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Comments on: Buzz Out Loud 643: Silicon Valley drink-off

Steve Jobs says Robbie Bach must be drunk if he thinks the Zune is a worthy competitor to iPod. Oh, snap, it's drinking contest time!

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by pffft January 18, 2008 2:07 PM PST

about metered pricing of internet access. it's funny that the people that complain are the people that use more than their fair share. there's a basic microecnomic concept called the "tragedy of the commons" that describes exactly this situation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

microeconomists understand that metered pricing of ANY resource is by far the most efficient pricing model and is better for the overall good of society.

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by ketau January 19, 2008 1:26 PM PST: For most utilities I would agree, but for bandwidth and traffic there is one other factor to consider. At any point in time, some of the most innovative services that will become incredibly valuable to every user consume an above average volume of bandwidth. By increasing the cost of theses services in their infancy you increase the hurdle to adoption. For example, video download rental services from Apple and Amazon are going to change the way people consume content. But they consume an above average volume of resources. If an HD movie download costs $4.99 AND 5GB of data transfer, and Comcast/Time Warner is pricing the data transfer, they are in a position to kill services like this by making their "On Demand" services more attractive.

Here is an interesting analysis from Business Week: http://businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2008/tc20080118_598544.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives; Like this


by mikemckibben January 18, 2008 4:58 PM PST: Although I agree that metered pricing might be a better solution than bandwidth throttling, I feel this is really just a sneaky way of killing legitimate peer-to-peer traffic since who is going to share their bandwidth with peers if it's going to cost them? A single file downloaded via p2p could easily be the equivalent of downloading a file 5 times as large.; Like this Reply to this comment


by Spellspt January 19, 2008 6:30 AM PST: I'm in europe, my internet provider has Cap's on monthly traffic, But to Solve the P2P users problem, they also have HAPPY HOUR(s), a home users happy hours are from midnight, to 8am, a business's hours are from 8am to 8pm.
During the happy hours, nothing counts towards your monthly Capacity!!

So by simply using a scheduled P2P program or download manager, you'll never hit the monthly limit.; Like this Reply to this comment


by JR Howell January 20, 2008 9:34 AM PST: Metered Bandwidth Analogy

It seems like it's difficult to get across the difference between Bandwidth and Metered Usage. A good analogy might be the speedometer in your car. The speedometer represents how fast you're going expressed in mph which would be like bandwidth expressed in Mbps, or how FAST is your connection to the Internet. Metered usage refers to how much you use your connection in terms on Gigabytes downloaded, just like the ODOMETER on your car measures how far you drove.

So ... Metered Usage could be like renting a car. You can go as fast as your rental car can go (sometimes limited by a rev limiter), but you pay for how FAR you go in cents per mile.

Might just be a convenient way to get the point across.

JR
Moline, IL

P.S. Love the show!

And say hey to my "cousin" Jason.; Like this Reply to this comment


by redwall_hp January 20, 2008 11:24 AM PST: Solution to MacBook Air Ethernet: Rememberthat Airport Lite (or whatever it was called)? You plug it into ethernet, and instant hotspot.

Note on Harry Potter DVD: It doesn't work on Macs or iPods. http://www.siteofrequirement.com/news/warner-brothers-plays-favorites-with-microsoft/; Like this Reply to this comment


by u2mr2os2 January 20, 2008 11:47 AM PST: Guys, the Macbook Air can both boot and have its OS reloaded over Remote Disc. See the guided tour they have. I read somewhere that Remote Disc puts up a NetBoot server. I mean, do you really think Apple would sell a computer without a way to reinstall the OS?

Please read a little on these things before spending several minutes speculating something doesn't do this or that and complaining how terrible it is for not doing it when the answer is sitting right there, usually at a very easy Apple URL (http://www.apple.com/macbookair). It's almost as bad as Leo Laporte on Mac Break Weekly talking after the keynote as if he wasn't there or wasn't listening, saying the Air doesn't have this or that, when Steve Jobs clearly said it during the keynote.; Like this Reply to this comment

by jdsmith_80127 January 21, 2008 2:37 PM PST

Isn't my bandwidth already metered?

Lets just say for example that I have a T1 at home and I pay $200 per month for it and my SLA says I should get a minimum of 80% of that capacity. Multiply it all out and it comes to a fixed finite number, representing the amount of data I could potentially transfer on that circuit. In fact (under normal circumstances) it would be impossible for me to exceed this
number given how the line is provisioned. Shouldn't that be my cap? For a provider to set the cap any lower than this number is just double billing me.

Some will say that the problem is aggregation of all the circuits. Organizations like Telegeography Inc. can provide the data to show that price for bandwidth has fallen dramatically (75% to 90% in many areas) especially after the fiber explosion of the late 1990s.

"The advancement in optical technologies, telecommunications deregulation, and general euphoria around the dot-com economy led to a boom in construction of optical fibers all around the world. Thousands of miles of terrestrial and submarine cables were laid in the anticipation of demand that, to date, has not materialized.

Today only 10 percent of potential wavelengths on 10 percent of available fiber pairs is actually lit. ... This represents 1-2 percent of potential bandwidth that is actually available in the fiber system. ... The result of this severe imbalance between supply and demand has understandably led to a tremendous price erosion of bandwidth products."

Grid Computing: A Practical Guide to Technology and Applications" by Ahmar Abbas copyright 2003

As someone who is involved in the provisioning of large network circuits I can personally say that I have not yet seen a substantial increase in bandwidth demand.

I think that there is some credibility to the argument that local providers are unwilling to adequately build out their last mile infrastructures to accommodate new levels of service.
To make a long story short providers like to take our money but they don't like to invest it back into infrastructure.

Love the show

JDS

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by iljitsch January 22, 2008 4:21 AM PST: jdsmith_80127, you and very many people aren't making the difference between maximum and average. An average American household uses something like 90 gallons of water per day. That's about a gallon every 15 minutes. However, the average faucet gives you 10 - 60 times that. That doesn't mean you should be leaving the faucet open all day and use up thousands of gallons a day.

The same thing is true of your internet connection: it's good that you can go faster than the daily average when you need to.

Of course there is a slight difference: for most of us, our water is metered but our internet access isn't. Having unmetered internet access is good for everyone: the people who don't use a lot know they don't have to worry about the bill because it's the same every month. ISPs save the costs of sending metered bills. And the high volume users get to use more than they otherwise could for the same money. But if the high volume users or the ISPs get too greedy, it doesn't work anymore so we'll all have to "suffer" the metering.; Like this


by nidgood January 21, 2008 8:50 PM PST: Did you guys have a look at LG Viewty at CES? Looks like a serious iPhone contender.; Like this Reply to this comment


by longklaw January 23, 2008 9:24 AM PST: Thanks for the DirecTV scheduler info. Of course I haven't heard anything from them about it.; Like this Reply to this comment


by GraysonBuzz January 24, 2008 1:10 PM PST: Regarding metered usage, in general, I agree with someone paying their fair share. However, you make an interesting point that you feel that internet access should be a utility. Local wireline service is a regulated service, but when was the last time you saw a plan that metered your local phone usage? Whether you make 10 local calls per month or 1000, you pay a single flat rate. Your comments on metered data usage seem contradictory.

For the record, one problem that I have with metered usage is that you do not always clearly comprehend how much data you are consuming. For phones, you can pretty much tell how long you are on the phone. With electricity, there is a long history of usage that, assuming usage patterns persist over the years, allows the user to generally be able to expect what their cost for power will be. Water service is very similar. I think regular data usage can be highly variable and not necessarily sufficiently transparent to make metered usage customer-friendly.; Like this Reply to this comment

(12 Comments)

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Buzz Out Loud features Tom Merritt, producer Jason Howell, and a rotating roundtable of CNET's top tech experts reviewing the day's tech news. Each episode, five times a week, the crew analyzes, interprets, and argues about what all this technology means and what it's doing to us. Fans can join in the show by calling 1-800-616-2638, e-mailing at buzz@cnet.com, or commenting on the blog.

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