Charging by the Byte
This article was published in the Technology section of the New York Times yesterday.
It's bad news for users like me, who use A LOT of bandwidth. My torrent client is pretty much always open, except for those few hours at night where I bask in the rare silence that occurs when I shut down my computer (and if it wasn't so damn loud, I'd just leave it on while I sleep, too.).
ISP's are getting killed trying to keep up with the demand that high-bandwidth users place on their systems. Especially with our ancient backbones here in the US. In japan, the average home internet connection is somewhere around 100 Mbps. Here in the US, it's more like 10. My service from Cablevision is advertised as 30 Mbps, but it rarely hits that speed. It only comes close during the hours when no one else is online, or if I happen to hit a really good server, since you can only download as fast as someone else is uploading.
So what's causing this sudden increase in demand for bandwidth amongst internet users? Contrary to what you might think, it's not really people like me, who download large files over Bittorrent. No, the people that are breaking the internet are those who play streaming video files over the internet. Yes, those tiny, crappy quality streaming videos on sites like Hulu and network TV websites are KILLING THE INTERNET. Why, you might ask? Well, much like me, people don't like being forced to adhere to some arbitrary television schedule. It's much more convenient to time shift your viewing. TiVo has done it for ages, and those wise to Bittorrent have been doing it for ages, yet television networks and other content providers are just starting to get wise to the fact that there's a lot of money to be made in providing ad-supported entertainment for free.
And people love it. They're eating this shit up. They can just go to their favorite bookmarked website and catch up on the latest episodes of their favorite shows, or reruns of classics. It's convenient, there's no software to learn, etc... I can't stand watching these videos, due to the fact that their quality is often akin to a garbled YouTube video. The video is chock full of artifacts (anomalies that appear on the screen that shouldn't be there), and the sound is worse than AM radio. I much prefer to download high resolution videos that were recorded from the actual source (usually over-the-air HDTV) compressed into smaller files with a decent codec like DivX, along with true MP3 or AC3 audio that could be mistaken for the real thing.
If you made it through all that tech babble, congrats. Basically, what I'm saying is that the fact that people are willing to settle for these crappy videos of their shows has made it extremely profitable for networks to experiment with a new medium. And no one told the internet providers that this was going to be so damn popular. Now, they're trying to keep their level of service at the same level it was at before, all while juggling the increased bandwidth demands this has put on them.
So what's the solution here? Well, from the ISP standpoint, it's kind of obvious. Charge for usage, just like cell phone plans or car leases. The more you use, the more you pay per month. And if you use more than your plan's set allotment, then the ISP rejoices at the fact that they can suddenly charge you exorbitant overage fees, just like cell phone companies do.
What's the problem with this? The internet is full of CRAP. A fairly large proportion of the bandwidth that passes over your connection is crap. Ads, useless images, poor web design, etc... Do we really want to spend our precious LIMITED bandwidth on this stuff? I, for one, am completely and absolutely opposed to this concept of varied rate plans dependent on usage for this sole reason. In its current state, a "per byte" rate plan is totally wrong for the internet.
It's bad news for users like me, who use A LOT of bandwidth. My torrent client is pretty much always open, except for those few hours at night where I bask in the rare silence that occurs when I shut down my computer (and if it wasn't so damn loud, I'd just leave it on while I sleep, too.).
ISP's are getting killed trying to keep up with the demand that high-bandwidth users place on their systems. Especially with our ancient backbones here in the US. In japan, the average home internet connection is somewhere around 100 Mbps. Here in the US, it's more like 10. My service from Cablevision is advertised as 30 Mbps, but it rarely hits that speed. It only comes close during the hours when no one else is online, or if I happen to hit a really good server, since you can only download as fast as someone else is uploading.
So what's causing this sudden increase in demand for bandwidth amongst internet users? Contrary to what you might think, it's not really people like me, who download large files over Bittorrent. No, the people that are breaking the internet are those who play streaming video files over the internet. Yes, those tiny, crappy quality streaming videos on sites like Hulu and network TV websites are KILLING THE INTERNET. Why, you might ask? Well, much like me, people don't like being forced to adhere to some arbitrary television schedule. It's much more convenient to time shift your viewing. TiVo has done it for ages, and those wise to Bittorrent have been doing it for ages, yet television networks and other content providers are just starting to get wise to the fact that there's a lot of money to be made in providing ad-supported entertainment for free.
And people love it. They're eating this shit up. They can just go to their favorite bookmarked website and catch up on the latest episodes of their favorite shows, or reruns of classics. It's convenient, there's no software to learn, etc... I can't stand watching these videos, due to the fact that their quality is often akin to a garbled YouTube video. The video is chock full of artifacts (anomalies that appear on the screen that shouldn't be there), and the sound is worse than AM radio. I much prefer to download high resolution videos that were recorded from the actual source (usually over-the-air HDTV) compressed into smaller files with a decent codec like DivX, along with true MP3 or AC3 audio that could be mistaken for the real thing.
If you made it through all that tech babble, congrats. Basically, what I'm saying is that the fact that people are willing to settle for these crappy videos of their shows has made it extremely profitable for networks to experiment with a new medium. And no one told the internet providers that this was going to be so damn popular. Now, they're trying to keep their level of service at the same level it was at before, all while juggling the increased bandwidth demands this has put on them.
So what's the solution here? Well, from the ISP standpoint, it's kind of obvious. Charge for usage, just like cell phone plans or car leases. The more you use, the more you pay per month. And if you use more than your plan's set allotment, then the ISP rejoices at the fact that they can suddenly charge you exorbitant overage fees, just like cell phone companies do.
What's the problem with this? The internet is full of CRAP. A fairly large proportion of the bandwidth that passes over your connection is crap. Ads, useless images, poor web design, etc... Do we really want to spend our precious LIMITED bandwidth on this stuff? I, for one, am completely and absolutely opposed to this concept of varied rate plans dependent on usage for this sole reason. In its current state, a "per byte" rate plan is totally wrong for the internet.
posted by snoots at 2:13 PM
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