Why do some ISP's have bandwidth quotas?

Mon Oct 8 14:10:57 UTC 2007

At 09:50 AM 10/8/2007, Joe Greco wrote:

> > On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, Mark Newton wrote:
> > > Thought experiment:  With $250 per megabit per month transit and $30 -
> > > $50 per month tail costs, what would _you_ do to create the perfect
> > > internet industry?
> >
> > I would fix the problem, ie get more competition into these two areas
> > where the prices are obvisouly way higher than in most parts of the
> > civilised world, much higher than is motivated by the placement there in
> > the middle of an ocean.
> >
> > Perhaps it's hard to get the transoceanic cost down to european levels,
> > but a 25 time difference, that's just too much.
>
>That's approximately correct.  The true answer to the thought experiment
>is "address those problems, don't continue to blindly pay those costs and
>complain about how unique your problems are."  Because the problems are
>neither unique nor new - merely ingrained.  People have solved them
>before.

"Address those problems" sounds quite a bit like an old Sam Kinnison 
routine, paraphrased as "move to where the broadband is! You live in 
a %*^&* expensive place." Sorry, but your statement comes across as 
arrogant, at least to me.

> > And about the local tail, that's also 5-10 times higher than normal in the
> > western world, I don't see that being motivated by some fundamental
> > difference.
>
>The fundamental difference is that it's owned by a monopoly.

Bingo. So, how do you propose an ISP in Australia fix the political 
structure, and do it in a timescale that fits your expectations?

>Here in the US, we wrestled with Mark's problems around a decade ago,
>when transit was about that expensive, and copper cost big bucks.  There
>was a lot of fear and paranoia about selling DSL lines for a fraction of
>what the cost of the circuit if provided with committed bandwidth would
>cost.
>
>The whole Info Superhighway thing was supposed to result in a national
>infrastructure that provided residential users with 45Mbps to-the-home
>capabilities on a carrier-neutral network built by the telcos.  These
>promises by the telcos were carefully and incrementally revoked, while
>the incentives we provided to the telcos remained.  As a result, we're
>now in a situation where the serious players are really the ILEC and
>the cable companies, and they've shut out the CLEC's from any reasonable
>path forward.
>
>Despite this, wholesale prices did continue to drop.  Somehow, amazingly,
>the ILEC found it possible to provide DSL at extremely competitive
>prices.  Annoyingly, a bit lower than "wholesale" costs...  $14.99/mo
>for 768K DSL, $19.99/mo for 1.5M, etc.  They're currently feeling the
>heat from Road Runner, whose prices tend towards being a bit more
>expensive, but speeds tend towards better too.  :-)

I should note that this applies only where the ILEC (or cable 
company, for that matter) has bothered to deploy service. Unlike 
telephone service, there has been no "universal service" approach. 
There are large areas without service other than dialup.

Verizon, it's particularly sad, charges $19.95/month for dialup 
that'll also tie up a POTS line, where it'll offer the lowest DSL 
speeds at $14.95. And Verizon "cherry picks" the places where it 
offers DSL (and moreso for FiOS) so the affluent towns get high speed 
service, while the rural and poorer places only have available dialup 
(and that dialup is more expensive).

I would be curious if any of the places in the world with higher-cost 
high-speed service also have any sort of requirement of coverage?

>Anyways, as displeased as I may be with the state of affairs here in the
>US, it is worth noting that the speeds continue to improve, and projects
>such as U-verse and FIOS are promising to deliver higher bandwidth to
>the user, and maintain pressure on the cable companies for them to do
>better as well.

Of course this only applies if you live in an inner city or wealthy suburb.

>US providers do not seem to be doing significant amounts of DPI or other
>policy to manage bandwidth consumption.  That doesn't mean that there's
>no overcommit crisis, but right now, limits on upload speeds appear to
>combine with a lack of killer centralized content distribution apps and
>as a result, the situation is stable.
>
>My interest in this mainly relates to how these things will impact the
>Internet in the future, and I see some possible problems developing.

Do you believe there is any reason for the "Internet of the Future" 
to be everywhere? You're concerned about video over IP delivery and 
other advanced applications, but do you expect to make a video call 
to your cousin who owns a farm outside of town? This question is 
largely ignored in discussions about cranking the 'net to ever faster 
speeds, at least in the US. I'd be interested to know how it's 
addressed elsewhere in the world.

>   I
>do believe that video-over-IP is a coming thing, and I see a very scary
>(for network operators) scenario of needing to sustain much greater levels
>of traffic, as podcast-like video delivery is something that would be a
>major impact.  Right now, both the ILEC and the cable company appear to
>be betting that they'll continue to drive the content viewing of their
>customers through broadcast, and certainly that's the most efficient
>model we've found, but it only works for "popular" stuff.  That still
>leaves a wildly large void for a new service model.  The question of
>whether or not such a thing can actually be sustained by the Internet is
>fascinating, and whether or not it'll crush current network designs.
>
>With respect to the AU thing, it would be interesting to know whether or
>not the quotas in AU have acted to limit the popularity of services such
>as YouTube (my guess would be an emphatic yes), as I see YouTube as being
>a precursor to video things-to-come.  Looking at whether or not AU has
>stifled new uses for the Internet, or has otherwise impacted the way users
>use the Internet, could be interesting and potentially valuable
>information to futurists and even other operators.
>
>... JG
>--
>Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
>"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
>won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on 
>e-mail spam(CNN)
>With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.