Further exposition on AT&T pay for speed

Guess who will end up paying more money if online retailers have to pay extra? Hmmmmmm....

So AT&T wants to be another portal where you pay them for the privilege of receiving more advertising? If I wanted a portal with advertising, I'd be using AOL! Just give me the damn connection and I'll decide where I want to shop...
Now, I'll have to go and add this to the reasons not to use cable by @home..
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This Space for Rent

Ok, let me get this straight.

AT&T says: hey JoeRetailer. Pay us money, and we'll let you advertise on our portal, and direct traffic to you.

Joe Retailer Says: Hrm, usimg this I can specifically target upper income users, with high bandwidth, and therefore I can present more information/media etc. And the cost of customer aquisition is a few pennies higher.

Joe Consumer: Hey, theres a link to Joe Retailr on my statup webpage, and, wow, Now I can get a 3d view of the jacket I wanted from them, cool, I will buy it now.

How is this wrong? Its not like At&T is shoving Lands end down your throat.. I don't use their web browser/start page, you don't have to.. no one is coming to your house, and saying.. "Buy online form Lands End, since they like higher bandwidth customers"

God, people are too paranoid about things like this.. so long as At&T doesn't sell my name name/addry/phone # to a retailer.. I am fine with it.. H3ll, they can even email spam me if they want to.. I use procmail.. And wow, I might even use something like this.. now I might get more relevant, and tangible product information from the web..

god.. oh the horror of an informed consumer. (/sarcasm)

The suggestion is that the future of marketing might be a model where priority is given to websites that have paid the edge network to deliver their content to the home... this might be why they want everyone on PPPoE.. it has a capability (as yet unused) of splitting up traffic into streams.. visiting amazon? data comes down the fast pipe.. visiting an academic website on etruscan antiques, well, that data comes down the slow lane... because they havent paid anyone..

I agree with Justin, in order to guarantee that the very large amount of bandwidths are available for future content there needs to be an economic model in place to ensure the integrity of the end to end network. I think this will in the long run mean a better experience for end users who get a higher quality and throughput of data ensured by a vendor who is hoping they will buy something.

att is planning to cap your bandwidth to all non-paying sites? So in other words its the customer that suffers if the site doesn't pay. If I buy a 1.5 mbps line, I don't want to be limited to 128kbps on my webbrowsing b/c most companies arent giving large quantities of money to them...

I don't think you agree with me, because I hate this idea, (although I was trying to explain it)..

Reading the news coverage, and at the risk of jumping the gun, the conclusion is only the very biggest sites will be able to buy any 'priority' access to users, which perpetuates their position.. making it all the harder for startups. How would Phoenix have enjoyed starting up and reaching customers during 1999 in this environment?

The whole internet has developed on the basis that a "broadcaster" (website) does not have to pay according to how far its traffic travels, or how fast its traffic gets delivered, beyond its own gateway.. is it ok to muck with this idea? What is next? how about this: for world news to reach rich broadband people, content sites must pay more than to reach poor people, since they are probably going to make more money off them (and of course charge them more to pay for this access tax). Maybe the new york times should cost more on the upper east side than in the bronx? Do you like that idea? Isnt this a situation where the owners of just part of the internet infrastructure (AT&T) having failed to make money on it with flat rate charges, are throwing away the (great) idea of the stupid network, where all bits are equal and anonymous, and are considering stopping traffic to investigate purpose, destination, origin and charge on that basis.
Obviously AT&T dumb telco-thinking shows thru here.
I hope that ISPs vote with their feet, shun any carrier that tries this, and think of equal speed, equal access as a marketing advantage, and not something to help sell to the gullible public as a plus. People want as much speed as possible, all the time, to anywhere. Charge according to amount of traffic, by all means, but not according to type of traffic and type of user.. just be a big fat dumb pipe.

And if we're all lucky, we can surf the web using 60% of our CPU speed to help with the SoftDSL modem we got from motorola, hit a few e-commerce sites that AT&T advertises because the others ones just don't seem to load, but that's okay because we want to pay higher prices to offset AT&T trying to undercut its competitors, and buy a fixed (immobile) wireless(mobile?? ok maybe it helps reach a few more people) web solutions for my 100% windows network.

Then I'll just throw it all out the window, sign up for 700 free hours of 56k AOL and bang my head against the monitor all day every day....or until my 700 hours is up.

Hi, all

Att has been ripping us off for years with their long distance rates. As internet phone services become more mature long distance will become even less profitable for them. A bloated company like att needs a lot of revenue to survive. So why not find new ways to rip customers? I am still shocked that att was allowed to purchase cable properties in the first place. Hate DSL or love it you have to admit that (even if you have awesome cable service) you can sleep easier knowing there is a choice, even if it is a horrible choice for you. The fact that if cable companies get too far out of hand customers with both DSL and cable available will leave them. So all you DSL haters out there be glad it exist even if you never sign up for it. The same holds true for all the Cable haters.

On a side note. Is it me or does AOL, Earthlink, ATT etc threaten the very freedoms that have made the internet so popular? I have on every turn pushed friends and family away from such ISP's because of the trends of restriction that seem to pop up more and more everyday. Anyone else have any thoughts on this subject?

Seriously though, there are two ways they can do it

Simple way: They can make site times an issue is to make the ones they don't like extremely slow (as in 56k or less). How do they propose to do this? Obviously, they can't keep a list of just the merchants who haven't paid them and slow down those sites. What if they miss some? Does this mean they slow down all internet sites that don't pay them? That would defeat the whole purpose of a speedy connection.

More likely way: I suppose the alternative to that, that they could use would be to simply oversubscribe users without properly upgrading their hardware. They would then use some kind of QoS thing to give certain packets priority (which, of course adds latency). Certain customers could order a QoS-guarenteed line so that all their traffic would be guarenteed, while others would be stuck with best effort. What does this mean for the average joe? Well, overall service would degrade, so that there could be a definate difference between the "good" service and the "bad" service. Thus, any gamers, etc. would be forced to pay more money for something decent.

It'll be interesting to see how this works out, but regardless, it is probably going to mean that the costumers pay more.

[text was edited by author 2000-10-12 23:56:08]

The "problem" is more advertising on a service that we are paying to get in our homes.
If you don't like the advertising on a particular radio or television station, or in a particular newspaper or magazine; you can turn it off. You can quit buying a particular periodical, or quit viewing, or listening to a particular medium. However, if this is being forced down your throat by something that you have no, or little choice to subscribe to, then that is just wrong at it's base argument.
We are so accustomed to force-fed marketing that we no longer see the harm that this creates. When you rent a video you are subjected to trailers for videos and movies, & commercials for products; That is unless you fast forward through them. Sports figures have become walking bill boards. During tonite's ALS baseball game one of the players on the Cardinals had the name of the manufacturer of the glare-block under his eyes!
My last point comes from the article where FreeDSL is considering "turning up" the bandwith for subscriber sites. Doesn't this really mean that they are turning down the bandwith for all of the other sites. What then are you really paying for? OK, I know that FreeDSL is "Free", but to block their banner ads you do have to pay for it.
So the harm comes from someone else, not you and I, deciding what, or how much of something we get, or need. After all, who knows best what's best for you?
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Fish laugh at the mere mention of my name!

Part of the problem is with the perception of the internet.

I *do* buy things online, but I also use my DSL connection to keep up with the news, to search for information, to download patches to software, etc. I resent the "consumer" label being forced down my throat. Yes, I'm a consumer, but that's not my primary activity, nor is it my primary self-image. It's not my concern if some company can't make a killing on the internet.

Are all .org sites going to be relegated to second-class citizenship on the net because they aren't playing for big money? Maybe they should have a .$$$ domain for sites that *really* want the fast access...

Once you've accepted the "internet as marketplace" paradigm rather than the "internet as information exchange medium" paradigm, you've lost half the battle.

Good point. And what about people who use the Internet for work? Should their traffic be slowed down because they aren't buying something but using the Internet in conjunction with a small business?
I'm about to set up a web server for my company's (records storage) clients so they can check their inventories. Should they be penalized on the speed? They're already paying for a high speed connection!
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This Space for Rent

Here's my prediction, @HOME users can only surf the web for limited hours. Need more surfing time? gotta pay extra.
Like back to old internet, can only surf 40 hours/month.

If I was one of those merchants and I was already paying for high speed access, I would drop ATT in a second and go with another provider. Isn't that what competition is all about?

...my $.02

And for the humorous side of this, clink on over to http://www.ubersoft.net/d/20001010.html and take a look. There's three strips about this so far, and this link is to the first one, so be sure to check out all three.
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Who recognizes his limitations is healthy;
Who ignores his limitations is sick.
The sage recognizes this sickness as a limitation.
And so becomes immune.

I agree wholeheartedly. When I first got cable it was advertised as commercial free. You paid for the cable and got shows commercial free. Not the networks naturally but the "cable channels" I could watch Bravo movies uninterrupted and the kids watched Nickelodeon all day uninterrupted. Then the commercials started and cable (except the movie channels) is no better than commercial TV.
If there is a nickel left in your pocket payday bet cable or some other company will find a way to make you pay twice for the service you get.
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It's much harder to hit a moving target!

A humorous slide-show. There is one inaccuracy that i can see though. The AT&T operator claims that they are THE phone company, and, of course, this is not true. We all know that they had their "we are the phone company status" stripped from them in the 80's when they were split into 7 regional operating companies. They even lost the rights to the "bell logo."

If they consider being the largest long distance carrier makes them "the" phone company, then let them live with that illusion.

I can see the disclaimer now on web pages such as lowestairfare.com., amazon.com, etc, "If AT&T is your ISP please refrain from making any purchases from this website. If your ISP is AT&T and you decide to still make a purchase, your credit card will be debited the amount of the fee that is charged us by your ISP. Thank you."
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ronnieg56 * *
Speakeasy works 4 me!

Only 60% of your CPU?? Man, what do you have, a dual 1-Ghz system??
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To define recursion we must first define recursion.

People pay big bux, millions of dollars to have their name higher on the list.

AT&T wants to use Barnes and Noble, you dont think Amazon was included in the bidding for who will be their primary retailer?

AT&T wants to use Infospace to host its portal, you dont think Yahoo, Lycos, Google bid for the rights?

I personally think this will help mom & pop shops out. If they can only afford a small pipe, and AT&T will increase the speed if they get a cut of the sales. Very good!

said by IronWolve:

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I personally think this will help mom & pop shops out. If they can only afford a small pipe, and AT&T will increase the speed if they get a cut of the sales. Very good!

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Mom and Pop shops don't have the buying power that the big guys do. They either have to charge more or accept a smaller profit margin. So where are they going to have the additional capital to bribe AT&T to give them a higher speed line? They'd have to pass on the cost to the consumer, you and me..

Incidentally, I have a choice whether or not I use Yahoo's search engine and I'm not paying them for service.
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This Space for Rent

OOfa .. I hope not.. I can do 40 hours in 3 days