|
|
| Backblog—VoIP |
|
Net stupidity
April 2, 2008 By Ian Harvey
Categories: General VoIP
Michael Giest is rightly angered by the news Rogers is going to throttle back their Internet users.
In his blog he tears into both Bell and Rogers over packet shaping and particularly Roger’s announcement they will cap users at 60 Gb and charge a penatly for those who go over it.
Ostensibly it’s to go afterthe small minority of users who use up more than their share of bandwidth to download movies, something I wrote about in a the most current issue of Backbone Magazine.
Look deeper and this is not about traffic, it’s about business. Rogers and to some extent Bell are terrified that as we shift to downloading movies (legitimately) we will stop renting DVDs from Rogers stores, or using Pay Per View from Rogers Cable or Bell Expressview. (UPDATE: And, I should have added, drifting from the enforced channels selections offered as bundles, and simply streaming shows directly over the Web - which many folks do now to watch soccer games not available here, such as Scottish Premier League games.)
They’re afraid that as they build capacity on their networks with an eye to their own plans to sell those services that while they tinker around, a so-called over the top player will eat their lunch.
And yes, they’re right since I can’t see Rogers letting me download a movie for less than I would have rented it at their store. So yes I would go to a vendor who offered a better deal.
And as far as the caps go, don’t you think when a Roger’s internet customer downloads a movie from Rogers (if and when they get it going) that those data packets will get A#1 priority on the network and won’t count to the 60Gb cap. Ditto for VoIP though it doesnt use a lot of bandwidth but it’s exactly what Shaw is doing out west. There, if you have non-Shaw VoIP service and you want to ensure quality on your VoIP you must pay a “premium” fee. How long before Rogers and Bell do that here.
This is all about monopoly control, about CYA and screw the customer. Rogers and Bell don’t want to be dumb pipes. They want to get a slice of every kb that zips along their network whether we like it or not.
Unfortunately so few people understand the issue of net neutrality - that the Internet or phone line is a public pipe where all data is equal and controlled by no one - and what it means beyond the spin the big telecomms put on it.
But we should be afraid people, very afraid.
Ian Harvey
0 Comment(s) ·
del.icio.us ·
Digg it ·
Furl ·
reddit ·
Email
|
|
|
| Top 300 Issue |
 
|
| Gadget of the Week (Canadian) |
|
Small. Really small
Creative Zen Stone Plus with Speaker
This MP3 player has a lot of features: 500-song capacity, 20-hour battery, an alarm clock, FM radio, voice recorder, stopwatch and—rare in an MP3 player—a built-in speaker. And it packs all that in a tiny space: check out the paperclip in the photo.
more>>
|
| Gadget of the Week (Japanese) |
Sounds of Japan
Why record just the visual when you can capture the sounds as well.
more>> |
| Backblog RSS feed |
Click to subscribe  |
|
sponsored by 
