Comments on: Why Mark Cuban's only half right about tiered broadband

There's no argument that the Internet is getting clogged up by massive dumps of video--and that's only going to get worse. But there are better ideas than a pay-as-you go approach.

[flaystus]

Mark Cuban says only a hog uses the internet for video?

Didn't he start a little company called broadcast.com?


Yes, yes he did. Bite me Cuban.

[Mergatroid Mania]

Dude, that was so awesome.

[NWLB]

I'm so sure Mark Cuban has suffered from net lag. He should save money with dial-up and spend more money on decent players and coaches for his team, they could use them more.

The attempts to bilk people who are only doing what the broadband providers advertise as being so "great" about the net, will fail.

Any day now, Netflix, Tivo, Vonage, Apple, and a half million people whose services depend on fast and broad data transmission will point out that the efforts are basically anti-competitive. People who want and demand those services, and frankly even those who use less of broadband, are going to cry foul over the efforts as well.

Attempts to charge by the amount of data used have failed every time they are tried. Providers try almost like clockwork, and the attempts are beaten back by the same uproar that is already starting now.

The future is not one of either or. Bandwidth and speed will walk hand-in-hand with the services and offerings online. People will want them, and the providers will have to either provide or move on.

There will be too many players in broadband services in five years for such attempts to have any lasting impact.

[Lerianis]

You are right in that this is an attempt to gouge people and to steer them to the services offered by their internet companies.
Personally, I think that any ISP that even TRIES metered access should be brought up on anti-competitive charges and shut down.
That includes Time Warner, Comcast, whoever.... unless they are VERY generous with the prices to gigabytes levels.

[Tsee-1968031069905097881578618]

Great article. Thanks for acknowledging that our country's falling far behind others in even technology. All the decades of low test scores, combined with greedy corporations and defeatist governments, are coming home to roost.

[ittesi259]

I'll agree with everything other than the low test scores part....we're way to focused on tests in this country. Case in point....I suck at standardized tests so I got labeled mediocre in school....I didn't know if you finish with a GPA higher than all but 17 other people in your class of 800 high school seniors you were only mediocre......I guess being in the 97th percentile is really a crappy situation for our country.....sorry to fail you.

[Lerianis]

I have to agree with ittesi259 about standardized tests and tests in general. I was EXTREMELY smart and still am, with an IQ of near 150 (past genius level), and I still SUCK at standardized tests and 'memorization' tests.
That is the main reason why I support going to open book tests in schools today... no one has to memorize these obscure facts and figures anymore.

[nachurboy]

The problem with tiered pricing is, the bandwidth is still limited! People who want the capacity is going to pay for it if they have no alternative, which means that "10%" of heavy users will now be bringing in more money for the cable companies, but will continue to use "90%" (or more now that they feel they're entitled to it by paying more) of the bandwidth. On top of that, the "non-heavy" users are paying the same amount as untiered today, so they're not benefitting from tiered services at all (same price, even less bandwidth). So if anyone thinks tiered service is about adding bandwidth, they're sorely mistaken. It's strictly about milking the cow for more money.

[Lerianis]

You hit the nail on the head. Frankly, I am one of those 'high-bandwidth users' even when I am NOT using Bittorrent or another p2p application. I just used my web browser to download pictures and other things for a month, not even TOUCHING Bittorent except for my Naruto Shippuuden episodes.... I still managed to use 100GB's.

How? By watching a lot of online video, downloading pictures, playing online games, etc.

I have to give Mark Cuban maximum props for telling like it is. Bandwidth is not an infinite resource; pretending otherwise is just wishful thinking.

Tiered pricing can have real benefits. For example, the lack of tiered or per-unit pricing for email is what has created the giant email spam problem.

[nachurboy]

You're mistaken. We pay to connect to the internet, which allows us to send email. That is the tiered pricing for email. Unless you can connect to the internet, you can't use email. The spam problem is due to spammers using other people's paid internet access to send unwanted emails and having tiered or per-email pricing isn't going to stop spam. It's just going to cost you and me more money! The only way to stop spam is to switch from today's email technology to something less anonymous, as well as strengthening the legal system against spammers.

[Lerianis]

Nachurboy, you are absolutely right. The person who posted the above message (and I wonder how on earth he did it without a login name?) is clueless. Most of the 'spam' e-mail is from the computers of users being infected with spyware, adware and other viruses, and being used WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE to spam other people.

That's the main reason why I switched to Mozilla Thunderbird - no known exploits and most viruses aren't programmed to exploit that program as of yet.

[bdennis410]

Mark Cuban got it all right.
The fact is that we are in this minimal bandwidth position because of cable and telco monopolies of infrastructure. Cooper mentioned, among others, that both Japan and Korea offer substantially higher bandwidth capabilities to users, as well as much deeper broadband penetration. How do they do it? By forcing competitive access to the infrastrucure at a reasonable price to content providers. Why is US different? We don't enforce any mechansism for separating the provisioning of pipline capacity from content; in other words, in many cases the Content provider is also the "pipeline" owner. No wonder we have difficulty catching up with other countries-we're 15th of 30 according to Cooper, maybe 17th by other standards.Cooper failed to mention that many of those 14 ahead of the U.S. pay LESS for their access.

Separating the pipeline infrastructure from Content provisioning would then allow the preferable, and in my opinion proper, approach of "metering" bandwidth usage; to consumers, and in certain circumstances, Content providers-think of Pay-Per-View -for everything.
If the Internet is the communications convergence many hope for, then Content providers must be separated from pipeline ownership, much as we did with the TV networks not so many years ago.
The Content providers would then charge consumers for ...whatever. Tom Cruise and the worldwide release of MI 7? It could happen.
TV networks developed their pipeline, the broadcast capability, in order to increase entertainment choices and sell advertising, Consumers made decisions to buy various devices of various quality and features to enjoy the broadcast Content.
Why should today be any different?
Force the separation of Content from infrastrucuture; allow the consumers a la carte choices of Content, and even packages of content that they can decide to pay for as they wish, based on the Content. The pipeline owners could then decide how much to charge each party in the transaction for the bandwidth usage.
TV networks broadcast for "free" and it is not too hard to imagine that some Content providers over the Internet will do the same, paying for the bandwidth privilege as part of pricing their advertising to reach these consumers.
So, if music and video consumers want Bit Torrent access and downloads, using large volumes of bandwidth to do so, they pay for it.
Same for data consumers like business.
The point is, we are getting to the Anything, Anytime, Anywhere marketplace for digital Content.
We must provide a structure that maximizess the choices for consumers, encourages reasonable costs for whatever Content is offered, and prevents the monopolization of infrastructure by owners, or by consumers, through usage-based pricing.
If you believe that fair and open competition will create the widest choice in the marketplace at the lowest price, then it is a "no brainer" to force open and reasonable access to the infrastrucure and a pricing model that charges users for their bandwidth
All we accomplish by allowing infrastructure monopolies is higher costs for access to Content, less selection and usage, and..the horror of it!.. more profits for the cable and telco monopolies.
Don't think so? Consider Wireless phone costs and their divorce from reality.
Consider that cable companies have enjoyed over $200,000,000,000 Billion (that's Billion with a big "B" folks) in monopoly profits in just the last generation, because of a lack of reasonable access.

[bagg44]

Japan is the size of Montana;Korea...Great Britain. The problem in the US is getting infrastructure to places in the upper Plains or remote desert hamlets. That's going to require some government regulation because the free market won't service remote areas.

[bdennis410]

Mark Cuban got it all right.
The fact is that we are in this minimal bandwidth position because of cable and telco monopolies of infrastructure. Cooper mentioned, among others, that both Japan and Korea offer substantially higher bandwidth capabilities to users, as well as much deeper broadband penetration. How do they do it? By forcing competitive access to the infrastructure at a reasonable price to content providers. Why is US different? We don't enforce any mechanism for separating the provisioning of pipeline capacity from content; in other words, in many cases the Content provider is also the "pipeline" owner. No wonder we have difficulty catching up with other countries-we're 15th of 30 according to Cooper, maybe 17th by other standards. Cooper failed to mention that many of those 14 ahead of the U.S. pay LESS for their access.

Separating the pipeline infrastructure from Content provisioning would then allow the preferable, and in my opinion proper, approach of "metering" bandwidth usage; to consumers, and in certain circumstances, Content providers-think of Pay-Per-View -for everything.
If the Internet is the communications convergence many hope for, then Content providers must be separated from pipeline ownership, much as we did with the TV networks not so many years ago.
The Content providers would then charge consumers for ...whatever. Tom Cruise and the worldwide release of MI 7? It could happen.
TV networks developed their pipeline, the broadcast capability, in order to increase entertainment choices and sell advertising, Consumers made decisions to buy various devices of various quality and features to enjoy the broadcast Content.
Why should today be any different?
Force the separation of Content from infrastructure; allow the consumers a la carte choices of Content, and even packages of content that they can decide to pay for as they wish, based on the Content. The pipeline owners could then decide how much to charge each party in the transaction for the bandwidth usage.
TV networks broadcast for "free" and it is not too hard to imagine that some Content providers over the Internet will do the same, paying for the bandwidth privilege as part of pricing their advertising to reach these consumers.
So, if music and video consumers want Bit Torrent access and downloads, using large volumes of bandwidth to do so, they pay for it.
Same for data consumers like business.
The point is, we are getting to the Anything, Anytime, Anywhere marketplace for digital Content.
We must provide a structure that maximizes's the choices for consumers, encourages reasonable costs for whatever Content is offered, and prevents the monopolization of infrastructure by owners, or by consumers, through usage-based pricing.
If you believe that fair and open competition will create the widest choice in the marketplace at the lowest price, then it is a "no brainer" to force open and reasonable access to the infrastructure and a pricing model that charges users for their bandwidth
All we accomplish by allowing infrastructure monopolies are higher costs for access to Content, less selection and usage, and..the horror of it!.. more profits for the cable and telco monopolies.
Don't think so? Consider Wireless phone costs and their divorce from reality.
Consider that cable companies have enjoyed over $200,000,000,000 Billion (that's Billion with a big "B" folks) in monopoly profits in just the last generation, because of a lack of reasonable access.

[drfez]

I gotta agree with nachurboy, if the ISP's can guarantee that I can have lighting speed being a light bandwidth user instead of still getting the same degradation and they just have a new revenue stream I'd be more willing to think tiered is fair. But the pipes ain't gonna get bigger, just the revenue to the ISP's.

[BCF1968]

Of course Cuban can easily afford any overage charges he might incur. "Let them eat cake" it sounds like he's saying.

REASONABLE caps are fine. The 40GB Time Warner wants to have is NOT reasonable. Overage fess do NOTHING to address the bandwidth problem unless those fees are going to be used to increase capacity, which I doubt. Also anyone that doesn't mind paying the overage fees will still go over the cap anyways.Instead of overage fees just slow down the connections to those that violate the cap for the rest of the month.

[Lerianis]

Yeah, for 50 dollars or more, 40GB caps are nowhere NEAR reasonable. Maybe, 8 times that is reasonable.

[GlennAllen]

When low usage actually results in low cost for the consumer, then maybe I'll believe tiered broadband is anything but a money-grab by ISPs. Well, no one is truly dumb enough to believe that WILL happen. Speed? Define speed... now... next year... 5 years from now. Whatever you come up with now will be quite different years from now. CableCos oversell their nodes worse than the airlines, but what do you expect from a broadcast medium? Upgrade your networks to satisfy the demand that YOU have created. Deliver on what you have promised your customers... ALL of your customers.

[ZA_Magazine]

I'm an American studying abroad in Australia, and let me tell you, metered bandwidth STINKS, but it isn't the end of the world for most users. I'm in a house with six other people and we get 20GB/month between noon and midnight and 40GB for the other 12 hours. We've found that even though the number of people in the house means you can't use more than 100MB a day during the day per person, you never hit the ceiling unless you use video or download stuff.

Downloading movies and music, for the most part, is illegal, so I have no sympathy there. You have to be careful about your YouTube time, but if you wait till after midnight there's no problem there. The only thing left is online gaming, and there's really no answer there. Metered bandwidth would be a shame for you guys :(

So while I'll be looking forward to the US of A with my restriction-less Internet, this new world of paying for your bandwidth won't be the apocalypse. Our infrastructure wasn't built to handle broadband, so the market has to adjust accordingly.

[Lerianis]

Wrong, industry shill. The infrastructure WAS built to handle broadband, that is why for the past many years, they have been putting fiber-optic line everywhere.

The real problem here is that these ISP's thought that p2p applications would never exist, and everyone would always be watching movies offline and buying music offline.... they were STUPID, to be blunt.

[-__-]

1. It's people like bdennis410 that are the reasons for the hog: DOUBLE POSTING!

2. I wonder what Mr. "Complainer" Cuban does with his bandwidth. I mean, I'm sure he has a T3 or fiber or a direct link to the backbone at home or work with the money he makes. Hell, why don't he invest in satellite to do his "work" (work = playing poker online or speculating on oil prices).

3. "People who are working, people who are trying to play games, people who are in virtual worlds, people who are networking, people who are just trying to watch a YouTube video or their favorite TV show, you all are the reason why we get incredibly annoyed by slowdowns and buffering."
Way to go, Cuban. Insult 90% of the world, especially, companies that rely on broadband for productivity. Maybe companies should go back to snail mail to send those important documents that needs to be there yesterday... And let's not forget companies like Blizzard Entertainment that makes millions everyday via WoW -- without broadband, they might as well make cheesy games...

[bugm3n0t]

"Of course, everyone knows the real solution, though nobody in a position of influence has the cojones to say it out loud: we need a national broadband build out--the likes of which would be on a par with the Eisenhower administration's national highway system"


That statement shows that the author has no idea how the bittorrent protocol works or how it exploits a fundamental flaw in TCP. Most clients are designed to consume the maximum bandwidth available so no matter how much you upgrade you're just raising the bar to how much it can consume. As for analogies to the highway system, get back to me on that when they're selling cars and gas for next to nothing and many businesses use regular cars instead of transport trucks and trains to cart their goods around...then we can talk analogies.

[Willie Winkie]

The movies, music and software that I download for free using bittorent is the only way I can offset the outrageous cost of cable service and gasoline. If I'm not downloading at least 500 dollars worth of content a month, what good is broadband anyway. I'd rather go back to bloody dial-up otherwise.

[bugm3n0t]

"The movies, music and software that I download for free using bittorent is the only way I can offset the outrageous cost of cable service and gasoline. If I'm not downloading at least 500 dollars worth of content a month, what good is broadband anyway. I'd rather go back to bloody dial-up otherwise." ----- So you're saying it makes sense for the ISPs to lay down and take it and spend ********* to unendingly upgrade the network to try and appease an unending appetite to accommodate for TV and gasoline insanity? And better yet, you'll ***** about that instead of the TV and gasoline insanity....good plan, you guys definitely have the better argument, caps will never work.

[Earl Benzar]

So given that the latest trends are SaaS and RIA's and streaming video and online gaming, it seems to me that anyone who is supporting tiered pricing is either an idiot or an ISP shill. It's just unfortunate that Google didn't win the frequency auction so that someone could ensure that this tiered idiocy doesn't get off the ground.

[Lerianis]

You hit the nail on the head. The only people who are supporting 'tiered' pricing, at least not with generous bandwidth caps, are industry shills.

[aka_tripleB]

Mark Cuban is an idiot. He obviously never learned how data is transfered. Speed is not affected by the number of users, whether that is one or 1,000. It is only limited by how fast electical impulses and travel through the medium. Bandwidth is the amount of data that can flow through any given medium. This is not a set number, although it's fairly static. And the problem only affects cable customers. Neighborhoods use a common connection to the internet, so the more people who try to use it the slower it is. DSL, fiber optic, T-1, ISDN, and even dial-up users aren't vastly afftected like that because they each get a dedicated line. The only limitations they have are the number of connections on switches and the bandwidth at the destination. Both of which are seldomly a problem and are easily remodied if it becomes a constant problem.

So Cuban is not only wrong, but actually hurting cable companies and their customers by suggesting that tiered broadband is a good idea. It won't do a thing to solve the problem with too many users. While phone companies will be able to attact everyone to them because they can actually deliever what they promise. Cable is going to need to change its delivery model unless it wants to fall behind DSL again.

[Lerianis]

The only delivery model they need to change is the one where they only upgrade their systems every 5 years or so. I have a cousin who works for Comcast, and that is typically the amount of time that they upgrade on, which seems like a VERY long time considering how fast equipment improves each year.

[aintnorainbowdorothy]

Cuban is right folks. For all of you posting and saying he's an idiot, think about the aggregate of people degrading bandwidth with illegal downloading of movies and music. They're the ones that should be paying for tiered services. Force them to pay for the services they use and let the rest of us who use the computer(s) we have at home for work use the badwidth available. There's a finite amount of bandwidth. Why do I have to allow idiots and thieves to degrade my service? I don't mind the players of games such as WOW. They pay to play and use bandwidth they pay for to play. But if they download illegaly, then maybe they should have to pay more for bandwidth. Not to mention the movies, music and so on. Pay for play works. Pay for work works. Get off my broadband, use DSL (which gets slower the farther you are from the main switches) or use Dial-Up. See how you like that.

[nachurboy]

So if someone uses a lot of bandwidth legally and "degrades your service", shouldn't they pay more as well? If both legal and illegal high bandwidth users use a lot more bandwidth than you, and they are forced to pay more, does that give you any more bandwidth? Isn't your service still "degraded"? And if WoW players "pay to play and use bandwidth they pay for to play", are you suggesting those who download videos and use bittorrent are not paying to play (in this case, not a game)?

This issue is not about who uses more bandwidth. The issue is does tiered pricing really help those who use less bandwidth by charging those who use more higher prices? Right now, tiered pricing is only one sided, the upper side. The lower side isn't going down with less usage. They've put a price floor at today's rates, and simply add a ceiling of bandwidth usage that didn't exist before. You're not going to pay less, but others will pay more. In the end, you'll still feel like you're not getting what you're paying for, while heavy downloaders will continue to use more bandwidth. Is that really a good solution for you? Saying "Make them pay" isn't going to help you.

[Imalittleteapot]

Well don't let them fool ya. From what I remember BitT traffic is regional. In Asia it averages about 60%, but in America I believe it is around 30% and less in other areas. Actually web based traffic is on the uprise to the extent that it will become the bandwidth hog. A normal sane BitT user's traffic wouldn't be that bad, but they get lumped in with the greedy freaks that download night and day as just ?Bittorrent users?. Let's think about something else though. I want to download a 100 meg file. If it takes me 2 days then I'm sitting there wasting bandwidth for 2 freaking days and so is everybody else. If it only took me 2 seconds I might hog some bandwidth, but only for 2 seconds. That is why throttling isn't really a solution. However, there's a problem. People that have more downloads prepared to start as soon as the last one finishes, and the fact that lots of people are doing it means infinite bandwidth certainly doesn't work either. However, if you take that ability away from lots of people with caps then guess what? Lots of people don't need your service anymore. If you were capped as to make BitT pointless how are they going to sell their 7 mbps or 50 or whatever? Think about it. If you're capped then the higher your mbps rate is the quicker you hit your cap. A broader pipe actually becomes a negative selling point. Back to dial up or 128 kbps (which I'm actually on right now by the way) which is all you really need if you only use BitT once every six months. Trading files would go back to one guy getting the disk and passing it around to everyone else which is how some people still do it by the way. They really lose the incentive for you to pay for the higher mbps. Worse, while other countries broadband is increasing we'd be sliding back technologically. Without being able to download whatever I want I don't need super broadband. I know this because I already don't need those speeds. What I have works fine for much less. Let us not forget that the Web's purpose is to trade files. HTTP is actually a form of file sharing. The files are just smaller. They're html files, jpegs, gifs, or whatever, but I've been at this a long time. If you think I've never downloaded a super huge something I shouldn't have via HTTP or FTP over dial up then you sir would be wrong. The fundamental purpose of the net is to trade data and files. Now the ISPs are saying they don't want people to trade files anymore. Well I hate to break it to them, but that's pretty much the business they're in. That's why they're screwed because many people can just shut the net off and do something else if it gets too expensive. This is sort of like McDonald's saying they can't continue to sell burgers anymore because the burgers people want haven't gotten too big. I'm sorry, but I'm an optimist about the situation. If there's that much demand for your burger then you'll find a way to serve that freaking burger.

[howbacha]

None of these posts has hit on the simple solution for this problem. bdennis410 comment about separating the content from the physical access is the first step. Once that is done then the content providers can charge what they will all based on what the market will tolerate. There will be some that charge fees, some that use adds and some that will be for free. This is as it should be for it's content, just like going to the store and buying what you want be it a physical item or a service.

The actual physical access should be the same fee for everyone. When the traffic is low (i.e. lots of unused bandwidth) then whom ever is connected should be able to use however much they need. When there is little to no spare bandwidth then it should be distributed on an even basis to all users. This is a very easy thing for the ISPs to do, they just keep track of how many bits of data a user is using per second and if user A is at 10Mb/s and user B is at 6Mb/s then they would even it out to 8Mb/s each. If any user only needs so much then they get what they need as long as it fits within the average. This load leveling has been done in the workforce with compute resources for years, if not decades, it can be applied to internet access as well. The big question then would boil down to over what length of time would the usage for load leveling be done? I would think something on the order of a minute or less, no more than 15 minutes. This amount could even be regulated by the FCC. The pricing for the access could then be based on the cost of the access, plus some profit margin, as it should be, instead of a tiered usage.

This simple solution taken from the engineering world would then prompt all the big content providers to push for bigger pipes so they could sell their wares. The market would then drive the upgrade of the pipes.

[nachurboy]

I guess you don't know that this is exactly how the network already is supposed to work. TCP is a first come, first serve protocol and doesn't care who is using how much bandwidth. Packets go into the pipe as they come in, in the order they enter the packet stream. If every server was capable of delivering the exact same speed and every client can accept packets as the same speed without retransmits, bandwidth would theoretically be divided evenly to every client. But with today's traffic shaping technology (QOS), packets can be prioritized over others, "stealing" speed away from protocols not prioritized. But ethernet protocol doesn't give priority bandwidth to any one service by itself and therefore it is a self-balancing protocol. The reason why you see uneven distribution of bandwidth is because P2P and other multi-peer protocols can cause collisions in the stream at the routers due to the large number of connects per client. That means other traffic may get bounced by the P2P packets saturating the pipe at a given node causing either a retransmit due to timeout or rerouting of the packet. What the P4P protocol supposedly does is reduce this potential for pipe swamping at certain nodes. Maybe that'll get the network back into balance. It's not a physical access issue. It's network protocol issue we're dealing with, but instead of spending money to fix these issues, the ISP's just want to charge more and deliver less. Why? Because in reality, there isn't a true bandwidth crisis. There's a business plan crisis in that the cable companies are trying to compete with the DSL companies, but their shared pipe technology (one cable to the central hub) can't compete with DSL's switched network (every home has their own pipe to the hub) when it comes to saturation of the pipe to the main hub. So their solution (the DirecTV commercials making fun of cable is so perfect!) is to do a stupid stats dog and pony show to try to get people to accept paying per GB when they need to change their technology. But why spend money, like the phone companies are doing to upgrade, when they don't have to? Just make something up like "10% of users are using 90% of the bandwidth!" and charge people more!

[SWILK3RS]

Mark Cuban is a BILLIONAIRE, can he not afford a T1 or a DS3 connection? Check your headgear guy. As the post below this said, he did help create the streaming radio over internet standard. Maybe he has made so many enemies that his "website" has drawn some DDOS attacks?