http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-30/the-year-wall-street-cut-the-cord-on-most-u-s-media-stocks

There’s “grounds for renewed optimism for the cable stocks,” said Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson LLC, who has taken an “overweight” position on the cable industry. That’s because cable companies will increase their broadband market share and continue to explore charging subscribers based on how much data they use, Moffett said.

Yes.  People consume more and more bandwidth for streaming services while cutting paid services to those that provide the bandwidth.  How do you think they are going to pay for the extra capacity?  Hopes and dreams?

I blame 4K streaming videos.

That shit must clog up most bandwidth pipes.

Charge the netflix users more, not me.

They can go fuck themselves.  I have a big problem with bills that I never know how much they are going to be.  My internet usage would go to minimum levels.  Netflix would get canceled and I would but up a GD antenna...

Carl Denninger talks about this a lot:

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229021

You work at the Woodbridge store? I go there quite a bit /hijack

Because flat rate Internet fueled the Internet boom in the 90's.  If you stop flat rate usage will plummet and growth will stagnate.

For urban/residential areas, no.  There's too much competition for access.  



Twenty years ago, most people had one option for internet access: their POTS line.  

Nowadays there are so many options -- at least eight for my house:

 - cellular (4 lines)

 - satellite

 - phone company

 - cable TV company

 - POTS line



 

So do you pay by the minute for cell phone (not data) or landline phone talking?



 

I agree, I'm tired of paying for other peoples everything. Want to eat? Work. Want to hog all of the bandwidth? You pay for it.

And then there is the 800lb gorilla, Google.  



Assuming they continue expanding and don't charge for usage, it will be hard for the traditional providers to

do so in markets served by both.



 

Because that's what granny agreed to when she signed up.

but but Net neutrality was suppose to save me from that!

I'm amazed at how people view data as anything other than a consumable.

Like gas, gasoline, water. Electricity.....

I hope not. I'll have to cut my fap sessions down to once a day.

Google fiber is coming to Jax, hope Mandarin is part of that.

brb uncapped symmetrical gig fiber right now, if they decide to play games in the future I will switch over to Google Fiber

Of course not.  Unfortunately we are already used to grandma subsidizing the cost of the internet.  We've been spoiled up to this point because providers have been raking in enough money from television packages to pay for increased bandwidth.  

As more and more people shift from subscription to streaming, bandwidth requirements increase while income decreases.  At that point, I see one of three things happening:  the ISPs will find a new source of revenue (pay-per-gig, streaming services, etc.), they will increase existing forms of revenue (higher monthly premiums), or stop building bigger pipes (hello 56K).

ETA Google falls under the "ISPs will find a new source of revenue" category, although they are sort of working the other way.  They are an interesting case.  They have a vested interest in making sure the bits flow.  I don't see them expanding anywhere outside of dense markets like large cities.  They aren't coming to Podunkton, Smalltown, or even Mediumsizeville any time soon.  They will expand to markets where their ad revenue proceeds warrant expansion.  Time will tell how much money they are willing to spend to provide free high speed internet, how long it really remains free, and how it impacts ISPs as a whole.

Does this mean I have to go back looking at dad's old dirty magazines hidden under the bed?

I actually do pay more for what I use being on the third tier of service.

What about the people that don't work? You realize we'll end up paying for their access too. FBHO already said its not fair FSA kids don't ha e internet access, so they won't be able to do good in school or some other such nonsense.

That's what was being regurgitated except that's not how I read the wording of the bill.

I wonder how much lost revenue for streaming services, advertisers, porn sites..etc will play into the decision because if people have capped data they will internet less. On the other hand stores with "free wifi" will probably see increased sales as people flock there to surf without using their own giggybuts.

Considering eventually Google will be everywhere and they have this little gem



I don't see it happening.

They try to do it, I'm moving to a Google Fiber area!

Free wifi will go away too if they are metered for the bandwidth

How do remote folks get access nowadays?  



I can't even get a Verizon voice cell signal in some remote parts of the South.  

It was the same for electricity 100+ years ago.  The feds started the TVA to provide electricity for poor Appalachian-Americans.  



 

They can't.  That was the whole point of Net Neutrality.

 

No way. There will still be unlimited plans for businesses. They may get more expensive but stores will want them so isp will provide. Your cup of coffee will go up to compensate.

If I ever catch you peeking through the floorboards again.........  

The internet has to crash as we know it. Cheap bandwidth, untaxed commerce, it can't go on forever.

This.  Business wants predictable fixed costs on things like that.  

 

That's right.  They might be able to go with the TMobile unlimited data model though.  Say you get 500GB of data at 10mbps.  After that, you get unlimited at 1.5mbps.  However, certain specified services (like their own paid streaming service) don't use your high speed data allowance.  Change the numbers to whatever makes financial sense for them, but if T-Mobile can do it, I'd imagine they could too.

never going to happen.

we are going the opposite way.

look at phones 20 years ago pay by the minute was normal.

now its unlimited, even data on cell phones they just lower the speed after so many gigs.

there is billions of dollars in internet gaming they would lobby so hard against it.

I was going to say that the gaming industry would make this very hard to do.

there are a few options in my area. The first few companies that that that will go out of business.

First, we are not going the opposite way.  True unlimited plans are going away.  What is left are data caps or throttled speeds.  I wouldn't call that an improvement to my unlimited Verizon plan of yesteryear.  Minutes are not the same as data.  Minutes are a finite burden on the system.  Voice doesn't require more and more bandwidth every year.  Data usage, on the other hand, is increasing year after year after year.

Second, the data caps would likely be high enough that gamers would be unaffected.  Games don't require a lot of bandwidth.  It's the streamers they are after.  Nothing chews up bandwidth like HD video.

If you use 1gig a month or 100gigs a month it doesn't really cost the ISP anything more. You pay for a connection speed not a capacity. Usage based billing is just a way to get more money from something they already provide. The amount of money put back into upgrades and infrastructure is a tiny fraction of a percent of what they make off of it already.

This. cable companies trying to come up with ways to increase revenue since a lot of people are dropping cable TV and going strictly to broadband + roku/netflix/hulu/amazon prime, ect.

If they do decide to go this route I predict a bunch of independent ISPs cropping up to provide flat rate internet services

It is a documented (made up) fact that 87% of internet bandwidth is from porn.  No one needs that much porn so tax porn.  It's for the children.

End result:   Bandwidth is freed up.   Growth and innovation continues and our precious children are protected.

Does this mean that we will be seeing even more of these . . .

Yup. Gotta squeeze every last dime out of the subscribers.

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

Right and wrong.  Just because you "pay for a connection speed not a capacity" doesn't mean that it doesn't cost them more money if you use more data.  It's just a simple way to bill people for a complex service.  

When you download is far more important than how much you download.  So, if you do all of your downloading at 2AM, how much data you use doesn't significantly affect their cost.  However, if you are always streaming around dinner time, how much you download does affect cost because they need to make sure they have enough capacity for you and everyone else that is always streaming every night at 6PM.  

It would be more appropriate to simply charge for unlimited access at whatever speed you get or to charge more for bandwidth during peak times.  But people like knowing their connection will be fast enough to stream Netflix and NOBODY wants to go back to old days of "peak minutes".  So instead they are hoping that data caps will both cut down on overall traffic (usenet & torrents) and generate enough revenue to expand capacity for peak times (Netflix & Hulu).

Google internet is only "free" to those who agree to accept only 5mb/s service AND pay a $300 build out fee.  Those who want gigabit service pay $70 a month.  Television is another $60 or so.



 

These threads are always fun. Might as well title it "who understands the ISP business?"



We are already moving in this direction in the industry. Most major ISPs have already implemented data caps, either hard or soft. The only reason Google hasn't is that they are still in the "foot in the door" phase. Let then become a large, near monopoly like Comcast or Bell, and you will see their practices evolve to match.



My personal opinion is that the future will hold tiered plans, like bronze for grandma to check email, with a very low data cap and a low cost to go with it, then silver, gold, platinum, etc with progressively higher access speeds and data caps.



I do not think we will ever again see true per bit billing outside of the Carrier to Carrier world, it is a pain for both customer and provider.

in most cases this is incorrect.

peering costs money; transit costs money; aggregated capacity costs money.  etc.

here it is in a nutshell:

should internet service providers continue to have to invest in more and more expensive capital infrastructure (routers, fiber optic gear, power, etc) and incur higher and higher operating expenses (peering arrangements, colo's) so they can carry more and more someone's else's traffic (e.g. content providers like netflix or hulu youtube) yet realize no attendant increased revenue stream from it?

it's about economics, not politics.

either your ISP costs are going to go up, or your content provider costs are going to go up. which do you want?

either

1) ISPs will be compelled by regulation to carry more and more of everyone else's data, and thus verizon/comcast etc see increased costs.

OR

2) content providers will be compelled by market forces to "pay-to-play" and contractually fork over money to the ISP's for carrying their data, and thus hulu/netflix etc see increased costs.

now pick which one you want.

note: if you don't subscribe to hulu/netflix are you even interested in option 1 above?

some companies are obviously involved in both transit and content. verizon is an example. their "content" arm enjoys a big advantage, versus say a third party such as netflix. verizon owns a huge section of waterfront, including millions upon millions of last-mile customers. if netflix wants access to those customers, it has to a) depend on verizon's goodwill, or b) pay verizon for bandwidth, or c) force verizon via law. which is your preferred option?

practically everything around you is predicated on a concept called "oversubscription". take the gas station(s) in your town. how many people live in the town? how many pumps are there? clearly not everyone can get gas at the same time. how did this happen? market forces create a situation where an "acceptable wait time" is traded off against the costs of running the business (real estate, number of pumps, etc). problems arise because of the "bursty" nature of people behavior. for example, more people want gas during commuting hours. hence, wait times go up. it's the same for highway capacity. if as an alien you arrived on earth on a Sunday, you would look at a major city arteries, and you'd ask, "why do earthlings build such wide highways for so few cars?". the answer of course is that the highway was sized to (hopefully) keep congestion to a minimum during peak travel hours -- AT HUGE COST, by the way. but even the widest highway succumbs to holiday traffic, and lengthy jams result. telecom networks are engineered the same way, because again it is not economically feasible to have a network which allows every [call, download, stream, etc] at the same time. so, on occasion -- mother's day is a good example -- you may receive the dreaded "all circuits are busy" message.

streaming video (e.g. sourced at Netflix etc) to a lot of customers requires A LOT of network bandwidth, and ISP's like verizon/comcast are now in a quandary: continually upgrade their network with additional capacity or face customers that complain that their streaming video performance is poor. but, as you can see, there is no correlated upside for verizon in terms of revenue. they don't make any more money by providing a better service -- all they end up doing to providing a better pipe from Netflix (etc) to Netflix customers. how does verizon benefit here? if they meter or cap Netflix they just move the problem to another ISP (comcast gains a customer; comcast has to upgrade their network; comcast gets complaints; comcast caps Netflix; comcast loses customer to verizon; ...).

network infrastructure is not free. 10G/40G/100G/200G routers cost a shit ton of money. 10G/40G/100G/200G/400G optical transmission systems cost a shit ton of money. 4G/LTE cellular infrastructure costs a shit ton of money. OAMP (operations, administration, management, and provisioning) of these systems is non-trivial and can not be done by the same people that mow lawns; ergo, it costs a shit ton of money.

when there is a storm in your area, and local infrastructure is damaged to the point your internet service doesn't work, is a truck from netflix going to come and fix the problems?

easy to understand example...

let say you pay UPS/FEDEX a fixed $50/month to deliver packages to you.
then, you contract with an ammo company to send you 10,000 rounds of premium almost-government-banned M855 every month.

and your neighbors do this as well.
and their neighbors.
and folks across the country.

pretty soon UPS/FEDEX have to buy more planes, more trucks, hire more drivers, etc to deliver all this ammo, everywhere. (network infrastructure costs)
moreover, they have to pay to get into and out of certain regional airports and highways which they don't normally have access to. (peering costs)
and, they have to bear the brunt of fielding complaints which have to do with problems the content provider caused. (customer service costs)
then, there is a hurricane and they have to reroute many thousands of planes, people, and packages around the problem. (force majeure costs)
etc etc etc

tell me, where is the ammo company (netflix/hulu) "sharing" in these escalating costs at UPS/FEDEX (verizon/comcast) ?

you are still paying $50/month for "flat rate" delivery, by the way.

that is, until the costs i outlined above are simply transferred to you... at which point you complain about escalating costs from your ISP.

ar-jedi

i design optical network hardware for a living; my ultimate goal is every teenager in the country is watching The Walking Dead in HD 24x7 via netflix/hulu/amazon/xyzcorp.



ar-jedi

As the owner of a small cable company that offers high speed internet to my customers, I can tell you that you don't know what the hell your talking about.

I will go tell my backbone provider that and they will laugh at me.....

Except that Google's ultimate plan probably isn't to make money by being a utility provider.  



 

I primarily game, with the move towards making folks download the game once purchased; the game studios will need to go back to giving a physical copy at the point of purchase...which I'm all for.  That would cut my internet usage by 60-70% easy.

I read the cable companies are making money hand over fist on Internet service. The actual cable tv part of the business is what isn't so profitable.