The problem is that bandwidth is a finite shared resource (much in the way that clean, potable water is). For most of us, there's more than we would ever want or need. We watch some online videos, download a few large files each month, and do use a fair bit, but not an excessive amount. Of course, there are always people that think they should have a golf course in their back yard.
I'm worried about usage caps and throttling as well, but I also know that at my university, about 50 people used up more than 50% of total network bandwidth. If the university didn't give priority to certain types of traffic (small HTTP, Skype, etc.) over other types (BitTorrent, Kazaa, etc.), the majority would have had a less enjoyable experience.
I think the solution should be something that both protects a shared resource while allowing people access and usage of the range of services one can use. I think it's reasonable to say that some services are higher priority than P2P filesharing and the routers than an ISP is going to have can easily handle creating differing priorities. That's an easy first step and it's still neutral to the source of the traffic (Google has argued that the problems with the ISP plans are that they want to offer high speed traffic from site A and slow from site B rather than differing on types of traffic). I also don't think it's unreasonable for excessive users to get friendly warnings that their usage is high along with help on lowering their usage. In terms of what is excessive usage: I'd say that 463GB is excessive in a month. Why 463GB? It's the capacity of a fully-loaded T1 connection costing hundreds of dollars. At that point, maybe you can't use a shared connection because you really need a dedicated T1. The users should be given several months to lower their usage, but there is a point at which cable connections are shared and you might need a dedicated connection. Rather than disconnect the user from service, the warnings could say that if the usage continues for several month, their bandwidth will be limited to 1Mbps (which would limit them to 316GB of transfer in a month) - essentially giving them a cheap T1.
It's never fun talking about limitations, but the world is made up of them. Rather than fight the limitations, we could actually use them to create better technologies. For example, most dedicated hosting providers give you unmetered bandwidth within their data center. ISPs could likewise give you unmetered bandwidth within the scope of the central office you're connected to (and faster than your general internet connection). We could then build P2P tools that would leverage such a system giving us faster downloads while using less resources. Creative thinking and an understanding of the resources at hand will help us to create better things. Ignoring resources and passing blame around just won't get us anywhere.
"The problem is that bandwidth is a finite shared resource (much in the way that clean, potable water is). For most of us, there's more than we would ever want or need."
Hm, the problem I think is that ISPs are over-selling their bandwidth and refusing to upgrade their lines. Even when they're allowed to have a monopoly.
ALSO! There is another problem! The ISPs are being extremely secretive about how they're throttling, the article says,
"And speaking of transparency, most of the important information in the filings was provided on a "confidential" basis and is not currently available to anyone but CRTC staff. This includes link utilization thresholds, detailed traffic growth numbers, and (most) vendors of the DPI gear involved in the throttling."
"They just need to upgrade their lines those greedy bastards!"
It sounds nice, but it doesn't solve things in the long run. Yes, ISPs should upgrade their lines and I think the government should sit on them a bit given their oligopoly or monopoly status.
So, let's say that you want to download a TB each month. Let's say that the majority of people want to download 10-50GB per month. If the ISP has no limits or tiered pricing, all of those small users subsidize your large usage since the ISP would need to get multiple T1 connections to cover your personal bandwidth usage. So, most people cost the ISP $13/mo and you cost the ISP $543 (fake numbers, but proportional calculation). Shouldn't the people using less get to pay less? Should we likewise subsidize people who want bigger homes or fancier cars?
"But they already charge less for lower speeds!" Yeah, I might not download much in terms of quantity (with my connection being idle most of the time), but I want to be able to burst to 15Mbps whenever I am actually using it. That's the wonder of a shared resource like broadband. We don't all use a lot at the same time so we can get a lot when we need it.
Would you object to usage charges in the way that electricity is metered out? Say, a connection fee of $10/mo plus $0.30/GB? That seems reasonable. It accounts for ISP costs and users that use more, pay more.
Would you support an all you can use electric plan or an all you can drive gasoline plan? Should the electric company just add more generators to accommodate me on a $40/mo plan that gives me unlimited electric as I make my house an igloo in the summer?
Yes, broadband companies should increase their capacity and we should be sitting on them to do that, but they currently have little incentive to do that since they don't get more money from more usage. Maybe do like wireless companies have for voice: usage charges at the lower levels coupled with an unlimited plan for $100 for users that know they'll need it.
> Say, a connection fee of $10/mo plus $0.30/GB? That seems reasonable
Do you realize this is three times the current cost of storage ? Metering could work if there was some actual competition. But if there was competition, we probably wouldn't be too worried about what methods specific ISPs were using.
The cities and towns (by virtue of owning the right-of-ways and not wanting ten copies of fiber) should mandate that companies laying wires provide only bulk access in terms of committed/burstable bit rate, which the actual ISPs would then use to provide consumer internet access.
First, electric companies have no competition in most places.
Second, $0.30/GB of transfer is a pretty reasonable amount. If you have a dedicated server you can get down to around $0.10/GB, but even Amazon charges $0.17/GB and that isn't expensive. And your home isn't a data center.
Storage and bandwidth have nothing to do with each other.
Electric rates are highly regulated. Also, note that electricity is split up exactly the way I described - transmission (local delivery) and generation (internet transit) are billed separately, with competition happening at the generation level.
Storage and bandwidth are related in that they show the tradeoff between local storage and streaming. 3x the price of storage doesn't feel right to me. If that's the actual cost, I certainly can't disagree. But with the price of bandwidth continually dropping, I don't think regulation or other arbitrary pricing will reflect anything like the true cost, and will be more akin to mobile text messaging prices.
I recall seeing usage metering based on something like $40/mo for 200GB, and then $0.50/GB thereafter. With an apparent fixed cost of -$60, it seems their goal is to punish heavy users, rather than selling them what they want for a fair price.
ISPs are over-selling their bandwidth and refusing to upgrade their lines.
Given that some customers have effectively infinite bandwidth demand, upgrading the network just allows them to download more without paying more. I think there's a diminishing marginal utility at work here.
The ISPs are being extremely secretive about how they're throttling
Yes, this is a problem. If ISPs adopted fair and incentive-compatible bandwidth management policies there would be no way to game the system and thus no need to keep the details secret. Unfortunately, most of the bandwdith management products on the market are crap or ISPs configure them wrong.
AFAIK, transit costs $5-10/Mbps/month (probably closer to the high end in Canada), so 463GB/month would cost the ISP $15/month. Given the cost of maintaining the last mile, 463GB/month is probably a generous allowance.
I'm worried about usage caps and throttling as well, but I also know that at my university, about 50 people used up more than 50% of total network bandwidth. If the university didn't give priority to certain types of traffic (small HTTP, Skype, etc.) over other types (BitTorrent, Kazaa, etc.), the majority would have had a less enjoyable experience.
I think the solution should be something that both protects a shared resource while allowing people access and usage of the range of services one can use. I think it's reasonable to say that some services are higher priority than P2P filesharing and the routers than an ISP is going to have can easily handle creating differing priorities. That's an easy first step and it's still neutral to the source of the traffic (Google has argued that the problems with the ISP plans are that they want to offer high speed traffic from site A and slow from site B rather than differing on types of traffic). I also don't think it's unreasonable for excessive users to get friendly warnings that their usage is high along with help on lowering their usage. In terms of what is excessive usage: I'd say that 463GB is excessive in a month. Why 463GB? It's the capacity of a fully-loaded T1 connection costing hundreds of dollars. At that point, maybe you can't use a shared connection because you really need a dedicated T1. The users should be given several months to lower their usage, but there is a point at which cable connections are shared and you might need a dedicated connection. Rather than disconnect the user from service, the warnings could say that if the usage continues for several month, their bandwidth will be limited to 1Mbps (which would limit them to 316GB of transfer in a month) - essentially giving them a cheap T1.
It's never fun talking about limitations, but the world is made up of them. Rather than fight the limitations, we could actually use them to create better technologies. For example, most dedicated hosting providers give you unmetered bandwidth within their data center. ISPs could likewise give you unmetered bandwidth within the scope of the central office you're connected to (and faster than your general internet connection). We could then build P2P tools that would leverage such a system giving us faster downloads while using less resources. Creative thinking and an understanding of the resources at hand will help us to create better things. Ignoring resources and passing blame around just won't get us anywhere.