Time Warner Cable CEO Still Dreams Of Metered Future > Metered billing coming - for telcos & cable; reason video

Metered billing coming - for telcos & cable; reason video

I agree.

Metered billing will happen. It is the only fair thing to do, not that the telcos necessarily care about fairness, but I would willingly pay extra for fairness.

Complaining can sometimes be okay, but voting with your wallet is better. If you don't like a policy, then pay for something else. Go back to dial-up.

One way to solve stupid metered billing is to use a network layer protocol or extension to embed the pricing informationin the packet, and let the consumer enter his willingness to pay for each packet. Each packet is priority forwarded by the amount the consumer is paying for the packet.

There needs to be an RFC for this type of protocol. Once a standard is laid, the telcos will more easily adopt it. Of course the move to IPv6 is slow going, so any implementation of such a protocol probably wouldn't happen for 20 years.

reply to fAcEtIOUs
What about ATT and I don't think Direct tv will like ATT messing there VOD systems as well the this will get the way of the direct tv / att deals.

reply to anderboy

I did not assume. I said I would willingly pay extra for fairness. If that means raising the prices on both me AND the torrent freaks, so be it.

Metered billing by definition is fair. You pay for what you use, never mind the ludicrous price per gigabyte.

Imagine a line of people waiting to be processed, each person takes around 5 minutes. Anybody can cut in line and the only thing you can do to prevent being taken advantage of is to cut in line also. Soon there is no queue, but there is a lot of fighting and almost no processing being done.

Now the proprietors of said service implement some authentication/enforcement to prevent/penalize cutters. Such an implementation requires some overhead time and cost in favor of fairness.

I'm the type of person who would willingly wait in line for 2 extra minutes if that somehow guaranteed that some asshat would not be able to cut in line and cost me 5 minutes.

Once again you're drinking the kool-aid that there is some sort of bandwidth apocalypse about to happen. You probably fell for Y2K too.

It's not about an apocalypse. I don't believe that everyone will be starving for internet bandwidth that they can't get.

It's about a scarce resource that needs a protocol to be allocated among many users. The choice of protocol will determine how many people get service, how fair it is, and what quality of service those people will get.

The current allocation (everybody gets as much as they can grab within the limits of the link speed and network congestion) is limited in its ability to provide advanced services in the presence of congestion.

Or do you believe there is never any network congestion? That would be more naive than believing that the Y2K scare had any merit.

reply to BF69

reply to anderboy

reply to NetAdmin1
I don't see any evidence that 95th percentile billing is "the fairest method of billing." I believe it is more fair than many methods, but a bid based packet payment has many more advantages.

First of all, 95th percentile billing is all about how much one should pay based on statistics taken over a period of time. There is no feedback to the network, so it does not directly solve quality of service in the face of congestion. Perhaps it reduces it indirectly by deterring the torrent freaks from using 100% link capacity all month, but congestion scenarios are still handled by the network in the same way, which is bad.

It is MORE fair to base forwarding priority on the price of a single packet. Even in the face of network congestion I can choose to pay more in real time, and still get great service because my packets are send to the front of the forwarding queue.

Also it is MORE fair because I only pay for what I actually use, and it's not based on some statistical sampling.

It's also great for the torrent freaks, because when the network is not saturated, they can still saturate their own link with best-effort packets for relatively little money.

reply to fiberguy
The Kool-Aid analogy is perfectly valid. While it's true that unicasting will drive usage up exponentially, the powers (TW, Bell in my case) that be are using fear mongering to drive the prices artificially high.

I can assure you that if these carrier get their way the prices aren't going to go down once our bandwith needs are met.

So whether you like it or not, you are drinking exaflood Kool-aid it's just a matter of how diluted that Kool-aid is.
--
They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage.

It's NOT kool-aid, sorry.. what that term drives is the underlying fact that some people just don't get reality therefore they dismiss everything they don't want to hear as BS.

The bottom line is this.. these ISPs, mainly cable and phone, have a core business to operate. If fly-by-night companies come in and start flooding video into the mix, this WILL put a dent in the cable and phone companies bank.. that's obvious... what you guys DON'T get is that when their revenue drops, and it's done so becuase the shift of business is going to the internet, another of their product lines, they will also shift that cost/loss rightfully to the internet.

Internet is largely subsidized by their core products.. for cable it's the video service and for telephone companies it's dial tone. You hurt cable's TV and telephones POTS, they're only going to shift their business model to keep the network propped up.

What you guys ALSO forget is that it's not always about what goes over the line that drives costs more than it is the lines themselves. I don't care if you push video, internet or voice over a line, it still costs about the same amount to operate the delivery system and maintain it.

The companies are going to need a certain amount of revenue to operate.. you lose video customers, then everyone else will pay for it.

Competition is a nice thing.. don't get me wrong.. it's very healthy and part of our economic structure.. but, you can't expect these guys to roll over and play dead either...

Therefore, your assertion that price hikes are artificially high is absolutely wrong.. in the past, operators have waited until it's too late to adjust to shifting markets and the people complain.. now they're trying to get a jump on it and yet the people complain.. so what do we have hear? .. a lesson that people are just going to complain.. so you just move forward and people complain. Simple.

I'd rather them get a jump on it now rather than later; after all, this is what all the consumer groups want.. pro activeness.. well, unless it actually means the customer has to pay their fair share.

I hope you've made it a point to send your resume to the Discovery institute while you're at it.

reply to anderboy
I have no problem with a pure metered system. But we never get that system! That is a system with no minimums period.

If I use nothing 1 month I should receive no bill, not even a service charge to the network, otherwise they are just screwing us just like the light/gas/etc companies do with minimum bills, or requiring you to disconnect and then pay to reconnect.

reply to fAcEtIOUs
The low end of the usage based consumption better be lower than the current model, otherwise consumers will see it for what it truly is, a money grab. This isn't about "fair, it's only about getting more money out of us that we don't really have.

reply to anderboy
Wow, that sounds like a very cumbersome way to access whatever information a consumer wants to use. I don't think the masses would go for that. When it's a hassle to use, you don't get mass adoption. I personally think that metered billing will be tried and then abandoned. The future is for data to be dirt cheap and a commodity. It's going to be ugly though... 8-)

I only mentioned the network layer functionality. The consumer doesn't have to think about the priority of each packet because there would be optimization tools to handle that for different profiles (video, audio, gaming, etc).

A simple method may be to have a knob for each application that you turn up until you get acceptable service (video not smooth? turn up the knob; too expensive for your taste? turn down the knob). The real-time price would be displayed also.

At the simplest, the user only has to do nothing and every packet will be treated with best effort service level.

reply to fiberguy
It looks like a one sided street for many ISPs for me. I currently pay $99 and $20 for internet at two places.
$99 U-verse ( 18/2) $20 Comcast ( 16/1). The U-verse price is outrageous, but I hate TWC, so it is what it is... I won't pay for any price increase over $99 for internet. For that price, I want to be able to use the service how I want. If I want to Netflix 24/7, I should be able to do that. It wasn't that long ago that $99 would pay for phone, internet, and cable TV. The prices for these services are getting out of control too quickly.

reply to fiberguy
Thank you for something intelligently written to think about.

Remember that the consumer is also being heavily squeezed right now, and that we're being pushed to the limit. The house of cards is coming down on many, and ISP may find that people are willing to do without them in the future. Many have long memories and will not return to these companies when times eventually improve.