Web Usage-Based Billing on its Way

A fun/interesting pro tip about our friends at the cable companies. And artists formerly known as RBOCs to a certain degree. You can get 100mbps in your home from Comcast for a mere $200 a month. However with their 250gig transfer cap, you could burn through that in 6 hours at 100mbps. The real punchline: Comcast's bandwidth costs are well under one cent per gig of transfer. They peer with folks like Google, Facebook, and Yahoo so essentially all they pay for is the wire.

So to recap, Comcast charges you up to $200 for as little as $2.50 worth of product, and they want to cry about subsidizing Hulu and Netflix.

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I am going to take a shot and say infrastructure costs are not included in your .01 cost. This is the same argument people make against drug companies, they say it only cost pennies to produce those pills completely ignoring all the investment it took to get that drug to market before they can sell pill #1. Laying cable is the expensive part and that has to be done before the bandwidth can be sold. No profit no new cable so you can download your porn and ever increasing speeds.

Bottom line is the Govt fucks up everything it touches so it should not be in the business of telling internet or any other companies how to run their business. These kinds of rules always end up causing higher prices and crappier service in the long run.
 


No profit no new cable so you can download your porn and ever increasing speeds.

So you think they have to run more wire to my house to give me 100mbps service, and it's not over the same trunklines they buried in the 80's that TV subscribers already paid for several times over.

Nub.
 
Article is bullshit. Not the first, I already pay fifty cents per gig :(
 
I am going to take a shot and say infrastructure costs are not included in your .01 cost. This is the same argument people make against drug companies, they say it only cost pennies to produce those pills completely ignoring all the investment it took to get that drug to market before they can sell pill #1. Laying cable is the expensive part and that has to be done before the bandwidth can be sold. No profit no new cable so you can download your porn and ever increasing speeds.

Bottom line is the Govt fucks up everything it touches so it should not be in the business of telling internet or any other companies how to run their business. These kinds of rules always end up causing higher prices and crappier service in the long run.

You have no idea how any of this even works. It's apparent that you don't from what you're saying. Out side of infrastructure costs bandwidth costs the $0. In regards to the infrastructure costs those were heavily subsidized by tax payers.
 
So you think they have to run more wire to my house to give me 100mbps service, and it's not over the same trunklines they buried in the 80's that TV subscribers already paid for several times over.

Nub.

If you really think that the infrastructure from the 80's is good enough then you might want to ask the internet companies why they are spending 100's of billions of dollars a year improving what is out there. I am pretty sure it is not just because they have nothing better to do with their money.

Locally three years ago the best speed I could get was 1mbp on a good day. Because of some new competition the phone company started spending money by running new fiber optic cables and building new switching stations and now I can get 10mbps. In town they are just starting to do fiber all the way to homes though I doubt I will ever see that where I am. There is no way they would have spent all that money if the existing wires would allow them to improve service and charge more money.


You have no idea how any of this even works. It's apparent that you don't from what you're saying. Out side of infrastructure costs bandwidth costs the $0. In regards to the infrastructure costs those were heavily subsidized by tax payers.

While I do agree that infrastructure costs are the largest expense the costs of running an isp is not $0 by any means. Do you really think that there is no day to day costs in running an isp? Seriously? You are saying there is no ongoing cost to running a company and I am the one who does not know what I am talking about? Pretty sure it is the other way around.

I suppose it depends on your location on how much if any the Govt subsidizes the costs. Just to be clear though I do not believe that any Govt funds should be used to subsidize a private company under any circumstances.


Bottom line though it does not really matter how much anything really costs. History shows us that whey the Govt gets involved things go to shit, we end up with less choices, higher costs, and a lower quality product. This always happens so why take the internet which is something that is not broken and let the Govt fuck it up?

If you somehow think the Govt getting more involved in the internet is going to make us better off then you are delusional at best.
 
What's the big deal? If a company charges usage based billing either pay the fees based on how much bandwidth you use or find a different ISP that doesn't bill this way. What, are ISP's not allowed to also be capitalists?
 
What's the big deal? If a company charges usage based billing either pay the fees based on how much bandwidth you use or find a different ISP that doesn't bill this way. What, are ISP's not allowed to also be capitalists?

Well, one problem with that is in my area there's only 1 cable based internet provider. Anything else, to my knowledge at least, is inferior in terms of speed and reliability like DSL, dialup (lol), etc..
 
What's the big deal? If a company charges usage based billing either pay the fees based on how much bandwidth you use or find a different ISP that doesn't bill this way. What, are ISP's not allowed to also be capitalists?

Nothing inherently wrong with charging by usage, in fact it makes a lot of sense. The problem is why companies are going to be moving in that direction. It is just one side effect of recent Govt regulations that will in the long run only make thing worse.

Well, one problem with that is in my area there's only 1 cable based internet provider. Anything else, to my knowledge at least, is inferior in terms of speed and reliability like DSL, dialup (lol), etc..

The one thing I miss about moving out to the woods is cable internet. I went from a big fat cable to a crappy dsl and it took some serious getting used to. In fact this was not my first choice on where to build my house but there was no way I could have gone back to dial up.
 
Canada just went thru this and the bill was pushed back. There were half a million signatures (a lot for Canada). Need to act. Wake up. Donate to the organization that steps up and win. We did it. You can too.

My Bell bill is going up over $4 in January due to their need to raise prices. Lol, the letter had a very "telling" line in it:

"If you do not like this change and wish to call and cancel, or down-grade your services, we can be reached..."

What a nut-sack on these companies! Basically saying they don't care if you stay or go, and directly making negative statements welcoming me to go elsewhere.
 
We don't have that shit in the UK, unlimited with cable companys means unlimited, no caps.

Since when? Was there a change in law?

Caps and 'unlimited' plans, backed by fair usage policies have always been around here. For some reason my shitty connections 100GB cap was lifted a couple of months ago (on 'Unlimited' broadband) - was there a change in statute?

Here a related fact to the above bandwidth debate - SMS messaging has never cost phone service providers anything. When they were charging 10p to send text messages it didn't cost them a thing. An SMS is sent alongside the standard update it makes to the antenna.
 
There's actually never been an decent unlimited plan for broadband users here in Australia. All the plans are usage based pretty much and I think it works fine.

But in terms of content and shit, different providers allow for different unmetered downloads depending on the ISP. Some providers might have uncapped games, Netflix and others might have free Youtube and Google etc. etc.

I have a 100mbit Cable now (get about 25mbit on wireless, 70-80mbit on wired according to speedtest.net) with a 1TB cap a month. Struggle to get over the limit and I download a lot of shit.
 
If you really think that the infrastructure from the 80's is good enough then you might want to ask the internet companies why they are spending 100's of billions of dollars a year improving what is out there. I am pretty sure it is not just because they have nothing better to do with their money.

They're not spending billions of dollars a year on infrastructure. If they were every several countries wouldn't be kicking our ass.

Locally three years ago the best speed I could get was 1mbp on a good day. Because of some new competition the phone company started spending money by running new fiber optic cables and building new switching stations and now I can get 10mbps. In town they are just starting to do fiber all the way to homes though I doubt I will ever see that where I am. There is no way they would have spent all that money if the existing wires would allow them to improve service and charge more money.

10mbps is pathetic at best. Several places in the world have had what they're just now rolling out for years.

While I do agree that infrastructure costs are the largest expense the costs of running an isp is not $0 by any means. Do you really think that there is no day to day costs in running an isp? Seriously? You are saying there is no ongoing cost to running a company and I am the one who does not know what I am talking about? Pretty sure it is the other way around.

I suppose it depends on your location on how much if any the Govt subsidizes the costs. Just to be clear though I do not believe that any Govt funds should be used to subsidize a private company under any circumstances.

I never said there were no costs to running an ISP. We're talking about Net Neutrality and the costs associated with bandwidth and infrastructure not the administrative side of running an ISP.

The ISPs use infrastructure as an excuse for slow speeds and a reason to gouge their customers. Now they're not happy just fucking their customers they're wanting to create a multi-tiered internet where content providers will have to pay them as well if they want their content delivered at a reasonable speed. Now you say oh this isn't fucked up they should be able to do that. I say they shouldn't, because I'm already paying to access the content I want. The content providers are already paying for the content they want to deliver. The ISPs are pretty much getting bandwidth for free.

Why should content providers have to pay several times just to get their content delivered to people who want it and already pay an ISP to get it? Can you afford to pay verizon, cox, comcast, and god knows who else to get your sites delivered at a resonable rate? No? Oh shit your competitor can, sucks to be you.



I have another question for you. Who in this conversation has ran an ISP? Oh yeah, me.
 
They're not spending billions of dollars a year on infrastructure. If they were every several countries wouldn't be kicking our ass.



10mbps is pathetic at best. Several places in the world have had what they're just now rolling out for years.



I never said there were no costs to running an ISP. We're talking about Net Neutrality and the costs associated with bandwidth and infrastructure not the administrative side of running an ISP.

The ISPs use infrastructure as an excuse for slow speeds and a reason to gouge their customers. Now they're not happy just fucking their customers they're wanting to create a multi-tiered internet where content providers will have to pay them as well if they want their content delivered at a reasonable speed. Now you say oh this isn't fucked up they should be able to do that. I say they shouldn't, because I'm already paying to access the content I want. The content providers are already paying for the content they want to deliver. The ISPs are pretty much getting bandwidth for free.

Why should content providers have to pay several times just to get their content delivered to people who want it and already pay an ISP to get it? Can you afford to pay verizon, cox, comcast, and god knows who else to get your sites delivered at a resonable rate? No? Oh shit your competitor can, sucks to be you.



I have another question for you. Who in this conversation has ran an ISP? Oh yeah, me.


:music06::music06::music06::music06::music06:
 
Pretty sure there are people on this forum who eat 250 gigs a day for breakfast on a regular basis.

Sure- that's not hard to do - but that's on hosted servers where you typically are already paying for bandwidth. This is more the mass-market/home market.
 
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What's the big deal? If a company charges usage based billing either pay the fees based on how much bandwidth you use or find a different ISP that doesn't bill this way. What, are ISP's not allowed to also be capitalists?

In non-rural areas, this works quite well. However, for the majority of customers that live outside of the city, you're stuck with one or two carrier options. So, with only pseudo-monopolies to deal with, they can do whatever they want to their customers and you're forced to bend over and open wide for more.

For instance, where I moved too a few months ago, I am limited to either AT&T, slow Satelite, or a Radio Antenna-based Internet. AT&T only offers their 150GB plan, so I'm paying for their 6mbps speed.

Now, if I were just 1-mile (Yeah, 1-mile) in any direction, I could get Comcast to the south and west of me, or I could get Windstream if I were North or East because I would be in a different county. I wish the later would move in the area because they have twice the speed I'm paying for now with no usage cap at all.

But, alas, I'm now forced to pay for Satelite and DVR my tv instead of streaming online (and you can forget catching up on anything not airing with the week because I can't download too many shows from DirecTV's online area to catch me up on missed shows because it eats up a ton of bandwidth), as well as buy multiple VPSs to run my bots on because anything else would eat through my bandwidth cap with AT&T in a couple of days. I even spent a few dozen hours on the phone with AT&T and offered to pay for their business plan and x amount per month if they'd turn off my usage cap, but they don't want too.
 
#citypeopleproblems

3mbpspipedoffthetopofschweitzer4lyfe!!!

get some big dedi's for your bots, don't waste time watching tv when you should be working. #problemsolved
 
Bottom line is the Govt fucks up everything it touches so it should not be in the business of telling internet or any other companies how to run their business. These kinds of rules always end up causing higher prices and crappier service in the long run.

With all the lobbying, these companies ARE the Gov.