S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge

Sun Oct 10 19:31:53 UTC 2021

On 10/10/21 21:08, Doug Barton wrote:

>
> Except that Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon all caved to SK's demands:
>
> "The popularity of the hit series "Squid Game" and other offerings 
> have underscored Netflix's status as the country's second-largest data 
> traffic generator after Google's YouTube, but the two are the only 
> ones to not pay network usage fees, which other content providers such 
> as Amazon, Apple and Facebook are paying, SK said."
>
> Which has emboldened SK to go after the bigger fish.

Prior to the popularity of "House Of Cards", Netflix would have bent 
over and taken it without any lube. Heck, they signed away plenty of 
rights around the world to several networks for "House Of Cards", purely 
because they didn't know how well their own in-house production would 
succeed. Fast-forward, it's 2021 now.

Other players in BigContent that haven't yet found their leverage, will do.

>
> One incentive I haven't seen anyone mention is that ISPs don't want to 
> charge customers what it really costs to provide them access. If 
> you're the only one in your market that is doing that, no one is going 
> to sign up because your pricing would be so far out of line with your 
> competition.

Isn't this the curse of a service people consider to be a basic utility 
for life to occur?

Unlike water and power, nearly anyone can start an ISP, and further feed 
the race to the bottom.

>
> Given that issue, I have some sympathy for eyeball networks wanting to 
> charge content providers for the increased capacity that is needed to 
> bring in their content. The cost would be passed on to the content 
> provider's customers...

But eyeballs are already paying you a monthly fee for 100Mbps of service 
(for example). So they should pay a surcharge, over-and-above that, that 
determines how they can use that 100Mbps? Seems overly odd, to me.

> (in the same way that corporations don't pay taxes, their customers 
> do),...

Many a company pays corporate tax, which is separate from the income tax 
they pay for compensation to their staff.

Of course, YMMV depending on where you live.

> so the people on that ISP who are creating the increased demand would 
> be (indirectly) paying for the increased capacity. That's actually 
> fairer for the other customers who aren't Netflix subscribers.
>
> The reason that Netflix doesn't want to do it is the same reason that 
> ISPs don't want to charge their customers what it really costs to 
> provide them access.

So what rat hole does this lead us down into? People who want to stream 
Youtube should pay their ISP for that? People who want to spend 
unmentionable hours on Linkedin should be their ISP for that? People who 
want to gawk over Samsung's web site because they love it so much, 
should pay their ISP for that?

Hey, maybe you're right. Maybe that's the model that is needed. After 
all, when we go to a rave, the entry fee is just the entry fee. You 
still need to fork out more cash to actually buy drinks, food or engage 
in some kind of entertainment that may be taking place inside that 
walled garden you paid a cover charge to be a part of.

I don't know...

Mark.