have to have a phone number to sign up for any type of account. (Hasn’t discouraged any toxicity either.) - Foreigners can’t use things like delivery apps because they can’t make accounts due to the phone number thing or they can’t use their international credit cards. - Most people own windows PCs because in order to do any banking in Korea you have to install software that is tantamount to the bank’s spyware on your computer. - All mobile phones have non-mutable shutter sounds. - Location services like find my iPhone are banned. - cellular data usage costs an arm and a leg, making free WiFi a necessity at any business - The quality of FaceTime calls is extremely throttled. For the longest time FaceTime just didn’t even work. KakaoTalk video calls never had that problem. - contactless pay via Apple Pay was only introduced this past year You’d think Korea would be bleeding edge when it comes to technology it’s far from a technocracy, It’s just a stumbling, bumbling, corrupt state that can only get out of its own way to clear space for the large conglomerates. I feel so sad for the Korean people. What should be a thriving, entrepreneurship-driven economy is the exact opposite - an oppressive, corporatist hole that sucks up peoples economic dreams and emits zero-sum, despair-driven ambition.

deleted 3y ago

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Analemma_ 3y ago

Every time the topic of net neutrality comes up here, the anti-NN crowd says “all the pro-NN points are just scaremongering, there’s no evidence that any of that bad stuff about ISP favoritism would actually happen”. Well, here’s the evidence. Korea doesn’t have NN, and now Twitch is pulling out (and YouTube is halting investment, according to one sibling comment) because the ISPs gouged it to death. Net neutrality should be mandatory and non-negotiable.

charcircuit 3y ago
Twitch is pulling because transit is ridiculously expensive. What good would net neutrality be for Twitch if they could not afford transit.
- jinxedpenguin 3y ago
  Because transit is expensive due to peering fees that Korean ISPs charge? Net Neutrality rules in 2015 did govern peering (but not nearly as much as other aspects of the internet).
- rsingel 3y ago
  It's not transit. Transit is about taking your data across a network to some other network or networks. These are access fees aka termination fees demanded to deliver data to a networks own customers on net. Net neutrality bans access fees as a kind of blocking and throttling. Twitch's servers almost certainly directly connected with the three largest ISPs in Korea. And Korea has a regulation that requires them to pay those networks and it looks like the fees that were demanded were way too high. And that's what you get in an economic system where monopolists (ISPs have a terminating monopoly over there) are allowed to set prices.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    >It's not transit Transit costs 10x what it costs elsewhere. You can't just neglect a 10x price increase when the cost sending video to users in the bulk of the expense of offering twitch in korea

xyst 3y ago

Wow, you would think that Amazon would just foot the internet bill for a company they now own. Especially since they basically own most of the infra. I guess all it takes is a “10X” surcharge on fees to make even a multibillion dollar company weak at the knees. I wonder if this is really just a chess move in Amazon’s playbook to get Korean government to bend the knee. Raise awareness of how bad it is to operate in Korea. Threaten to cut services from country due to how prohibitively expensive it is. Korean citizens become outraged and put pressure on govt. Govt either bends to pressure from public or continues to bend for big ISPs. Government is doomed either way. Public is fucked. Only winner is Amazon or Korean ISPs.

Xelynega 3y ago
What does "prohibitively expensive" mean for a company that's largest cost is paid to its parent company at a rate completely decided by the parent company? Wouldn't anything that decreases the profit of twitch in South Korea be "prohibitively expensive" for an organization who's goal is to profit?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jinxedpenguin 3y ago

Actually found a pretty good source on what the Korean rules are (hint - it is about paid peering). This is somewhat biased (it's from a Spanish telecom - actually editing this again, the style choice + date formatting makes me think it is from a Korean trade group/telecom but the only source I can find for this is Telefonica. Likely from the Korean telecom industry itself...). Just haven't really seen a comment linking to anything substantial about the actual plans/rules/etc in Korea. https://www.telefonica.com/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/06/Myths-and-truths-about-Korean-IP-Interconnection-in-overseas-reports.pdf https://www.telefonica.com/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/202...

resolutebat 3y ago
The accompanying blog post makes it clear that this is from the Korean Telecommunications Operators Association, and has the explicit goal of "debunking" "myths" (read: inconvenient truths) about Korean telcos. https://www.telefonica.com/en/communication-room/blog/myths-and-truths-setting-the-record-straight-on-the-south-korea-case/ https://www.telefonica.com/en/communication-room/blog/myths-... Here's the Internet Society brief they appear to be responding to: https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2022/05/old-rules-in-new-regulations-why-sender-pays-is-a-direct-threat-to-the-internet/ https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2022/05/old-rules-in-ne... (summary) https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2022/internet-impact-brief-south-koreas-interconnection-rules/ https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2022/internet-... (full doc)
rsingel 3y ago
Telefonica's blog is amazing. They come out and say the outrageous things giant telecoms believe: that internet service should be 1) people pay them and then they get to connect to 2) the select group of websites and services that also pay telefonica. There's a very good reason that the U.S. net neutrality orders banned these kinds of fees starting in 2010, and again in 2015. California's net neutrality law also bans access fees
Joking_Phantom 3y ago
A corrupt Spanish organization, trying to support a corrupt Korean organization, only brings more credence to the argument that SPNP was a bad idea.

vermilingua 3y ago

As an aside, isn't the name of the country South Korea? Has something changed that the preferred name is Korea?

zoky 3y ago
The official name of the country is the Republic of Korea. However, it’s common to drop descriptors such as “Republic of” from country names, leaving only “Korea”. South Korea is an informal name, used only when it’s necessary to disambiguate from North Korea (officially, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), which in this case, it isn’t.

xpressvideoz 3y ago

I blame Twitch's laziness. There is a competitor of Twitch in South Korea, namely AfreecaTV, and it is highly profitable. Why is AfreecaTV sustainable whereas Twitch is not? Because Twitch hasn't altered its business model while operating in the Korean market. The same network cost applies to both AfreecaTV and Twitch, so there can't be a fundamental restriction keeping Twitch from being profitable in South Korea. One thing that makes AfreecaTV profitable is that it charges a fee for every donation happening in the platform. Twitch does not. AfreecaTV also uses a P2P network to reduce network cost. These policies may make the users and the streamers a bit annoyed, but it is still infinitely better than abandoning the service.

RCitronsBroker 3y ago
Twitch being unprofitable is a smokescreen. After acquiring Twitch, Amazon gutted it of its infrastructure IP and transferred it to a subsidiary of AWS. Amazon can now decide how much they want to charge Twitch as an entity for the AWS services they now need, that’s where the unprofitability comes from.

jmyeet 3y ago

Here's some context: when Amazon bought Twitch, it basically took that IP and created Amzon Interaction Video Services ("IVS") [1] as a live streaming solution within AWS. IVS is also the basis for Kick. Amazon and Twitch frequently talk about how Twitch is unprofitable and use it as an excuse to increase ad density. lower creator rev share, etc. Thing is, their unfprfitability is largely an accounting trick. Let's asy the compute cost for a stream is $50 and the ad revenue is $80 but there are two points in between: IVS and Twitch. Amazon could charge $50 for IVS and Twitch is super-profitable. Amazon could charge $90 for IVS and Twitch is losing money even though IVS is hugely profitable. The reason I bring this up is that I'm skeptical about Amazon's claims of Twitch in Korea being unprofitable just like I'm skeptical of all of Amazon's statements regarding Twtich profitability. South Korea is a developed nation with robust netowrk infrastructure. I doubt egress bandwidth from South Korea is particularly expensive. If it is, Amazon is a large enough company to solve that with their own backhaul. AWS has a region in South Korea so encoding shouldn't be an issue. In the last 2-3 years we've had a slew of reports from the likes of CVS and Walmart blaming theft on unprofitability in closing stores. This was and is a lie. It's used to mask rising costs, poor inventory management and bad execution. So when I see an announcement like this I really have to ask "what failure is Amazon/Twitch really hiding?" because I'm convinced there is one. [1]: https://aws.amazon.com/ivs/ https://aws.amazon.com/ivs/

rsingel 3y ago
It's not the actual cost. It's the Korean regulatory requirement that sending networks pay. That's why Cloudflare moved most CDN content out of S. Korea to Japan, and why Facebook did the same, and why Netflix sued SK Broadband. The demanded fees are outrageous.
- Xelynega 3y ago
  Why are they outrageous? I've yet to see a reason that Netflix/twitch/etc. having to pay for the infrastructure they profit massively from is a bad thing. If they have to pay a larger share, it means that services that don't use as much can be charged a much more reasonable rate.

andrewstuart 3y ago

>>> our network fees in Korea are still 10 times more expensive than in most other countries What exactly are "network fees" in this context?

rsingel 3y ago
Basically, if a Korean subscriber to a broadband network requests data from your app and you send it, you have to pay that person's ISP. It's a terrible economic model that punishes peering. Cloudflare and Facebook moved most of their servers overseas to Japan. It's been a long running sh*t show, with lots of lawsuits between Netflix and S. Korea's biggest telecom. And unfortunately EU Commissioner Thierry Breton wants to bring this model to the EU.
- Xelynega 3y ago
  > It's a terrible economic model that punishes peering. Isn't that how most international trade agreements work? You either have to pay the taxes to manufacture in the country of origin, or you have to pay the import fees for importing it. I don't understand what benefit I get as a consumer or small developer from not having models like this. If Netflix is generating 32b in revenue and using a significant amount of bandwidth, shouldnt they have to pay for a larger portion of the infrastructure?
  - viceroyalbean 3y ago
    Netflix is paying for the infrastructure because for every byte that Netflix "pushes" there is a "pull" side who is paying for their residential internet access. What is the consumer paying the ISP for if the ISP is charging every service that the consumer is using more money separately?

rsingel 3y ago

This is probably the first service ever to be effectively shut down in a country by anti-net neutrality policies. This is the model know as sending party network pays (the same model that led to international telephone calls costing $5 a minute), and it has terrible incentives. Unfortunately, Europe, Brazil and India are all looking to emulate Korea's requirement that online services pay ISPs. It's particularly bad in the E.U. where Commissioner Thierry Breton, a former telecom CEO, wants to shove it through despite overwhelming opposition, including from the EU's top telecom regulators (BEREC).

Semaphor 3y ago
> It's particularly bad in the E.U. where Commissioner Thierry Breton, a former telecom CEO, wants to shove it through despite overwhelming opposition, including from the EU's top telecom regulators (BEREC). How would it then get through parliament?
- the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
  The ISPs are lobbying for this for years. They see that 90% of traffic is a handful of services like Netflix and co. and they feel entitled to charge those something. You only need to convince a handful of bureaucrats of that idea.
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    You need to convince a decent chunk of Parliament, not just a handful.
    - Exoristos 3y ago
      No, only the pols in charge.
      - f_devd 3y ago
        Well you need to convince someone in the Commission to raise the proposal (the easy part), and then you need to convince a majority of parties 300-350 people to vote in favour of the proposal in Parliament, and do the same in the council (member countries national leaders).

andrewstuart 3y ago

The big Internet companies should probably all pull out of South Korea to send a message to the rest of the world about the outcomes of net neutrality.

ookblah 3y ago

i'm going to guess that this is korean protectionism at work under the guise of valid regulation. look at the Apple location services, google maps, uber/lyft, etc. basically any industry that could have a "home grown" version gets some preferential treatment through some bs law or national security. for better or worse, chaebols own korea.

thriftwy 3y ago

Interestingly enough, they still run in Russia, where the market was probably the fraction of that of Korea, and now they neither run any ads nor have a painless paid subscription process.

tasubotadas 3y ago

What about good old switcheroo logic where telecom needs to pay to be able to offer netflix and twitch to its users?

NanoYohaneTSU 3y ago

I'm curious about the operating costs. It seems like Twitch should be losing money, as YouTube does, but because Google/Amazon are gaining other non-monetary benefits that eventually become profits in other services, they keep them alive. In order to help this they make all kinds of deals with governments. What I am getting at is without more information, I can't really tell if this is a good or bad thing. Companies that aren't profitable and use government to stay afloat should go out of business.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

KomoD 3y ago

I'm curious why peer-to-peer didn't work out for them