ISP's to push back on video downloads? - Page 2

All IPTV providers are probably not very happy with tiered-internet pricing. Unless the ISP actually IS the IPTV provider. Apple and Netflix for sure are not going to like this as it makes consumers think twice before buying an AppleTV or the future Netflix box.

In Canada Videotron droped their last unlimited bandwith plan a couple of month ago (extreme high-speed plan). Now we have limit per month and they charge by the meg. Bell also has limit. I think Cogeco still have an unlimited plan (or they are capped but don't enforce it) but this shouldn't last.

Some tried to sue them but since it's written in the contract that they can place a cap they really don't have a chance of winning.

I really don't think IPVOD will really fly. Maybe in the US but in Canada even ITunes isn't really that popular (especially since p2p is still an option in Canada).

And it all comes down to choice. I can find those oscure and popular movies on some physical medium on amazon or other store but what are the chance of you finding those film available on a server when disk space and bandwith are at a premium. They'll only keep those holywood blockbuster movie that they know they can make a lot of money. Forget about classic or B grade movie or foreign film.

You know this really happened recently right? They were charged double and told never to come back.

ooooohoooooo, I'll bet the backlash was fun off of that one.

This would suck if we started getting charged per usage by our ISP's, at least for those of us that use it a lot. But I really can't see Comcast or Verizon Fios doing this anytime in the foreseeable future. Plus, so many people barely use their internet, so they are making money off of these people who pay a flat rate.

As for the DL supporters hating BD... I am a DL supporter and don't hate BD or HD-DVD, but I won't support either just yet.. because it seems like, if made correctly, DL set-top boxes will be the most convenient and cheapest way of viewing HD movies from all studios. BD and HD-DVD are very inconvenient for the average consumer and casual high-def fan such as myself. We don't want to have to buy two players, and we also don't want to only buy one player and end up missing out on a ton of movies that aren't made on a certain format. Until there is a major fix in this area, people like me will continue watching regular DVDs and ordering movies On Demand. The DL concept excites me because it will most likely (at least eventually) have a greater selection to choose from than On Demand and if it is subscription-based, it will be even easier to use than Netflix's DVDs by mail.

BTW, a lot of people, including me, ended up on Comcast's list because a Windows Media Center online application, TV Tonic, had a bug that caused it to keep downloading the same content over and over. This caused it to download hundreds of GB without the user knowing it. It was fixed by a patch, but I just deleted it from my system permanently.

I now make it a practice to monitor the network activity to make sure that the utilization is 0 percent if I am not actively doing anything. I also secured my wireless router as well as I can, short of disabling it altogether.

Broadband internet in the US is already considerably behind a large portion of the world, and I doubt it's going to get WORSE. I really can't imagine anything but a considerable amount of improvement in speed over the next few years.

Basically, video download services are going to wind up screwing all of us.

Well, something to keep in mind is that not all bandwidth costs the same.

Most ISPs don't give a crap how much you download at 3am, since nobody else is using the network at that time. The bandwidth would otherwise have been wasted, so no big deal if some people want to max out their connection overnight.

The real concern is peak usage (which I would guess is between 8pm and midnight). When everyone is online and competing for bandwidth, then that bandwidth becomes more valuable, and thus more likely to be monitored.

A flat bandwidth cap doesn't address that, which is probably why comcast wants to keep some flexibility in who they define as a 'heavy' user.

well i have internet radio running about 8 hours long most days. i watch a few videos every week, plus the web feeds that have video running on them. i like to send a video cam email to family at least once a week, some times more when my girl who is in collage wants to chat with me.

add in both my younger girls internet radios playing and my wifes computer. plus the few hours late at night when i can play WOW.

i would be surprised if i got bandwidth UNDER 100G any month.

If HD video downloads really do take off to any significant degree, they won't have much choice. Almost every broadband provider out there has oversold capacity. The only one I can think of that hasn't is Verizon with FIOS. And that's not exactly wide-spread. The cable companies are the big culprits, though.

Edit: Also, the ISPs will want a piece of the pie. See: "Google is getting a free ride," from whomever it was that was their provider.

There's nothing wrong with oversold capacity per se. It's a much more efficient way to use the available pot of bandwidth (ie, everyone gets better speeds), and it works great most of the time.

The downside is that they need new models to react to new usage patterns, like a boon in IPTV, in order to maintain that efficiency.

One way they could respond would be the Akamai model, where the content providers would put a box at every ISP's head end. The ISP would then get content off that local box, instead of going through the internet backbone. The issue of "oversold capacity" never comes up, since the content is right there on the local network.

I might be wrong, but doesn't Apple already use Akamai for distribution? Maybe the solution is already there?

Maybe the AOL execs in the TWC staff came up with this "new, innovative" idea of usage billing. They're thinking: "Heck, it worked for us in 1991, can't we do it again?"

I could see some kind of surcharge for "excess" usage, but defining excessive could be tricky since customers have become accustomed to a flat fee pricing schedule since the mid-late 90's.

They're stomachs were too full to cause any trouble!

Brandon

Paying tiered prices for internet usage is exactly how it should be. Why should I foot the bill for someone downloading 100GB a month? I have no desire to download bit starved 720P, DD 5.1 HD movies. I much prefer high bit rate 1080P, losslesss audio, Blu-Rays. The same thing will happen with healthcare in this country. You want to smoke? Overweight? Visit the hospital/doctors office >5 times a year and you will be moved to a higher tiered premium. Its time for people to start paying for their own choices in life.

If they do this, I would be pissed as well should any customer who doesn't ever come close to the cap. Think about the business model. Right now, all of the customers in the lowest tier are subsidizing the bandwith that the highest tiered customers are gobbling up. We all pay a flat rate, so when I use 10% of what I could, and you use 110% of what is allowed, it more than balances out in favor of the ISP.

If they change it to a flat-rate + premium tier (kinda like phone companies that charge by the minute once you go over your allotment), then I still pay a flat rate and subsidize your excess, but they also get compensated for the excess by the end-user. So, assuming it would normally balance out (big assumption), they are now being paid double for the excess amount.

If any company is going to do this it should be a pure continuum and sliding scale, like utilities companies use. You pay for what you use, period. But will that ever happen? Probably not.


Exactly, lower tiered customers are already footing the bill for higher tiered customers like I said above. It either stays that way or goes to a complete sliding scale.

Brandon

If you are on a Mac, Activity monitor has a "data received" listing under the network tab. It only goes to the last reboot though, but you can probably get a good monthly estimate if you leave your Mac on for several days.

I haven't found a good windows solution yet.

They already had a pay per use service called America Online. At one time they had almost 70% of customers with internet acces. Absolutely HUGE! Obviously they had to change their policy when tons of customers flocked to much cheaper ISP's and they lost their huge marketshare. Time Warner was much too slow to react to the trend and ended up taking big losses on it's acquisition of AOL.

It's amazing that Time Warner didn't learn their lesson the first time around. You know what they say about history and those who are doomed to repeat it. Good luck TWC. Watch all your customers go elsewhere.

Meh, note that they don't make money on all customers. Ideally, they'll want the heavy users to voluntarily quit the service (and go make losses for the competition), while they can offer cheaper, faster (read: more competitive) service for the grandmas and everyone else out there.

This move is going to help them financially, unless they get hammered by the marketing.

Yes, because a dial up provider you connect to using a telephone line is completely analogous to a dedicated always on connection.

Tell me, how many places can you get broadband from in your area? In mine I'm stuck with Cox cable because DSL isn't available.

Time Warner should be able to price and sell its bandwidth anyway it wants. If we don't like the price there are always other options.

Not trying to me a smart ass here, but where are you going to go? Once one company does this and is sucessful, all the other large ones are going to follow. So you may have small ISP's will to sell unlimited, but all the bandwidth hogs will go there and they will soon be out of business.

I am fine with the idea as I have a teenager in the neighborhood who keeps his computer maxed all the time with downloads. He must have 10,000 or more songs he will never listen to and thousands of movies he will never watch just to be able to say he has them.

At the expense of my ability to download a large file for work one in a while. So if his parents had to pay extra for his usage, they may not look the other way so quickly. Plus it is only a matter of time before he gets a RIAA/MPAA letter.

I'm in Seattle and I have quite a few choices. Even if you don't live in an "as wired" metropolitan area such as Seattle, there are still options such as satellite and new wireless radio broadband, cellular radio broadband, and there are a few other technologies in the works as well.


The cable companies don't necessarily own all the infrastructure involved. Believe me... the cable companies had better tread lightly unless they want the Federal Government getting involved with regulation. After Enron getting away with all they did with the deregulation of Power and infrastructure control, I would hope the Feds have a close eye on cable operators and broadband providers. Don't make Al Gore pull the cord on his invention

Actually its rather easy. If you go to network connections and click on the network connection you use for internet connection it will tell you how much you have received and sent. I usually go to properties and put it on the system tray.

As for people talking about footing the bill for others. Its that way in almost every bussiness. Whether its buying the TV that is marketed up to cover the costs of selling DVD's to customers that have almost no margin. Or its buying the SUV that sold at well above costs to make up of the sedans and compacts sold at below costs. Its about the bill you pay on your cell phone that covers them putting up a tower in California. Its about you paying taxes for schools even though you have no children. Trust me you pick any market and I could find a way to show you how one side is making up for the other.

Are there? I just recently got another option for internet access in my area that didn't involve DSL at much slower speeds. If there isn't direct competition of the same infrastructure you can bet that issues will begin to arise concerning closer regulation.

Brandon

I totally agree. 100%

That's the big thing. They can but that doesn't we can't debate if its a good thing. It just alienates customers and then pushes them towards a company willing to give them unlimited access we already went from limited connections i don't see how you can develop a business model that goes backwards. In the end customers not worried about their bandwidth will still be forced to pay for that big network that isn't used as much. Its not like you are buying a candy bar, anything not used right away goes to waste, when people its just money gone and bandwidth wasted.

The best that can happen from this is it allows them to eventually stop upgrading the lines and maybe (maybe being key) charge less to those other users. Right now I guess they count on being able to charge people more for their bandwidth use on the high end and hope that those people didn't just sign on because it was unlimited and leave. If it was me their are many other options even if their slightly slower then cable, and if Fios ever comes to me sometimes faster that will allow me the same access I am getting now.

You're illustrating my point though: it's already built into the cost. So take your analogy and now imagine one citizen paying more in taxes for every child above 2 that they have in public school. This is in addition to the other people who have no children using the system but still pay taxes. It's in addition to, not in place of, which means they are doubling revenue because they're being paid for it twice. And this revenue isn't going to better schools or roads or military equipment like some taxes do, it's going to direct profit for the ISP.

If all cable companies with monopolies in certain areas start doing this and can keep their customer base it'll be time to start buying stock.

Brandon

can't wait to see what happens when downloading hd reaches popularity i picture
major outages be it amps, nodes or servers i just don't see this working so well for
quite a few years.

I get it, you live somewhere that has plenty of options and can't fathom that those of us in flyover states (ie. most of the country) are YEARS from getting this tech. I'm lucky to get a cellphone signal most of the time.