I don't know if yall have been keeping up with it, but there's been rumblings that Time Warner (one of the biggest ISPs in the US) has been going to trial (not implement, just trial) monthly download caps like we have in Australia, and have had forever.

Wired have a new article which is a good summary of the situation.

I found some of the comments to be hilarious:

- "This is more threatening to our personal freedom and right to free expression and populist actions than the Pirate bay trial..."
- "Data caps are censorship. They put you into slavery of watching the meter as inaccurate that meter will be."
- "its a book burning if ever there was one. f*ck time warner"

Now, to be fair to Americans, they're just lagging behind us here - the ACCC quickly jumped on ISPs selling "unlimited" plans and smashed them into compliance in a very useful manner. It seems they're still selling "unlimited" plans in the US and now they're trying to cap them so people are (justly) whining.

Because they've been sold unlimited plans, people are trying to use them as such. Unfortunately the Internet's killer app - peer-to-peer - didn't fit in to any of their bandwidth projections. BitTorrent sells itself to content creators/publishers as a way to lower the cost of moving data to customers - but that cost doesn't vanish, it's just spread out amongst all the users who are paying a flat monthly fee for 'unlimited' data transfer - and thus, it's these ISPs that end up footing the bill. So that's basically why (I think) these movements are occuring in the US).

There's all sorts of conjecture about this (as indicated in the comments), but frankly, I ascribe to Hanlon's Razor on this one - these companies aren't being evil, they're just retarded, trying to save money but doing it in the typical manner of a big, lumbering incumbent telco. I don't think they're intentionally trying to stop piracy. I don't think they're in cahoots with the media companies. I don't think they're trying to censor people. I just think they're looking at their bandwidth bills and going, "s***, we need to upgrade links or reduce usage", and they're picking the easier one.

Now, I have a different perspective to most people. I know hating on caps is all the rage, but the simple fact is bandwidth is a limited resource. If you let everyone download or upload all the time with no limits, noone will have any respect for bandwidth, and it'll just lead to much more congestion than is otherwise necessary.

I am a firm believer in download limits, mostly because I know my connection to my ISP is a shared resource - and then my ISPs connection to the rest of the world is a shared resource, and I don't like the idea of people using bandwidth unnecessarily and wantonly, just because it's there.

Of course, I also don't want my ISP to rape me on costs just because they can. I believe that mirroring and better distribution techniques is a better way for ISPs to save money (caching, mirroring, local Akamai clusters, etc). As I suggest in this post on Slashdot - Australia has a lot more mirrors than a lot of other places so Aussies can get content quickly and easily. We have Steam servers, lots of Linux mirrors, etc, etc. This has lead to more competition between ISPs to have more content that is of interest to people - so for example, if you like games, you can pick a gaming ISP like BigPond or Internode.

This is, of course, ONLY useful if you have total Net Neutrality - that is, your ISP doesn't interfere with what is happening on your wire (ie, they don't prioritise one service over another). Fortunately in Australia noone is doing this (yet), and I'd hope that if anyone tried to, groups like the EFA and ACCC would be all over them in a heartbeat.

Anyway, this started out as a link to the Wired article and turned into a brain dump.

It really is blind rage, a lot of Americans are crazy in this sense though. Some companies have amazing caps (like Comcast’s 250GB a month cap) and if you think about it, in the first month you'd run out of things to download, illegally or legally.

Anyway, this started out as a link to the Wired article and turned into a brain dump.

You mean a rant.

I think interwebs should be just like any other utility we have. Gas, electricity and water are now all charged per usage so I believe the internet should be as well. A flat fee for a subscription to your ISP of choice and then whatever cents/MB on top of that.

If I want to run my aircon 24x7 at 18degrees (or heating at 24 because its so fricking cold here) then I can but I just pay more on my electricity (or gas) bill for it. So if I want run my torrents 24x7 then there shouldn't be some limit imposed on my usage based on the average usage of all my ISP's subscribers.

Well as per usual, if someone thinks they can make a buck selling unlimited plans, and stealing customers from the greedy big ISPs, then they will stake their cash and offer an unlimited deal.

Otherwise this is just the market at work demonstrating that as with any resource offered on an unlimited basis, that is will inevitably be used to excess.

sure, id love to be unlimited, but ive learnt to live with caps:

so i say, caps for all!

I agree with what you are saying and its a bit of a laugh at all the Seppo's whingeing about the caps.

But I still think that Aussie Broadband Caps are poor value. I'm all for a cap to reign in the download monkeys but I still think we pay a bit too much for what we get here.

Especially the post YouTube revolution we are in now. Which accounts for most of my download content nowerdays.

Pretty sure I read Time Warner was going to be 50GB. I think I read that one of them was ~ 250GB - and people still complain.

last edited by mongie at 11:40:15 21/Apr/09

Now, I have a different perspective to most people. I know hating on caps is all the rage, but the simple fact is bandwidth is a limited resource. If you let everyone download or upload all the time with no limits, noone will have any respect for bandwidth, and it'll just lead to much more congestion than is otherwise necessary.

But is bandwidth limitation really helped by a data cap? I was under the impression that the limitation is the amount of data that can be passed at any one time, as in it's limited by the capacity of the cable to be able to do 10mb/s or 100mb/s etc. Wouldn't it be better to simply give unlimited plans on slower connections rather then have huge caps on fast connections?

I can download at 700Kb/s but I rarely see that speed because most sites seem to limit their speed per connection so I only get to download at 125Kb/s or there is just a lot of congestion so my dl speed goes up and down. I do get that speed sometimes like when downloading from my ISP or from high bandwidth sites like streaming TV from ABC but it's pretty rare to get it from torrents or general websites.

Pretty sure I read Time Warner was going to be 50GB. I think I read that one of them was ~ 250GB - and people still complain.

From the article I linked, "In early April, Time Warner Cable proposed a four-city trial of 5 to 40-GB caps for $30 to $55 per month, with an extra charge of $1/GB". Comcast is 250gb.

lets say we limit people to ADSL1 (stupid idea)
they can attain 150kb/sec. It's still possible to do in excess of 350GB in a month.

I'm with ticcles on this one. The internet is about data as a resource, so charge for data. Also, legislate that companies must provide a per MB or per GB rate (similar to what's happening in grocery stores now with per kg rate), and let them compete on a level playing field with things like servicing and first line support.

I also agree with the need for download caps, but I'm also of the opinion that the bar has been set far too low for these in Australia. Starting with the f***ed up 3GB cap when it first came in and crippled my BigPond cable.

Ever since then, I reckon the average Internet plan has been at least 75% of what the allowance for price should be.

This is of course due to the high cost of wholesale bandwidth in the country and our penchant for US hosted content, but that doesn't mean it can't be addressed. If the only way that's going to happen is Telstra being properly neutered, then bring it on.

For the time being, we're basically at the mercy of our ISPs to provide content services and let's face it, they're pretty f***ing useless at it. Very little of the kind of content that _could be_ unmetered actually is, and even then it's still a minority of ISPs that offer these. The reality is that it's really only due to a handful of dedicated people that we're offered the mirroring services that we are.

If the big players like google, yahoo etc got involved locally, things would be quite different. But they've obviously found local pricing to be too prohibitive to bother setting up here and so when you play a youtube video, you're still downloading from the US.

Americans have had it too good for too long. Fair enough the whole advertising 'unlimited' when it's not, but they're not whinging about that - they're whinging about being capped in any way at all.

Any other service - water, power, phone, is pay for use, why shouldn't it be the same for internet?

A bunch of crybabies the lot of them.

and if you think about it, in the first month you'd run out of things to download, illegally or legally.

You're doing it wrong

I'd be pretty pissed if my ISP said 'hey guys, we're "trialling" a new system where by you get less data for the exact same amount of money!"

This is of course due to the high cost of wholesale bandwidth in the country and our penchant for US hosted content, but that doesn't mean it can't be addressed. If the only way that's going to happen is Telstra being properly neutered, then bring it on.

I have no idea how you made the leap from high wholesale bandwidth costs and the majority of content being sourced from the US to Telstra needing to be "neutered".

There is competition on local metro transit in most capitals already. Powertel, uuecom, telstra, optus, pipe. The list goes on. The only places where there is no competition is where there is not enough demand to make it fiscally attractive. In those areas everyone just whines about Telstra's prices instead of investing themselves.

There is also competition on overseas transit at present with more coming online from pipe and SXC in the near future, Telstra hardly has a monopoly here.

It is all too easy to just blame Telstra for all the Australian internet industry's problems instead of blaming the historical and continuing lack of investment from the other Tier1 and Tier2 players.

are you contracted by telstra to defend them on internet forums?

I just offered the Telstra factor as a suggestion (note the if the only way). Because they seem like a obstruction that's stopping more companies investing in national backhaul - based on examples like the Basslink situation.

So what, in your opinion, is the cause of the price barrier that is stopping these big global content companies from investing in local Australian hosting for their sites?

There was a point in time where ISPS were offering unmetered peering traffic over PIPE etc. Once upon a time didn't even BigPond cable have unmetered traffic from user to user? They've pretty much all stopped now (with the exception of a few legacy plans), which suggests to me that international traffic might not be the big limited factor it used to be.

last edited by Dan at 13:19:30 21/Apr/09

Lack of investment in competing infrastructure.

Due to the concessions the ACCC keeps handing out to Telstra's competitors regarding pricing it has become much more economical for them to sit back and use Telstra infrastructure at the regulated price.

If instead they got jack of Telstra's pricing and rolled out their own infrastructure you would see true competition. Telstra's pseduo competitor, Optus, is happy to maintain a number2 position and just matches Telstra moves when it comes to pricing and caps in the internet space.

Look at the competition that is available in mobile phone/mobile internet space because of competing infrastructure.

are you contracted by telstra to defend them on internet forums?

no, but sometimes you have to step in for the guy getting beaten up by the angry mob.

Due to the concessions the ACCC keeps handing out to Telstra's competitors regarding pricing it has become much more economical for them to sit back and use Telstra infrastructure at the regulated price.

Won't a separation of Telstra (what I meant when i used the word "neutered") resolve that though? Since the massive over-regulation wouldn't be needed to control pricing if there was no longer a monopoly provider?

Why do you think the new Telstra-wholesale company won't just gouge the market for what it can where there is no competition?

The thing is, even if you forget the cost of transmission over an antiquated network (eg. Testra's ATM and 1st gen TWE networks of the ERX and Shastas in the early, mid, and some late 2000s), today, with a brand new schmicko network, a 10G ethernet card for a modern BRAS costs something in the order of $70,000. That's alot of brass for 1) off-net traffic 2) replicated (potentially illegal) traffic 3) revenue sapping (substitution) traffic.

The 3G cap was pretty nasty but if you recall there were a hell of a lot of outages around that time and a significant proportion of those were directly related to the ADSL network _as it stood at the time_ not being able to handle the demand being placed (primarily by wholesale customers on it). So take the tinfoil hat off for a moment.

The reason smaller ISPs were able to offer PIPE over DSL access links is because the additional overhead to the AGVC circuit at 1.5 meg was negligible in comparison to the 8/20MB you get nowadays.

It is all too easy to just blame Telstra for all the Australian internet industry's problems instead of blaming the historical and continuing lack of investment from the other Tier1 and Tier2 players.

I completely agree with you here. Simon Hackett is one of the worst offenders... although. That being said, I'd hardly consider Internode big enough to fund their own backhaul... but still.

Why do you think the new Telstra-wholesale company won't just gouge the market for what it can where there is no competition?

Thats not the point of structural separation. The point is that when they gouge the market, they have to gouge Telstra too.

Why do you think the new Telstra-wholesale company won't just gouge the market for what it can where there is no competition?

Isn't that the point you just made before though? If they then gouged the market wouldn't that encourage other players to invest in infrastructure to provide competitive prices?

I would be perfectly happy to pay a reasonable amount for data consumption ala electricity. At a high level to me its quite analogous.

You cant deliver infinite electricity over a single line (hence why there's three phase and whatever else). Nor can the power station deliver infinite electricity (if total consumption is too high you get brown/black outs)

So start charging a reasonable for data consumption, I have no problem with this model. Given the current cost of internet plans, $1 per gig on ADSL2 seems reasonable.

$1 per GB would be quite reasonable as far as I'm concerned. At the moment, I pay nearly twice that.

So start charging a reasonable for data consumption, I have no problem with this model. Given the current cost of internet plans, $1 per gig on ADSL2 seems reasonable.

That'd be OK if you could put your own arbitrary caps (eg, I don't want to accidentally leave my Ubuntu torrents running on my Linux box and come back in a week and realise I've used eleventy thousand squiggabytes). But that seems like the sort of thing that could relatively trivially be implemented, surely.

I don't mind the idea of data blocks, like Internode use. I just want it to be cheaper.

At the moment, I can use my 55GB, get capped, but then purchase 10GB extra for $15. Thats not the end of the world, but being able to purchase it at $1/GB would be a more reasonable cost.

hell yeah I'd pay $1/GB

it would probably make me think before I went ape s*** on mininova etc
if I've got 150gb a month to use, I use it all just "because"

if I had 50gb for $70~ or so and then every gig after 50 cost me $1 I would think twice before I downloaded those two seasons of monkey magic (that I never watched)
but at the same time if I really wanted to watch a high def movie on apple tv I could and it would only cost me $2 on top of of the rental charge (or $0 if i'm with iinet anyway)

I think interwebs should be just like any other utility we have. Gas, electricity and water are now all charged per usage so I believe the internet should be as well. A flat fee for a subscription to your ISP of choice and then whatever cents/MB on top of that.

+1.

The point is that when they gouge the market, they have to gouge Telstra too.

And the new Telstra-wholesale company cares if they gouge the new Telstra-retail company because?

ISP's want to sell you a high capacity plan so you're locked in though, and then hope you use only a fraction of it.

The comparison with electricity is reasonable, but note that service and connection charges make up a reasonable proportion of your electricity bill.


last edited by orbitor at 15:09:01 21/Apr/09

And the new Telstra-wholesale company cares if they gouge the new Telstra-retail company because?

Exactly...

They wouldn't care. That's his whole point, everyone is treated equally so they can no longer whinge about preferential treatment. The result should then be other companies ponying up to provide more infrastructure because there's now a market for it.

Isn't that the point you just made before though? If they then gouged the market wouldn't that encourage other players to invest in infrastructure to provide competitive prices?

Yes, it is the exact point and it makes no difference if they are separated or not. No one can argue that Bigpond's ability to negate the cost of dealing with Telstra wholesale has let them position themselves as a cheap alternative to the rest of the market.

Yet you think that when/if Telstra gets seperated and Bigpond have to pay Telstra Wholesale prices with real money it is going to shake things up? I don't see it making any difference.

There will still be no competition in the wholesale space and the other players are still going to demand the wholesale price be regulated by the ACCC.

last edited by ara at 15:13:51 21/Apr/09

(or $0 if i'm with iinet anyway)

There's the AFACT case right there..

$1 per GB would be quite reasonable as far as I'm concerned. At the moment, I pay nearly twice that.

Try paying 150 times that for excess data.

~ If you exceed the standard data usage allowance of your plan, any additional usage will be considered excess usage and will be charged to your account at a rate of $0.15 per MB (megabyte) until you reach 2GB of excess usage, after which you will be speed limited to 64 or 128kbps depending on your plan until the end of your billing month. Excess usage charges may not be invoiced in the month in which they occur and may be billed up to 3 months in arrears. Usage means monthly combined upload and download data transfer 1 Gigabyte = 1000 Megabytes. Due to usage rounding, total usage shown here may differ slightly from what is displayed on your bill.

I hate optus!

I have been on unlimited at what works out at about 50c/gig, stop crying

last edited by Ross at 15:23:50 21/Apr/09

^^ Well, there's heaps of competition at the Wholesale space. It's just that the upstream provider sets a carriage price above and beyond what the wholesale market can compete for. Building some universal NBN backhaul (or legislating it) would go a looooong ways in getting more value to end users.

They wouldn't care. That's his whole point, everyone is treated equally so they can no longer whinge about preferential treatment. The result should then be other companies ponying up to provide more infrastructure because there's now a market for it.

I don't see how you come to this conclusion. Bigpond not having to pay Telstra wholesale real money isn't stopping others from investing in infrastructure.

Telstra is. ISPs can cherry pick all the urban exchanges, but the cost of backhaul transport from whatever goat-track exchange to a regional POP is extortionate.

dranged, how does this change with Telstra splitting?

Not sure. Are they being split? Medusa is pretty resilient.

dranged, how does this change with Telstra splitting?

Perhaps Telstra having to actually pay the large amounts of money for regional backhaul will cause a rethink on the charges?

Its all good to say that onces their relationship is over, the network company can charge what they like... but seriously - they do need customers, otherwise they're operating an asset that doesn't make any money.

Once their customer-by-default is gone (due to high prices of backhaul) maybe they will have to reduce the backhaul costs to attract customers?

Question, if they split it how do they stop Bigpond investing in their own infrastructure like any other ISP has or can?

How do you stop them using their massive client base and existing capital to build their network again?

While you may be able to legislate to stop Telstra-Wholesale getting into retail, how can you stop Bigpond getting into wholesale when other retail ISPs are already in that space themselves? (chime, powertel, primus, optus etc)

s***! dam! guys think this through a little more... about p2p

how hard is it to get aussie files compared to american tv shows? dam well harder... why? coz theres not as many aussie pc's hosting the crap (mainly the country of origin users). Why? coz we can only upload so much before we get capped.

Most of our s*** comes from overseas like US... if they get caps on uploading...alot of files aren't going to be so readily available... this will screw us over.

and uh, by american shows i mean amateur movies or some crap or linux files... legally allowed files.

imo, torrents are a dumb way to distributed files because the system does not take into account regions.

if you could set a region in your torrent client and then your client seeked out other people in your region from the swarm that would be an awesome improvement, but as it is, it sucks.

what we need is an Australian astraweb/giganews mirror. then who needs torrents.


last edited by ara at 15:53:56 21/Apr/09

Perhaps Telstra having to actually pay the large amounts of money for regional backhaul will cause a rethink on the charges?

This is a great idea in theory, but in practice I'm not sure it would make much of a difference. But it's certainly one more thing to 'hold back the fray' and diffuse market focus on what it needs.

Its all good to say that onces their relationship is over, the network company can charge what they like... but seriously - they do need customers, otherwise they're operating an asset that doesn't make any money.

..like the NBN?

Once their customer-by-default is gone (due to high prices of backhaul) maybe they will have to reduce the backhaul costs to attract customers?

It's absolutely not just backhaul. Bigpond have 50% of the market, and are certainly amongst the most expensive. They have a competitive advantage, a result which is well outside of 'market collusion'.

While you may be able to legislate to stop Telstra-Wholesale getting into retail, how can you stop Bigpond getting into wholesale when other retail ISPs are already in that space themselves? (chime, powertel, primus, optus etc)

Any legislation should be aimed at stopping any vertical integration, not just singling out Telstra. They are the prime example though.

if you could set a region in your torrent client and then your client seek out other people in your region from the swarm that would be an awesome improvement, but as it is it sucks.

When ISPs had free pipe, I knew people using peer guardian doing just that. Sure it takes a fair bit longer to suck down a torrent when you're limiting yourself to only peers on PIPE connected Aussie ISPS, but there was apparently still enough for it to be worthwhile. All quota free!

Its all good to say that onces their relationship is over, the network company can charge what they like... but seriously - they do need customers, otherwise they're operating an asset that doesn't make any money.

seriously, you aren't getting it. where else are their customers going to go when there is no one else providing that service? they just going to close up shop to get back at Telstra-wholesale for charging too much?

There is no benefit from splitting up Telstra unless there is a competitor in the wholesale market because that is where the monopoly exists.

nats for communication minister!!!!

When ISPs had free pipe, I knew people using peer guardian doing just that. Sure it takes a fair bit longer to suck down a torrent when you're limiting yourself to only peers on PIPE connected Aussie ISPS, but there was apparently still enough for it to be worthwhile. All quota free!

Actually I found this article today on the BitTorrent site detailing the "BitTorrent Local Tracker Discovery Protocol" specification.

My limited understanding after glancing over it - basically, an ISP can create DNS records and run a local tracker on their network. Software that supports this extension can then use this local tracker to identify other peers that are local to their network. ISPs can run caches (somehow) or it can just be used to let local peers talk to each other more efficiently.

This would be really great for Aussie ISPs to support.

in the first month you'd run out of things to download, illegally or legally.

Hahaha, so naive.

I think interwebs should be just like any other utility we have.

100% agree, the $1 per gigabyte figure thrown about previously is actually a little cheaper than the current plan I'm on anyway. Even $1.50 GB 'peak', $0.50 'off peak' and the like.

Interweb data transfer (like water, gas, electricity, phone) is a limited resource so it just has to be priced intelligently, not stupidly like it is currently. The first 60GB costs $70 then it costs $200 per GB after that? WTF?

This would be really great for Aussie ISPs to support.

Hopefully it wouldn't make them even more likely to get sued into oblivion by powerful interests. I sure hope all the recent legal faff works out OK for iiNet.

Hopefully it wouldn't make them even more likely to get sued into oblivion by powerful interests

Yeh you'd be nuts to try to improve market position or reduce costs by providing better P2P - especially torrents. Its just too hot right now.

Anyone ever have a dial up plan that was pay per hour? I did with Telstra, it was awesome. They should bring that back. $3.95/hour sounds like a fair price.

Haha my first 'Internet' account was nine bucks an hour dial-up from CompuServe!

I spent about a thousand bucks back in ~1994 before I realised this was madness.

I bought in blocks from PowerUp. Had to dial up to them and then use a terminal to access Gopher, NNTP, Email, etc.

With the telstra split, whats to stop telstra just operating telstra retail at a theoretical lose by paying telstra wholesale the ridiculous amounts they charge other isp's, becuase they know they are making money on the wholesale anyway.

This applies more for mobile phones, but what the f*** is a "cap"??? I know what the plans mean, but the plans aren't capped... at best, with internet plans, the only thing that gets capped is your speed, right? With mobile phones, you get a certain amount of value with a minimum payment, but there is NOTHING that is capped! It's a brilliant marketing ploy that makes you think you're getting something for nothing, when it's actually the complete reverse.

I should point out too that for mobile phones the term "value" or "included value in a cap" is completely arbitrary, as call costs change from plan to plan. So if you get $300 worth of calls in one "cap" plan, that $300 might not actually translate into as many phone calls as $300 worth in the next plan on the list. Again, it's a massive marketing ploy that just confuses consumers and makes them spend more money.

Triple post (cause this "cap" s*** pisses me off and I cbf editing): a real "cap" would mean that you only get charged for what you use, up to a certain point. Eg. a true $100 cap plan would mean that you pay $1 for every gig that you use, until you have spent $100, at which point you would either get blocked from making any more downloads, or you would stop paying money for any additional downloads. THAT would be a "cap".

This is, of course, ONLY useful if you have total Net Neutrality - that is, your ISP doesn't interfere with what is happening on your wire (ie, they don't prioritise one service over another). Fortunately in Australia noone is doing this (yet), and I'd hope that if anyone tried to, groups like the EFA and ACCC would be all over them in a heartbeat.

I believe I would be correct in saying Exetel and Westnet both deprioritise P2P traffic.

I believe I would be correct in saying Exetel and Westnet both deprioritise P2P traffic.

I don't have a problem with that AS LONG AS THEY MAKE THIS FACT KNOWN before people are signing up.

I don't use p2p so I'd be more likely to sign up with an ISP that deprioritises P2P, on the basis that I'd get better performance because less people would be whoring the links.