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When Everyone Wants To Watch 'House Of Cards,' Who Pays?

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Re: When Everyone Wants To Watch 'House Of Cards,' Who Pays?

#41

Post by simoncion »

jeffdavis wrote: post #40

I wonder what would happen if netflix called their bluff? People all of a sudden start to notice that House Of Cards plays more smoothly over their 4G cell connection than their expensive cable connection, and how does Time Warner explain that?

> People all of a sudden start to notice that House Of Cards plays more smoothly over their 4G cell connection...

That's not too likely. Most folks (unless their vaguely-savvy 4G-connection-having not-afraid-to-tether friends clue them in) will decide that Netflix sucks and stop right there.

As a datapoint, look at Obamacare. Alabama rejected any and all Federal premium assistance subsidies. This means that in Alabama, regardless of your ability to pay, or employment status, you pay full price. In California, low-income folks get reduced or totally subsidized premiums. The talk in Alabama is not about the insurance is gobs cheaper for poor people in California, it's about how Obamacare has made insurance so goddamn expensive for everyone.

People are soulcrushingly incurious.

Re: When Everyone Wants To Watch 'House Of Cards,' Who Pays?

#42

Post by EpicEng »

>Who's going to pay to keep the videos running smoothly?

...Me? Do I not pay for my internet service? Are ISP's not subsidized to build infrastructure by my tax dollars? Is my ISP running at a deficit? Yes, yes, and no, I don't believe so. I pay Netflix for the content, I pay my ISP to deliver it.

Re: When Everyone Wants To Watch 'House Of Cards,' Who Pays?

#43

Post by chrisyeah »

doesnt_know wrote: post #13

Ugh, is this even a question anywhere except in the US? The ISP should be paying for it because that is literally the service they are suppose to be providing, it's the reason consumers are giving them money. In what other industry can you accept payment for a service and then try to make a legitimate claim that you then don't have to provide that service or maintain the infrastructure you are selling? It's fucking n…

Presently there is also a huge debate (with political discussions and petitions) about net neutrality in Germany and other European countries (mainly EU).

In 2013 there was a petition [1] to try to bind the internet providers to net neutrality.

[1] https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/petitionen/_2013/_04/_23/Pe... (German)

Re: When Everyone Wants To Watch 'House Of Cards,' Who Pays?

#44

Post by qq66 »

The problem here is that a framework built in one environment (settlement-free peering) has a lot of problems as the underlying environment has changed.

Let's say everyone in the United States had a second mailbox, and each mailbox is owned by FedEx, UPS, or DHL. To ship a package, you leave it in your box, it's picked up by your carrier, transferred to the recipient's carrier, who then delivers it to their box. Only the sender is billed, and this shipment fee includes whatever your carrier will have to pay to your recipient's carrier to complete delivery.

When these mailboxes are built, most people in the country are shipping as many boxes as they receive, and the number of packages sent by and received by customers of each carrier are roughly the same (let's say a total of 15,000 per day). So FedEx, UPS, and DHL, to avoid having to track every single package, just decide to "call it a wash" and deliver each other's boxes for free, under the assumption that nobody's really getting the upper hand.

Fast forward twenty years, and Jeff Bezos has built Amazon.com at his house. His house is a UPS house, so UPS picks up 15 million boxes from him every morning, and hands over 10 million of them to FedEx and DHL for delivery. FedEx and DHL are billing their customers for 15,000 boxes but also have to deliver Bezos' 10 million boxes.

You can imagine that they'd want to revisit their original agreement to "call it a wash" and start billing by the actual package.

Re: When Everyone Wants To Watch 'House Of Cards,' Who Pays?

#45

Post by waps »

azurelogic wrote: post #11
Lockyy wrote: post #4

I had always assumed that when I paid an ISP for an internet connection that payment was so that I could send and receive packets across their network. Clearly I was wrong.

This is exactly why I agree that this whole mess is a load of crap. Net neutrality should be a given. If I'm paying for a service, then it should be up to me how I use it, and the entity that I am paying should not have the right to arbitrarily alter my traffic. I mean, if you send a letter to someone popular, that doesn't give the USPS the right to delay your letter. The same should go for ISPs.

And what happens if everyone wants to use the same pipe ? Who pays for expanding that pipe ? Because that's the real question.

> I mean, if you send a letter to someone popular, that doesn't give the USPS the right to delay your letter. The same should go for ISPs.

Of course the question is the reverse. If someone wants a letter to be sent to virtually everyone in America, that person certainly pays by the letter. Currently that's not what's happening in ISPs, currently sending is free, provided you "deliver it to the post office" (carrier hotel). The companies make their profit by charging rent for having a mailbox and delivering mail for free to those mailboxes. They want to change that.

Re: When Everyone Wants To Watch 'House Of Cards,' Who Pays?

#46

Post by ASneakyFox »

I thought this was covered in my internet bill. You know network communication... if that was supposed to be free all this time some one let me know because then Ive got to call the police because some one has been scamming me out of 50 bux every month for the past 2 decades. I suspect there are more victims.

Re: When Everyone Wants To Watch 'House Of Cards,' Who Pays?

#47

Post by kashkhan »

azurelogic wrote: post #6
kashkhan wrote: post #3

why should time warner own the last mile? It should be owned by the homeowners.

If the homeowner owns the last mile, then they become responsible for maintenance, ensuring they comply with FCC and other regulations, and negotiating terms of interconnection. Obviously, that's out of reach of most of the population, so homeowners don't own the last mile.

how often is the last mile maintained? Once established there's usually not much need fro maintenance until it is replaced. Coax cables and fibers have little use for maintenance.

Homeowners can comply with the FCC just as easily as the corporations. We won't make the stuff, only install it.

It's not out of reach. In many poor countries the last mile is done by small companies that string coax wires on existing utility poles (also paid for by the homeowners through the electricity installation charges) which are often just 1-2 guys. Coax cable or fibre costs less than $1 per foot in bulk.

Re: When Everyone Wants To Watch 'House Of Cards,' Who Pays?

#48

Post by noise »

waps wrote: post #45
azurelogic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I agree that this whole mess is a load of crap. Net neutrality should be a given. If I'm paying for a service, then it should be up to me how I use it, and the entity that I am paying should not have the right to arbitrarily alter my traffic. I mean, if you send a letter to someone popular, that doesn't give the USPS the right to delay your letter. The same should go for ISPs.

And what happens if everyone wants to use the same pipe ? Who pays for expanding that pipe ? Because that's the real question. > I mean, if you send a letter to someone popular, that doesn't give the USPS the right to delay your letter. The same should go for ISPs. Of course the question is the reverse. If someone wants a letter to be sent to virtually everyone in America, that person certainly pays by the letter. Cu…

In your analogy, sending is not free. Both Netflix has already paid postage to deliver all of the letters (their CDN/bandwidth costs) and each recipient has already paid for their mailbox (cable modem service). In this case the ISP wants Netflix to pay extra money to to deliver their letters even though everyone has already been paid and they weigh about the same as all the grocery flyers and other junk mail already cluttering your mailbox (think youtube).

Re: When Everyone Wants To Watch 'House Of Cards,' Who Pays?

#49

Post by waps »

noise wrote: post #48
waps wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens if everyone wants to use the same pipe ? Who pays for expanding that pipe ? Because that's the real question. > I mean, if you send a letter to someone popular, that doesn't give the USPS the right to delay your letter. The same should go for ISPs. Of course the question is the reverse. If someone wants a letter to be sent to virtually everyone in America, that person certainly pays by the letter. Cu…

In your analogy, sending is not free. Both Netflix has already paid postage to deliver all of the letters (their CDN/bandwidth costs) and each recipient has already paid for their mailbox (cable modem service). In this case the ISP wants Netflix to pay extra money to to deliver their letters even though everyone has already been paid and they weigh about the same as all the grocery flyers and other junk mail already…

Okay, so here's the rub. If ISPs want to talk to eachother, in order to support "full" bandwidth between them you need n(n-1) connections to support a bandwidth of n mbit.

This is quadratic. You understand why this won't work ?

Let me put the TLDR here : the infrastructure needed to support the internet grows quadratic with the number of endpoints on the internet. Meaning everytime any ISP adds a customer, everyone else's internet should get more expensive, in order to reflect the real cost of interconnection. Since ISPs are not about to let that happen, they demand someone else pays for interconnect.

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