Bill Ready To Ban ISP Caps In the US 439
xclr8r writes "Eric Massa, a congressman representing a district in western New York, has a bill ready that would start treating Internet providers like a utility and stop the use of caps. Nearby locales have been used as test beds for the new caps, so this may have made the constituents raise the issue with their representative."
Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure there will be a loophole somewhere.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure there will be a loophole somewhere.
There always will be. The difference is that, with regulation, there is a loophole somewhere. With deregulation, there are loopholes everywhere.
I'm sure there will be a loophole somewhere. (Score:5, Interesting)
There always will be. The difference is that, with regulation, there is a loophole somewhere. With deregulation, there are loopholes everywhere.
With deregulation there are no loopholes, there are only loopholes when there are regulations.
Falcon
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps, but once a utility the consumer has a lot more power to get them closed.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Section 8 - Powers of Congress
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the United States Constitution is a pretty easy read. Before you say what you said above, you should give it a look. What you are looking for is the 10th Amendment.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Common Carriers, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
A recent study by the Pew Institute demonstrates that Internet access is a "must have" service. That makes it a utility. Treating all ISPs as utilities brings them one step closer to common carrier status.
You may have noticed that I tend to harp on this idea. Here's why: a common carrier cannot refuse service and cannot discriminate. Once those two requirements come into view, just watch the content providers get out of the business, in a hurry.
The current debate in public discourse and with respect to pending legislation seems to exhibit a logical progression of taking a new service that was a luxury and turning it into a utility. I'm happy to help it progress.
Unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the bill banned caps, I would believe it.
It actually just requires the FCC approval for caps. If ISPs with the most political pull think it will let them have caps while denying them to their competitors, they might well not work too hard to prevent the bill from passing (though they'd still probably say they didn't want it.)
FTC not FCC (Score:3, Informative)
As I noted in another comment, [slashdot.org] it's not the FCC, it's the FTC. That's a huge difference. If it were the FCC and the bill passed, it would be worthless. The FTC, on the other hand, has some teeth, and is not totally in bed with industry.
PS, nice job getting modded up twice for essentially the same comment. Maybe it'll happen to me too :-)
Re: (Score:2)
ant thatswhy power companies aren't utilities~
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're living in a dream world. They are not capable of dealing with the traffic. A bunch of paper with dead peoples faces on them is not going to change that. They have been neglecting their infrastructure for a long time, and it's going to take a long time to rectify the situation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Which is a shame since there are so many people who want a new power line run through their property and even more who want to live next to a brand new power plant.
Just imagine living in a world where "NOT IN MY BACKYARD!!!!" was the standard response to any sort of infrastructure upgrade.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The immense cost of the Gig ethernet or OC12 or whatever layer 2 connection they are bringing into that local ISP is prohibitive, even if you ignore the fact that the ISP has to have some great massive layer 3 hardware to connect it to somewhere.
The Telecoms selling those OC12s and Gig Ethernets and whatnot do plenty of upgrades and maint. They could upgrade a local ISPs trunk connect
Re: (Score:2)
Even if you don't, how would something like this affect the bottom line of an ISP? Who's really charging what for bandwidth or usage? I still, to this day, don't know how ISPs get or pay for their access or if they just have to contribute something to maintain the backbone... or whatever... Does someone have a good idea how this all relates money wise?
It also seems to me that the best cure for caps and pricing issues is having some good healthy
Re: (Score:2)
Has it occured to anyone else. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Has it occured to anyone else. . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Has it occured to anyone else. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Until you see what time Warner wants to do with caps. The modification to their terms of service allowed their VOIP service unlimited bandwidth while charging the customer for some else's VOIP. ISP's want a deal where BING.com users don't get charged bandwidth but if you use google.com you have to pay extra. Breaking metering will prevent the value of such arrangements.
Re: (Score:2)
They can't afford people thinking they should use less bandwidth. For them: bandwidth used by people = money.
Re: (Score:2)
Except everyone is becoming mass downloaders.
or is that 'are becoming'?
Sure, there is a good argument for the pay per bit, but utilities don't need that.
Of course, the cost in metering, billing, and the addition of customer support for a pay per bit may not be worth it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Has it occured to anyone else. . . (Score:5, Informative)
Gaming of a deregulated energy system by crooked companies like Enron played a major part in those rolling brown-outs.
Re:Has it occured to anyone else. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Gaming of a deregulated energy system by crooked companies like Enron played a major part in those rolling brown-outs.
Gaming a badly/partially deregulated system, which IIRC they were involved in determining the structure of the not-quite-deregulation (I think it was something like, fixed retail prices and deregulated wholesale prices, because they (incorrectly) predicted that wholesale prices would drop significantly). There were other states that did things properly and it worked fairly well, or at least didn't cause problems like in CA.
This article [csmonitor.com] from 2006 indicate that deregulation doesn't actually lower prices like it "should", apparently because providers don't want to compete and don't bid to serve the same areas.
Re: (Score:2)
Gaming of a poorly deregulated energy system by crooked companies like Enron played a major part in those rolling brown-outs.
FTFY. The way California went from regulation to de-regulation was pretty stupid. [wikipedia.org]
First they had price caps, removing any incentive to conserve energy. (Different situation than internet here where there is a fairly linear cost to produce the product.)
Second, they released the caps on wholesale prices first, but not retail prices. So you had end users with no incentive to conserve being fed by producers who had no incentive to lower prices because the end users were gobbling up as much as they could
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Could the water shortages have been caused by simply having too many people for the amount of water nearby?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except California wasn't really deregulated, there were still caps on in-state kWh charges among other weird rules. They called it deregulation, but what they set up was a hodgepodge of conflicting laws that was just aching to be gamed. Or, in other words, the usual government incompetence in trying to set how a market works based not on sound supply/demand principles, but some social engineering agenda. We saw the same exact thing with the mortgage meltdown, largely caused by the effective requirement t
CA was not deregulated (Score:3, Informative)
If you want to say you don't want government involvement, that's fine as an argument, but there's evidence that deregulation in California and abuse of this deregulation by Enron and other such companies had more to do with the situation
CA energy was not deregulated but you like so many other have fallen for the lie that the rolling blackouts in CA were caused by deregulation. Sure some regulations were dropped but others were added. See this post [slashdot.org] of mine.
Falcon
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Has it occurred to anyone else that treating "utilities" like utilities is what's caused water shortages and rolling brown-outs in CA? Maybe it's not such a great idea to extend the process to ISPs.
Someone already linked brown-outs and Enron, so I'll tackle water shortages.
In a few words: poor planning + droughts
Because more growth = more taxes, all those Western and Mid-Western states that are currently parched did fuck-all to limit growth. The water shortages are self-inflicted because no one that mattered had the foresight or policital courage to say "no more building unless you can arrange for your own water." This is 95% the result of failtacular (sub*)urban planning. The other 5% is the serious
Re: (Score:2)
No it hasn't ecasue that's not true, at all.
Brown out were caused by people operating illegally and trying to pressure a rate increase. You do notice that the company behind that ceased to exist, right? and that you still get power?
Water Utilities don't cause water shortages. Lack of water for demand does.
Re: (Score:2)
CA just finally started building new plants agai
Re: (Score:2)
It is already well established that the rolling blackouts in Ca were the result of a combination of felonious market manipulation made possible by de-regulation and of deregulating just part of the industry.
The latter part was from wholesale prices rising while retail prices were held firm by regulation. Unlike the energy situation, wholesale bandwidth prices continue a downward trend driven by new technology routinely doubling (or more) the bandwidth that can be provided over existing fiber.
The water short
Re: (Score:2)
Has it occurred to anyone else that treating "utilities" like utilities is what's caused water shortages and rolling brown-outs in CA?
No, your problem is you're NOT treating them like utilities. You're treating them like commodity brokers. Your brownouts and shortages are the result of underregulation, not overregulation. Monopolies must be heavily regulated; with a monopoly, there is no free market. I can't choose gas, electric, or cable companies. Hell, I have only one choice of high speed internet here.
Sounds like an idiotic idea (Score:2, Insightful)
What right has anybody to dictate contracts in that regard?
Why should somebody producing little traffic pay as much as somebody who produces a lot?
You dont pay your water bill by your pipe-diameter, or your electricity bill by your wire-gauge.
So why should you pay your internet becaue of the maximum throughput possible?
Re:Sounds like an idiotic idea (Score:5, Insightful)
You dont pay your water bill by your pipe-diameter, or your electricity bill by your wire-gauge.
So why should you pay your internet becaue of the maximum throughput possible?
Only going to say one thing here - remember that trying to analogize the internet to make it the same as things that are not-the-internet has led us to some rather unfortunate conclusions.
With that said, what I'd prefer is simply regulation that you can't call a service "unlimited" if it's not unlimited. That's my biggest beef. They should have to clearly advertise it as X gigs/month. "Unlimited" should mean "unlimited."
Re: (Score:2)
First off, there are a lot of laws dictating ways contracts can be sued.
Hiong as a utility is the best way you ahve of eventually getting pay for what you use plans.
The current plan stems from the Cable TV model, not some government utility program.
"You don't pay your water bill by your pipe-diameter, "
Actually that is a factor in many areas. It can also cause your sewer bill to change.
"or your electricity bill by your wire-gauge."
that as well.
"So why should you pay your internet because of the maximum thro
Re: (Score:2)
They Aren't the ISPs Bits to Sell (Score:4, Interesting)
Comcast doesn't produce the bits they deliver to me, they simply transfer them from someone else who I might be paying for the bits. If they can actually deliver the 16Mb/s they claim they can to me at any time of day regardless of "congestion" (of course they can't), then the cost difference to them of delivering nothing for a month and maxing out that connection for a month is negligible. Their routers might draw slightly more power, but the total cost of delivering an additional bit (or 100GB) is next to nothing compared to the cost of making the network available to me.
The idea behind ISP transfer limits is totally different than paying per unit for water or electricity. With water and electricity you pay per unit (usually - in my hometown of Anchorage, AK water is actually a fixed rate I think) because it costs the company to sell you a unit. With ISPs, they want to limit your use because the speeds they charge you for aren't actually the speeds they can deliver if everyone actually uses their connection. So instead of telling you realistic speeds, they just make sure people can't actually use their connection, making it more likely that you will be able to use yours (until you too hit the cap).
Of course there is the totally separate issue of most ISPs also selling content that they would much rather you get via pay per view, etc than via the Internet...
Huh? (Score:2)
You pay by your water usage which is really just a means to charge for water treatment of your waste water which is not metered.
If you use no water; you pay almost nothing, yet you can dump tons of horrible waste into the system like many businesses do currently without added expense. A friend of mine invented a meter for waste water but nobody wants it.
I see nothing wrong with charging for throughput like we do with water and power utilities. Initial hook ups cost if you want a 'bigger pipe' but unless you
They can justify it. (Score:5, Insightful)
13(a) PROHIBITION.--It shall be unlawful for major
14 broadband Internet service providers to offer volume usage
15 service plans imposing rates, terms and conditions that
16 are unjust, unreasonable, or unreasonably discriminatory.
I'm sure they can somehow find a way to "Justify" the caps.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, but they have to Justify it in a manner that elected officials and consumer agree on.
As opposed to now when they don't ahve to justify it at all.
Overall, this sort of thing has worked out well.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that would be for a judge to determine. At least with this law you have the ability to argue they're unjust.
Question (Score:2)
Does this mean that internet service is going to be provided by local monopolies like most utilities are? Oh, wait...
How do people help (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Contact your congress person a let them knwo you support it and want them to show support.
Just like a utility? What about rolling blackouts? (Score:2)
I'm not in favor of caps. I'm just anticipating how some of the carrier weasels will try to get around this one.
Re:Just like a utility? What about rolling blackou (Score:4, Informative)
Enron did that, pissed everyone off and suddenly they were put under a microscope.
Re:Just like a utility? What about rolling blackou (Score:2)
Excellent Bill (Score:2, Funny)
I'm not sure who this new Bill guy is, but I like him already.
A lot better than most of the other Bills around.
ISP's like Utilities? Be careful what you ask for (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to get a new water, sewer, or electric hookup can be an exercise in frustration because of the bureaucracy and safeguards in the system.
Phone and cable have gotten better in the past 30 years. Landline phone and cable companies are so desperate for business that they're oftentimes pretty damned quick about getting a line out to you. (Unless you want something fancy like a business line or a T3, then welcome back to the Bad Old Days.)
I invoke the ghost of Lilly Tomlin: "We don't care, we don't have to. We're the phone company."
And if you think that usage on Utilities isn't capped, you're naive. If you didn't have those teeny-tiny water pipes and electric lines to your house you'd find out real quick there are all kinds of regulations and arbitrary rules about water and electric usage. For industry -- which have much larger access to electric and water -- there are often "monthy maximums" for water use, and obscenely high electric rates for peak usage.
Re: (Score:2)
What? I have never had a problem getting a utility hook up.
You didn't show any example of caps.
Yes, you can't exceed 100% of your water pipe bandwidth. You can get a bigger pipe and meter.
They aren't capped any any realistic way for the consumer. The exception being during shortages. But there sin't exactly 'bandwidth' droughts that appear.
Plus as a uitility the consumer has a lot more power, and protections.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with the sentiment, but Ms. Tomlin is, thankfully, still alive. At least, according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
It's a Stupid Idea, if Competion Exists (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Whoa, whoa, whoa, that article seems to be promoting a balanced viewpoint that denies a) that telcos are totally evil and b) that we should all be allowed to have as much bandwidth as we want and not have to pay for it. We'll have none of that nonsense on /.
Billed like water? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm billed for usage in tiers like this:
0-3000 gallons $3.30 per 1000 gallons
3001-6000 gallons $6.60 per 1000 gallons
6001-9000 gallons $10.00 per 1000 gallons
9001+ gallons $13.30 per 1000 gallons
Presumably, utility style billing for internet connections would be similar - very cheap for the first few GB, then progressively more expensive where the heaviest users could find themselves a lot worse off.
Not sure I like it. I suspect the internet companies would think it a great idea.
Re: (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
Unnecessary... (Score:3, Informative)
Just compel the ISPs to state that there is actually a limit to what they will allow you to use, the penalties/limits they impose if you exceed that limit, and what it takes to get past the limit. I'm not sure we should be legislating that Internet service be UNlimited. Sooner or later, someone will claim cell phone service is a 'right', and all plans need to be UNlimited. Not so smart, but it sounds good.
In other words, make them say 'limited' when they try to say 'unlimited', and it is NOT.
Truth in advertising. Yes, an oxymoron. Shouldn't be.
How does this bill make a difference? (Score:3, Insightful)
The more electricity I use, the higher my bill.
The more water I use, the higher my bill.
The more natural gas I use, the higher my bill.
By treating internet connectivity like a utility, that would mean that I would get billed according to usage... Which is what bandwidth caps mostly are (pay extra if you surpass a certain amount of utilization in a month). So how does this bill have any type of impact, other than ISPs having to prove to the FCC what the cost:utilization ratio is.
Re: (Score:2)
Not every utility is metered by usage. Most landline telco providers provide unlimited local calling... and it's actually unlimited local calling. ...unlike many ISPs, who claim to provide "unlimited" use when they actually have hidden caps.
Re: (Score:2)
But, if you are out of town for a month or you have no power for 3 weeks due to hurricane damage, you have a *really* low electric bill. But your ISP bill stays the same...
Re:How does this bill make a difference? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. On the Utility part.
Just because i use more doesn't mean my access is cut off.
That is what this bill aims at.
Nobody is disputing that internet can be billed on usage.
Everybody is disputing that internet access can b e cut off, because i exceeded a limit set by my Telco.
Get it first through your thick head before you post.
ISP like my utilities - Bad idea. (Score:2, Insightful)
goodluckwiththat Tagging... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do all articles that express certain ideas that haven't been implemented yet get the tag "goodluckwiththat" and articles that ideas that have just been implemented get "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense".
Does it speak to the pessimism of the community to influence technology towards the mass market or is the /. crowd just a bunch of crabby whiners?
Responding to the topic at hand... I don't think they should make the internet a regulated utility until such a time when the nation's government is capable of using it as a mechanism to broadcast emergency information/communication. For the time being, television for 1-way communication and telephone for 2-way communication are the standard and they should stay that way.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Does it speak to the pessimism of the community to influence technology towards the mass market
Yes. Our pessimism is borne out by experience.
I don't think they should make the internet a regulated utility until such a time when the nation's government is capable of using it as a mechanism to broadcast emergency information/communication
Why would that be a condition of regulation? Monopolies require regulation to keep them from screwing the consumer. If there were ten high speed ISPs in my town, the open mar
Re:sounds like an (Score:5, Insightful)
Until you realize they will just lower their speeds. But...
I'd really ike an investigation into how much bandwidth these ISP's and the top telco's really have and what their utilization is. What needs to be done is to make this information public on a permanent basis so these companies can't claim that the small percent of users are eating up allthe bandwidth and use it as an excuse to lower speeds.
Quite frankly these companies should have not be able to withhold this information in these matters because the internet is so important to society.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
if they become a utility, as they should
Be careful what you ask for, 'cause you just might get it, square in the pocketbook when They push for metered service, just like how all the other utilities price their service.
Re:sounds like an (Score:4, Insightful)
" Who says metered service is a bad thing? "
Uh...
The internet is not a public resource.
It's a concatenation of private networks.
You own your network, I own mine, we agree so use the TCP/IP protocol suite to connect them.
There is no "public internet". It's all privately owned.
And you want some politician to tell you how you're gonna run your network?
Be very, very careful what you wish for.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My guess is that if ISPs become utilities they'll charge bandwidth like my water company. Average users get the flat rate, power users get increased rates. If I were a cable or FIOS company that provided media content in addition to internet access, this is how I would want my custome
if they become a utility, (Score:3, Interesting)
as they should, that'll be possible
No they should not be regulated as a utility. Instead what we need is to foster competition. And a duopoly is not competition. Add fiber and wireless then you may have competition.
Falcon
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Add fiber and wireless then you may have competition.
I would say separate the infrastructure from the service. Don't allow a service provider to own the delivery medium. We have competition for electric service because one companies maintains the grid, and the other companies with power plants feed power onto it. The grid owner reads all the meters, and the power plant companies bill according to the meter. Phone service, cable TV, internet, all these should be done like electricity. One grid who sells access to the service provider, and the service provider bills the consumer.
Re:sounds like an (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it will happen, but then it will be easier to pick your ISP, right now there are so many hidden details it's very hard for a regular Joe to pick up the best package.
I'd go even further, 50ms is the maximum latency, packet lost should be under 1% and the upload and download should never go below 80%. Ofc, this would only apply inside their network. Plus some public monitoring of their routers / bandwidth so they can't blame someone else for their problems.
The speed of the connection is their decision, but we have to stop this sill over-selling capacity, bringing down the whole net.
Re: (Score:2)
Well sure, we could make them give you what they say they're selling, but then you'd have to pay for what you're buying. Overselling made sense when most people would use the internet for maybe a couple hours in a day - the network was fully capable of giving people their full speed so long as it didn't have to provide it to all of them at once (especially given normal web-surfing behaviour of pauses for reading between requests for a new page).
It now doesn't work because more and more people want to make
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you define "their network"? You could go coast to coast and never leave AT&T's (or Qwest's or Verizon's) "network".
low latency is very hard (Score:4, Interesting)
Getting latency down is very hard especially when modems are involved. Often modems need to keep a moving "sample window" of the signal before they can decide what bits were sent. That "window" = latency.
FWIW the distance between the east and west coast of the USA is about 13 light-milliseconds (following the surface of the earth) - assuming speed of light in vacuum.
But light travels slower in optical fibres. A naive calculation just using the index of refraction gives me about 20 milliseconds. Round trip time then becomes 40ms.
The fibre isn't taking a "great circle route" and there's some modulation and demodulation involved, so round trip time is likely to be higher than 50ms.
Re: (Score:2)
But 50ms maximum latency to where? And is it one way or return?
My guess would be from your home to their facility (i.e. the last mile of the connection).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I only have one broadband option available to me (that I know of). Unless I want to go back to dialup or get some ridiculously expensive air card or satellite link, I'm stuck with just one service provider: our local cable company.
The cable company decides to implement a cap or traffic shaping/policing to reduce throughput? I've got no choice other than drop them and go with some other even worse option. I suspect many people are in the same boat.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the telcos that use caps lowered their speeds, that would make them less able to appear superficially price:performance competitive with their competition, where they have it, so forcing them to be more honest about what they are providing would still be a plus.
Of course, the bill would not prohibit caps, it would make ISPs get FCC approval for caps, which might reduce the imposition of caps, or it might mean that those that have the most political pull
Re:sounds like an (Score:5, Insightful)
As a utility, they would be more inclined to institute "metered access" which will be worse than having simple unlimited access. They have always controlled the speed and I would actually have less issue with that so long as it is reliable. As a utility, it should also mean a great many other things such as no port blocking or DNS redirecting or any of the other games they play. It would also open up the floodgate of many ISPs who have been inhibiting botnet behavior.
It could do a lot to change the scape of things.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
i would rather take a slower speed with no cap then a super fast speed and 250gb month cap. what is the point of say 20mbit download if you can only avg 8gb a day, and max speed dl speed that is only 1 hour and its used up.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
i would rather take a slower speed with no cap then a super fast speed and 250gb month cap. what is the point of say 20mbit download if you can only avg 8gb a day, and max speed dl speed that is only 1 hour and its used up.
I, on the other hand, would rather have a faster speed and a cap. I don't download much stuff from home -- some email, some light web browsing. When I do, I want it to be fast. If I'm not planning on BTing a bunch of stuff, or watching tons of online video, then why sacrifice speed for
Re: (Score:2)
Don't take this as trying to regulate what you're doing with your bandwidth, but I would like to understand what would be eating 8GB a day. I know some people that average 5GB or more per day, and when I ask them what they're downloading, they mention TV shows, movies, music, basically what you would expect.
Questions about legalities and ethics aside, I have always questioned why they would pull down that much. They work full-time jobs, and in some cases have families, and yet they pull down more than the
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, like the power companies, have a certain level of responsibility towards the gov. to prove what they create use and sell, so should we, and not to the lame ass management that knows nothing about bandwidth numbers, but a real techie that can tell when the ISPs are double charging for stuff or doing certain "shady" practices to stop themselves giving more then they should really be giving.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:sounds like an (Score:5, Informative)
The summary grossly misrepresents what the congressman is proposing.
This bill doesn't "ban ISP caps". It simply says that ISPs will start to become regulated in the same way that phone companies, for instance, are, so that a given ISP would have to put in a submission to raise their rates, explaining why they need to do so, etc.
Most ISPs solution to this would be to immediately switch all plans to a per-byte type of plan (which works given the comparison with utilities. I don't get carte blanche from the electric company to use it all for free, complaining that "they provide 20A to the house so I should be able to use 20A around the clock for free!"), and this would almost certainly not be in the consumer's best interest.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
this would almost certainly not be in the consumer's best interest.
Only if the ISP's are lying about 1% of users using 90% of bandwidth. If they're telling the truth with that statistic 99% of users will see their bills drop significantly because they will no longer be subsidizing the 1% that are power-users.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't get carte blanche from the electric company to use it all for free
The electric company doesn't provide communications. I had carte blanche phone service all my life until I switched to a cell phone, and now I have it again - $50 per month, no minutes, free voicemail, free texting, free internet (Boost Mobile). I don't have to pay by the minute to watch cable TV. Why should internet service be any different?
Re:sounds like an (Score:5, Insightful)
Most ISPs solution to this would be to immediately switch all plans to a per-byte type of plan (which works given the comparison with utilities. I don't get carte blanche from the electric company to use it all for free, complaining that "they provide 20A to the house so I should be able to use 20A around the clock for free!"), and this would almost certainly not be in the consumer's best interest.
No, that wouldn't be in our best interest though it would probably happen, even though the comparison to utilities fails for the exact same reason that fixed download caps are stupid in the first place, which is this: Bits are free. The total amount of power you use in a month directly affects the amount of fuel a power utility has to burn, or the amount of water you consumer affects how much water the utility has to treat. Bits on a connection aren't like that. If you "don't use" a bit on their fiber link to the backbone, that doesn't leave them with an extra bit, and if you use a bit, the next one is coming at the same time and same cost anyway. Combined with how most peering relationships work, other than a tiny amount of electricity in their routers, it doesn't make any difference to them if a bit is used or not and thus the total number of bits you consume is by itself meaningless.
Bits per second, aka bandwidth, is a different matter. That's what costs them money to provide, and money to improve. And no single user's cable modem/DSL connection is going to saturate their ISPs bandwidth even if it is used continuously. Rather it's during Internet Prime Time when everyone, even "light" users, hop on the net and download some Youtube videos which in aggregate suck up every last bps and make the ISP's pipe choke. It's Prime Time peak usage that makes the ISP have to go out and buy new hardware in order to keep their customers happy. Utilities have maximum rates too, which is why electricity is cheaper at night and the water company will have designated days for watering your lawn based on addresses. But they also have per-unit expenses. With an ISP, someone who downloads 100GB a month but does it all at 2am will cost them less than someone who downloads 20MB but does it all at 8pm.
So here's what makes sense with an ISP: You charge your user for bandwidth. "Unlimited" bits -- as in as many as you can download -- goes without saying because its irrelevant. During Prime Time, when the ISP's link is saturated, then everyone's performance degrades, ideally in proportion to the amount of bandwidth they payed for (as in if the link is at 120% utilization, everyone's bandwidth goes down by 18%). Thus just like with electricity everyone is encouraged to use off-peak bandwidth to get better performance. If prime time performance degrades too much, the ISP buys more hardware.
Unfortunately, while this is completely fair to everyone, it's not going to happen because 1) the ISPs probably believe they can make more money charging per-bit and 2) most of the biggest ISPs are also content providers, and thus for them total number of bits -- as in total number of movies/shows you could download without paying for their more expensive media services -- matters a great deal. That is what download caps are all about. Not conserving their precious bits.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)