

How broadband pay-per-use will change web apps - panarky
http://gigaom.com/2010/12/12/predictions-2011-if-pay-per-use-comes-to-broadband-then-what/

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toast76
Almost the entire article is BS.

We've ALWAYS had tiered broadband in Australia, and none of these things have
happened. The one exception is Peak/Off-Peak usage. Yes, we schedule downloads
after hours...but now with every ISP offering fairly healthy download caps,
even that is a non-issue for most of us.

It hasn't made me want to "buy" instead of "rent" video content. Peer to Peer
is not sending us all broke. We aren't all caching our data at our front door.
We don't expect every website to suddenly start compressing their JS scripts.
We don't all project our monthly usage. And I most certainly aren't concerned
about streaming.

Most of the article is nonsense. The only REAL implication is that people who
don't need to 500Gb of data, don't pay for 500Gb of data. Everyone else can.

Probably the only side-effect of the limited downloads is certain ISPs
offering "quota free" downloads. E.g. Bigpond customers can download Bigpond
movies without being charged for the data. IINet has streaming TV, also
without data being counted. But these are nothing more than "value adds".

~~~
greendestiny
The other important quota free value add that is fairly unique to Australia is
ISP run game servers. Most of the major ISPs run large numbers of free game
servers. These are historical benefits though, I think we're reaching the kind
of bandwidth costs where people are less concerned with whats on the quota
free list.

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jdvolz
Am I the only person who thinks we're getting screwed in the US? I mean, I
keep reading about how Asian countries have internet that is 100x faster than
ours after we dumped billions of dollars into helping them upgrade their
networks (which they didn't do), and now the big internet companies want to
put restrictions on our use of broadband, or in effect, charge us more for the
same crappy thing we've always gotten.

Maybe I'm being emotional, but maybe it's just bullshit.

~~~
pmjordan
I don't know about broadband, but as far as I can tell, you _are_ absolutely
getting screwed on mobile phone and internet rates. They're _so_ much cheaper
in much of Europe, and probably even more so in Asia. Competition is so fierce
that calls here tend to be cheaper than the termination fees the network
operators pay each other for routing the calls to one another. And they're
still making massive profits.

I don't know why this is, by the way. A big problem is that the frequency
bands are a finite resource which rarely makes it back onto the market once
sold. The other issue is that a network with limited geographical coverage
isn't as competitive; these two facts caused the "land grabs" when the GSM and
3G frequencies were being sold in various European countries. New players
haven't joined the fray outside those periods; LTE doesn't seem to have
introduced any new players, probably because the markets are now oversaturated
and well served. The infrastructure investment would be immense. There _are_
new resellers who rent access to the big networks, though.

Still, most countries seem to have 3-5 national operators, and competition
among them is alive and well in many cases. No idea why it's stagnated in the
US. You'd think one of the operators would slash prices to try and eat away
market share from the others.

~~~
trafficlight
Density plays a big role in the cost of the last mile deployment. In urban
Japan you can reach thousands of customers in a square mile as compared to a
few hundred (or less) in typical suburban America.

Though that still doesn't account for places like New York costing just as
much.

~~~
kgermino
Without knowing the details, is it possible that internet in NYC cost as much
as in the 'burbs because the ISP is a regulated utility? Are they allowed to
charge different rates within a state?

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Maakuth
Some of these seem actually well thought out, but some of them feel pretty
unrealistic. I don't think most of these are actually going to happen. My
guess is that the bandwidth tiers will be somewhere pretty high so that it
only causes problems for big downloaders. Most "Web 2.0" (think Google Docs)
apps are already pretty modest with their bandwidth usage - you can use them
pretty well even in mobile data networks, so I don't think that's going to
affect people's behavior that much. I'd say streaming video and bittorrent
would suffer the most from these caps.

~~~
warren_s
I doubt much/any of this will come to pass, speaking as someone who has always
had to deal with download limits, it's really not THAT big a deal.

We here in Australia have been subject to tiered broadband pricing since day 1
- I feel pretty comfortable in saying that whatever pricing US carriers come
up with, it will be much lower than here in AU, simply because you don't need
to haul most of your data thousands of KMs via undersea cables. My ISP has a
range of ADSL2+ plans from AU$50/month for 150GB data through to AU$120/month
for 1TB data. (There's also an entry level 30Gb for $30 plan for your
grandparents)

~~~
Waywocket
>(There's also an entry level 30Gb for $30 plan for your grandparents)

I managed to find a real unlimited connection (here in England) so I might be
a little out of touch with broadband allowances, but I think 30GB is on or
above the high end of what you can get here in most places without spending a
mint. Of course, they all label it as 'unlimited', which apparently is legal
despite being very blantantly fraudulent advertising.

Hell, T-Mobile recently sent me some blurb trying to persuade me to replace my
ADSL with their 'unlimited'* mobile broadband.

* Fair use policy applies. Bandwidth is limited to 3GB/month.

~~~
nl
30Gb is pretty low end here (Australia). Eg, here's a price list for
Internode:
[http://www.internode.on.net/residential/broadband/adsl/easy_...](http://www.internode.on.net/residential/broadband/adsl/easy_broadband/plans/).
The base plan is 30Gb/month for $40, the high end is 1Tb/month for $130.

iiNet's base plan is 20Gb/month for $30:
<http://www.iinet.net.au/broadband/plans.html>

Telstra has a 2GB/month plan for $10, but that is really just there so they
can price gouge people who don't know better:
[http://go.bigpond.com/broadband/?ref=Net-Head-Int-Plans-
Broa...](http://go.bigpond.com/broadband/?ref=Net-Head-Int-Plans-Broadband)

I don't know what lets T-Mobile sell 3Gb as "unlimted", but they wouldn't be
allowed to call it that here.

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bhickey
There's a really easy solution to all the noise ISPs are making about
bandwidth.

If a provider wants to sell me a 384kbps line, they should offer 120 gb per
month. If they want to advertise a 20 mbps line, they should sell me 6.3 tb
per month. If they can't provide the capacity, sell me a slower line and I'll
be happy when I get bursts of speed. Regional monopolies should be compelled
to have transparency in pricing.

~~~
wmf
That kind of "transparency" would likely require US ISPs to reduce advertised
speeds 10x overnight, enraging millions of customers.

~~~
quanticle
Isn't that a good thing? I mean, if the ISP can't actually satisfy the demands
of every user at a given level of service, then why is it allowed to advertise
that level of service at all? Its a bit like a sports stadium saying, "Yeah,
we can seat 50,000 people, provided they don't all want to see the same
venue."

~~~
tb
It's called oversubscription and it's a very common practise. Statistically,
not all of the ISP's customers are going to use all of their quota every
month, so why should the ISP provide enough bandwidth to allow them to? That
just means they're spending far more on infrastructure than is really
necessary to service their customers' actual requirements.

Also, why should the quota be tied to the speed? When I want to download a
movie, I want to download it as quickly as possible, but that doesn't mean I
want to max out my bandwidth continually.

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whiletruefork
The problem with metered internet billing is that the service isn't treated as
a utility like power and water are. There would be no restrictions on service
providers violating customer rights - and they generally have a defacto
monopoly wherever they operate (a single provider to a building, etc).

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Dramatize
Here in Australia we've always had data caps. You have to take this in to
consideration every time you use a streaming service (still never stopped us).

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te_chris
I pay $120 a month for 40 gigs of admittedly quite fast internet here in NZ.
WTF is this guy talking about. Bloody americans

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danw
One place where this is the case is when developing Kindle apps using the SDK.
From <https://kdk.amazon.com/>:

"Active content applications that are smaller than 1MB and use less than
100KB/user/month of wireless data may be offered at no charge"

How apps are priced takes into account their data usage over their lifespan.

