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How's this for an analogy; "Electricity supply companies have found that almost 30% of the total electricity capacity in their networks is being consumed by cu

by piqufoh 12y ago

How's this for an analogy; "Electricity supply companies have found that almost 30% of the total electricity capacity in their networks is being consumed by customer's light bulbs. In order to support future demand, the electricity supply companies will begin charging light bulb manufacturers for light bulb users electricity usage." Completely bonkers.

sschueller 12y ago
But there is one giant difference between how electricity and internet is sold . Electricity is a metered service. It would probably be much better if internet service was metered but it would not go over well after we all have been used to the unlimited pipe.
- cs02rm0 12y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure. Lots of UK ISPs charge by usage and they haven't been immune from similar pressures. This was 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7336940.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7336940.stm
- gnoway 12y ago
  Who knows how well it would go over? I would be pleased to pay a metered rate, provided that the metering was standardized and easy to understand - like the electrical meter outside my home - and the pricing was fair. I would also expect there to be no speed tiers; everyone using a service gets the same nominal speed. I would not be interested in purchasing e.g. bandwidth blocks with f-you overage fees like what we used to have (still have? I don't do mobile data) with mobile carriers. That, I agree, would not go over well. I think that the real problem is not perceived acceptance by customers, but that moving to metered billing makes the service look more like a utility. If I were running an ISP I would want to do everything I could to keep people from equating my service with water or electricity.
  - YokoZar 12y ago
    There's an efficiency argument against metering. Bandwidth is "free" unless service is near capacity, so introducing pricing that discourages use during that off-peak period can create needless problems. So maybe you only want peak-period pricing (kind of like how some cell providers give free minutes on nights and weekends).
    - otterley 12y ago
      This is already done at commercial providers. Those of us who operate networks are pretty well used to paying monthly rates based on 95th-percentile bandwidth utilization.
- josefresco 12y ago
  "unlimited pipe" Ha! Sorry can't read statements like that without laughing/cringing. We all lost our "unlimited pipe" years ago .. in fact I'd argue we never had it in the first place only that the technology prevented us from hitting our limits in the early days.
- FollowSteph3 12y ago
  Landlines phones generally aren't metered but it works...
  - jaredmcateer 12y ago
    Devil's Advocate: most dialup internet services are not metered as well.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    For phones the demand is very different: a subscribers connection is either in use or not. When it is in use, it typically consumes no more than 64kbps at most. And it is easy to model expected peak demands in normal (non-disaster) scenarios because everyone that people might be calling tends to have a fairly low number of inbound connections, so the total peak bandwidth usage is still quite small - miniscule by todays standards. When you're paid per subscription, and you at most carry 64kbps through a small local area before long distance fees kick in, it works. Even so, in Europe (and I believe most of the world) landline usage is metered. It is the US model of free local calls that is unusual.
  - smackfu 12y ago
    Landline phones certainly used to be metered for all but local calls.
- micro-ram 12y ago
  Metered service...OK. Bring on the gigabit pipe and turn the meter on.
- venomsnake 12y ago
  Depends on the price. 1$ for TB seems more than reasonable to me.
- marcosdumay 12y ago
  Metering or not is a choice made by the ISP. Why do they get a free pass to not deliver their service just because they choosed a bad pricing model?
- sixothree 12y ago
  I don't know where you live but most people in America have data caps.
  - otterley 12y ago
    That's one form of metered pricing, but I'd argue that granularity of a month is much too coarse to make much sense form a network utilization perspective. As I've said in other comments, pricing based on 95th percentile circuit utilization (which is common among commercial ISPs) is a much more practical way to balance efficient utilization with incremental cost.
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  Internet service is metered. It's just metered in very large chunks instead of by the penny. Try going over your monthly bandwidth cap and see what happens. The ISPs have total control over their subscribers' connection fees. If they set them too low to make a profit,* then they need to raise those fees and live with the consequences, not go trying to extort profits from new sources. *I don't believe for an instant that the major ISPs are actually hurting, mind you. They just see an opportunity to make even more of a profit.
- graylights 12y ago
  And how is the average user to manager their meter? There are no intuitive controls. How do you stop that prankster on unmetered service from pingflooding you so you're charged hundreds of dollars? Now that ads cost me money, I have good reason to do adblock. Does it cost as much to download that file from a congested line as it does from my ISP's cache? And when there's still congestion do I pay for all the retransmissions from dropped packets?
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
It's a bad analogy. If you buy a cell phone so you can talk to your grandma (who lives 1600 miles away) on the weekend, the phone company shouldn't be obligated to buy her a phone too. Not even if she only uses it for incoming calls. If you're offering a service where you let other people interconnect their computer networks to each other, by definition you're only offering the service of connecting them to other people who (choose to) connect to the network.
- jonlucc 12y ago
  But grandma pays to use her phone. My phone company shouldn't pay for her phone, but that's why she pays her own company.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
    If the two are to be connected, someone must pay. Consumers are screaming "they're violating network neutrality!" any time someone suggests they (the consumers) pay, so who is left? Grandma just wasn't (until very recently) paying anything at all. This is why we shouldn't conflate peering disputes with network neutrality issues. We're reading and hearing quite a bit that is abysmally stupid. Comcast has no obligation to spend it's own money letting Netflix connect for free. The peering arrangement they had with Level3 was more than adequate to handle everything but the Netflix traffic, and now Netflix/Level3 is expecting Comcast to pay for the upgrades? Why? How is that fair? I get sick of defending Comcast here. They are an abominable company that I hope goes bankrupt and out of business. But I keep reading really stupid things from people who aren't thinking through the implications of what they're saying.
    - jpollock 12y ago
      The US operates a bill-and-keep [1] model for phone calls, which is why people pay to receive calls on their mobile phones, and why spam texts are more prevalent. If a call is made from Verizon to AT&T, no money changes hands between them. ISPs have typically operated a B&K model where the traffic is largely symmetrical between carriers. The argument arrives when the flows aren't symmetrical (such as streaming video). As for Comcast paying to upgrade their network, there is precedent in the Cable TV model where they both pay for the content and pay to upgrade their network to receive, carry and bill it. Networks derive value from the connections. If there was proper local competition then this would fix itself over the course of a contract cycle since a competitor would enter offering a network with a better value. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_keep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_keep

by piqufoh 12y ago

sschueller 12y ago

But there is one giant difference between how electricity and internet is sold . Electricity is a metered service. It would probably be much better if internet service was metered but it would not go over well after we all have been used to the unlimited pipe.

cs02rm0 12y ago
I wouldn't be so sure. Lots of UK ISPs charge by usage and they haven't been immune from similar pressures. This was 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7336940.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7336940.stm
gnoway 12y ago
Who knows how well it would go over? I would be pleased to pay a metered rate, provided that the metering was standardized and easy to understand - like the electrical meter outside my home - and the pricing was fair. I would also expect there to be no speed tiers; everyone using a service gets the same nominal speed. I would not be interested in purchasing e.g. bandwidth blocks with f-you overage fees like what we used to have (still have? I don't do mobile data) with mobile carriers. That, I agree, would not go over well. I think that the real problem is not perceived acceptance by customers, but that moving to metered billing makes the service look more like a utility. If I were running an ISP I would want to do everything I could to keep people from equating my service with water or electricity.
- YokoZar 12y ago
  There's an efficiency argument against metering. Bandwidth is "free" unless service is near capacity, so introducing pricing that discourages use during that off-peak period can create needless problems. So maybe you only want peak-period pricing (kind of like how some cell providers give free minutes on nights and weekends).
  - otterley 12y ago
    This is already done at commercial providers. Those of us who operate networks are pretty well used to paying monthly rates based on 95th-percentile bandwidth utilization.
josefresco 12y ago
"unlimited pipe" Ha! Sorry can't read statements like that without laughing/cringing. We all lost our "unlimited pipe" years ago .. in fact I'd argue we never had it in the first place only that the technology prevented us from hitting our limits in the early days.
FollowSteph3 12y ago
Landlines phones generally aren't metered but it works...
- jaredmcateer 12y ago
  Devil's Advocate: most dialup internet services are not metered as well.
- vidarh 12y ago
  For phones the demand is very different: a subscribers connection is either in use or not. When it is in use, it typically consumes no more than 64kbps at most. And it is easy to model expected peak demands in normal (non-disaster) scenarios because everyone that people might be calling tends to have a fairly low number of inbound connections, so the total peak bandwidth usage is still quite small - miniscule by todays standards. When you're paid per subscription, and you at most carry 64kbps through a small local area before long distance fees kick in, it works. Even so, in Europe (and I believe most of the world) landline usage is metered. It is the US model of free local calls that is unusual.
- smackfu 12y ago
  Landline phones certainly used to be metered for all but local calls.
micro-ram 12y ago
Metered service...OK. Bring on the gigabit pipe and turn the meter on.
venomsnake 12y ago
Depends on the price. 1$ for TB seems more than reasonable to me.
marcosdumay 12y ago
Metering or not is a choice made by the ISP. Why do they get a free pass to not deliver their service just because they choosed a bad pricing model?
sixothree 12y ago
I don't know where you live but most people in America have data caps.
- otterley 12y ago
  That's one form of metered pricing, but I'd argue that granularity of a month is much too coarse to make much sense form a network utilization perspective. As I've said in other comments, pricing based on 95th percentile circuit utilization (which is common among commercial ISPs) is a much more practical way to balance efficient utilization with incremental cost.
PhasmaFelis 12y ago
Internet service is metered. It's just metered in very large chunks instead of by the penny. Try going over your monthly bandwidth cap and see what happens. The ISPs have total control over their subscribers' connection fees. If they set them too low to make a profit,* then they need to raise those fees and live with the consequences, not go trying to extort profits from new sources. *I don't believe for an instant that the major ISPs are actually hurting, mind you. They just see an opportunity to make even more of a profit.
graylights 12y ago
And how is the average user to manager their meter? There are no intuitive controls. How do you stop that prankster on unmetered service from pingflooding you so you're charged hundreds of dollars? Now that ads cost me money, I have good reason to do adblock. Does it cost as much to download that file from a congested line as it does from my ISP's cache? And when there's still congestion do I pay for all the retransmissions from dropped packets?

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago

It's a bad analogy. If you buy a cell phone so you can talk to your grandma (who lives 1600 miles away) on the weekend, the phone company shouldn't be obligated to buy her a phone too. Not even if she only uses it for incoming calls. If you're offering a service where you let other people interconnect their computer networks to each other, by definition you're only offering the service of connecting them to other people who (choose to) connect to the network.

jonlucc 12y ago
But grandma pays to use her phone. My phone company shouldn't pay for her phone, but that's why she pays her own company.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  If the two are to be connected, someone must pay. Consumers are screaming "they're violating network neutrality!" any time someone suggests they (the consumers) pay, so who is left? Grandma just wasn't (until very recently) paying anything at all. This is why we shouldn't conflate peering disputes with network neutrality issues. We're reading and hearing quite a bit that is abysmally stupid. Comcast has no obligation to spend it's own money letting Netflix connect for free. The peering arrangement they had with Level3 was more than adequate to handle everything but the Netflix traffic, and now Netflix/Level3 is expecting Comcast to pay for the upgrades? Why? How is that fair? I get sick of defending Comcast here. They are an abominable company that I hope goes bankrupt and out of business. But I keep reading really stupid things from people who aren't thinking through the implications of what they're saying.
  - jpollock 12y ago
    The US operates a bill-and-keep [1] model for phone calls, which is why people pay to receive calls on their mobile phones, and why spam texts are more prevalent. If a call is made from Verizon to AT&T, no money changes hands between them. ISPs have typically operated a B&K model where the traffic is largely symmetrical between carriers. The argument arrives when the flows aren't symmetrical (such as streaming video). As for Comcast paying to upgrade their network, there is precedent in the Cable TV model where they both pay for the content and pay to upgrade their network to receive, carry and bill it. Networks derive value from the connections. If there was proper local competition then this would fix itself over the course of a contract cycle since a competitor would enter offering a network with a better value. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_keep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_keep