S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge

Sun Oct 10 21:42:16 UTC 2021

[some snipping below]

Also just to be clear, these are my own opinions, not necessarily shared 
by any current or former employers.

On 10/10/21 12:31 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
> 
> 
> On 10/10/21 21:08, Doug Barton wrote
>> 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.

Yes, I get that. But as you pointed out here and in other comments, the 
ISP market is based entirely on undercutting competitors (with a lot of 
gambling thrown in, as Matthew pointed out).

>> (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.

I didn't say income tax. Corporate taxes are considered an expense by 
the corporation paying them. Like all other expenses, they are factored 
into the cost of goods/services sold.

>> 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?

First, I'm not saying "should." I'm saying that given the market 
economics, having the content providers who use "a lot" of bandwidth do 
something to offset those costs to the ISPs might be the best/least bad 
option. Whether "something" is a local cache box, peering, money, or 
<other> is something I think that the market should determine.

And to answer Matthew's question, I don't know what "a lot" is. I think 
the market should determine that as well.

And for the record, not only have I never worked for an ISP, I was 
saying all the way back in the late '90s that the oversubscription 
business model (which almost always includes punishing users who 
actually use their bandwidth) is inherently unfair to the customers, and 
when the Internet becomes more pervasive in daily life will come back to 
bite them in the ass. I was laughed at for being hopelessly naive, not 
understanding how the bandwidth business works, etc.