S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge

Thu Oct 28 12:23:14 UTC 2021

On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 3:41 PM Matthew Walster <matthew at walster.org> wrote:
The user initiates the connection to the CDN. The user is paying for a
level of access to the internet via the BT network, with varying tiers of
speed at particular costs. They are advertised as "Unlimited broadband: With
no data caps or download limits, you can do as much as you like online." on
their website. Many CDNs bring the data closer to the customer, either
embedded within their network, or meeting at various PoPs/IXPs around the
country.

Seems pretty disingenuous to now say the called party has to pay as well,
in stark contrast to decades of precedent with their telephone product,
just because their customers are actually using what they were sold.

All in all, this raises an interesting question. Is British Telecom running
> their networks so hot, that just keeping the lights on requires capacity
> upgrades or are they just looking for freebies?

What happened is pretty clear, and not just for BT or SK.  Those providers,
as a business decision, built their business models around a certain level
of oversubscription that would strike a balance between customers not being
unhappy and squeezing as much headroom out of the network before upgrades
are required (beefier routers/switches, fatter pipes, more peering/transit,
etc).  That business model got upended when that acceptable level of
oversubscription changed.  Video streaming was the puddle of
gasoline/petrol on the floor, and the change in user traffic patterns was
the lit match.

By asking content providers to hand over money to those carriers in
exchange for (better) access to their customers, many of the ISPs could in
fact be triple-dipping because they already get revenue from their
customers and some also get various government subsidies to provide certain
types of service or services in certain areas.

Definitely doesn't pass the sniff test.

Thank you
jms

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