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If you're in the top 1% of non-stop bandwidth users, shouldn't you pay more? Why is it OK for AWS & Google Cloud to meter by the GB, but not Comcast?

by gojomo 12y ago

Afforess 12y ago
If Comcast charged the same rates as AWS, I probably wouldn't mind. But Comcast charges ~1000x more per GB. In addition, with AWS I can always switch to a cheaper provider. I can not switch to a cheaper cable company.
- gojomo 12y ago
  1000X more? Not by the source article: 50GB/$10 is $0.20/GB which is less than 2X AWS/Google's wholesale $0.12/GB. And that only kicks in after the first 300GB.
  - No1 12y ago
    Well, AWS doesn't charge at all for inbound traffic, so you're looking at even worse than 1000x in one direction.
  - al_bundling 12y ago
    > 1000X more? Not by the source article: 50GB/$10 is $0.20/GB which is less than 2X AWS/Google's wholesale $0.12/GB. AWS/Google retail bandwidth prices are a bad comparison, as they are ridiculously expensive compared to wholesale bandwidth prices. Wholesale bandwidth costs about 0.1 cents per GB. Not quite 1000X what Comcast charges, it's "only" 100X the wholesale rate. To give you some perspective, Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic.net said they spend about 3% of their costs on bandwidth. Please consider that Sonic is a small actor and at scale costs will be less.
    - iamhamm 12y ago
      > Wholesale bandwidth costs about 0.1 cents per GB. Source? I've often wondered what this number is when viewed in aggregate across carriers - I can just never find it.
      - MichaelGG 12y ago
        $0.003/GB is what $1/1Mbps is, at 100% utilization. 324GB is what 1Mbps can do in a month. Perhaps a bit less but low quality providers (HE, Cogent) will do a dollar a Mbps easily. So work backwards. (Another way, you need 3kbps to do 1GB in a month. That times 333 is about 1Mbps, so $1. I'm ignoring 95th percentile billing here.) Better providers like L3 are around $3/Mbps, last I heard. So $0.001 a GB means you'd only pay 33 cents per Mbps, which seems pretty low. But maybe at terabit commits, HE goes even lower.. I've only looked at 10G commits.
      - al_bundling 12y ago
        > Source? http://amazon.com/ip-transit http://amazon.com/ip-transit Just kidding. Seriously though, you are not going to see wholesale rates posted on a website. Contact your bandwidth provider and ask for a quote. For serious volumes and good pricing, expect to sign an NDA. However, to give you an idea of lowend pricing here are some examples from FDCservers. This is not an endorsement, just a site with easily accessible prices that I could remember off the top of my head. In fact, I emphatically do not recommend them. There are much better providers both in terms of price and quality. Remember 0.1 cents per GB equals about $0.30 per Mbps. Asymmetrical 100G at $0.15 per Mbps https://fdcservers.net/ip-transit.php https://fdcservers.net/ip-transit.php Metered 10G at $0.60 per Mbps https://fdcservers.net/colocation.php https://fdcservers.net/colocation.php Unmetered 10G including server $500 https://fdcservers.net/dedicated-servers.php https://fdcservers.net/dedicated-servers.php
    - codexon 12y ago
      Where can you get wholesale bandwidth at $0.001/GB?
      - nmjohn 12y ago
        You can get a dedicated gigabit line for like a grand a month - possibly less - which if you max out 24/7 gets you like 300 terabytes of bandwidth = $0.00333 - and one gigabit line is hardly wholesale.
      - nullrouted 12y ago
        www.he.net at $.45/Mbps...1Mbps = 320 GB per month, you can find similar deals out there, it is pretty close.
        codexon 12y ago
        HE is at the cheap end and I don't think most people are going to colo so they can buy transit, if their colo will even let them. Not to mention that bringing bandwidth to a DC is way cheaper than bringing it to individual homes.
        al_bundling 12y ago
        HE is just an example, the other transit providers will match and beat those prices at wholesale scales. For an ISP the wholesale rate is the same as the DC rate. We are not talking about individuals buying retail bandwidth here.
        codexon 12y ago
        The parent comment was talking about comparing Comcast retail prices to AWS retail prices. The story is talking about Xfinity retail plans. It doesn't make sense to compare retail prices to wholesale prices. If an average coder can't even get bandwidth at $0.001/GB with some serious effort, then how this this a valid point of comparison for how much bandwidth should cost for the average internet user? I doubt you can get Level3 or Internap to beat HE prices.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    AWS bandwidth costs are grossly overpriced.
kstrauser 12y ago
What's the top 1%? Since you're preaching Comcast's virtues in this story, I presume you have the number close at hand?
- gojomo 12y ago
  Comcast has reported ~2% or less of their customers use more than 300GB per month: http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/05/comcast-plans-data-caps-for-all-customers-in-5-years-could-be-500gb/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/05/comcast-plans-data-c... We are the 98%! And charging the heavy users more makes our service cheaper. Some of the people complaining here are elites – in technical and economic terms – and want poorer, less-sophisticated people to subsidize their outlier usage. And they're dressing this desire-for-handouts up in a righteous anger!
  - kstrauser 12y ago
    No. It keeps our price the same and makes Comcast more profitable. Don't think for a second that savings will ever trickle down to us.
    - MrUnknown 12y ago
      This right here is the real lesson. Comcast is not going to lower rates for everyone else because of this.
    - gojomo 12y ago
      Actually, that depends on whether Comcast has effective competition. If they do, prices for end-users will improve, trending closer to the cost of servicing them. If they don't have competition, regulation can't always simulate the same consumer benefits, for a number of reasons. The regulators are often at the mercy of the regulated company. (The FCC, for example, is all telecom/lobbyist/party-functionary lawyers.) The regulated company tends to do fine, as their model and margins get frozen into slow-moving regulatory law. Smaller/newer companies with other models and technologies can't as easily fit into the regulatory mold, which often even bans them from offering the high-value (differentiated) services that could offer a competitive toehold. Can't have some upstart skimming off the cream from the now-tamed monopolist! Which is why in all cases new competition, not formulaic rules from DC lawyers, should be the policy priority.
x0x0 12y ago
if it weren't a monopoly, I'd agree in swaths of the bay area, there is exactly one high speed provider
paralelogram 12y ago
Unlimited bandwidth is better for me because I can use the connection without worrying that watching too many videos or downloading too many game updates will cause me to lose the internet access for the rest of the month or get an extremely high bill. AWS bandwidth usage is not an issue because when the traffic to my websites increases, my ad revenue increases too.

If you're in the top 1% of non-stop bandwidth users, shouldn't you pay more? Why is it OK for AWS & Google Cloud to meter by the GB, but not Comcast?

by gojomo 12y ago

If you're in the top 1% of non-stop bandwidth users, shouldn't you pay more? Why is it OK for AWS & Google Cloud to meter by the GB, but not Comcast?

Afforess 12y ago

If Comcast charged the same rates as AWS, I probably wouldn't mind. But Comcast charges ~1000x more per GB. In addition, with AWS I can always switch to a cheaper provider. I can not switch to a cheaper cable company.

gojomo 12y ago
1000X more? Not by the source article: 50GB/$10 is $0.20/GB which is less than 2X AWS/Google's wholesale $0.12/GB. And that only kicks in after the first 300GB.
- No1 12y ago
  Well, AWS doesn't charge at all for inbound traffic, so you're looking at even worse than 1000x in one direction.
- al_bundling 12y ago
  > 1000X more? Not by the source article: 50GB/$10 is $0.20/GB which is less than 2X AWS/Google's wholesale $0.12/GB. AWS/Google retail bandwidth prices are a bad comparison, as they are ridiculously expensive compared to wholesale bandwidth prices. Wholesale bandwidth costs about 0.1 cents per GB. Not quite 1000X what Comcast charges, it's "only" 100X the wholesale rate. To give you some perspective, Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic.net said they spend about 3% of their costs on bandwidth. Please consider that Sonic is a small actor and at scale costs will be less.
  - iamhamm 12y ago
    > Wholesale bandwidth costs about 0.1 cents per GB. Source? I've often wondered what this number is when viewed in aggregate across carriers - I can just never find it.
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      $0.003/GB is what $1/1Mbps is, at 100% utilization. 324GB is what 1Mbps can do in a month. Perhaps a bit less but low quality providers (HE, Cogent) will do a dollar a Mbps easily. So work backwards. (Another way, you need 3kbps to do 1GB in a month. That times 333 is about 1Mbps, so $1. I'm ignoring 95th percentile billing here.) Better providers like L3 are around $3/Mbps, last I heard. So $0.001 a GB means you'd only pay 33 cents per Mbps, which seems pretty low. But maybe at terabit commits, HE goes even lower.. I've only looked at 10G commits.
    - al_bundling 12y ago
      > Source? http://amazon.com/ip-transit http://amazon.com/ip-transit Just kidding. Seriously though, you are not going to see wholesale rates posted on a website. Contact your bandwidth provider and ask for a quote. For serious volumes and good pricing, expect to sign an NDA. However, to give you an idea of lowend pricing here are some examples from FDCservers. This is not an endorsement, just a site with easily accessible prices that I could remember off the top of my head. In fact, I emphatically do not recommend them. There are much better providers both in terms of price and quality. Remember 0.1 cents per GB equals about $0.30 per Mbps. Asymmetrical 100G at $0.15 per Mbps https://fdcservers.net/ip-transit.php https://fdcservers.net/ip-transit.php Metered 10G at $0.60 per Mbps https://fdcservers.net/colocation.php https://fdcservers.net/colocation.php Unmetered 10G including server $500 https://fdcservers.net/dedicated-servers.php https://fdcservers.net/dedicated-servers.php
  - codexon 12y ago
    Where can you get wholesale bandwidth at $0.001/GB?
    - nmjohn 12y ago
      You can get a dedicated gigabit line for like a grand a month - possibly less - which if you max out 24/7 gets you like 300 terabytes of bandwidth = $0.00333 - and one gigabit line is hardly wholesale.
    - nullrouted 12y ago
      www.he.net at $.45/Mbps...1Mbps = 320 GB per month, you can find similar deals out there, it is pretty close.
      - codexon 12y ago
        HE is at the cheap end and I don't think most people are going to colo so they can buy transit, if their colo will even let them. Not to mention that bringing bandwidth to a DC is way cheaper than bringing it to individual homes.
        al_bundling 12y ago
        HE is just an example, the other transit providers will match and beat those prices at wholesale scales. For an ISP the wholesale rate is the same as the DC rate. We are not talking about individuals buying retail bandwidth here.
        codexon 12y ago
        The parent comment was talking about comparing Comcast retail prices to AWS retail prices. The story is talking about Xfinity retail plans. It doesn't make sense to compare retail prices to wholesale prices. If an average coder can't even get bandwidth at $0.001/GB with some serious effort, then how this this a valid point of comparison for how much bandwidth should cost for the average internet user? I doubt you can get Level3 or Internap to beat HE prices.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  AWS bandwidth costs are grossly overpriced.

kstrauser 12y ago

What's the top 1%? Since you're preaching Comcast's virtues in this story, I presume you have the number close at hand?

gojomo 12y ago
Comcast has reported ~2% or less of their customers use more than 300GB per month: http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/05/comcast-plans-data-caps-for-all-customers-in-5-years-could-be-500gb/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/05/comcast-plans-data-c... We are the 98%! And charging the heavy users more makes our service cheaper. Some of the people complaining here are elites – in technical and economic terms – and want poorer, less-sophisticated people to subsidize their outlier usage. And they're dressing this desire-for-handouts up in a righteous anger!
- kstrauser 12y ago
  No. It keeps our price the same and makes Comcast more profitable. Don't think for a second that savings will ever trickle down to us.
  - MrUnknown 12y ago
    This right here is the real lesson. Comcast is not going to lower rates for everyone else because of this.
  - gojomo 12y ago
    Actually, that depends on whether Comcast has effective competition. If they do, prices for end-users will improve, trending closer to the cost of servicing them. If they don't have competition, regulation can't always simulate the same consumer benefits, for a number of reasons. The regulators are often at the mercy of the regulated company. (The FCC, for example, is all telecom/lobbyist/party-functionary lawyers.) The regulated company tends to do fine, as their model and margins get frozen into slow-moving regulatory law. Smaller/newer companies with other models and technologies can't as easily fit into the regulatory mold, which often even bans them from offering the high-value (differentiated) services that could offer a competitive toehold. Can't have some upstart skimming off the cream from the now-tamed monopolist! Which is why in all cases new competition, not formulaic rules from DC lawyers, should be the policy priority.

x0x0 12y ago

if it weren't a monopoly, I'd agree in swaths of the bay area, there is exactly one high speed provider

paralelogram 12y ago

Unlimited bandwidth is better for me because I can use the connection without worrying that watching too many videos or downloading too many game updates will cause me to lose the internet access for the rest of the month or get an extremely high bill. AWS bandwidth usage is not an issue because when the traffic to my websites increases, my ad revenue increases too.