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BBC's iPlayer Chief Pushes Tiered Charging For ISPs
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Dec 28, 2008 08:39 PM
from the if-isp-bills-looked-like-phone-bills dept.
from the if-isp-bills-looked-like-phone-bills dept.
rs232 writes with a link to a story at The Register which begins: "The executive in charge of the BBC iPlayer has suggested that internet users could be charged £10 per month extra on their broadband bill for higher quality streaming." The article suggests (perhaps optimistically) that "after years of selling consumers pipes, not what they carry, [tiered, site-specific pricing] would be tough to pull off."
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The bbc is joking what is next a net fee like tv (Score:2)
The bbc is joking what is next a net fee like the tv one?
Re:The bbc is joking what is next a net fee like t (Score:4, Informative)
it's more of that stupid notion that the ISPs are trying to get away with double-dipping their customers.
Parent
Are they joking, or just accepting reality? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it just being realistic? Here in the UK, ISPs have been selling flat-rate "up to 8MB" broadband for some time now, but glossing over the very high contention ratios they've been using (and getting away with so far, because the average user doesn't currently want anything like 8MB/s of data transfer).
With the rise of streaming, real-time media — and the BBC's iPlayer has been a great success story over here — the assumption that a large group of users only ever sends a few e-mails and shops at Amazon is becoming less valid. While quite a few people have visited YouTube and the like and watched a five minute clip of something, that's a long way from a service that offers full-length, full-quality downloads of major programs and advertises this fact prominently on several major TV stations.
Unfortunately, the reality is that the ISPs don't have the bandwidth they've sold if everyone wants to use it, any more than the banks had the money they were selling. Some sort of change in pricing is inevitable. One way or another, those who have been doing very well out of the current flat-rate deals are going to be the ones who lose out, because they are getting things disproportionately cheap right now.
Personally, I don't like the filtering by source/destination idea. It sounds like something that will attack the openness that has made the Internet such a success. I'd rather go back to some sort of metred use policy, perhaps with tiered flat rate bundles for a bit of predictability for low/average users (so that up to x MB/month is a standard rate, up to y MB/month is another standard rate, and after that it's metred or something). This model seems to work fairly well for the mobile phone industry, and the pricing is transparent and sustainable.
But whether it's done by bandwidth, web sites visited, protocols used, or what postcode you live in, anyone who has been happily streaming tens of gigabytes per month of downloads on their flat rate plan and thinks an extra 10 pounds a month is excessive is just deluding themselves. The bandwidth simply isn't there to support everyone doing that, and when commodities are scarce, prices go up.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"This model seems to work fairly well for the mobile phone industry, and the pricing is transparent and sustainable."
and we've seen what they charge for text messages. i don't trust that.
"The bandwidth simply isn't there to support everyone doing that, and when commodities are scarce, prices go up."
and referring to bandwidth as a commodity seems a little like fallacious thinking.
I already pay my tv licence (Score:5, Insightful)
I've used iPlayer like 3 times in my life. I shouldn't have to pay anything extra for it and certainly not £10 per month for something I rarely use. It'd be more cost effective to buy the content in DVD format.
If the BBC can't afford to do something with the licence fee then don't do it.
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It could be the last 12 digits of your credit card number. :D
Credit card numbers (Score:5, Informative)
I sincerely hope you were joking:
All VISA cards start with 4.
All Mastercards start with 51, 52, 53, 54, or 55.
Don't believe me? Take a look in your wallet. :)
Thus, iCONICA, if you just shared the last 12 digits of your Mastercard, you now have cut down the search space of your password to 500 numbers. Moreover, credit card digits have to conform to a checksum (double every other digit + add them all up, must be 0 mod 10.) Thus, I'd estimate we could guess your card within 10 unique numbers, around 100 if VISA. There are ways of getting around the "security digits" and expiration date...
Short story is, don't share your credit card number. Even as a joke.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Of course he could have a Discover card. :)
(Disclaimer: I agree with your post.)
Re:Credit card numbers (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, but the remainder of the digits in the first group of 4 digits are used to identify the issuing bank. While it's not actually a bulletproof method, knowing where someone is can narrow down the list of valid codes even smaller. Just take the valid numbers, cross-reference them with the list of Visa or Mastercard bank codes, and with the smaller list of numbers, find the banks that are in the local area, and use it knock off a few more numbers (someone in the US will probably not have a UK credit card, for example - they might, but it's extremely rare).
The entropy in the first 4 digits is extremely low.
Anyhow, sharing codes is easy to prevent - just do IP geolocation - non-UK IPs should be restricted from using the codes (and for the most part, IP geolocation is reasonably country accurate), and ensure that one code isn't used from multiple IPs in too often a time, or one code used simultaneously.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Or you could buy a boatload of CC#s from a Russian clearinghouse for a coupla bucks.
Not that I would do what iCONICA did of course, but you'd have to have a truly niche skill-set/hobby/ethics to puzzle out iCONICA's CC#, and not just buy them directly.
I don't think the BBC is asking for more money (Score:2)
I think the idea is that you'd pay your ISP more to cover their costs of carrying iPlayer traffic. Cue proxy servers in 3, 2, 1...
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If iPlayer requires more money to cover everything then they should have to do it through the licence and justify the increase. This isn't that different from the case of B&W and colour TVs. One gives you a better picture and you pay more for it through the licence if you want and it covers the BBC content only rather than making it easier for ISPs to convert the web into a very costly and limited n
Charge TV users instead (Score:2)
But let's face it; Bureaucrats see it as their job to think of new ways to through levies, fees, taxes and charges at customers.
Re:I already pay my tv licence (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also implied the iPlayer may show live content at some point as well. They know full well PCs are goinjg to become a major part of watching TV and they won't let that licence money disappear.
I suspect even now you'd get harassed and made to prove you never watch live broadcasts online if you opted not to pay the licence and got rid of your TV.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You can already watch BBC One, Two, Three, Four, News, Parliament, and CBBC (And that's only after a quick skim), for example BBC One [bbc.co.uk] (Beta, limited to UK IPs).
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The live content on iPlayer is not "implied", it's an actual current feature. All the BBC's main TV channels, with the sole exception of BBC Alba (the BBC's new Scottish language channel), are now available online for live streaming through the BBC iPlayer web site.
The addition of BBC One and BBC Two to live streaming was within the last few weeks, but I believe the other 6 channels (BBC Three, BBC Four, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC News and BBC Parliament) have been streaming for some time now. I'm not sure that
We tried this back in 2004, and in mobile network. (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for an ISP/Telco. A few years ago this whole "access Internet from your phone" was just coming and GPRS costs were crazy. At that point we made quite a few studies that basically came to the effect of "in ISP world, with DSL, cable etc, people are already used to flat rate - you can't change that. In mobile, folks are still used to idea of different price for different services - case in point text messages".
Well, we missed the boat on that one (technology was there - all traffic goes through GGSN and they supported tying a Layer 4/7 switch to a accounting server). There were some ideas proposed, like concepts of "sponsored links" where if you normally paid X amount per megabyte some advertiser could perhaps do it for you and so on.
We missed the boat on that one, and now everyone is in the "flat until X MB (where X can be infinite), then extra bytes cost extra from that point on" model - even in the Internet accessed from mobile phone. In regular ISP world it's a doomed proposition since we have had 10-15 years of flat rate broadband now.
There's just *no* way this is going to happen anymore. Sure, business customers might be interested (and are) paying for e.g. guaranteed delivery for their internal VoIP traffic and guaranteed QoS, but it's just not going to fly for average consumer. Some "added value" services might be in there (stuff like, say, some freebies at iTunes), but QoS-related stuff for *generic Internet service* is not going to be one of them.
Re:We tried this back in 2004, and in mobile netwo (Score:5, Insightful)
Good.
I want to be in charge of the QOS I receive. I disapprove of any model in which the content provider pays the ISP for more QOS. That leads to a Disney and Coca-Cola Internet.
The consumer should be the one to choose (and pay) for QOS. And payment should be to the ISP, not the content provider, which would end up as a kickback to the content provider's ISP.
Only in this way can we hope to ensure that the Internet is not filtered by the content providers with the largest pockets, and by the ISPs themselves.
Parent
Re:We tried this back in 2004, and in mobile netwo (Score:4, Informative)
Considering QoS...an ISP can only guarantee QoS to any practical degree in their own network.
The whole point of term "Internet-based service" is the fact that it's accessed through a mystical cloud of multiple networks held together by glue, duct tape, BGP and peering agreements. Accessing Slashdot (for me) goes through four AS numbers (try in Linux traceroute with the -A option). So while all those ISPs have been able to agree to exchange bits either in peering or customer/provider model, there's no practical way that I could negotiate a guaranteed access quality to slashdot.org across all those various organizations at any practical cost...
BBC *is* a special case that topologically they have their own network [bbc.co.uk] which is able to peer with other ISPs at lot of places (at least if you are either in US or UK) so they might be able to wrangle deals with directly-connected ISPs to provide some QoS to their peering point. As their customer-base would be UK license payers it might, technically, work.
Whether anyone is actually willing to pay extra for that...I seriously doubt it.
Parent
Re:We tried this back in 2004, and in mobile netwo (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand the QOS issue. With a packet network such as the Internet, you cannot guarantee QOS. All you can do is promise to prioritize packets, and provide a certain bandwidth within the network that you control. Out in the cloud, one can try to set up special arrangements, but as you know, nothing is for sure. One can always lose or delay a packet if traffic is heavy.
Thus, there really isn't a technical solution beyond what IP6 provides - which is not a guarantee.
What I am saying is only that I do not want QOS to be managed primarily by ISPs who deal with the deep pockets. I want the ISPs instead to attempt to treat each packet without regard to where it is from, and deal with the QOS service issue by providing enough bandwidth to satisfy their customers, without playing favorites.
At the consumer endpoint, the consumer should have the ability to improve performance by buying more bandwidth, but you are right, that if there is insufficient bandwidth at some point along the way the traffic will be choked. But if that occurs, I want it to occur evenly and fairly to all of the customers of the ISP that is causing the choking. No favorites.
That is the only way that we will ensure that players with big wallets will not hog the Internet and cause response time for other sites (perhaps ones with more open content) to be accessible.
Parent
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BitTorrent & p2p? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why don't they use BitTorrent or similar p2p networks to distribute their files? Sure, it might be a bit more difficult for live-streaming, but most content is not live content* and p2p networks have shown to be a good alternative to regular Server-Client-downloads.
(* I don't know about you guys, but hate anyone trying to force me to watch some tv show at a specific time. I want to watch what I want, when I want. I believe this is true for most people and most content).
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It wouldn't be as profitable for them.
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That's what Iplayer was written as, a concealed Bittorrent-like client. The need to support non-Windows platforms, and their own decisions to use Windows Media to provide the DRM they insisted on, forced them to break their usage model and provide something closer to normal video streams for Mac and other clients.
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Why could they not have used p2p technology for the mac and linux clients as well as the windows one?
Don't most ISPs already have tiered service plans (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't most ISPs already have tiered service pla (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Article suggests right (Score:5, Insightful)
How long before... (Score:2)
I'm confused.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If $ISP cannot profitably sell $x mbit/s at $y dollars/month they need to either increase $y or decrease $x. It doesn't cost anyone more to deliver traffic from the BBC than anywhere else (peering ratios/contracts aside). It sounds like the problem is that average people are ... *gasp* ... actually using their internet connection for more than e-mail and web surfing and the bandwidth:customer ratios are no longer extremely in the ISPs favor.
ISPs should instead be looking at ways they can reduce their costs while providing better service to their customers, such as a peering arrangements with the likes of YouTube, BBC, etc. or a local appliance that serves up the most bandwidth expensive content (you know, like any content delivery network does).
Re: (Score:2)
Here is one solution [akamai.com] to that problem.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In the US, ISPs are fighting for market share. Most home connections are operating at zero or negative profit so they can acquire greater market share. This is offset by other business operations, such as telephone service, cable TV, etc.
If things are in the same state in the UK, then the ISPs (a) can't charge their customers more and (b) aren't charging what the connection costs.
One big clue to this is to look at pricing where market share isn't being fought over. Business connections in the US are anyw
Re:I'm confused.. (Score:4, Informative)
One big clue to this is to look at pricing where market share isn't being fought over. Business connections in the US are anywhere 2-4x the prices being charged for home connections. This is not a matter of higher utilization because these business connections are sold on the same terms as home connections with "burstable" bandwidth and maximum transfer caps.
First, why would you think that ISPs aren't fighting for market share with business connections?
Second, the reason business connections cost more is that generally you get a lot more. Although I agree with the amount of the price difference, my bandwidth is 24/7 guaranteed, with no cap on the total amount of data transferred. Sure, I pay about double what a "residential" customer pays, but all that really gets me is 5 static IPs, no blocked ports, and an SLA. In general, business customers don't have any of the limits that residential customers have, and that's why the connection costs more for the same speed, but that's not true with my ISP (Verizon FIOS). Residential customers get the same guaranteed bandwidth and no cap (not even a hidden one).
At my work, we also pay a fixed rate regardless of bytes transferred, have 24/7 guaranteed bandwidth, and have no cap. I don't know what residential customers of that ISP get, though, as I don't know any in the area.
Parent
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True. But I think influence would have some effect on the decision making process of ISPs and content providers alike wether from the company itself or the executive with their connections. I'm hoping it won't come down to a Coca-Cola internet as another poster noted, but based on the volume of media Apple is selling in iTunes store, it wouldn't surprise me if they at least asked for some $$$$ or QoS preference. Or vise versa - that is the ISPs or Tier backbone providers asking Apple for $$$$$ since iTunes
And a BBC viewer says : (Score:3, Informative)
They do not need better quality (Score:2)
Except for mayby some TV games, there is no need for higher quality.
TV is one-way so just buffer more.
Preferably download it all before you start to watch it (that's what mimms is for).
Would you rather pay 10pount/year or watch the stream delayed an extra second?
Re: (Score:2)
Because today they will start by charging $10 for HIGH quality. Tomorrow they will start by charging $10 for NORMAL quality.
Give corporates a small chance to increase price for a select few, and they will increase the price for ALL.
Treat all corporations as criminals unless proven otherwise.
bandwidth (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait a minute... I already pay more per month than my neighbor, so I will have a faster internet connection. Faster for EVERYTHING. Now the ISPs are going to ask me to pay even more, so that certain selected (by them, not me) content will be supposedly faster? Yeah, good luck selling that one...
go figure out a business model (Score:2)
Seems to me that the BBC has become lazy and reliant on broadcast fees and thinks it's everybody's job but theirs to figure out their business model.
If you can't figure out how to stream megabit streams profitably, then don't stream them. Don't try to mess up the Internet just because you don't have a business model.
If it's the Beeb you can count on 2 things (Score:2, Interesting)
1) they have their head up their asses
2) they mumble under their breaths what the BNP says aloud.
no comprende (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm afraid I don't understand. Most broadband companies where I live offer tiered service already with slower speeds costing less and higher speeds costing more. Or is that not the case in the U.K.? If no, why are they treating this like it's some brand-new idea?
Why do companies and governments not see that cheap, plentiful broadband is the only way to grow Internet adoption and the online industry as a whole? Especially now that the worldwide economy is in the shitter, the information age is poised to drag us out of it, if only self-serving companies and conrgresscritters wouldn't stifle progress to make their own quick buck.
When the Internet was this shiny new thing, large companies didn't want anything to do with it. The first ISPs started out as ma-and-pop operations because big communications companies thought it was a silly idea to connect two consumer's computers together over some distance. Remember that? The telcos were the ones that fought the hardest because they hated having dialup modems on their voice network. Now that the Internet is clearly here to stay, everyone with a bit of power and/or money wants their own slice of the pie and in the process make it more costly, more inconvenient, less open, and overall less beneficial to the average individual.
Re:no comprende (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Correction. (Score:2)
Why do companies and governments not see that cheap, plentiful broadband is the only way to grow Internet adoption and the online industry as a whole? Especially now that the worldwide economy is in the shitter, the information age is poised to drag us out of it, if only self-serving companies and conrgresscritters wouldn't stifle progress to make their own quick buck.
Apparently you've missed [wikipedia.org] the [wikipedia.org] news [zeropaid.com]. The "information age" was stifled a long time ago, and its remains expelled from its gestation chamber in a dead bloody mess.
Fuck you, Rose (Score:2)
I'll back tiered charging when you back tiered (monthly) rebates from ISPs who slowly take away benefits like usenet, the ability to run your own ports, etc. Looking at you, Comcast.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll back tiered charging when you back tiered (monthly) rebates from ISPs who slowly take away benefits like usenet, the ability to run your own ports, etc. Looking at you, Comcast.
since when has 2 gigs a month been useful on usenet?
Combined with for-the-kids ratings... (Score:3, Interesting)
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obama has all of us by the balls and we will pay through the nose for anything we need in life.
This is rather funny.
If someone came to abduct me and subject me to the horrors of my every need being catered to for the rest of my life they wouldn't need a gun or knife to make me go : )
If they were coming to abduct me and make me empty my account so they could buy weapons and drilling equipment, however, i'd take as many of them with me as possible.