FCC Sides with Cable Companies on Tiered Pricing--Netflix Objects

On May 22, 5:53*pm, "D. Peter Maus" <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 5/22/12 16:29 , David Kaye wrote:
>
>
>
> > "D. Peter Maus" <[email protected]> wrote
>
> >> * *They already do.
>
> > I'm on Comcast and they don't give preference to NBC programming. *Discovery
> > is on channel 15, which is basic cable. *Faux News, CNN, MSNBC, et alare
> > all gathered together on basic and look comparable to the customer.
> > Likewise, Comcast also offers History, Biography, and similar channels on
> > basic.
>
> > What I'm saying is that there'll come a time when Comcast offers a "basic
> > basic" service very cheaply which will consist largely of their own channels
> > and local brodcasters. *I'd bet that you won't be seeing Biography, History,
> > Discovery, CNN, or Weather on that service.
>
> * *When I looked at Comcast for my television, they were doing it
> already, here.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

By constantly attacking cell phone streaming, this is SMS's indirect
way of promoting OTA HD Radio.

---

› See More: FCC Sides with Cable Companies on Tiered Pricing--Netflix Objects

Neil wrote on [Tue, 22 May 2012 14:50:16 -0700]:
> On 5/22/12 2:29 PM, David Kaye wrote:
>>
> If by "Weather" you mean "The Weather Channel", that's another
> "property" in the Comcast/NBC-Universal stable. (You can trace the start
> of TWC's decline to the day NBC got its paws on it.)
>

yeah, remember when you could turn on the weather channel and find out the
weather?

AJL wrote on [Tue, 22 May 2012 14:01:37 -0700]:
>
>>In my own case, I was perfectly happy with my provider's 1Mb/s
>>(eventually 3Mb/s) budget tier of service, but I upgraded to 7Mb/s for
>>$10/month more solely for Netflix's $8/month streaming package to work
>>acceptably. They're making more from my Netflix usage than Netflix is!
>
> Simple. If you're displeased vote with your wallet. Or else do like
> everyone else here. Pay the price and ***** about it...

Most of us don't have that option, we're relegated to at most 3 choices
and only one being acceptable.

On 5/22/2012 2:46 PM, Todd Allcock wrote:
> At 22 May 2012 14:01:37 -0700 AJL wrote:

>> The ISP is a business, not a charity. The *sole purpose* is to make
>> shareholders happy (if a public company).
>
> True, but they chose their business, and they don't own the internet.

Nobody owns the Internet. And...lots of people do.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/in...-internet1.htm

>They're making money

Hopefully. Otherwise it's bankruptcy.

>leeching off of established infrastructure

No leeching (at least not much). Interconnections are negotiated
business agreements between the corporations (and the mom and pops too).

>just like Netflix and Pandora are.

Netflix (and ilk) may be leeching for now, and causing ISPs to take
action to control the load. But my guess is that eventually there will
be a business agreement with these sites too

> we pay Comcast, Verizon, et al for access to the content they're trying
> to prevent us from accessing.

They're just trying to get paid for Netflix's water that's flowing
through their pipes.

>My point was that ISPs now want to favor their own proprietary
>content over third-party content,

I think they're just trying to level the playing field. They can't
compete with $8/mo movies when Netflix gets to use their pipes for free.

>just like AOL over a quarter-century ago.

Not so. I was on AOL also. You just brought up a browser and went to the
Internet at large, you certainly weren't trapped in AOL's walled garden.

> I'm not displeased. My ISP (CenturyLink) doesn't have caps (yet.)

I abandoned CL for a better deal at Cox. I voted with my wallet. That's
the way the free market works.

>My point was that the access to the third-party
> services that the ISPs think are "leeching" their bandwidth and profits
> are actually what we're paying the ISP for-

But of course you're not really paying for unlimited use. I don't know
your TOS but I'll bet there is fine print.

The ISPs could offer the 'illusion' of unlimited service as long as most
people used an average amount of data. That went along fine until video
sites started to ramp up that average. Something has to give, they can't
just keep providing more and more data service without raising prices or
decreasing service.

I get my phone service for $17/mo. No talk limit as far as I know,
though there's probably some fine print there too. But if everybody
started talking 10 hours a day you know there would be some changes.

Too much load on the phone lines actually happened in the AOL days if
you'll remember. The phone companies were scrambling to keep up with the
increased load of dial-up. It actually crashed the lines in my area a
few times.

> When it becomes too expensive for me to use Netflix (or Hulu, or whatever)
> either because of speed tiers or usage caps, I'll drop my service to a
> slower, cheaper, tier.

As I said vote with your wallet. Cox was killing CL here so now CL has
that $19.95/mo for 5 year promotion. When enough people vote with their
wallet things change, often for the better...

>The ISP is a business, not a charity. The *sole purpose* is to make
>shareholders happy (if a public company).
A corporation needs to keep its shareholders *satisfied*, but that's not
it's sole goal. The government charters corporations and lets them "own"
property, use the courts to settle disputes, and generally act a lot like
a citizen. From the taxpayer's viewpoint, this is so the corporation will
do useful things for taxpayers. And we shouldn't forget management, which
certainly acts as if an important goal to is to pay spectacular salaries.
Like any other "life form", a corporation has to satisfy a bunch of
requirements in order to continue to exist. Talk about "goals" ("make
money for shareholders", "serve our customers", "let our employees share
in our mission to change the world", etc) is rhetoric for CEO speeches.

AJL wrote on [Tue, 22 May 2012 16:37:36 -0700]:
> On 5/22/2012 2:46 PM, Todd Allcock wrote:
>> At 22 May 2012 14:01:37 -0700 AJL wrote:
>
>
>>just like Netflix and Pandora are.
>
> Netflix (and ilk) may be leeching for now, and causing ISPs to take
> action to control the load. But my guess is that eventually there will
> be a business agreement with these sites too

Netflix is not leeching anything, they are paying someone to get their data
into the internet

>> we pay Comcast, Verizon, et al for access to the content they're trying
>> to prevent us from accessing.
>
> They're just trying to get paid for Netflix's water that's flowing
> through their pipes.

It's not Netflix's water, it's their customer's, who are paying the ISPs
to deliver it.

>>My point was that ISPs now want to favor their own proprietary
>>content over third-party content,
>
> I think they're just trying to level the playing field. They can't
> compete with $8/mo movies when Netflix gets to use their pipes for free.

Netflix doesn't get to use their pipes for free, they pay to get data onto
the network. Customers pay to receive it.

> I get my phone service for $17/mo. No talk limit as far as I know,
> though there's probably some fine print there too. But if everybody
> started talking 10 hours a day you know there would be some changes.

Those changes weren't made when plenty of people had two phone lines,
one for voice and one for dialup. I used hundreds of hours a month of dialup
and never heard a peep.

On Tue, 22 May 2012 13:55:38 -0600, Todd Allcock wrote:

> ... If I just
> wanted a little web browsing and email, I could still be using a sub-
> $10/month dialup account ...

Todd, Todd, how many days would the next Patch Tuesday Windows Updates take
you then, at such dial-up speeds? Add browser and Adobe updates, and you'd
never get to your email for a week at a stretch. At least, contemplate
$15/month Basic rate DSL :-) .

Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.

Todd Allcock wrote on [Tue, 22 May 2012 21:44:55 -0600]:
> At 22 May 2012 16:37:36 -0700 AJL wrote:
>> On 5/22/2012 2:46 PM, Todd Allcock wrote:
>
>> >just like Netflix and Pandora are.
>>
>> Netflix (and ilk) may be leeching for now, and causing ISPs to take
>> action to control the load. But my guess is that eventually there will
>> be a business agreement with these sites too
>
>
> Perhaps, but there shouldn't have to be. The free market tends to sort
> these things out. If Comcast can't provide sufficient access, some other
> provider (hopefully) will.

The market isn't free. The cable companies are given a monopoly for a fee


> there's Xfinity video! And Xfinity video usage won't count toward your
> caps or cause those nasty overage charges like those other services will!

It gets a higher packet priority, too

In article <[email protected]>,
AJL <[email protected]> wrote:

> Business and residential users generally get different rates. If I
> used my (unlimited) home phone for a business I expect Cox would be
> inviting me to change to a business plan. Why would an ISP be
> different?

That's all meaningless. Business telephone service has unlimited plans
that would put residence plans to shame. (I haven't paid for a call to
anywhere in the US or Canada that incurred a charge in over ten years.)
I have Comcast Business Class Internet because the service is taken
seriously by the provider who doesn't hesitate to send a technician to
my location on a Sunday within four hours rather than simply tell me to
"reboot the router". I'm willing to pay more for that kind of service.

But neither Sonic (whose Fusion service I also have) nor Comcast
Business Class have caps on data. No business would put up with that
sort of crap that uses the Internet for anything real. Sonic doesn't
even differentiate between "business" and "residence" service since it
is a meaningless distinction.

If you want Internet service that is delivered in a robust way, then you
should choose accordingly. If you don't mind being brushed off by the
provider who nickels and dimes you with "caps" and other artificial
nonsense, you can have that as well.

--
John Higdon
+1 415 852-3811

On 5/22/2012 8:44 PM, Todd Allcock wrote:
> At 22 May 2012 16:37:36 -0700 AJL wrote:

>The free market tends to sort these things out.

I couldn't agree more.

>I'm paying them [ISP] for use of the pipes, not the water.

Well I've never seen an ISP that charged for use of their infrastructure
(pipes). They always charge for data (water). Be it (limited) unlimited
data or 100MB of data.

> If I rent a piece of real estate to open a sandwich shop, the
>landlord is entitled to rent- not a cut of my business...

Sorry but I'm completely lost in this analogy. Who is the renter? Who is
getting the cut? Comcast? Netflix?

>If we're
> accepting the premise that they are a significant cause of every ISP's
> congestion problems (what's that stat floating around? That Netflix is
> responsible for 20-30% of North American internet traffic?), how does
> Netflix find the bandwidth to send all of these bits to all of us?

Netflix could continue as things are now under the tiered system. Then
their users can pay the actual video data costs. When those users see
what the video is actually costing, they might even slow down a bit.
This will ease the system load, and maybe even lower costs for the rest
of us...

> Just like the cell phone guys, ISPs have no problem selling access to
> anyone and everyone who wants to sign up, then whining they're using
>too much service.

There's finite capacity. They can't (or shouldn't) sign up customers
without increasing the capacity to handle them. That costs money.

>If you don't have the infrastructure to support your
> customers, you can buy more infrastructure, or stop adding customers!
> Degrading service isn't the only option.

I would agree. But making the data hogs pay their fair share is not
degrading the service IMO.

> Noob! AOL predates consumer browsers like Netscape or IE.

Guilty as charged. Got my first real computer in 92. DOS 5

> Absolutely. CL, at least here in Denver, has no limits or caps. If
> that's a differentiator to entice users to use them instead of
>Comcast, that's the free market at work.

Since I left CL I do use more data, but perhaps that is because of the
faster service and less wait time. But still at 40GB/mo average I'm a
long way from 200GB (Cox's unenforced limit). So unlimited would not
enter into my reason to change. But then I'm not a data hog...

> you're really hoping your provider successfully rounds up all of those
> "abusers", that if left unchecked, will steal your fair share of the
> service.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Love it.

>Then you expect once they kick them awful "data hogs" out of
> Dodge, they'll reward you with lower rates and better service.

Or maybe CL will have fiber to my house by then and beat out Cox's price
because they don't have to feed the data hogs and have money to work on
infrastructure.

>punishing
> the guy downloading OS service packs or using an online backup
>service at 3AM for his data consumption won't fix congestion at 8PM.

The tiers will (hopefully) stop the 8 PM video data hogs which are the
real problem. If they want to go to timed tiers to balance the load that
would seem reasonable. Maybe help out the graveyard data hogs...

On 5/22/2012 9:25 PM, John Higdon wrote:

>Business telephone service has unlimited plans
> that would put residence plans to shame.

I would hope so. I pay $17/mo for my residence phone. How much is your
business phone?

> I have Comcast Business Class Internet because the service is taken
> seriously by the provider

I'll bet you pay seriously business class prices too, as it should be.

>who doesn't hesitate to send a technician to
> my location on a Sunday within four hours rather than simply tell me to
> "reboot the router". I'm willing to pay more for that kind of service.

I would imagine a business account being down should have priority over
a residential account. If mine goes down permanently I think I could
survive on my smartphone for a day or so. But so far I've never lost
service for more than a few hours and it has always restored itself
(knocks on wood).

> But neither Sonic (whose Fusion service I also have) nor Comcast
> Business Class have caps on data. No business would put up with that
> sort of crap that uses the Internet for anything real.

My guess is that if Comcast could charge business rates to regular
residential customers they wouldn't need caps either.

On Tue, 22 May 2012 21:44:55 -0600, Todd Allcock wrote:

> Have you ever heard a wired ISP tell you or anyone else, "gee, we'd love
> to sign you up, but the node in your area is full. If you'd like to
> leave us your number or email address, we'll contact you when we can take
> on more customers in your area..."

Absolutely. That was the norm in Warsaw in the '70's and '80's -- wait-list
times as long as seven *years* in most cases. Once they upgraded to 7-digit
switches from the prior 6, they could suddenly handle all the pent-up
demand and the backlist got cut back to virtually zero in short order :-) .

Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.

On Tue, 22 May 2012 22:28:58 -0600, Todd Allcock wrote:

> At 22 May 2012 23:33:11 -0400 tlvp wrote:
>>
>> Todd, Todd, how many days would the next Patch Tuesday Windows Updates
>> take you then, at such dial-up speeds?
>
> Who'd need them? The connection would be too slow to download a virus!

Don't be so sure -- the Blaster worm got me over dial-up when it did get
me, years ago, before I'd heard of Zone Alarm Free :-) .

>> Add browser and Adobe updates,
>> and you'd never get to your email for a week at a stretch. At least,
>> contemplate $15/month Basic rate DSL :-) .
>
> You do realize you're talking to a guy who still uses free "unlimited"
> 14.4kbps QNC data on his circa-2004 PagePlus smartphone as a backup for
> his T-Mo 3G phone. My cheapness knows no bounds!

You're aware of the Moto Q9m you helped me activate half a year ago -- it
ran through only $9 of its first $10 PIN in its first 120 days, and is on
track to use no more than that on its second :-) .

> I call my PagePlus phone, a Samsung i730 (as thick as a brick, and twice
> as heavy), the "$2.50/month email machine", because it costs me $10 every
> four months to keep it active.

My eyes are still peeled for a discarded working instance of that device.

> And yes, I've even tethered my netbook to it in a pinch, when I was way
> off the beaten path and it was my only source of internet access!

Haven't needed to try such a thing yet with the Q9m, but should experiment.
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.

"Todd Allcock" <[email protected]> wrote

> Depends on the market. Some cities have tried opening up cable to
> multiple providers. When I used to live in Omaha, we had a choice of two
> cable companies; Cox, and a local startup.

San Francisco once was totally open but only CBS Cable (which became Viacom,
which was sold to AT&T, which was sold to Comcast) had built any
infrastructure here. They hadn't built out the city, only the more densely
populated residential areas. Harry Britt, then city/county supervisor,
carried an ordinance to give Viacom Cable an exclusive franchise in exchange
for building out 95+% of the residential parcels in the city. Otherwise, I
guess, nobody would have built out the city. This was prior to home
satellite services like Dish.

As it stands now, there are areas of SF that cannot get cable nor any kind
of internet, such as parts of Treasure Island, the 3rd Street Dogpatch
corridor, parts of the Excelsior and Ingleside districts. People who need
internet usually go through Hughes. Two of my tech customers use Hughes.


>
> As it turned out, the experiment failed. Omaha just wasn't big enough to
> support two competing cable cos, and Cox bought out their competitor.

Yeah, that can happen. Portland (the big one) once did not give monopolies
to power companies. Thus Portland General Electric ran wires down one side
of the street and Pacific Power & Light ran wires down the other side.
After some decades they petitioned the city to allow them monopolies with
PGE getting the downtown/inner city areas and PPL getting the suburbs. I
think both are happy now.


>
> Personally, I believe in dumb pipes. Separating content owners from the
> distribution chain is far better for consumers.

I'm a strong believer in government-owned internet and cable. After all, we
have government owned water and sewer services in many cities, which do much
better in quality of service than the private companies. And cities that
provide city-owned power (such as Alameda and Los Angeles) provide their
customers with better service and lower rates than the profit-making
companies that operate nearby. Time for Phil Kane to chime in here...

AJL wrote on [Tue, 22 May 2012 22:34:03 -0700]:
> On 5/22/2012 8:44 PM, Todd Allcock wrote:
> > At 22 May 2012 16:37:36 -0700 AJL wrote:
>
> >I'm paying them [ISP] for use of the pipes, not the water.
>
> Well I've never seen an ISP that charged for use of their infrastructure
> (pipes). They always charge for data (water). Be it (limited) unlimited
> data or 100MB of data.

I never saw a dialup ISP that charged per byte that wasn't AOL

> >punishing
> > the guy downloading OS service packs or using an online backup
> >service at 3AM for his data consumption won't fix congestion at 8PM.
>
> The tiers will (hopefully) stop the 8 PM video data hogs which are the
> real problem. If they want to go to timed tiers to balance the load that
> would seem reasonable. Maybe help out the graveyard data hogs...

In that case they need to institute a peak data usage time and charge
A monthly cap won't help at all.