| reply to Alpine
Re: IDIOTS! "think it's alright for the pipe providers to have to cut profits to build out networks "
Since they own the networks, it isn't the slightest bit unreasonable that the pipe provides have to roll their own profits back into the build up of their own infrastructure. That's what all businesses do to grow. It's an odd world we live in when capitalists don't think they should have to put their own profits back into their own business.
"overloaded by the content providers' applications"
Overloaded is simply another way of saying that the pipe owners are not managing their growth properly in order to keep up with growing demand. This doesn't mean that they are being cheated or that the content providers are abusing them.
" while the content providers reap all the benefits and don't have to lift a finger to help infrastructure (aka, "their lifeblood.)"
They lift a finger the way any customer does: by paying for their service. What more should a company expect, we pay them in exchange for their building and maintaining a satisfying service.
"Consumers may have problems either way. If Google (or whoever) gets charged, they'll either have to take a cut in profits or pass that on to consumers....The money for advancement has to come from somewhere.."
If we have faith in Capitalism then we should want a clear signal sent to the market, rather than devious roundabout ways of recovering costs. If the pipe owners aren't making enough money to be able to build out then they should raise the price of bandwidth and everyone, from the googles of the world to the individual isp customer will pay more for a given amount of bandwidth. This is far superior to allowing the pipe owners to use QOS to subvert the way people experience their competitors content. To a large extent this debate is happening because the pipe owners want to use their control of the pipe to undermine competition in spaces such as video. Do they recover costs in a neutral way, by charging for pipes of different sizes, or do we allow them to discriminate based on the type of applications and content.
"Since cost is going to be passed on to consumers anyway, is having guaranteed QOS for certain services so bad"
Yes it is bad for a number of reasons.
1. It gives these companies every incentive to use their control over the pipe to corner the market in the content and services that they want to deliver.
2. It allows them to hide real costs by not passing them on directly to those who are responsible for the costs, (especially their video customers, which is the main reason they are upgrading their networks, i.e. they want to get into the video content delivery business). They want to socialize the cost of their video service and take it out of the backs of all internet users. Let their video customers shoulder the cost of their video service upgrades.
3. The company has little incentive to build out beyond what is necessary for their own video service. If they have a juicy new revenue model based on having those with deep pockets paying additional money for the privilege of being given preference on the network, why would they undermine this revenue by creating abundance and lessening the pressure on content providers to pay. If we weren't bandwidth limited QOS wouldn't be much of an issue. In other parts of the world, where speeds of connections are far superior to ours, this isn't an issue. The needs of the market there are being met by providing bigger pipes, not by extorting money from deep pockets by maintaining scarcity. |
