Thos are all different companies...

dialup, I pay say, netzero, which pays the phone company.

DSL, I pay the phone company to use,

Cable, I pay the cable company to use.

You are paying for different technologies, they all have different prices.

I havn't seen SBC DSL offer me a $20 a month deal or a $40 or $60, its one price for one technlogy.

Its not like the cellphone companies where I can pay for 1500 free minutes, or 200 free minutes.


If a network sends 1K a day or 1Terrabyte a day across the network it costs the same thing. The question is, if I'm making money from other people accessing the network (like google does) do I get to pay the same amount as my customers, or will I have to pay more since I profit from the network running more smoothly and having larger capacity.

Qwest and Cox both offer tiered rates here. You can buy the crappy cable connection for $20 a month, or the "premium" (2mb/sec, woo!) for $45 a month. Qwest has a standard DSL line for $35 a month, or a dual line for $50 a month.

Ah, so various companies allready have various ways of doing things.

So now why is this all on the customer and none on the other companies?

I may pay dreamhosting extra money to run my website, but I certaintly don't pay SBC to do it.

Because each company is paid by the subscribers that actually cause the bandwidth to be used. The burden is not on ESPN to pay Cox, because I'm already paying Cox to retrieve information and send it to me. ESPN's responsibility is to handle the extra server and modem space used by its hosting company so that it can provide uninterrupted service to all of its subscribers.

Really, there's no correlation between the two. If ESPN's websites flash through Cox a million times a day, it's because Cox's customers want it to. If IRE's websites only flash through Cox a couple hundred times a day, it's because fewer of Cox's customers want it to. In the end, it's Cox's customers that determine Cox's server and modem needs, not the content providers.

However, that is not true in the Television or Movie industries.

ESPN pays CoX to have it on a basic network channel.

If a movie wants to be in worldwide theateres, it pays companies to do so.

Most other media industries the payments go both ways.

There is nothing unjust or unfair if a company like Comcast wants to offer Google a new fiberoptic cable to be devoted to its website.

What will be insane is all the new lawyers making money and sueing over all the new laws, and the government getting more and more involved in what can and acannot be done on the internet.

modern Regulations tend to help beurcrats and screw over everybody else

I can't speak for how cable companies and cable channels bill each other. I don't have any foggy clue how that works unless I take your word for it (no offense to you, but I prefer to work with primary sources).

Theaters pay movie producers for content, not the other way around. Actors, cameramen, editors, directors, and the like get their checks from the producers, who get their checks from the theaters, who get their checks from the people who go to watch.

Comcast couldn't offer Google its own line, unless it planned on digging a trench from all of its major hubs to wherever it is that Google is hosted. It's just not how the protocol works. It would be screening at the local server level.

This is a little off topic, but... *happy sigh* Gone are the days when needing extra bandwidth cost 5 bucks per 1GB.

The internet is not movies, it is not television. If it were, it wouldn't be nearly so successful. I can't pay Comcast for a custom channel that only plays what I want, when I want. I can't pay a movie theatre to only play the movies I like. However, the way the internet works, I can do that.

I pay for what I want. I don't want content providers paying for what they think I want.

You're young Veonira. I remember when we had to pay hourly charges to access networks. Imagine the bills some would run up for Lusternia if you were paying $4.00/hour.

As for NN, I'm a little mixed to it. I agree that they shouldn't mess with the fundemental "peering" agreements. I also think that providers like Google, Yahoo, etc., already pay fair rates for bandwidth.

However, my biggest concern are the development of new technologies. Most recently, Cisco and other router manufacturers have come out warning against regulation of Net Neutrality.

I think Phone and Cable providers have legit reasons for establishing tiers, simply because some of the high-density applications such as audio, video, and IP Phone and TV can throw the net into chaos. I think there should be higher charges for, say, real-time phone usage over IP than just e-mail. And I think there needs to be some financial incentive for the backbone providers to invest in fiber and new routining and compression technologies to support this.

But I'm also distrustful of the backbone providers--or at least the last-line subscribers since there is little competition.

So I'm not sure where I stand.

Here it is called, Cox on Demand. For a monthly fee, you have channel 1 play what you want, when you want it. There is a also a company called Tivo who charges you for a very similar service.


Theatures pay producers for movies, but distribution companies also pay theatres. Generally, if the movie is going to be popular, the producers get paid, if its not going to be so popular, the distribution companies pay theatres to have limited releases.

You don't need to take my word for it, you can look it up on the internet.

Thats where I get most of my information from.


Here is one sample article on the subject. I tend to read multiple articles on these things to find varied views to synthacize. and I have not specifically read this one, it was just the first one in google that looked relevant.

http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories.../03/story1.html

hmm, looks like I got it backwards

cox pays espn.

But then again, espn is going to cox, not viewers of cox going to espn.

It is definitly complicated, but quotes like this I think are just insnane


Just rediciculous to think this would actually happen. Maybe in a sci-fi movie, or some conspicary theorists novel, but thats about it.

Why? There's absolutely nothing wrong with that from a capitalist standpoint, so long as it's legal, and makes sense to at least try, see if your profits go up.

According to the pro net neutrality websites, it has been attempted 4 times. Each time, current laws and practices have made the people who did such actions pay for it.

Doing something like that is akin to shooting yourself in the foot, it is just pointless.

There is no monolopy on network infrustructure, and the cost of entry into the market is reletively cheap these days.

Why do you think they're trying to make it legal?

What the people who are against Net Neutrality want, allready is legal.

my god.

The Telecommunication companies are Lobbying against NEW legistalation...

They are also proposing thier own Legistislation that gives minimal garantees to Net Neutrality, so minimal that Net Neutrality proponents think its not giving anything.

Yay Fearmongering over things that arn't happening.

Perhaps we should start lobbying Japan about thier Robot Safety laws. Its not right to have kill switches on Humanoid robots, they have feelings too you know!

http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffictio...obot_rules.html

Also, only 1 of those 4 instances happened in the United States.

This issue has basically (by design I suspect) turned into a "the sky is falling" situation in which everyone over-reacts.

Although I see the point that the pro-neutrality camp are trying to make, with the possibility of corporate censorship through degradation of service, the very same thing is, and always has been, possible since the inception of the internet.

What has stopped the telcos from doing this in the past?

Theoretically, corporations could charge extra for preferential service, or prioritise their own brands, but that has always been possible anyway.

Theoretically, the moon could suddenly suffer orbit decay and crash into the earth, but that has always been possible too.

Do we need to build a giant trampoline just in case?

What's scary is the lack of knowledge about the Internet from the people who want to regulate it!

Take a look at this clip and see what I mean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DClkE64nFDY

This reminds me of the phone companies. Right now when you call a small volume user, like your mom, only you get charged. But when you call a large-volume customer, like a corporate call center handling millions of phone calls a week, the guy on the other end of the phone racks up a phone bill for whichever telco provides phone service for the call center. So if your home is serviced with Bell Telephone and you call an insurance sales phone bank that is serviced by AT&T, then AT&T charges the insurance company even though you already paid Bell Telephone for phone service. I heard of one major insurance company that was able to save millions of dollars by finding a way to cut 10 seconds off of every billing related phone call and making their web site more capable of handling requests on-line. (Often times an insurance request may be too difficult for a computer program to do and the web site tells you to call up the company to complete it; so I'm talking about reducing these sorts of instances.) Granted, some of that was wages for the call center employees, but a lot of that was the phone bill. So the direction the telcos are taking the Internet seems exactly like how they bill phone service today. I don't see what's so scary about that; the phones are working pretty well. Net neutrality reminds me of if we forced the phone companies to give away for free these billions of dollars in phone service to large corporate phone banks and had us consumers calling the phone banks get double-charged to pick up the tab instead.

Why does it cost double to route a call to a large call center, as opposed to a home customer?

Yep. I've got 2 packages offered by the cable company I'm gonna be going to soon. One's 5mb/s, one's 10mb/s. The 2nd one is almost twice as much as the first.

If you call the call center toll-free, then that call center is paying for that. If you have to pay to speak to them, and they have to pay, the phone company is selling the same service twice, and needs to be carpet-bombed with napalm.

Considering we don't charge by bandwidth use or time spent, that model doesn't work for the Iinternet. And I'd rather pay a flat fee than pay per bandwidth.