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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.

#71

Post by Goronmon »

ergo98 wrote: post #65
ashchristopher wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stop pretending this is some ridiculous amount of bandwidth people are attempting to burn through. 25GB is about a dozen TV shows on Netflix and a couple decent sized game on Steam over the course of an entire month.

Plus, if the ISPs really want usage based pricing, then they should do that instead of this arbitrary download cap stuff that is nothing about usage based pricing.

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

#72

Post by gsmaverick »

ergo98 wrote: post #65
ashchristopher wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where has the profit from the past 10 years been going? They should have been improving capacity all along knowing this explosion of bandwidth would come.

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

#73

Post by ergo98 »

Goronmon wrote: post #71
ergo98 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stop pretending this is some ridiculous amount of bandwidth people are attempting to burn through. 25GB is about a dozen TV shows on Netflix and a couple decent sized game on Steam over the course of an entire month. Plus, if the ISPs really want usage based pricing, then they should do that instead of this arbitrary download cap stuff that is nothing about usage based pricing.

Who is pretending anything? What a trollish comment.

Yes, 25GB is an absurdly low cap. Most providers have a basic plan that provides 60GB, with a usually quite inexpensive way to dramatically increase the cap. People keep quoting the $2.50/GB bit which is just shockingly ignorant -- if you know that you'll use more (which not everyone will. The casual user will not and Avg Facebook and Email User has no reason to subsidize the "everything through my internet connection" guy), it's more like $0.12/GB.

This whole discussion is a perfect example of how people can embrace positions wholeheartedly just because they selfishly want them to be true.

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

#74

Post by dhughes »

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/…

> HN is fairly anti-reddit

I don't get that impression here at all, quite often you'll see Reddit articles on HN linked back to Reddit. I agree HN is more industry focused and professional and Reddit a lot more laid back but still can be professional at times.

HN and Reddit are similar but also quite different, I go to both and sometimes even digg (I know!) and whatever else I can find, I don't get this mentality that you're only allowed get to choose one social news website to view.

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

#75

Post by mrcharles »

Dear Hacker News Canadians:

Please continue to write your MPs. This is far from over, and we need to keep on top of it. We can't stop now that it looks like it will be overturned, because Bell will fight back. I urge every one of you to write a letter to your MP (or another one if you already have).

If we show any slowing in activity against Bell et al, they will just swoop in and come up with something just as bad.

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

#76

Post by danudey »

3pt14159 wrote: post #67
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.

If it were a big enough issue you'd just get recalled by your constituents and then you've got to justify it to try to get re-elected.

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

#77

Post by AgentConundrum »

Nick_C wrote: post #62
AgentConundrum wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wor…

I understand the closed loop. I did a bit of research when I wrote my last comment and when I read that line is when I realized how dumb I was.

So.. electricity gets pumped into the grid from some power station, and then [a given unit of electricity] loops repeatedly around the loop until it's either consumed by an appliance or is converted to heat by the resistance inherent to the transmission lines themselves?

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

#78

Post by AgentConundrum »

brk wrote: post #63
AgentConundrum wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's the clearest explanation of the problem that I've read so far.

I've always known that there was something inherently wrong with charging by traffic, but I could never put my finger on what it was. A clear explanation, such as you've just provided to me, on exactly how the internet works and is billed at higher levels makes things obvious.

Traffic is a problem, but only insofar as it contributes to saturation of the overall available bandwidth of the existing infrastructure. Calling the problem "traffic" is just a convenient scapegoat for other concerns that can't be directly billed as easily, even if traffic isn't the real problem.

Thanks. I'm always impressed by the quality of discourse on Hacker News.

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

#79

Post by gamble »

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…

The UBB decision is separate, but the major providers have coincidentally decided to start enforcing the caps simultaneously. The two are linked since they can now charge whatever they want for bandwidth without worrying about competition.

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

#80

Post by redthrowaway »

dhughes wrote: post #74
redthrowaway wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

> HN is fairly anti-reddit I don't get that impression here at all, quite often you'll see Reddit articles on HN linked back to Reddit. I agree HN is more industry focused and professional and Reddit a lot more laid back but still can be professional at times. HN and Reddit are similar but also quite different, I go to both and sometimes even digg (I know!) and whatever else I can find, I don't get this mentality tha…

Any discussion of reddit here usually ends up being people complaining about it. Yes, there are often reddit links posted here, but whenever reddit is brought up, people will usually complain about how it's full of /b/tards, it's all just memes and pun threads, there's no useful comments there, etc. While this may be true for the larger subreddits, my point is simply that there are some great small ones where the quality of discussion is much higher.
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