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UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

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Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#61

Post by ergo98 »

pyre wrote: post #25
warrenwilkinson wrote: post #10

I don't understand what happened. Why was the government able to set internet rates at all? Is there a monopoly here or not? Why weren't we (I'm Canadian) paying per usage before -- was it a law or did a flat rate grow from convienience?

You can reference the diagram in my post here (and the more detailed one in the response to my post): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158888 This was mostly about Bell's ability to bring UBB to bear on the 3rd party ISPs that are leasing their lines (and thereby forcing all of those ISPs' customers onto a usage-based-billing model). Thought if you read that full thread you'll see that there's was a bit of debate…

Your diagram there was unfortunately wrong. Swannie's variation was actually correct.

The issue here is not about the last mile. I'll say it until I'm downvoted to oblivion, but people keep restating this incorrect statement.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#62

Post by Nick_C »

AgentConundrum wrote: post #55
apenwarr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A random nitpick that you might find interesting: in fact unused electricity is not "simply lost." Where would it go? Because of the law of conservation of energy, it would have to go somewhere, and we're talking about what might be a lot of energy. Electrical systems actually must generate exactly the required amount of electricity at all times. One particularly interesting tidbit I learned in one of my engineering…

Well, now I feel like an idiot. That comment was based on a poorly recalled statement regarding the ineffectiveness of Earth Hour. If you don't use electricity, it'll flow to the next guy, so your lack of use doesn't really have any effect. Still, you need to generate enough electricity to cover everyone's potential needs. Whether that electricity is used or not (where not means that unused electricity dissipates as…

> whatever happens to unused electicity?

Re-orient your thinking a little and it will make sense. We're talking AC systems (not a SWER) so it is a closed-loop as far as the electricity is concerned. The electricity doesn't go anywhere, it constantly oscillates. What you are actually generating in a meta sense is ability to do work. You are overcoming the electrical resistance from all those users' machines doing work.

Does that analogy help?

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#63

Post by brk »

AgentConundrum wrote: post #40
rfugger wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the caps were low and the overage rates seemed high, but it's not actually about the incremental cost of delivering the next gigabyte, it's about the cost of building an infrastructure that can handle hundreds of thousands of people using Netflix all at once at peak capacity. That's an entirely different calculation. Also, at Bell you can buy 40GB extra for $5 if you pay in advance, which equals $0.125/G…

Absolutely, and I'll freely admit that I don't know how to calculate that. I made a major assumption in my last post, that I'll explain here: Most quotes I've heard recently put the cost of bandwidth at around 1-2c/GB. I assumed, quite possibly erroneously and I'll go hunting for the source in a moment to confirm/refute said assumption, that when TekSavvy's CEO said that a conservative estimate (read: "highest reason…

It's very difficult to accurately price bandwidth by the GB.

At the wholesale level, bandwidth is sold as a committed throughput rate. Essentially like an "open pipe" of various diameters (to use a semi-bad analogy).

Wholesale bandwidth is currently around $15/Mbit/mo. This means that for $15 you can get a 1Mbs connection to a wholesale Internet provider for 1 month (not really, because they generally want you to buy at least a 10Mbs handoff). If you leave this connection completely idle, you pay $15/mo. If you saturate it 24/7, you pay $15/mo.

Because of the bursty nature of Internet traffic, ISP's will typically resell multiples of their committed bandwidth. You might have a 100Mbps handoff, but could sell 500 or 88Mbps worth of traffic to your customers.

Bandwidth really doesn't get metered down to the MB or GB until you get to the consumer level. This is mostly done to "shape" demand somewhat, and allow for a billing method to charge users who are heavy users (eg: if your customers all tried to actually use that 800Mbps you were selling them and you really only had 100Mbps of available bandwidth, you're going to have to do something about that...). For higher-level datacenter type customers, it's typically a 95th percentile billing method, not a direct $/GB overage charge.

You can do some math and take your operating costs and divide by your bandwidth and figure out your cost/GB, but that's not going to be highly accurate. In many cases you can go from say a 40Mbps connection to an 80Mbps connection with all the exact same equipment, and just pay the upstream for the extra 40Mbps/mo. This would mean the same infrastructure cost is divided over a larger amount of bandwidth, resulting in lower cost/GB (until you need to add another card to your edge router, or add another router altogether...).

I think that part of the problem people are having with coming up with fair and realistic pricing for bandwidth is that unlike gas or water or electricity, you're not really delivering a physical commodity with costs that vary directly by quantity used.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#64

Post by brk »

crjvice wrote: post #17

Sometimes you have to ask yourself who are those people in charge? How did they get the job?

Depending on which people-in-charge you're referring to, generally by false-promises, cooperative back-scratching, and a proven ability to squeeze dollars from sand.

It really shouldn't be so surprising, all things considered.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#65

Post by ergo98 »

ashchristopher wrote: post #54
rfugger wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the caps were low and the overage rates seemed high, but it's not actually about the incremental cost of delivering the next gigabyte, it's about the cost of building an infrastructure that can handle hundreds of thousands of people using Netflix all at once at peak capacity. That's an entirely different calculation. Also, at Bell you can buy 40GB extra for $5 if you pay in advance, which equals $0.125/G…

The fact that you can buy "overage insurance" is telling and shows that UBB isn't about capacity, but instead a new revenue stream. If there was a legitimate concern regarding bandwidth and infrastructure, insurance wouldn't be offered and there would be hard limits to usage.

Revenue == funds to build capacity. If everyone really wants to stream Netflix 24 hours a day, the capacity will be built but it isn't free.

This is how every single element of the economy works.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#66

Post by cryptoz »

redthrowaway wrote: post #48
memetichazard wrote: post #31

I'm annoyed that I didn't even know about UBB until earlier today, when I stumbled across Reddit Montreal and saw something about the organization of a protest. Then again I'm getting all my news from here and Slashdot these days - haven't watched any TV in ages. My ISP already posted up new rates conforming to UBB - if it does get overturned, I hope they'll return to the old rates: $29 a month for unlimited bandwidt…

HN is fairly anti-reddit because a lot of the people on here were early reddit adopters who left when it ceased to be programming and tech-centric, and when the site got big enough that the quality of the average comment dropped. That said, there are some great subreddits on there, you just have to cut out most of the main ones. I dropped r/pics, r/atheism, r/worldnews, r/gaming, and r/reddit.com. I added r/humor, r/…

r/coding is an excellent place to hang out too :)

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#67

Post by 3pt14159 »

jedsmith wrote: post #12

At the risk of being pedantic (and maybe too American), isn't this a promise from politicians that it will be overturned? The title might be masking that a little bit... (The important words in my question being "promise" and "politicians," for hopefully self-evident reasons)

In Canada you would never come out and say that a highly disliked legislation piece is going to be overturned and then not overturn it. You would be incinerated at election time.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#68

Post by wmoxam »

redthrowaway wrote: post #47
charlief wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Liberals may be forcing an election soon, and after tens of thousands of complaint emails, the decision was an easy way to gain a couple percentage points in the polls. This was a no-brainer for the incumbent Conservatives, but their swiftness in resolving the issue was really impressive.

They weren't particularly swift. Every other party had come out strongly against UBB while the conservatives would only say they would be "paying close attention" to the ruling. This was simply such a wildly unpopular decision that it would have been political suicide to support it, and once every other party had come out against it the Conservatives couldn't be the only ones not to do so. The Conservatives are well-…

They could not come out against it before the ruling was made. They are the gov't, and the CRTC is an arms length agency. It's not the government's place to interfere with an arms length agency, at least before they've announced a decision.

Re: UBB overturned - Canada no longer biggest internet loser.

#70

Post by nuclear_eclipse »

ergo98 wrote: post #59
gamble wrote: post #8

The second half of this article reads like it was written by Bell or Rogers. The problem with UBB is not caps, per se, but the fact that the caps were absurdly small and overage fees grossly exceeded the cost of bandwidth. Not to mention that they were introduced at the same time as Netflix launched in Canada, and the providers' own TV-over-IP services were exempt. I dumped my $120/mo Bell Expressvu subscription last…

Not to mention that they were introduced at the same time as Netflix launched in Canada, and the providers' own TV-over-IP services were exempt. Caps were in place on the vast majority of Canadian connections (meaning direct customers of Bell, Telus, Rogers, Cogeco, etc) long before Netflix came to Canada. The UBB decision impacted a very small number of customers on services like TekSavvy. Not saying it's right, but…

If I recall, Netflix already colocates their servers with ISPs in advantageous nodes all over the US, and we still have that count against our bandwidth usage while the providers services are still granted free passage...
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