In EU, Google Accused of YouTube "Free Ride" 449
An anonymous reader passes along a Financial Times piece that covers a push by EU telecoms to get Google to pay them directly — years after US ISPs began rattling that sword, to little effect thus far. "Some of Europe's leading telecoms groups are squaring up for a fight with Google over what they claim is the free ride enjoyed by the technology company's YouTube video-sharing service. Telefónica, France Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom all said Google should start paying them for carrying bandwidth-hungry content such as YouTube video over their networks.... Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes' because the internet search and advertising company pays the network operators little or nothing for carrying its content. Rick Whitt, a senior policy director at Google in Washington ... said Google was spending large amounts on its own data networks to carry its traffic to the point where it is handed over to telecoms companies round the world." Note that FT.com operates on a "first few per month free" paywall basis.
Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
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Google had to, sooner or later, start fighting such a fight. Interesting is that European, and not Asian or American, ISPs are engaging it.
What? Even the summary mentions that American ISPs have already tried this, though with no success to date. European ISPs are just following American ISPs' lead.
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FT is owned by the Pearson Group. It is not a Murdoch paper.
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"Also, if Google end up having to pay ISPs in Europe, you can bet lobbyists will use that as a reason to reopen the debate stateside."
Estimated chance of that happening: nil to none at all.
Estimated chance of ISPs being clobbered over promising bandwidth they can't reasonably supply to all their customers: better than average.
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*facepalm* ISPs have never been common carriers.
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And in the US it has never applied to ISPs no matter how many times it is falsely claimed on Slashdot that ISPs are common carriers.
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I'm from the Netherlands, so I don't deal with the providers in question.
Interesting detail is that these companies are mostly large monopolies, so google could simply start complaining about monopoly abuse.
And for added worries to those companies: the EU tends to respond quite allergic to monopoly abuse.
If that wasn't enough, wait until various consumer organizations learn about this. While they're basically powerless in the US, over here they can generate a world of hurt for companies.
I'd actually like th
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Just as it has been "jumping down the throats" of successful European businesses for years. You say successful, I say abusive and corrupt. Go figure.
What is the purpose of ISP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Providing bandwidth for their users to do what they want? Is that the purpose of ISP?
Or is there any other purpose? Like laying down ground rules, like the Ten Commandments:
1. Thou Shalt Not View Video Online
2. Thou Shalt Not Use Too Much Bandwidth
3. Thou Shalt Pay Through Thy Nose
4. Thou Shalt Obey Everything
5. Thou Shalt Hath No Right
6. Thou Shalt Be Grateful
7. Thou Shalt Giveth Us All Thy Money
8. Thou Shalt Sacrifice Thy First Child For Us
9. Thou Shalt Let Us Screw You
10. Thou Shalt Not Complaint
Re:What is the purpose of ISP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is the purpose of ISP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why is it surprising? The EU has been jumping down the throats of successful American businesses for years. After they got through with Microsoft, it only makes sense that they would shake down Google as their next target."
Firstly, EU != European Union government in this article, only the EU ISPs.
Secondly, you make it sound like the EU is picking American businesses on purpose.
I guess you're American and thus only hear about the US businesses fined by Neelie Kroes, but believe me, more European companies have been hit than American ones by the anti-monopoly and anti-kartel legislation.
Thirdly, the ISPs are greedy and wrong on this count. They have paying customers. Don't like it that they actually use all of the bandwidth you promised them? Tough luck, find another business model or don't promise something you can't deliver.
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Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
No it's worse than that.
How it is:
User pays their ISP for their connection
Server owner pays their ISP for their connection.
How the ISP's want it:
User pays their ISP for their connection
Server owner pays their ISP for their connection.
Server owner pays every other ISP again and again and again.
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Interesting how you can always find Deutsche Telekom behind these ideas. I'm so sick of their self proclaimed sanctity. I say let DT block youtube so that all the users migrate to another ISP. My bet is that would be the very last thing they ever did as an ISP.
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"Thirdly, the ISPs are greedy and wrong on this count. They have paying customers. Don't like it that they actually use all of the bandwidth you promised them? Tough luck, find another business model or don't promise something you can't deliver."
And, that is the entire story in a nutshell. I don't download and upload 24/7 - but if I felt like it, that's my right. I'm paying for the service, they promised a little more bandwidth than I EVER see, so I can use it. It ~15 gig of download per month is breakin
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the argument is flawed. Google is not pushing data. Their clients want to access Google, and are paying for that.
I'd say, if Google and all the other online services didn't exist, the ISPs wouldn't exist either (why the hell would we pay them?). So I'm hoping they're told to fuck off.
ISPs shoud pay search engines (Score:3, Interesting)
Just think - If the only websites you knew about was the ones that you found by clicking links on websites that you started with or ones you learned about from other people. For example: Digg or Slashdot would lead to many new sites, but pdp11.org might not take you much ou
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't agree.
First, even if there was such argument, it would be from *consumers*, not the ISPs, since it's the costumers who are paying for the bandwidth, as you rightfully said.
But unlike the ISPs, who *are* being paid for the bandwidth and now want to double charge, in the case of Google, nobody's paying for their service; ads are their only payment. What you're saying is that Google should provide those services without any kind of payment.
Personally, I prefer to watch some ads than to pay for a Google subscription.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the reasoning of the ISP's is not that Google is causing their pipes to get clogged up, but that Google is succesful with their services because the ISP's are providing their customers with bandwidth. If they didn't provide the bandwidth, Google wouldn't even exist.
If they didn't provide the bandwidth, they wouldn't exist, as their customers would switch to their competitors who did provide that bandwidth.
They're trying to get a free ride off Google's success, when all they really are is "dumb pipes". Google doesn't reduce them to that, it's what they are by nature, and for some reason they desperately wish they were something else.
Maybe Google should charge them (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
They were always dumb pipes. They pretended that they had content in order to push out the small ISP's. When people learned what the Internet was about the stopped using the ISP's content. Too bad the small ISP's are no longer here to testify.
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They're originally telco's. They're not used to being dumb pipes because only a decade or so ago, they mostly weren't.
Wha? What is a Telecommunications company besides a dumb pipe? Does your phone company's hold-muzak count as original content?
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They're originally telco's. They're not used to being dumb pipes because only a decade or so ago, they mostly weren't.
I don't get this "dumb pipe" thing. What other kind of pipe do they hope to sell ? In Europe ISPs typically sell three services when they hook you up via ADSL : Internet access, telephone (via VOIP) and TV (as streamed MPEG2 or 4). Some of them separate those offers but increasingly, you tend to just get the whole package, whether you want it all or not.
My ISP only has one offer with all 3 services on top of ADSL2+ (and a WiFi and video-recording set top box thrown in) for 30 €/month (in France). No ca
Dumb Pipes always (Score:3, Insightful)
They were dumb pipes even before... Imagine how it would be if they were not, you are talking on the phone with a friend and one of you mentions Pizza, suddenly a local Pizza delivery place is connected in to the conversation and asks if you would like to order a Pizza (You and your friend were actually just talking about how the Pizza made you both sick recently)
Or even more chilling, one of you mentions some thing that, taken out of the context of your conversation, seems dangerous or illegal - an
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Why have all these criticisms of the EU been modded Troll?
Probably because there is no (-1, Factually Incorrect) moderation, for which quite a few of the anti-EU posts in this discussion would qualify.
Alternatively, (-1, Offtopic) would be more relevant in several cases, since we are talking about EU ISPs here and not European-level government.
Also, who said anything about Europeans "punishing success"? Again, this isn't the people of Europe acting, it's the ISPs. In case you hadn't noticed, almost everyone in this discussion thinks they're just making a greedy cash grab, including the commenters from Europe.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
All I can say is Jackass!
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/07/business/canadian-lumber-penalized.html?pagewanted=1 [nytimes.com]
Canadian Lumber penalized
http://www.google.ch/search?hl=en&ei=J0PES87yPOiXOP3XjdkP&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&ved=0CAcQBSgA&q=American+steel+tariffs&spell=1 [google.ch]
"American steel tarriffs"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2004/apr/28/brazil.usnews [guardian.co.uk]
"American Cotton Subsidies illegal"
My point is that America is neither better nor worse with respect to breaking the trade rules games.
But because of jackass's like you, you think that it is poor poor America that always suffers! BS!
Again I am not saying America is good, nor bad. America is dealt bad cards at times, and deals bad cards as well. So if you are going to complain please keep the argument to Google and the ISP's and not "America" and "Europe"
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
You're using "The EU" to refer to both the EU's competition regulators, and EU-based businesses. The former have nothing to do with the current action, and the latter are behaving as they would be expected to in an unregulated free market: petulantly and with no regard for their customers.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The EU ISPs aren't the first ones who suggested this [washingtonpost.com].
To the ISPs who complain that Google turns you into a "dumb pipe:" Yes, that is the idea. That is the service that we, as consumers, buy from you. We would be quite happy if we could lease some relatively inexpensive, and very dumb pipe [wired.com]. Google doesn't pay you to ship their content, because *we pay you to allow us to fetch that content.* Last I checked, you made some decent money doing so. Stop treating our broadband connections as a revenue stream and start treating it as the service it once was.
An honest question (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that they are dumb pipes, however, that got me thinking about the arrangement I have with my cable company. What's the difference between the data (content) I am receiving over my net connection, and the data (content) I am receiving as my television service? I don't mean the bits and bytes here, I mean the actual content. My cable company would like to call themselves a 'content' provider, but they aren't making those television programs, they are simply passing them to me through a pipe. That bein
Seems like the bandwidth has already been paid for (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google bought some bandwidth to be able to send site content to users. Those users bought some bandwidth to be able to receive it. What's the problem?
Technically Google doesn't buy lots of bandwidth nowadays, the way people might imagine. They instead hook directly to many peers and at the backbones. That said, when the rest of us pay for "bandwidth", we pay exactly for building and maintaining the kind of infrastructure Google built themselves. But it explains why on the surface you can spin it like they did.
Re:Seems like the bandwidth has already been paid (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. The bit that really got me was:
Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes'
That is really all that they are, or at least should be. They are not content providers, they are merely facilitators.
Re:Seems like the bandwidth has already been paid (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe their concern is that it'll become obvious to everyone that they're dumb pipes, and that they're dumb pipes whose business model, pricing infrastructure can't cope with piping all that well.
Re:Seems like the bandwidth has already been paid (Score:4, Insightful)
I notice that all on the companies mentioned are ex-state-owned companies. Basically they're the old monopoly telecoms who got to lay the telephone lines in the past using taxpayer's money and later got privatised, keeping ownership of all that infrastructure.
Even though in most (maybe all) of the countries where those companies are based laws were passed forcing them to provide access through their lines to any company wanting to work as an ISP (a boon to competition and why Internet access is faster an cheaper in most of Europe than in the US) they are still meaningful because they own the last-mile infrastructure and get paid by ISPs that use those lines to provide Internet access.
They still retain many of the bad habits from their days as a state own monopoly (big, fat and uncompetitive) and have only remained in their positions because of the huge barriers to entry in the landline telecoms infrastructure business.
Given that I would say that these big, fat behmots are worried about high-bandwith Internet services because they have in fact not updated the infrastructure:
- Until now they were relying in advances in xDSL technology to provide ever increasing speeds on top of the existing POTS copper lines. This improving of xDSL technologies is now slowing down while at the same time government have suddenly discoverd it's fashionable to rant about the need for universal high-speed Internet access to "liberate Europe's creative energies" and "Create the jobs of the future". This means that a critical mass is building that would lower the barriers to entry (or make it a better investment) to lay fiber-to-the-home.
Once other companies have replaced enough of the installed base of last-mile POTS copper wires with fiber these guys (who never had to face any real competition in the landline telecoms business) will likelly shrink to nothingness.
This is why they're trying to hold the tide.
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No, but you implied it by saying the previous incarnation of these companies had their infrastructure paid for with taxpayer funds, then the new private companies got to "keep" that infrastructure. They didn't keep it, they bought it.
Words have meanings, and if you can't be bothered to use the right ones to convey your thoughts you're going to continue to have misunderstandings like this. You need to do a better job of expressing yourself.
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I didn't say they made it, I said they provided it. Services like YouTube are great for providing everyday users with a high availability, high bandwidth platform to reliably distribute their content to a large audience (regardless of the merits of said content).
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Actually, google itself is not making any content either. Its users are.
Maybe not the content, but they're providing a very expensive service. The huge amount of storage space, the development that goes into the platform and the data centers operating all over the world are what makes youtube so usable.
dumb pipe (Score:5, Interesting)
Some European telecoms groups fear Google will reduce them to 'dumb pipes'
And I 'dumb pipe' is all I ever expected from my ISP, and it is what I'm paying for! If they want Google to pay for delivering the content, I will get access for free, right? Bullshit.
Who pays? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, those poor telecoms that gives their users free access to the internet must be paid back by Google. How does Google dares to provide content and expect the charity telecoms to be the only ones that pay for those bills. I'm outraged.
Wait a minute....
Then why my telecom is sending me a monthly fee?
European Telecoms (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:European Telecoms (Score:4, Insightful)
All ISPs sell bandwidth proportional to usage cycles. Your government doesn't build roads for everyone to drive the same mile of it at once. Your local restaurant doesn't cook all a day's meals at once. It's natural, considering not everyone uses their full service all the time, to sell proportional to usage patterns.
The problem is that most ISPs these days use a ratio that is well behind the actual usage patterns of their users. An ISP will likely never build out for the full burst bandwidth of all users combined exactly once. There's no need to do that. However, they should build out enough capacity to cover what their users are actually going to try to use, plus about 50% for news peaks when everyone is checking for headline updates.
But the fact is - they are dumb pipes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But the fact is - they are dumb pipes (Score:5, Insightful)
Google should charge those ISPs for making their dumb pipes interesting enough for users to buy.
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And users should charge Google for visiting YouTube so that get an income from advertising, and charge Google for uploading content to YouTube so that people will visit.
This starts to look like a circular dependency. We might as well not charge anybody and thereby save money on accounting.
Accounting (Score:5, Interesting)
Remminds me of the story about the rich man and the poor village....A rich man walks into a hotel in a poor village where all the bussinesses are in debt. He gives the hotelier $100 for a room on the condition that if he doesn't like it he will take the money back and leave. The hotelier gives him the keys, confident the rich man will like the room he takes the $100 and pays the grocer for the food he bought on credit. The grocer takes the $100 and pays back the farmer the money he owes him, the farmer uses it to pay back the blacksmith who then goes to the hotel to pay off his debt to the hooker who in turn gives it to the hotelier for past rent. The rich man comes back dissatisfied with the room, takes the $100 and leaves the village. Nothing has changed but the village is now debt free.
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It's an amusing story, but that exact thing - on a larger scale - is what happens if an economy has too little money in it.
It's why we can't use a gold standard. The money supply has to expand or shrink at the same rate as the economy.
Usury is the ultimate sin. (Score:3, Interesting)
Remminds me of the story about the rich man and the poor village....A rich man walks into a hotel in a poor village where all the bussinesses are in debt. He gives the hotelier $100 for a room on the condition that if he doesn't like it he will take the money back and leave. The hotelier gives him the keys, confident the rich man will like the room he takes the $100 and pays the grocer for the food he bought on credit. The grocer takes the $100 and pays back the farmer the money he owes him, the farmer uses it to pay back the blacksmith who then goes to the hotel to pay off his debt to the hooker who in turn gives it to the hotelier for past rent. The rich man comes back dissatisfied with the room, takes the $100 and leaves the village. Nothing has changed but the village is now debt free.
And that's is how things would work in a sane world. (Minus the prostitute.)
And by "Sane" I mean, "Free of Usury". In fact, things would work even better than that, because the Sun keeps pumping energy into the system. The planet is one gigantic solar collector. Logically, scarcity should only ever be a temporary situation at the worst of times because there is simply so much raw energy freely available. But that's not how it works in reality. Why?
Because of the cowardice of the Dark Side and their fea
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Not really, all it depends on is bargaining power. Google definitely has the upper hand here, because of the popularity of YouTube.
And so do the customers by the way, who can instantly cancel their ISP if they start blocking traffic.
Ironic, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
On one hand we have content providers like Murdoch saying Google should pay them for the content Google is providing access to.
And on the other hand we have telcos saying Google should pay them because they're providing access to Google's content.
It's the fate of any success story; Google has money, they want it for themselves, and they think it's easier to get Google's than to earn their own.
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They're getting it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The European Telecom operators should know that we, Internet subscribers, pay for our connection top Euros to be able to access sites like Google, Gmail or Youtube. Google is offering most of their services for free to their users and we, as clients of the Telecom companies, are already paying.
At least, Spain's Telefonica CEO demonstates he's just a parasite that doesn't know about what he's talking except getting more money from Google and their clients. If you understand the Spanish talked by a almost drunk man, you'll get the point watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVADWAxOZtg [youtube.com]
Of course they are (Score:5, Insightful)
All this bitching, be it in the US or the EU, is just about the telecoms wanting to double-dip. All bandwidth is paid for, one way or another. In the case of extremely large connections, like connections between Tier-1 ISPs, the cost is shared between the two ISPs. When they peer, it is an agreement where they say "You pay the costs of your equipment and lines, we'll pay the costs of ours, and we don't charge each other anything to trade data." At every level down from there, it is paid by a smaller consumer. If you are a smaller ISP, you pay the bigger ones for access to their networks. Individuals, businesses, etc then pay those ISPs for access to their network. All the bandwidth is being paid for.
They just want to double charge. They want to tell Google that they should have to pay because Google's data goes over their network.
Of course, if push came to shove, I'd bank on Google winning. Dumbass ISP X says "Ok, we are throttling Google traffic and/or blocking Youtube." Google says "Ok, we are blacklisting all your IPs and showing your users a page that explains what dicks you are and what you need to change for us to restore access." My bet? Consumers get furious at their ISP and either force a change, or simply switch to a new one.
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I don't think that the conclusion is foregone. The issue, at least on the US side, is that there are few enough ISPs now that if you find your ISP "doesn't have google" the other two might not either. This would be a pretty obvious collusion situation, and therefore would go unprosecuted.
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I think that might generate a rather unfavorable response from the US government. There are some free trade agreements around that would run afoul of. Also there is the matter of the citizens in Europe. Last I checked the countries were Democracies at their core. The citizens might not at all be happy with the explanation of "You can't access Gmail or Youtube or Google search anymore because our telecoms are greedy and want to double charge and we want to force Google to allow that. On and by the way we are
Where is the greed tag? (Score:2, Informative)
Why don't telecoms pay google? (Score:5, Interesting)
If we're not going to buy into net neutrality, why does it follow that google should pay the telecoms? Why shouldn't they pay google for enhancing their service?
If google stopped serving pages to people connecting through specific ISPs, those ISPs would go under. Who here wouldn't change their provider if they couldn't get google? You wouldn't really be on the net without google.
Isn't someone already paying for this traffic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like, the customers? If I'm paying for 10GB of data at 10Mbps each month, and the ISP is oversubscribed to uselessness, that's not Google's vault, that's the ISP's false advertising at work.
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It is possible to get more, but uncapped connections are completely unaffordable. I can't remember the numbers now, but I think it started somewhere around R1000/month for fairly low-speed ADSL, line rental not included.
For the benefit of others who, like me, had no clue: about $137 USD (source [xe.com]) plus whatever line rental costs are.
Utter stupidity. (Score:2)
Re:Utter stupidity. (Score:4, Funny)
This is like suing a car manufacturer because somebody got run over by a car they created.
A better car analogy might be highway operators trying to charge manufacturers of SUVs as they take up more space when driven by motorists on the toll-road.
Re:Utter stupidity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Utter stupidity. (Score:4, Insightful)
Before using that analogy remember that some toll roads already charge you more if you have a bigger vehicle and people seem to think that is ok.
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Yes, but I would hate if that analogy was used to support metered internet usage.
Note to telecoms (Score:5, Insightful)
Note to telecoms: You were, are, and always will be, dumb pipes. Stop complaining, it used to be that you guys made respectable money selling dumb pipes to people who needed them. Of course, that was back before you became a bunch of bloated gasbags intent on squeezing every last packet out of the internet.
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Shorter Note to Telecoms:
Shut up, dumb pipe.
applies to all content! (Score:4, Insightful)
Dear Mr. NuttyProf,
we have noticed you've been having a personal web site since 1993. With the statistics you graciously provide publicly we gather, that your site gets accessed several dozen times per month. Since we provide the channels bringing your content to our customers, we'd like to request you to review the attached contract and initiate a monthly fee of $14.95 in order for us to continue to serve your needs in the high quality you have come to expect of us....
Sincerely,
AnyOfTheLargeISPs
Seems perfectly reasonable to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not cable TV, you can't "unbundle premium channels", stop clinging to your ancient business models and come up with a good one.
What I don't think they've fully thought out is the end-game. Possible options:
1) Google pays them. Google then starts getting invoices from every ISP around, from the little mom-and-pops to the tier-1s demanding a cut of the pie.
2) Google cuts them off so that the above doesn't happen. These ISPs customers start screaming "Why am I paying you for access to the Internet, when you aren't providing it?" and they start switching to other providers that aren't pulling this.
Come on, telcoms! You're already charging users for access to the Internet, and the businesses they visit for access to the Internet. How many more times do you need to get paid?
They seem to think they're in a position of power because they control the "eyeballs", but those eyeballs will go to another provider if you don't provide access to the services they want.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The second option you give may sound nice, but we've seen this happen too many times in the US:
User 1: My Internet connection sux and I'm paying top money for it! ...
ISP: Well, we advertised "up to," so that really means that you can't get more than that.
User 2: Just change your provider, idiot!
User 1: I wish I could...
User 3: Yeah, just change your provider!
User 1: There are no other providers.
User 4: Change the provider already!
User 1:
There are many regions in Europe where the same applies, and you fail t
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2) Google cuts them off so that the above doesn't happen. These ISPs customers start screaming "Why am I paying you for access to the Internet, when you aren't providing it?" and they start switching to other providers that aren't pulling this.
There may be areas where you can't pick another ISP, that said, something else may happen.
In China, when you cannot reach a site, you can't opt out of China's firewall, but you use proxies. Many, many, small, widely geographically, randomly distributed proxies.
Might be a pain to use for videos, but I never underestimate a user hellbent on getting his funny cat video.
Good luck to the ISPs sending thousands of little invoices to every one of those proxies.
Grrr.... evil moves (Score:5, Funny)
Telefónica is like neandertal people, really. I have read some declarations from the director, and I was forced to check the date.. I was like a talk from the dictator Franco. And France Telecom is everything that is wrong with corportations plus everything that is wrong by govern owned industry.
Can these two companys die, please?
Net Neutrality Conference video stream (Score:3, Informative)
Dumb pipes, and the media lobby all over (Score:2, Redundant)
Dear Telecoms (Score:5, Insightful)
A dumb pipe is precisely what you are, and should continue being.
They are NOT "dumb pipes". (Score:2)
If ISPs need to do this, their prices are wrong (Score:2)
If the total amount of money paid by customers to the ISP is not enough to cover the bandwidth costs in the YouTube age, instead of going after Google, they should increase their prices so what the customer pays is enough to cover the outgoing bandwidth costs.
But they dont want to do that because they will loose customers.
The Internet is a "pull" network (Score:2, Insightful)
Those YouTube megabytes are being requested by end users. It is they who are getting the "ride" - and it is usually not free. Google/YouTube is just making content available on demand - as is just about every other data supplier on the net except spammers. The only people getting a free ride are spammers, because they are using a "push" mode. Before they stop or slow my YouTube, which I want, let them do something about spam.
The crazy thing is, they might get away with it (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, yeah, you're all saying "this is crazy, I've already paid for my bandwidth"...and you're all correct, but: /. passim : FCC in USA, filtering in Australia...)
As we've seen here recently, common sense or 'fairness' seems to have little to do with ISP regulation and/or behaviour.
(See
Here in Europe, many countries tax blank media and playback devices [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy] in order to 'compensate' artists for 'lost' revenue.
How long before Europe's telcos, (most of whom have strong lobbying power), actually get something like this either legislated, or get Google to cough up some money just by threatening to get it legislated?
They're already trying to grab some of Google's ad revenue:
"French President Nicolas Sarkozy is mulling a recommendation to impose a tax on Internet ad revenues in France. The proposal is aimed at helping the French culture industries survive the new digital age. But critics say it is absurd, unworkable and will do little more than prop up failing business models."
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,670837,00.html]
Re: (Score:2)
Here in Europe, many countries tax blank media and playback devices [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy] in order to 'compensate' artists for 'lost' revenue. How long before Europe's telcos, (most of whom have strong lobbying power), actually get something like this either legislated, or get Google to cough up some money just by threatening to get it legislated?
Yeah, and what are they going to do, tax users for accessing Youtube? Or better yet they can block Youtube until Google pays.
Followed by millions of angry users switching to another ISP.
Re: (Score:2)
...and now you understand why Google has no physical presence in France. Same with Italy. The "failing business model" in this case is a coun
start charging the Europeans for everything (Score:3, Funny)
Given that it was a European (well, Briton, but it is on "that" side of the Atlantic), working at a European facility, that mucked up a perfectly good Internet with this "web" thingie, all of the non-maintenance traffic other than mail, telnet, and ftp should be billed to the EU, plus a royalty for Al Gore, since he invented the entire thing.
Trick? (Score:2)
Isn't this just a trick so that they can later collude and increase the service charges across the board? Get publicity of their faux-plight and then go - "See, we tried to give you guys cheap internet but.."
Or maybe they're just testing the waters to see what they can get away with w.r.t. setting precedents. On a related note, this a systemic problem with overzealous capitalism. Every quarter the profits and revenues must go up - more, more, more. After a while, when you can't really drive them up any more
Googles owes ME money too then! (Score:2)
The customer already paid for it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The ISPs have it all backwards, presumably with full knowledge of the real problem. The customer pays for a connection to the internet. The customer then uses it to access popular services, like Youtube or Facebook or any other of this months fad.
Many ISP has vastly oversold their capacity to their customers and engaged in price fights that has made internet access well below what they should cost. They know its going to be a cold day in hell before the customers agree on a big price hike this late in the game so they try to wring money out of the popular services the customers use their bandwidth on.
Since the ISPs sell access to the internet they have nothing, absolutely nothing they can demand from services on the internet. They made this mess by charging to little for all to much bandwidth, well, sucks to be wrong dont it?
Easily solved.... (Score:3, Insightful)
....any ISP that thinks Google isn't playing fair should just not allow connections to the Google Empire for their customers.
Then we'll see how long it takes for the free-market to self correct. I give it about 30 days, most of that time being required for the ISP to staff up their disconnections department.
Re: (Score:2)
It could take longer than you think. All those ISPs mentioned in the article are in fact big nationwide network providers (owners of the WAN cables and infrastructure), with near-monopoly on the pipes. Most smaller ISPs are actually subcontractors to those big ones. If those 800lb gorillas decided to depeer Google, it would immediately affect most other ISPs too.
'dumb pipes' (Score:2, Insightful)
The funny thing is... (Score:2)
Telecoms Providers Are The Free Riders (Score:2)
They're right that someone's getting a free ride - only it isn't google.
My telecoms provider sold me my contract for a connection to the internet on the basis of the ability to:
-Download Music
-Download Films
-Watch TV & Videos online
-Play Games online
-Email, chat and web
How much are they paying Google et al for that?
Solution: Stop peering with Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh. STFU and just stop peering with them if you don't want the traffic. Of course then your customers won't get anything back when they request pages from Google. Good luck with that. Maybe they'll feel better when you pass along all your network cost savings to them. Right.
Bullshit PR aside, the facts are plain: Your continuing to peer with Google is proof you believe you derive positive economic value by serving Google's content. Given this reality, maybe now you can explain carefully why Google owes you something?
And when you're done answering that question, how about this one: Why is it that with TV distribution it's the cable providers paying the content providers, not vice versa as you'd propose Google do? Why shouldn't you be owing them money, for turning your dumb pipes into something people will pay $50 a month for?
This is journalism? Does the Financial Times just run press releases now?
I'm sorry! (Score:3, Funny)
Now it seems that my innocent advice ruined everything... I'm sorry.
In other words... (Score:3, Funny)
"How dare you provide the interesting, high-bandwidth content that help us sell our high-priced internet connections! We want a piece of that action!"
Yes, ISPs, it's time to demand your rights! And the movement is growing:
Justice will roll like a mighty tide!
Dumb pipes (Score:3, Interesting)
If the ISPs don't want to be just dumb pipes, they will have to meet the requirements. Firstly, they must stop being dumb. As long as they are dumb, they won't advance. To not be just a pipe, they'll have to build something else their customers will want more than they want google. I suggest they get busy hiring the world's best and brightest for premium salaries and start building various internet based services that their customers actually want enough to willingly forgo access to google.
If they are dumb and all they have built is a pipe, they shouldn't be surprised that they are considered to be a dumb pipe.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
http://exiledonline.com/water-wars-billionaire-thugs-scheme-to-pull-off-katrina-style-wealth-transfer-that-could-destroy-california/ [exiledonline.com]
The problem with the EU telcos is they want to be a "Telstra" an Australian bell and cash up on every packet in and out of their EU thiefdom using exclusive pipes.
The "you can select any isp you want" but they all touch our wholesale at some point dream.
End users and optical peering should cover all their costs
So the question to some smart EU