When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

[TheCotMan]

When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

ugh. i can't bear to think of it. then again, maybe at such a time there will be two grades of internet service: metered, filtered nonsense & unlimited, net neutral service.

perhaps something that was derided in the past by some will become the best solution: legally requiring (perhaps through the FTC) that something can't be sold as "internet access" unless it is unlimited and fully net neutral.

as far as my own views go, i feel that "true" internet access should be limited in only one way... overall bandwidth. this is, of course, the advertising model with which consumers have been familiar for years. (i.e. "i have a 256k DSL line." "i have a fractional T-line at 768k." "new Comcast Cable Internet with speeds up to 6 Mbps." etc) I believe that customers deserve bandwidth 100% of the time at the speed advertised, regardless of how many bits they push across it and what those packets contain.

my belief... if ISPs can't figure out how to turn a profit offering such service to users, they deserve to fall apart and be replaced in the marketplace by someone else who can get their head around that.

[converge]

Re: When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

I question how it would technically be framed. Would the ISPs maintain arrangements and then charge at the last leg? Outbound traffic vs Inbound? What if someone DoS's my connection to drive up the bill?

I would honostly like the idea of metered unfettered service, or heavily filtered but unlimited usage for specified uses. That way once iptv takes off I won't have asshats clogging my tubes. I would likely pay for both ... and/or find creative ways to 'repurpose' the cheaper unlimited connection.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

once iptv takes off I won't have asshats clogging my tubes

you know i love you, my brother, but we disagree dearly on some fundamentals on this issue (as we've seen before in our respective commentary)

essentially, i envision a world where internet connections are treated like getting cable TV... you pay a standard monthly fee and the one "pipe" coming into your home just does it all. you get all the channels and the infrastructure is designed to support people watching whatever they want at any time. even if all the people in my town tune into channel 7, that doesn't make my channel 7 get fuzzy or weak-signaled.

this is a gross over-generalization, but folks whose comments are in line with yours seem to treat internet connections like electricity or water... that they somehow deserve to be metered and throttled. the thing is, however, in most towns these services are distributed through metered billing because of the scarcity of the actual resource (it costs money to make electricity, water comes from reservoirs at a cost) not because one person using all of it will degrade service.

i like to think of the 'net with the Roman Aqueduct model... a massive supply of water from mountain springs and lakes transported via tubes and troughs to urban centers. the volume of water at the source is almost limitless, all that really matters is the capacity of the infrastructure. if you paid to construct an aqueduct spout to your home, you simply got to use as much water as your personal tube could carry.

i really feel the internet should be viewed that way, or else those who supply service are given a blank check for laziness or failure to invest in infrastructure. i wish that if you paid for a 10 Mbit connection, your ISP should be required by law to provide exact that and that they should almost expect customers to make full and complete use of the advertised connection 100% of the time.

in my opinion, once IPTV takes off there will be no asshats clogging your tubes if all ISPs were required to have an infrastructure in place that would fully support all users getting the advertised bandwidth. if an ISP can't figure out how to do that and turn a profit at the same time, let them fold and let someone else take a whack at it.

[DaKahuna]

Re: When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

I see this coming sooner rather than later as the cable companies get more and more control of the home user Internet service market. This will be a way for them to add revenue. Hotels are doing it now and even some of the cable companies are offering more bandwidth.
One could even make a case that FIOS is doing it now. The more you pay the higher bandwidth you are promised.

[converge]

Re: When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

The problem is that oversubscription makes ISPs money.. period.

With widespread bandwidth consumption comes overutilization on the backend, .. your decision to watch iptv, or insert any other web enabled service here.. will directly affect my traffic through latency or saturation, or it will effect the cost of my service because of the equipment to handle that load. Essentially everyone will be paying for the iptv bandwidth, and then those who watch will give extra cash to the service owner.

Idealogically I think we actually agree on this, but I think that practically it fails at implemenation with current technology/cost limitations to actually provide the transport. ..and with that in mind, I would rather the option of a pay as you go service (since like water/electricity/etc capacity *is* limited) and the option of unlimited usage in a competitive environment that may have one provider allowing certain services but not others and inversely at another provider.

I don't really see how economics would infer anything else.

[liberator]

Re: When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

I think that it's now closer than it was a few weeks ago, because Comcast got caught with their hand in the cookie jar forging TCP RST packets, thereby killing Bittorrent (and other P2P, and Lotus Notes) connections, all the while lying about it.

Note that this is on top of the separate, earlier scandal, where they are terminating contracts for people who download more than their secret limit of 29 GB per month; they are lying about that, too.

The EFF has now jumped into the fray, see Packet Forgery By ISPs: A Report on the Comcast Affair

Excerpt:

"Comcast is essentially deploying against their own customers techniques more typically used by malicious hackers (this is doubtless how Comcast would characterize other parties that forged traffic to make it appear that it came from Comcast)."

A zillion arguments, pro and con, have been posted about this kind of thing over the last week or so on a lot of sites. Google "Comcast torrent" to find some good stuff.

Comcast (and other ISPs) has now started an arms race that they can not win. Already people can get past this by turning on encryption in the Bittorrent client. You can just imagine the tit-for-tat escalation that will happen over the coming months as they desperately try to put the cork into their customers' pipes.

It's interesting to note that gymnasiums don't demonize their customers, calling them "resource hogs" and worse, if they deign to utilize the service that the company has contracted to provide.

"All you can eat" contracts completely fail when the ISP oversubscribes and the customers suddenly have software that fills the pipe 24/7. It's just not sustainable, especially the way the residential cable plant has been built. The dirty little secret is that it's not just P2P that will swamp them; Youtube and successor IPTV will do it, too. And IPTV will eventually cannibalize their regular cable TV eyeballs, what a coincidence....

Note that Comcast's approach does not just block heavy bandwidth consumers. It can't, because it doesn't consider the bandwidth. It just flat stops all P2P traffic from being seeded, regardless of port, regardless of bandwidth usage. This is yet another way to tick off customers who are not even doing what Comcast alleges to be harm.

The only solution, IMHO, is to charge for bandwidth consumed, possibly with a break for traffic that is routed within their network (which will drive further enhancements to Bittorrent clients). This may be coupled with *published* bandwidth caps. It could also be priced much cheaper for multicast, which is essentially what their current TV broadcasts are, and is potentially way less strain on their network.

I predict that they will flail around punishing their customers for a while before taking this approach, further damaging their reputation in the process. Already they have drawn a lawsuit and the ire of a Congressman. A group of people has filed a formal complaint with the FCC. Even a major Presidential candidate is stating that he would make this net non-neutrality illegal. It's a PR disaster. They have tossed a grenade into the porta-pot and they won't be able to defuse it before it goes off. It's already boiling, and the splatter is mighty nasty.

[astcell]

Re: When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

The standard charge here in Tajikistan is 50 cents per megabyte.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

Can someone again explain to me (converge has done so in the past... but i'm a stubborn bastard and tend to shrug off his reasoned arguments ) why it would be so hard to make over-subscription against the law?

My notions...

1. You go into business as a small internet service provider

2. You get a T3 connection from an upstream provider. Let's say you pat $10K per month for this. This gives you 45 Mbps of bandwidth.

3. You begin to sell service to subscribers. For ease of argument, let's say it's DSL. You have some sort of Covad-style line use contract which may add $5 to $10 per month to your per-user costs... maybe you pass that on to the customers.

4. You charge customers a reasonable rate schedule (say $400/mo for full 1.5 Mbit both ways, work your way down from there, slightly sticking it to the smaller customers as you go)

5. You have yourself a business. Bill the customers, pay your taxes, and reap your profits.

Anyone found to be over-subscribing would be fined and/or penalized (my personal choice would be for them to have to knock down all users' fees by a percentage each month representative of how much they over-subscribed) to keep things proper. If an ISP pisses and moans that they can't turn the profits they want to under this system then they are free to go the fuck out of business and let someone else fill that void in the market... someone else who thinks they can figure out how to make a business run properly.

You'd have real costs and real services all out in the open. Real competition among providers would result in true speeds for all parties and straightforward rate plans... Not to mention no traffic bottlenecks and bandwidth issues.


I mean, come on... airlines are another example (like ISPs) of a business where overbooking is the norm and part of how things just operate. BUT when a flight is full and too many people arrive, the airlines don't just say "Well... we messed up, sorry. I guess you'll be sitting on each others' laps." Nor do they have the right to penalize "power travelers" who consistently show up 100% of the time for the flights that they've booked.

No, they have to bump people to first-class at no cost, or give them free vouchers for another flight, etc. They don't get a free pass (one of the few places where airlines don't get handouts and molly-coddling at the hands of regulators.)

[semprix]

Re: When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

Poll seems to be closed. But I would say more than 5, but less than 10 years.

[TheCotMan]

Re: When (if ever) will most ISP move to metered service for home users?

Poll seems to be closed. But I would say more than 5, but less than 10 years.

Ok. I edited and extended the poll to last 60 days from the creation of the thread.

You should be able to vote now, unless you have already voted.