Internet Service Providers To Start Charging For Bandwith

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

The NY Times gives a good overview - the bigger problem is that the content providers (studios, radio stations and TV networks) are gearing up to start offering their content on the Internet via streaming. Other businesses offering online data backups are reaching into consumer's homes. Bandwidth caps with high service fees will delay if not limit business growth. And think - every Youtube vid you watch will cost you. Might make us more selective eh? No more dancing rodents or Rick Roll vids.

All three companies [including ATT DSL not just cable internet providers] say that placing caps on broadband use will ensure fair access for all users.

Internet metering is a throwback to the days of dial-up service, but at a time when video and interactive games are becoming popular, the experiments could have huge implications for the future of the Web.

Millions of people are moving online to watch movies and television shows, play multiplayer video games and talk over videoconference with family and friends. And media companies are trying to get people to spend more time online: the Disneys and NBCs of the world keep adding television shows and movies to their Web sites, giving consumers convenient entertainment that soaks up a lot of bandwidth.

Moreover, companies with physical storefronts, like Blockbuster, are moving toward digital delivery of entertainment. And new distributors of online content — think YouTube — are relying on an open data spigot to make their business plans work.

Critics of the bandwidth limits say that metering and capping network use could hold back the inevitable convergence of television, computers and the Internet......

Even if the caps are far above the average users’ consumption, their mere existence could cause users to reduce their time online. Just ask people who carefully monitor their monthly allotments of cellphone minutes and text messages.

“As soon as you put serious uncertainty as to cost on the table, people’s feeling of freedom to predict cost dries up and so does innovation and trying new applications,” Vint Cerf, the chief Internet evangelist for Google who is often called the “father of the Internet,” said in an e-mail message."

The article goes on to note that the caps being discussed could limit you to 30GB/month - every GB therafter will cost you $1. A streaming TV show will be around 300MB - which if my math is correct works out to around 3hrs TV a day. Or 3 hrs of movies a day. Or 3 hrs of Yotube vidding. Essentially think of 3 hrs for all of your streaming Internet a day.  But before you say: hey, no way am I using that much - remember if you're watching High Def on your new HDTV - you will have less than half of that amount. And don't forget - using Skype or phone services will count against you. And all of your online data backups. Playing games online?

"As the technology company Cisco put it in a recent report, “today’s ‘bandwidth hog’ is tomorrow’s average user.”

edited to add: Comcast is looking at a 250GB/month cap which is a bit more reasonable and works out to 8GB day. But still one hour of HDTV can eat up a large chunk of that amount. The NY Times blog points out :

Some see another motive. Bandwidth use is also on the rise because of legal uses of video, such as streaming shows on networks and movie downloads from Apple’s iTunes Store. As Internet video becomes more popular, it has the potential to threaten the core business of the cable television companies.

Indeed, Time Warner’s proposed caps are just low enough to keep its customers from using their Internet connections as a replacement for cable as their main source of TV shows: the 40-gigabyte limit would allow users less than 2 hours a day of video.

Comcast’s rules, by contrast, would allow 11 hours of video a day — giving its customers plenty of access to the sweet stuff, while still preventing the few from eating the whole cookie jar.

 

Comments

[littleheaven70.livejournal.com]

Wow, I never realised that you guys had unlimited access. Here in New Zealand all plans have data caps. And the maximum download speed is something pathetic like 4mbps. We get 10GB a month for $45US. You can get bigger plans but they're much more expensive. If we exceed our cap we get knocked down to dial-up speed until our account rolls over to a new month. We have to monitor our downloads really carefully.

The good thing is that they cap the speed back to dial-up manually, so someone has to press a button somewhere. That means they only do it on business days during normal working hours. So if there's something huge we want to download, we do it on the last evening of the billing month, knowing we'll reset to a 10GB allowance at midnight.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

nods. I could deal with them lowering the download speeds. but I suspect they will handle it much like they handle all the other pay as you go plans - keep the numbers hidden from you and then hit you with hundreds of dollars of fees with no ability to cancel or change your service - like the cell phones plans.

[littleheaven70.livejournal.com]

That would be pretty dodgy. At least we have an online meter that we can log into any time which shows us how much we've used of our 10GB. Some of the plans do charge you extra with over-the-cap usage, but we deliberately picked that one because we know how to get more out of it for free.

Of course, if Usenet gets hobbled, I won't need my 10GB any more anyway. :o(