 espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2
 ·Vitelity VOIP
| Yeah, let's just ignore the access charges If metered pricing were about "fairness," carriers would offer the nation's grandmothers a $5 a month tier that accurately reflected her twice weekly, several megabyte browsing of the Weather Channel website. The first packet is the most expensive one to deliver, because you have to have all of the necessary underlying infrastructure in place to get it there.
The key problem is trying to time your technology refresh cycle so that it lines up with the next generation of available technology so that you get the most "bang for your buck" when you purchase new hardware for replacement or expansion.
Data caps are an imperfect system to try and shape demand into something that meets that refresh cycle. It's been pretty clear for years that caps are about the business model, not congestion.
We had this whole discussion on this site in 2008/9 when there was news every freaking day about the Comcast network management system. This isn't news. |
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 ·Verizon FiOS
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 ·Optimum Online
·Cablevision
| It's news because a cable lobbyist admitted it, and it's a huge accomplishment that the opposition had so much proof the network congestion was a farce that they finally had to come clean and admit it.
Of course they just switched to a new argument, but that argument is even weaker in my opinion. |
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| reply to espaeth
I might agree, but hasn't Comcast kept the same cap for years? I mean if that is the case, then the D3 upgrade didn't make any bit of difference?
In my neck of the woods, Time Warner nor FIOS have caps and both stream at max rates all the time, especially FIOS. And I only pay $110 for 50/25 and extreme. I think that is perfectly reasonable, and I use about 200-400GB a month (depending upon the kids streaming habits). I would not be happy in a capped world.
What they have to worry about is simple: I drop cable and do only internet. Now I use 600-700GB a month because streaming becomes the only method for getting video. Right now outside of broadcast only 5-10% of the viewing comes from cable. Wife has finally given me the go-ahead to drop cable and save $50/mo.
Also infrastructure costs are often shared w/ the other services (most people actually run TV), so in that case outside the HSI equipment costs, baked into the cost of cable and phone are infrastructure costs.
As we know transit costs (if they have any) --look @ CDN have been plummeting.
So the cost is clearly going down, so why does the price go up every year? Profit, nothing more, nothing less. I don't blame them, they can get away with it for now.
If too many people start dropping cable, then it will start eating into their margins because equipment was sized for distributing cable too. Phone cost is minimal.... That is the balancing act, keeping you signed up for the triple play.... |
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| reply to espaeth
said by espaeth: If metered pricing were about "fairness," carriers would offer the nation's grandmothers a $5 a month tier that accurately reflected her twice weekly, several megabyte browsing of the Weather Channel website. The first packet is the most expensive one to deliver, because you have to have all of the necessary underlying infrastructure in place to get it there. You hit the nail on the head. The connection itself has a fixed cost regardless of what the actual usage (be it total data or average bitrate) is. Our electric bill costs us $15/mo before we use a single kWh, just for the connection to the grid.
In a fair system, Grandma wouldn't be paying $44.95/mo, but it's equally insane to think that she should be paying $5/mo. Time Warner's tiered option ($5 lousy dollars off your bill for a pathetic 5GB cap) is a blatant rip off, but the point here isn't to save 95% of their customers money. It's to monetize the 95%+ percentile of customers that use the lion's share of the available network capacity. |
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espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Vitelity VOIP
| reply to elefante72
said by elefante72:I might agree, but hasn't Comcast kept the same cap for years? I mean if that is the case, then the D3 upgrade didn't make any bit of difference? It started off a decade ago as a "soft" cap where they kicked heavy users off the system. In 2008 it was defined to be a 250GB cap, and then this year they started to expand the cap / look at strategies for being able to use more capacity for a larger monthly fee. See: »Exclusive: Some Comcast Users Will See 500 GB Cap
I think the problem is that infrastructure updates take years, and our culture is now exclusively focused on short term goals/results. |
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 morboComplete Your Transaction
join:2002-01-22
00000 | The problem is that the caps are mostly arbitrary and used in an anti-competitive way to limit competition from streaming content. If the caps were at least updated annually or on a rolling schedule based on average consumption increases then this wouldn't matter. |
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morboComplete Your Transaction
join:2002-01-22
00000 | reply to Crookshanks
said by Crookshanks: but the point here isn't to save 95% of their customers money. It's to monetize the 95%+ percentile of customers that use the lion's share of the available network capacity.
I'm glad you admit that this is strictly about milking the subset of customers that consume above average resources for no other reason that "we can" and a mistaken understanding of costs associated with the above average use. |
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Reviews:
·Frontier Communi..
| said by morbo:I'm glad you admit that this is strictly about milking the subset of customers that consume above average resources for no other reason that "we can" and a mistaken understanding of costs associated with the above average use.
It doesn't matter what the cost differential is, you can't dispute the fact that someone who has an average bitrate of 5mbit/s (just to pick a number) imposes a greater cost on the ISP than someone with an average bitrate of 100kbit/s. The former requires more infrastructure investment than the latter, yet people defend pricing plans that charge them the same amount of money.
From a business standpoint this policy is hard to argue with. They alienate a tiny slice of their customer base, which happens to impose the greatest cost on them, and they either monetize them or get them to reduce their cost/leave the network entirely. It's a win win for the ISP from a business perspective, and I'd probably be doing the same thing if I was running an ISP. |
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espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Vitelity VOIP
| reply to morbo
said by morbo:The problem is that the caps are mostly arbitrary and used in an anti-competitive way to limit competition from streaming content. Yeah, yeah. We've all heard the blanket statement repeated over and over again on this site.
How many services really compete head to head?
At best, online services chip away at sections of what is available via broadcast TV, but there is not a wholesale replacement option. It's not because of bandwidth caps; it's because anyone with a clue about how that infrastructure is built knows that you can't scale to 100+ million simultaneous Internet video feeds using technology available today.
Caps aren't the reason that service doesn't exist, no matter how badly you want that to be cause.
said by morbo: If the caps were at least updated annually or on a rolling schedule based on average consumption increases then this wouldn't matter. Technology refresh cycles are 3-5 years, which is about the rate you're seeing access speed increases and bandwidth cap increases. |
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| reply to Crookshanks
I can dispute your use of the word "greater" as a person that has an average bitrate of 5mbit/s has a very marginal cost over someone that uses 100kbits/s per second and that is a fact. |
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| said by Skippy25:I can dispute your use of the word "greater" as a person that has an average bitrate of 5mbit/s has a very marginal cost over someone that uses 100kbits/s per second and that is a fact.
The additional cost of the heavy user is only negligible while the node has extra capacity.
As soon as the node hits capacity, the next bit costs thousands of dollars, for the additional equipment to split the node. And that's assuming you've got unlit fiber available in your existing plant.
As soon as you run out of fiber to do logical node splits, the next bit costs tens of thousands of dollars. You have no choice but to run new fiber to the new nodes.
Now, who pays for it? Do you make grandma pay the same amount as the heavy downloader? That's unfair, because grandma didn't max out the node. Wouldn't it be fair to impose a surcharge on the heavy downloaders, so that they end up paying all of the costs of the additional infrastructure?
You can argue that the caps are too low, or that the price of the surcharges is too high, or that there's no off-peak free-use period. Indeed, the cable industry would have a much easier time justifying the caps if they were to have a separate -- and much higher -- cap for off-peak usage.
But you cannot just blindly argue against caps, as so many do on the DSLReports forums, unless you deliberately ignore the fundamental economics of Internet service. "Bits are almost free!" Yes, but there's an asterisk -- they're not free when the pipes get congested. |
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| reply to MovieLover76
said by MovieLover76:it's a huge accomplishment that the opposition had so much proof the network congestion was a farce that they finally had to come clean and admit it. Congestion would become very real and a very expensive problem to fix if all incentives to moderate usage and artificial speed bumps were removed while people are still expecting dedicated-like performance.
Building the network just to reach the customers is expensive but bulking up the network to sustain high concurrent usage at high speeds quickly gets expensive too. |
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| Really? how do both cablevision and Verizon FiOS manage uncapped users, while also being two of the Fastest ISP's based on real life speed tests.
The lobbyist gave up the argument man, time to toss in the towel. |
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| reply to InvalidError
And there ya have it folks... some people still believe the old mantra about caps being an essential part of managing the "network".
No, caps are and have always been about PR and managing customers' perceptions about using the network. ("Don't use it! You might break it!") |
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| reply to MovieLover76
said by MovieLover76:Really? how do both cablevision and Verizon FiOS manage uncapped users, while also being two of the Fastest ISP's based on real life speed tests. Just because you can speedtest the highest speed does not mean the network behind those speeds could actually cope with a large percentage of subscribers using anywhere near those speeds at the same time. |
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Crusty
join:2008-11-11
Sanger, TX Reviews:
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| reply to espaeth
said by espaeth:said by morbo:The problem is that the caps are mostly arbitrary and used in an anti-competitive way to limit competition from streaming content. Yeah, yeah. We've all heard the blanket statement repeated over and over again on this site. How many services really compete head to head? At best, online services chip away at sections of what is available via broadcast TV, but there is not a wholesale replacement option. It's not because of bandwidth caps; it's because anyone with a clue about how that infrastructure is built knows that you can't scale to 100+ million simultaneous Internet video feeds using technology available today. Caps aren't the reason that service doesn't exist, no matter how badly you want that to be cause. said by morbo: If the caps were at least updated annually or on a rolling schedule based on average consumption increases then this wouldn't matter. Technology refresh cycles are 3-5 years, which is about the rate you're seeing access speed increases and bandwidth cap increases. I haven't seen a speed increase in nearly 7yrs and I'm forced to either have zero internet or just use one ISP or move across the street.
But yet, my costs rise each year........ |
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morboComplete Your Transaction
join:2002-01-22
00000 | reply to tanzam75
Yes, it costs money to upgrade a node. However, unless the network is completely mismanaged to the point of incompetence, a single user using above average resources cannot be attributed to the cost. That's like saying that the 3 lane interstate highway is congested for 5 hours a day, and at 5 hours and 1 minute of congestion per day the next driver is responsible for adding an additional lane to the highway (millions and millions of dollars). It's ridiculous. |
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guppy_fishPremium
join:2003-12-09
Lakeland, FL
kudos:1 Reviews:
·Verizon FiOS
| reply to InvalidError
You Obviously know nothing about FIOS and that for all practical purposes Verizon IS a major backbone of the US internet.
Verizon could care less what its users send/receive as being a tier one provider, it costs the same for one bit or one trillion GB, they have no peering charges |
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 jjo
@comcast.net | reply to Crookshanks
Your point is well taken, and is an argument for basing access charges on bandwidth: provide a 100kbit/sec pipe for a cheap flat rate, and a 5Mbit/sec pipe for a higher flat rate. This is in no way a justification for per-byte usage charges on top of the flat-rate charge for bandwidth. |
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 Simba7I Void Warranties
join:2003-03-24
Billings, MT | reply to espaeth
said by espaeth:Technology refresh cycles are 3-5 years, which is about the rate you're seeing access speed increases and bandwidth cap increases. Um.. Sure the speed increases, but the cap doesn't for most providers. |
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