Insanity on the port bow

[Dracos]

As Liddo suggested some might be interested on the article/topic/discussion.

[21:26] <Dracos> So what's up?
[21:26] <Liddo-kun> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/chester  <-- Have you seen/heard about the subject of this horrid article?  >_<
[21:28] * Dracos checks
[21:28] <Dracos> Yes.
[21:28] <Dracos> Been idly tracking it
[21:28] <Liddo-kun> Ugh.  Ugh I says.  -_-;;
[21:32] <Dracos> He's got it pretty much right, though he's missing a small bit of the puzzle that's also pushing this
[21:32] <Liddo-kun> ?
[21:34] <Dracos> For a very long time now, the lowering of internet prices has been majority pushed by oversubscription.  In other words, major telecos and isps below them selling more bandwidth each month than they could possibly provide.
[21:34] <Dracos> This is how they've been dropping the prices and still raking in profits.
[21:34] <Dracos> a good deal of people, traditionally, do not use much of their average bandwidth that they are paying for.
[21:35] <Dracos> with the advent of podcasts, video google, youtube, and similar video+audio type stuff, the percentage used by the average customer is shooting up.
[21:35] <Liddo-kun> Hm.
[21:36] <Dracos> Similarly, the advent of phone over ip makes for more expensive hardware to manage the <150 ms latency requirement for proper telephone.
[21:36] <Dracos> The companies themselves can't pull up the prices easily
[21:36] <Dracos> their competitors would swallow their customer base in a second
[21:37] <Dracos> So, it's partial responsible for this
[21:37] <Dracos> where all of a sudden they'd be able to have all the big source points  rolling out higher payment plans together
[21:37] <Dracos> and isolating out those who are actually using the bandwidth they're paying for.
[21:37] <Dracos> and charging them more 'accurately'.
[21:38] <Liddo-kun> Guh.
[21:39] <Liddo-kun> Could it be possible that they turn it into something like the power company where they keep track of the "traffic" going through your connection as they track wattage and charge a flat rate against that?
[21:40] <Dracos> They could, but nobody does that.
[21:40] <Dracos> the closest thing to it is what you often see in Britain and australia
[21:41] <Dracos> Where they go 'here, you can have this much bandwidth, and this is your rate per gig over'.
[21:41] <Dracos> This ensures that they're charging all their customers at  least so much
[21:41] <Dracos> and then on top of it they can charge extra
[21:41] <Dracos> and, of course, like american companies, they oversubscribe as well.
[21:45] <Liddo-kun> What do you suppose they're going to end up doing?  Somehow, I can't see big sites like Yahoo, Amazon, Google, etc. sitting idle with something like this possibly affecting them.
[21:45] <Dracos> They aren't.
[21:45] <Dracos> Microsoft is also apparently weighing in against the telecos.
[21:45] <Liddo-kun> And isn't there something... I dunno, anti-trust-ish that could crop up?  I mean, this initiative is going to crush out small internt companies that rely on traffic to keep them in business.  In this way, only big companies would survive, I wager.
[21:46] <Dracos> Some yes....  but the smaller companies are more subsidaries of the big ones anyway.
[21:46] <Dracos> They buy their traffic from them.
[21:47] <Dracos> This is particularly relevant in smaller cities
[21:47] <Dracos> where often, no matter who you're paying for your traffic, it's going through the same company.
[21:48] <Liddo-kun> No, I meant like those podunk nobody web pages where they advertise the goods on their site for some random store out in the middle of BFE, Arizona, or some such.  Those small private companies and small businesses.
[21:51] <Dracos> mmm
[21:51] <Dracos> It migght
[21:51] <Dracos> but that's why they're going through congress first
[21:51] <Dracos> they're covering their bases
[21:52] <Dracos> Right to common carrier isn't covered constitutionally.
[21:52] <Dracos> And thus a law on that clearly stated isn't going to be able to be overruled by the courts...nor is the current environment of the courts likely for such an overruling.
[21:55] <Liddo-kun> Murky waters.
[21:56] <Dracos> It's a serious issue, yup.  Scares a fair bunch of people.
[21:57] <Liddo-kun> Has this been talked about a lot?  It's not something being brought up by a lot of people, it seems.
[21:57] <Dracos> I live at a tech school.  It's tossed about a fair bit by the profs of late.
[21:58] <Liddo-kun> Main stream media seems not to know jack crock about it.  At least I hadn't heard anything until one of my buddies mentioned it via a Left Wing radio station out of New York.
[22:00] <Dracos> Main stream media works with the telecos.
[22:00] <Dracos> Welcome to modern media.
[22:00] <Dracos> All the 'news' that's fit to print.
[22:02] <Liddo-kun> Blah.

Dracos

[Dracos]

Or boring =p