These people operate on some sort of bizarre moon logic. Youtube doesn't "eat up your ISP's bandwidth", your customers eat up your ISP's bandwidth by using Youtube.
If electricity usage followed the same argument as they give, power plants would be at fault for their electricity being used.
Of course, your customers can't always easily be extorted for hundreds of millions of dollars, while (they think) Google can.
The ISP's logic of people paying for getting bits as well as people paying for receiving bits gets you (in America) text messages that are $0.20 to send, and $0.20 to receive.
Problem is that ISPs hate it when you actually use bandwidth.
I got an email from my ISP - BT, to say that I'd used 80GB of transfer for March, and that if I went to 100GB, I'd have my speed capped for the next 30 days. This is on their (and I quote) "UNLIMITED" plan. bleurgg
Of course. But normally ISPs take it out on their customers, as opposed to taking it out on the services their customers use.
Most likely the problem is that they now can no longer blame the problem on "bandwidth hogs"--with everyone using Youtube, everyone uses the bandwidth that you advertised to them.
They certainly took/take it out on filesharing/p2p also though. I think they generally take it out on anything that eats bandwidth for them.
It's sort of ironic, since they have specifically sold the benefits of broadband ADSL as being able to watch movies, etc and now they complain people are actually doing that ;)
If the Telcos feel they can charge Google for carrying its bits, then perhaps they should pay all the newspapers, blogs, etc that are providing all their content to those telcos for free.
Over the last 20 years, Telcos have made humongous profits selling internet access to content that they didn't have any hand in producing. Meanwhile, the newspapers are going bust.
People keep talking about saving newspapers by introducing paywalls and such. There's already a paywall: it's the internet access monthly fee. Take the money out of there.
I just think that it's an uneasy "let's keep our eyes closed" arrangement to begin with. If the Telcos want to open their eyes instead, they might find they have a lot more to lose than to gain. Ditching Net Neutrality will cost them a whole lot more than it will gain them, as soon as content providers realise that actually, the providers should be paying them, not the other way around.
I mean, if Telefonica wants to block access to youtube, why should Google stop them? Fine. Block it. And lose 80% of your customers overnight. If Google wanted to play this game, they should be asking Telefonica to pay them money.
It's not a long step from this to having bloggers, newspapers, etc, organise in collectives that can charge telcos for "access to every newspaper on the web" or "every blog on the web".
ISPs (Comcast, ugh!) have monopolies in a ton of areas in the states. Block YouTube and it'll lose 80% of it's traffic overnight, not the other way around.
Years ago, I saw lots of "unlimited" cell phone plan commercials in London, every single one being subject to "fair use". How come it's that common in the UK? I think there are close to none "fair use" plans in e.g. Germany. Why the local differences?
I think "unlimited" is just a word that gets people to buy something. It's not economical to actually offer something with unlimited anything.
Even if you buy a dedicated server with "unlimited" transfer, it'll be limited by the connection speed - eg 10mbps uplink "unlimited bandwidth" works out at less than 5TB total transfer per month.
Same with the magic word "free". You'll often see that used such as "free mobile phone (small print: when you sign up to a contract at £19/month)" etc.
Are there true unlimited plans in Germany that aren't subject to any limits then?
This is what at&t/apple does with their 'unlimited' iphone subscription. It might be unlimited but they try their best to stop you from using any actual bandwidth (tethering etc.)
Google has had to take a lot shit lately from non free speech and non free market ideologies.
For internet at home, I think so. Just checked the legalese for the #1 provider (Deutsche Telekom) here, found no wording relating to "fair use". Internet at home is extremely competitive here, though. Lots of different delivery methods (tv cable, telephone cable etc), unlimited internet + landline calls for ~30 EUR/month or less.
For mobile internet, it's a whole different story, obviously. There are all kinds of caps.
I think 'unlimited' should mean unlimited. But I agree, introducing caps sadly makes business sense for some companies.
It's largely down to the Advertising Standards Agency refusing to do anything about the term "unlimited".
The problem is now that the term is completely meaningless. We found an Unlimited mobile data plan a few months back that had a 250mb a month 'fair usage' allowance. Total rubbish.
The next thing to watch for is "fibre optic broadband". The ASA don't see any problem with Virgin Media (a cable company) advertising their service as "fibre optic", despite the fact that the last leg is actually coax.
I've already had a couple of non-technical friends wonder what all the fuss is about "fibre optic", since they think they already have it.
This just shows that telco's won't solve a thing by capping bit-torrent traffic. What they need to do is stop charging too little for the bandwidth and improve their infrastructure to support the market they expanded to.
Bandwidth is not a major cost for most large scale ISP's. The real problem is there is only so many way's for ISP's to cut costs and pissing off the customers that most use the service is unlikely to cause them to quit because they don't have any choice.
ISP's already profit from moving bit's from A to B. They want to make as much profit as possible.
ISP's have the same basic problem as the airlines. They are selling a commodity service that requires high capital costs and have little to differentiate themselves with. The only way to increase profits is to drive down costs because they can't offer much outside of "fat pipes".
"Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to “dumb pipes”" : yes Google, PLEASE do us that favor. Telecom's business should be to transport bits from point A to point B, nothing more, nothing less.
News Flash: telecom company whines "Our customers pay us every month to allow them to connect to YouTube, but YouTube is owned by Google, who is rich, and Google isn't paying us anything on top of what our customers pay us. Boo hoo hoo!"
I believe this is more related to some of the peering relationships Google currently has. While it was a good idea to peer with Google in the past to benefit your customers, right now they are probably upset that their free peering arrangements are putting quite a bit of stress on their networks and it is quite understandable to want to start charging some money.
This is quite a good argument. If they have entered into a peering agreement then Google is freeloading off their services. However, an agreement is an agreement and the telco can't just pussy out because it's turned sour for them
Then they should cancel the peering agreement and pay transit charges to reach Google...and also reduce the quality of service that the customer receives when watching Youtube. Most peering agreements are relatively informal anyway.
For the larger providers reaching Google through transit routes, such transit would jeopardise other peering relationships which rely on traffic being balanced.
If they were complaining about peering relationships, that would be just fine. Renegotiate the peering relationship! Perhaps instead of true (free) peering (what most telecoms have with Google, perhaps they should be paying Google something.
Aren't the telecoms hitching a free ride? I mean we all upload our videos to YouTube and Google so graciously hosts them for us, but the telecoms get to charge fees to their customers who want to watch these videos. Google should ask for some compensation for providing the content the telecoms need in order to sell their services.
Here are some quotes that have been changed to reflect the same logic applied the other way:
“These guys [telecoms] are using the content and they don’t pay anybody.”
"Let’s see the development of digital society in terms of the winners and the victims. And today, there is a winner who are the telecoms. There are victims that are content providers, and to a certain extent, YouTube. We cannot accept this."
*Bolded items have been changed.
Honestly, that's the same logic being used in the opposite direction. I could do this with almost every quote in that story.
That's an interesting quote: "Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to “dumb pipes”". I wonder what description would they prefer now - especially what do they want to offer above the "dumb pipe" standard?
I read the paper version of this and the other articles on the page had a similar bizarro-world quality to them. It took some time to see some logic to the ISP POV, which I think the article doesn't do justice.
Forget for a moment any notion of fairness or the traditional arrangement of customer > ISP > Internet as a whole. Take a look at the arrangement in terms of value transfer (give) and extraction (take).
The consumer-oriented ISPs give network connectivity (and maybe some other ancillary services such as an email account, anti-virus, NNTP, etc.) and take money from customers.
Google gives content (search may be more important to users, but content such as video is the focus in this case) and takes eyeballs on ads.
There is no formal connection between Google and the ISPs. There are two important informal connections: 1. Without Google (or other similar entities), the product of the consumer oriented ISP would be much less valuable to the customer. 2. Without the ISPs, Google has no way of giving its content or taking its eyeballs on ads.
At present, the ISPs perceive an asymmetry in revenue between [them and the consumer] and [Google and the consumer]. They are interested in connecting the dots from Google to the ISP in a more formal way. The only question is who has more to lose by pursuing their point.
Google can't take value from the customer without the ISPs. The ISPs' will offer less value to the customer without Google. Will an ISP without Google provide enough value to the customer to justify operating that way?
The relationship between each entity is not totally unfettered. The regulatory environment must also be considered. If the ISPs annoy the customers too much, there may be regulatory change (such as Network Neutrality, etc.). This in of itself may be good or bad for the ISPs and their complaints and threats regarding Google may be a diversion for the purpose of increasing their government supported monopoly power.
Fine, the telecoms can start taking payments from their customers to access youtube then. Lets see how many customers they'll get with that kind of deal. We (the users) already pays for the networks. This article is complete bullshit.
Mr Alierta said that if no revenue sharing agreement was possible between the internet search engines led by Google and the network operators, regulators should supervise a settlement.
This is what strikes me as disturbing. Peering has been one of the success stories of an unregulated internet infrastructure in contrast to the hugely complicated PSTN system with all manner of complicated charging schemes. In this instance getting regulators involved would almost certainly complicate things. Bureaucrats won't understand the myriad of informal relationships that underpin the peering that runs the internet.
Peering strikes me as akin to free trade between countries. Can peering relationships survive large imbalances? If packets were trade and peering relationships borders, who are the net exporters and importers?
If either party should be paying it should be the telcos. No one needs to pay for monthly Internet access without content to access. They'll find that out the first week they drop Google.
If electricity usage followed the same argument as they give, power plants would be at fault for their electricity being used.
Of course, your customers can't always easily be extorted for hundreds of millions of dollars, while (they think) Google can.