Category: Broadband

A Sneaky Assault on the Future of the Internet.

Comcast recently announced it was considering extra charges for users who consume more than 250 GB of bandwidth per month. After 250 GB, users could purchase additional bandwidth in 10 GB amounts for $15 each.
On its face, this plan sounds very reasonable. I’ve monitored my bandwidth usage before, and I’m what many would consider a fairly heavy user. In a good month, I generally wouldn’t exceed 30 GB of bandwidth. That’s a little peer to peer file sharing, a lot of music streaming, occasional software downloads. Maybe a Linux image here and there.
But if you look closer, this is nothing more than an insidious attempt to hijack the future of the internet.
Jim Lynch over at ExtremeTech called it:

“I suspect that Comcast is making a preemptive attack to hurt Apple and other downloadable content companies. In effect, Comcast is trying to kill the downloadable content market in its infancy. It sees the future and in that future Comcast may be nothing more than the owner of some dumb pipes that carry everybody else’s valuable content.”

ExtremeTech Story

Downloadable movies and other similar sorts of content delivery systems are just right over the horizon. The only thing that’s holding off deployment of downloadable movies is bandwidth.

Continue reading “Comcast Metered Billing Plan:”

If a “pay-by-the-byte” pricing scheme is necessary for the economic survival of US ISPs, then how on earth are the ISP’s in Asia and elsewhere making it? Here are some current prices from Asia:

Japan:
100 mb/s symmetrical FTTH – $51/ month US
47 mb/s down, 5 mb/s up ADSL – $6.00 / month
https://asahi-net.jp/en/

Korea:
100 mb/s symmetrical FTTH – $36.63 / month
50 mb/s symmetrical FTTH – $30.22 / month
10 mb/s symmetrical FTTH – $27.40 / month
http://www.megapass.net/service/megapass/IN_PImegftth02W.php

Then Hong Kong Broadband Network offers FTTH with symmetrical speeds ranging from 10 MB/s all the way to 1 GB/s (1000 MB/s), with prices topping out at about $258 per month for the symmetrical gigabit FTTH.
www.hkbn.net/bb1000/index.html

If these companies are making money at those prices – with no bit caps – then why can’t American companies offer the same packages at equivalent rates?

Continue reading “Pay-By-The-Byte Ressurected?”

It never fails to amaze me how the telcos shills populate user forums.
There was a story on broadbandreports.com: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/81287

5% of ISP Users Generate 45.3% of Traffic

On the flip side, 40% generate just 3.8%…

Ellacoya is a supplier of network hardware that can monitor and shape network traffic, and they recently shared some of their findings with ISP Planet. The company notes that 5% of users (aka “bandwidth hogs”) generate 45.3% of traffic, whereas at the other end of the spectrum 40% of users (aka “barely users”) generate just 3.8% of traffic. VoIP use spiked in 2006 for those light users, but online gaming exploded, with 22.3% gaming in August jumping to 66% in December (of course, it got cold, too). Meanwhile, 41.9% of bandwidth hogs use VoIP, whereas 95% play online games.

This produced a slew of comments for and against bandwidth hogs. I posted this comment:

Continue reading “Oh to be a shill for a telco (or a gullible retard)”

I don’t believe wireless and fiber will ever really compete. I think there will always be a place for both. They both have unique attributes: wi-fi’s portability, and fiber’s speeds. Each has it’s own place – they compliment each other.

The main problem with wireless – at least at this early stage of the game – is that it just can’t provide enough bandwidth to effectively compete with fiber.
I haven’t really kept close tabs, but it seems like most of the metro wi-fi projects are advertising speeds ranging between 1-3 mb/s.

Now 3 mb/s may be just great for web browsing, email and light gaming (assuming the latency isn’t too terrible). But that’s about it. I wouldn’t go downloading the latest Linux distros or anything on a connection like that. Much less downloading a movie or loads of mp3’s or programs.

Continue reading “Wi-Fi Makes Fiber Obsolete?”

BellSouth and a few others telecos have recently started advocating a “pay-by-the-byte” type of pricing scheme. Under those proposals, consumers who access high-bandwidth applications, like file sharing or VoIP or online gaming would pay more than people who just web surfed or read email.

An example of the current justification for the proposed pay-by-the-byte pricing was given by BellSouth Chief Technology Officer, William Smith.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Smith, they said, “often laments the fact that his parents, who use the Internet for only low-capacity activities such as Web surfing and email, pay fees similar to those of heavy users who suck up capacity by downloading music or using BitTorrent, which is used by millions to download movies and other material off the Internet. Overall at BellSouth, 1% of broadband customers drive 40% of Internet traffic, he says. “People who drive cost in the network create additional charges in the network,” Mr. Smith says. “If my elderly parents don’t use a lot of traffic we ought to be able to create a service plan that meets their needs.”

Oh, my heart goes out to those poor people! What philanthropy! What humanitarians!

This development follows the recent proposals by the telecos to make Google and other high-bandwidth content providers pay extra in recognition of their popularity – and the extra bandwidth people consume accessing those sites.

Continue reading “A World Without Net Neutrality: The Death of the Internet As We Know It”

Below is an open letter to Click! Network management.

For nearly six months now, Click! Network subscribers in the City of Tacoma and surrounding areas have had to pay 33% more for their broadband Internet service than similarly situated customers of Comcast and Qwest.

Why is this? There really is no rational answer.

How could anyone have failed to notice that Comcast and Qwest had changed their product offerings, effectively lowering their prices? How could anyone have thought that Click could be competitive with the “big boys” by allowing their rates to remain 33% higher than everyone else?

Click’s management decisions defy logic.

I sent Mayor Baarsma and the Tacoma City Council a letter outlining these and other problems in great detail, about a month and a half ago. Councilmember Julie Anderson sent me back a note thanking me for the information, then later I heard from the Mayor that three council members were going to meet with Click management to hear their response to my charges.

And since then, nothing.

In all fairness, we’ve had a bunch of holidays in the interim.

But metro Tacoma citizens are still paying 33% more than Comcast and Qwest customers for the same exact service – and I for one, am getting tired of it.

My big gripe is that the only reason municipal utilities exist is to provide citizens with essential services at prices the same or less than the competitive market rates.

If Comcast or Qwest charges 33% less than Click for the same exact service, then what’s the point of having a city-owned internet service? So we have an option to pay more to get the same service? I think not.

Maybe it’s to help pay for the Tacoma Public Utilities executive’s recent raises? Or if not that, then what? I really don’t have a clue.

In Into to Business 101, they teach you that for a business to be competitive, it needs to set its prices in accordance with the going market rates. If you set the prices too high, you’ll eventually lose all your customers. Likewise, you need to have a similar range of product offerings if you want to attract and retain customers. These are some of the most basic concepts in marketing. Very, very basic stuff.

But apparently Click management does not comprehend.

Continue reading “The High Price of Doing Business With Click! Network”

Here’s what I think is going to be big in the near future:
A lot of the commercial software publishing places have immense pipes for software downloads, now. And if the people in the forums are telling the truth, download speeds are mostly not capped (on the software publisher’s end).

The most prominent online publisher right has got to be Valve, with their Steam distribution system (http://www.steampowered.com/ ) which they used to distribute Halflife 2.

I heard that they had a phenomenal amount of bandwidth available for the release of HL2 – something like 1,500 Mb/s. I’m not aware of any download throttle or any other speed limitation they placed on users.

My own experience was that on the day HL2 was released, I bought and downloaded two copies – say maybe 6-8 GB of files, total – and it took all day. Based on the fact that it was on the first day, I was happy that it even just worked – both downloads went without a problem. But it was still a bitch that it took so long. It tied up two computers almost all of the day.

If I’d had a 10 mb/s connection, it would have taken less than two hours. For someone with a 1.5 mb/s connection, it would take about 12 hours.

Time is money.

Continue reading “Where is broadband heading in the US?”