Wednesday, June 25, 2008
« DHS INVITES PUBLIC COMMENT ON INFRASTRUC... | Main | 4th Amendment privacy in text messages »
Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic
There is a serious moral hazard problem with congestion pricing as so
clearly illustrated in the California electricity market. If the price
goes up when the supply goes down and there are extreme barriers to
entry, congestion pricing results in suppliers chocking off the supply
in order to maximize revenue. Esther's dining model fails in this
discussion because choice is limited and there is little to no entry.
(See the short and sad history of CLECs.)

It seems like many of your subscribers are almost re-inventing Clarks'
expected capacity mechanism from the nineties, first presented (I
think) as  "Explicit Allocation for Best Effort Packet Delivery
Service" at  the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference in 96.
It is worth a read. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=288396.288401
[[The Expected Capacity Service is a two level priority scheme. It
provides a guaranteed minimum capacity service with a guaranteed burst
size allowance provided by a token bucket. For sender-pays, each user
selects a profile. The profile consists of two measures: minimum rate
and token bucket depth (comparable to TCP's window size.) In response
to the user's selected profile, the service provider offers a price
for the time period (e.g. a month) in which the profile will be
enforced. Thus users are provided a fixed and predictable price for
their selected profile.]]

thanks,

L. Jean Camp
http://www.ljean.com
Net Trust
http://code.google.com/p/nettrust/
Economics of Security
http://www.infosecon.net/



Bruce Kushnick writes:

Does no one remember ACTA?
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Comments/actapet.html

Lots of other links:
http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/resources/affiliates/workshops/regulate/

The poor phone companies claimed massive internet congestion because of
"internet telephony" --- it was just a ruse to charge VOIP companies more
money or block them.

Today's let's charge by the byte is just another iteration of the problem --
they don't want any video that they can't control and get paid for.

SBC, Ed Whitacre's famous "we own the pipes" was a target at google et al
offering video. This entire issue is again more troubling because we have a
created a monopoly/duopoly of vertically integrated companies who can
control not only the speed but the access to the internet.

The Bell companies, now AT&T and Verizon, collected over $240 billion to
have over 93 million homes rewired with fiber -- and instead, never properly
upgraded their networks but pocketed the money. -- Why has no one bothered
to examine what wasn't built and why any congestion problem exists.

Remember, the Bells claimed they would be deploying 45mbps services in both
directions -- so how can they now claim there is any 'video congestion' as
their networks should have been more than capable.

And the cablecos? Well, under the 'social contract' of 1995, they have been
allowed to charge every customer about $1. a month (which was supposed to
stop in 2000 but didn't) to upgrade the networks. --- Where's the billions
back or adequate networks?

NetHappenings Mailing List
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 8:50:23 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  |  Related posts:
[ECP] NetHappenings News and Resources
Lori Drew was found guilty of three misdemeanor charges
Yiddish: A Struggle for Survival
My Uncle Stan
Youth and sexual predation online
Accidental Chrismukkah cards from President Bush