Charging by the byte

[ken0042]

We'll use digital TV as an example; analog is slightly similar.

With digital TV the bandwidth is allocated ahead of time. Lets say TSN gets 2 mbps, CBC gets 1 mbps, and CTV gets 1.5 mbps. But because there are only 200 odd streams (channels) the network only has to handle the sum of all of them; so in my 3 channel example they only need 4.5 mbps. But with the internet, there are millions or possibly billions of streams available; and each pretty much unique to each house.

So while 100 of us are watching the game on TSN, it uses the same bandwidth as if 10,000 of us are watching. But if we are all downloading movies, we are likely either using different formats, different sources, etc.

[fredr123]

Thanks for the explanation.

This confirms two hunches I had regarding the internet vs. tv analogy. One, that television service is probably using a lot less bandwidth than internet service potentially could. Two, that Shaw and others sell more internet service than their network could reasonably support if everyone decided to use it at the same time to the extent that they were promised when they signed up.

So now people are starting to use more and more bandwidth for various online activities revealing the shortcomings in the infrastructure and the network itself and the solution is to restrict user activity via some inhibitory pricing scheme.

Shaw and others wrote a check that their network couldn't cash, in a sense. That annoys me.

[BlackEleven]

Originally Posted by fredr123

I'm about to reveal my ignorance here, but why is internet usage and tv usage different? Aren't they both just bits flowing from Shaw through the tubes to my house? Is it that internet usage requires a lot more of these bits than television usage? Is it that Shaw has sold so many internet connections in my area that the infrastructure can't support the simultaneous use of the service?

More or less you are correct -- they both use bandwidth. However, the bandwidth a television uses is pretty fixed and predicitable. So its easier to calculate the bandwidth they need based on the number of channels they carry.

The Inernet on the other hand is wildly unpredicitble. Someone that checks email and reads Calgarypuck will use almost no bandwidth while someone who downloads many movies per day can use ten of thousands of times more. No tv will ever use 1000 times more bandwidth than another tv.

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by fredr123

So now people are starting to use more and more bandwidth for various online activities revealing the shortcomings in the infrastructure and the network itself and the solution is to restrict user activity via some inhibitory pricing scheme.

Shaw and others wrote a check that their network couldn't cash, in a sense. That annoys me.

Well, I would say that most (or at least many) businesses operate like that:

- Rather than using restaurants, let's say University cafeterias prepare enough meals knowing that only 70% of students with the meals cards will eat there.

- Phone companies only have a certain bandwidth available. But there is no way their network can handle every user placing a call at the exact same time.

- The City's garbage collection allows for up to 5 bags per house. However if every household had the maximum allowed, the trucks wouldn't be able to handle the load.

- Transit riders with monthly passes can ride whenever they want. But if they all hit a bus/C-train at the same time, the system would be over capacity. (wait, that's already happening.)

These are just examples where the users are entitled to a standard service, but the service provider counts on not everybody using it all at once. Restaurants, roadways, retail stores all do the same thing based on averages.

What the ISPs are talking about now is telling the people who use more to pay more.

[Barnes]

I just don't see this bandwidth shortage.

If an ISP can handle 100 bajillion bits per second, it cost more or less the same amount of money to have its users use one bit as it does to use 99 bajillion bits. Are the sum of its users hitting that upper limit? I really doubt it. What's the point then?

[ken0042]

^^

But that isn't the issue at hand.

Fred was right on- Shaw (as an example) designs their network to handle 100 houses per line; assuming on average 20% of users are online with a peak of 60% possible. In most cases this is fine. But then you get a pocket of users who all use a lot of internet, that throws the numbers off, and you get guys like me calling Shaw asking why CP is so slow today.

Business internet gets charged by the GB of bandwidth. All they are saying is that if you use as much traffic as a small business, then pay for it.

And really, as much as I might have one or two MP3s that I downloaded for free, if you are using dozens of gigabytes then you are saving so much money by not paying for your music and movies that a few extra dollars for delivery shouldn't be that much of a drop in the bucket. However my gut tells me many of the worst offenders are people who as I mentioned before either:
a) Download a ton but hardly ever watch/listen to what they download.
b) are unaware that leaving Limewire running 24/7 is using up bandwidth.

And to go back to the water analogy; for years water was based on a per month charge and that was it. Then the infastructure couldn't keep up so the city started giving people water meters and charging based on usage. This is all the ISPs are doing.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Well, I would say that most (or at least many) businesses operate like that:

- Rather than using restaurants, let's say University cafeterias prepare enough meals knowing that only 70% of students with the meals cards will eat there.

- Phone companies only have a certain bandwidth available. But there is no way their network can handle every user placing a call at the exact same time.

- The City's garbage collection allows for up to 5 bags per house. However if every household had the maximum allowed, the trucks wouldn't be able to handle the load.

- Transit riders with monthly passes can ride whenever they want. But if they all hit a bus/C-train at the same time, the system would be over capacity. (wait, that's already happening.)

These are just examples where the users are entitled to a standard service, but the service provider counts on not everybody using it all at once. Restaurants, roadways, retail stores all do the same thing based on averages.

What the ISPs are talking about now is telling the people who use more to pay more.

Interesting examples. Though I'm not sure I agree all your examples are entirely analogous, I see your point nonetheless.

- To be completely analogous to the ISP situation, I think you would have to be charged a flat fee each month to use the cafeteria as much as you want. That's not the case, at least, in my experience. When I went to the U of C, you paid a certain amount of money per semester for your food plan and had the various products you "enjoyed" at the University cafeteria deducted from your account balance.

- Phone companies have different pricing schemes depending on various factors including whether your call is long distance and what time of the day you are placing your call. Shaw Digital Phone is a littler closer to the ISP situation at least with respect to their more pricey plan and calling within North America. You pay a single fee for the entire month and can talk to your heart's content.

- The transit situation is also interesting. I suppose the ISP solution to the transit problem would be to charge different fees for monthly passes depending on how often you used the system (and/or perhaps how far you traveled)

Seems to me that the averages ISPs have used in their business model are getting out of line with previous expectations.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by ken0042

And to go back to the water analogy; for years water was based on a per month charge and that was it. Then the infastructure couldn't keep up so the city started giving people water meters and charging based on usage. This is all the ISPs are doing.

Upon further and deeper reflection, and at the risk of further beating a dead horse, I think I would be okay with this plan IFF the fees were reasonable.

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by fredr123

Upon further and deeper reflection, and at the risk of further beating a dead horse, I think I would be okay with this plan IFF the fees were reasonable.

But there's no guarantee of that.

I still want to know what the point of this is. Bandwidth costs them f-all and there's all kinds of dark fiber lying around so capacity is there. No one gets slow downs anymore, why do we need to step backwards?

[photon]

Originally Posted by Barnes

I just don't see this bandwidth shortage.

If an ISP can handle 100 bajillion bits per second, it cost more or less the same amount of money to have its users use one bit as it does to use 99 bajillion bits. Are the sum of its users hitting that upper limit? I really doubt it. What's the point then?

I think it's more the ability to get that bandwidth to the end points... Not the user's house so much as the first few hops up the stream. Chestermere for example had a problem for a short while until they upgraded their link to wherever they collect all the connections for Chestermere, while they may have a fibre link that could handle 10,000 times the load it does now in, the hardware to actually use that link is probably like anything else, faster = more $$, so it's always a balance between upgrading too fast (which impacts the bottom line as wasted unneeded upgrades) and not fast enough (which results in slow Internet for people).

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by fredr123

Interesting examples. Though I'm not sure I agree all your examples are entirely analogous, I see your point nonetheless.

- To be completely analogous to the ISP situation, I think you would have to be charged a flat fee each month to use the cafeteria as much as you want. That's not the case, at least, in my experience. When I went to the U of C, you paid a certain amount of money per semester for your food plan and had the various products you "enjoyed" at the University cafeteria deducted from your account balance.

Fair enough. When I went to school U of Manitoba had a card that you bought at the begining of the semester, and it was good for 3 meals per day. So my analogy was based on people paying a flat fee for unlimited meals, but the cafeteria found that the usage rate was closer to 70%.

[SebC]

As long as the market is competitive, it's totally fair... but as soon as you have a monopoly or oligopoly (*cough* Canadian cell-phone companies *cough*) doing this, it would likely just become a way to tack on more charges. If I was in the States and my ISP started doing this, I'd probably just switch to FiOS. Unless you offer an "unlimited" plan, you'll create a niche that hopefully someone else will move to fill.

[HelloHockeyFans]

Hold up - did I miss something? I'm already getting my monthly download limit capped. Anything over, and I get charged by the MB.

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by HelloHockeyFans

Hold up - did I miss something? I'm already getting my monthly download limit capped. Anything over, and I get charged by the MB.

Telus?

All the recent developments have me really worked up. I am used to hearing about this stuff coming from the U.S. and I used to shake my head and say I'm glad I live in Canada. Now, we seem to be copying them while upping the BS.

I'm not a huge downloader and have been going more and more legit as options have become available to us in Canada but I really don't like where any of this is going.

I'll stop ranting for now and save myself for the inevitable not consensual bum sex that will be Rogers' iPhone data plans.

[FanIn80]

Yeah... Sorry guys, but I don't see the point.

Bandwidth is a manufactured resource that is reliant solely on hardware infrastructure. Need more bandwidth? Install better/more hardware.

There's no such thing as finite bandwidth.

My parents live in BC, but own a house here in Calgary. They're in town maybe once every 6 months, but they pay the same level of property taxes everyone else does.

Would you like to pay higher taxes for your property just because you live there 24/7 while your neighbor's taxes are reduced because he's out of town all the time?

I use less gas in my car than a lot of other people. I know I already pay less because I have to buy less, but should the gas I do buy be subjected to a lesser tax? I think it should... I mean, afterall, I use less gas... why should I have to pay the same 1.30 that everyone else does? If you use 2 tanks of gas every week, and I use 1 tank every two weeks, I think you should pay more taxes than me, since you're burning it up faster than I am. Gas is actually a finite resource, too!

[photon]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Yeah... Sorry guys, but I don't see the point.

Bandwidth is a manufactured resource that is reliant solely on hardware infrastructure. Need more bandwidth? Install better/more hardware.

There's no such thing as finite bandwidth.

In theory yes, but in practice there is a limit on additional bandwidth: cost. Each step up the ladder there's a finite amount of bandwidth at any given time, and that must divided among the users, until that bandwidth gets upgraded.

And sometimes it's just installing more hardware, sometimes it might mean laying more cable or fibre or whatever, and there's a cost for that, which gets amortized and passed down the chain.

So Shaw needs so many Gbps for Calgary, if they have to increase it may not be easy to do so in effect there is a cap on the bandwidth until it becomes cost effective to add additional bandwidth.

[HelloHockeyFans]

nm

[Azure]

Originally Posted by HelloHockeyFans

I'm surprised you guys in Alberta aren't getting capped yet... or maybe you just don't know?

Again, I wonder if the reason we're not getting capped is because our ISPs are on the Supernet Backbone.

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

I use less gas in my car than a lot of other people. I know I already pay less because I have to buy less, but should the gas I do buy be subjected to a lesser tax? I think it should... I mean, afterall, I use less gas... why should I have to pay the same 1.30 that everyone else does? If you use 2 tanks of gas every week, and I use 1 tank every two weeks, I think you should pay more taxes than me, since you're burning it up faster than I am. Gas is actually a finite resource, too!

Sorry, I'm a little lost. If you use less gas, you do pay less taxes don't you? Isn't gas tax a percentage of the cost? 25% of $50 is less than 25% of $100.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Sorry, I'm a little lost. If you use less gas, you do pay less taxes don't you? Isn't gas tax a percentage of the cost? 25% of $50 is less than 25% of $100.

Well, obviously 25% of 50 is less than 25% of 100... I'm saying the 25% itself should be lower.