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S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

reuters.com

51–60 of 243 posts

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#51
post #4

Everyone pays for their internet access, so why should Netflix (or anyone else) suddenly pay for mine? Netflix isn’t pushing data, I’m pulling it. If my ISP is losing money then I guess they better raise their prices, no?

Netflix is pushing data AND you are pulling it.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#52
post #8

> South Korean lawmakers have spoken out against content providers who do not pay for network usage despite generating explosive traffic It's impressive how this framing has gotten so much acceptance. The content providers are not generating the traffic, the users are, and they are paying their ISPs to be able to do so.

It really is wild. ISPs have been overselling "unlimited" connections for forever, and being paid for it, but when their customers actually want to use literally the service they paid for, _legally_, it's somehow wrong? I guess that's the thing with Netflix though, it's torrent-like traffic, but legal, so there's no excuse to stop it and they have to come up with something. "oh they're generating explosive traffic th…

You seem to spend too much time on leftist web sites.

First, they aren't being paid for unlimited. Do you think that $39.99 or $199.99 per month can cover the cost of transferring unlimited amount of data to another continent? Of course, it doesn't. Somebody pays $39.99 to download 10 emails, another customer runs BitTorrent 24 by 7 consuming TB's of bandwidth for the same price.

Second, they don't want to sell "unlimited" - they could make more money by selling differentiated services.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#53

I think it becomes easier to think about this, if I frame the problem in terms of more tangible objects than bandwidth and data. The public street network is in large parts paid for by taxes, so for everyone access to the network is already payed for. If I now envision a single company blocking all streets with its giant truck fleet, I could completely understand a motion to introduce a new form of toll to be payed b…

I don't think that's a fair framing. As others have said, the users of the broadband pay for their bandwidth. It's not Netflix pushing data, it's the users pulling it. If you have 100 users that pay you for 1Gbps/s but your network can't handle 100Gbps/s that's your failure to adhere to the contract you made with your users.

In the road example, it's more like if every person paid for the ability to put one truck on the road and everyone delegated their truck space to a shipping company who now has millions of trucks hogging the roads. Yes, they're using tons of infrastructure but their usage has been paid for already.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#54

What if ISPs created their own CDNs or someone creates a CDN network behind major ISP providers -- Netflix and YouTube top consumed content seems to be a very good contender for this type of a offering.

Netflix already has https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ . YouTube probably has something similar.

There's a big difference in usage patterns: Netflix has a small number of videos, each with huge viewer count. That's eminently cachable. Youtube otoh is the long tail, orders of magnitude more videos with small view counts. Some of it may be cachable, but that's going to shave off on the order of 20% of the traffic cost, whereas in Netflix's case the gain could easily be 99%.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#55
post #16
post #4

Everyone pays for their internet access, so why should Netflix (or anyone else) suddenly pay for mine? Netflix isn’t pushing data, I’m pulling it. If my ISP is losing money then I guess they better raise their prices, no?

Hmm, I guess ISPs could just drop traffic if they can’t afford it, but maybe if you push a lot of data you could pay more to have the content actually delivered to end users.

... and customers could just drop the ISP if they don't deliver the service they want (if there is no ISP monopoly there).

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#57
post #29
post #8

> South Korean lawmakers have spoken out against content providers who do not pay for network usage despite generating explosive traffic It's impressive how this framing has gotten so much acceptance. The content providers are not generating the traffic, the users are, and they are paying their ISPs to be able to do so.

If anything, customers should be suing ISPs every time they don't get the expected bandwidth. It's the ISP that fails to deliver according to the contract.

I agree, but there still need to be constraints. For instance, if I have a 1Gb symmetrical connection, it's probably still unreasonable for me to expect 1Gb connecting to my buddy's 1Gb 3k miles away.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#58
post #51
post #4

Everyone pays for their internet access, so why should Netflix (or anyone else) suddenly pay for mine? Netflix isn’t pushing data, I’m pulling it. If my ISP is losing money then I guess they better raise their prices, no?

Netflix is pushing data AND you are pulling it.

Nobody says that a bullock cart involves the bullock pulling the cart and the cart pushing the bullock. That’s only a physics framing.

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#59

Similarly, Australia had problems when Netflix was first becoming popular here, putting huge strains on the network and causing widespread congestion issues from 6 to 10 pm. I wonder if we'll ever see a predictive home-caching system; if I watch the first three episodes of squid game in one night, it might be sensible to have my TV download the rest of the series overnight.

Doesn't Netflix have a CDN in Australia, and doesn't Australia have fast Internet within the continent? I'm a bit surprised this is such a problem

Re: S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge from 'Squid Game'

#60

Seems like a good opportunity for Netflix to raise their prices in S.Korea and use a portion of that increase to pay what the courts seem like they're going to demand. The rest of the increase would go to offsetting the additional burden on Netflix that this will cause by forcing them to treat S.Korea differently than everyone else. I'm honestly surprised that any corporations are paying that there, but if the govern…

> I'm honestly surprised that any corporations are paying that there, It benefits Netflix in the long term as it raises barriers to entry for disruptive competitors. If, in order to reach an ISP's customers, you have to pay the ISP for the privilege, then creating new startups is harder and the incumbents can just price it in. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this became more common elsewhere, as everyone involved b…

While I see the logic in what you're saying, the Netflix business moat is already much deeper due to A) billion dollar content deals with major providers and B) billion dollar investments into first party content.

Content is king and competitors are already priced out long before minor squabbles over bandwidth.

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