First off, there is some pretty ignorant people in this thread.
There are other technologies that are available besides cable.
Cable
Dialup
DSL
Wireless (3G)
Satellite
There are probably more but this is all I can think of off the top of my head.
Cable is an alternative for cable?
(sorry had to point that out
)
First off, those are not always alternatives. For example, satellite is NOT able to do VoIP because of delay. Dialup doesn't offer the bandwidth or delay required for VoIP. The 3G wireless can depending on the area, but not everywhere (nor can it have the reliability of the connection/speeds that a dedicated DSL/cable line will).
So, depending on what you're doing with your connection those are not all viable alternatives. Also, most places you're stuck with one DSL provider and one cable, but sometimes not even one of each. That means there is a monopoly on the market, which isn't good for the consumer.
As a professional in networking, and as someone who holds two Cisco certs, Im still on the fence about this. Fact is, I believe part of the reason voice/video works so well now is that traffic is prioritized. I'll have to wait for implimentation to see if its a benefit or not.
If you hold Cisco certs, then you should also know that unless you're a business of decent enough size (i.e. one large enough to pay for guarantees in your SLA) that the *only* prioritization that is done is stuff at your edge router before it hits the public internet.
Part of the reason voice/video works well now is also the codecs/technologies that have been developed specifically to meet the needs of the current topology/environment. We have codecs/protocols that were developed to meet certain criteria, and for the most part they work (while they do create packet bloat). I would personally much rather the internet to not have any form of "tiers" more then the current you get what you pay for approach.
People would be bitching just as much if they did that, though. The latest and greatest in cable internet technology, DOCSIS 3.0, shares like 152Mbps of downstream bandwidth between an entire neighborhood. Assuming 32 customers in a neighborhood, if you split that evenly it's only 5Mbps per household. Yet people are demanding very high speed services, 10Mbps+, stuff like that. There's no way they could deliver those kind of speeds and guarantee people could max the connection 24/7.
Fiber has a lot more capacity, and with a GPON network the cable providers could easily deliver that kind of bandwidth to customers. But that's a big investment, Verizon for example has spent five years and $20 billion to bring its FiOS service to 20 million households. And I'm sure they were going after the most profitable markets first, so delivering it to the next 20 million households would probably be much more expensive. It probably wouldn't even be economically feasible to rewire a lot of Americans for fiber right now, heck a lot still don't even have cable or DSL. So you can't really blame cable providers for sticking with the current infrastructure as long as possible. Not to mention the people that want very high speeds and bandwidth limits are the minority of customers, most are happy enough with their service. They're not going to spend tens or hundreds of billions on upgrading to fiber to appease 0.1% of their customers. I'm sure in 5-10 years when a significant amount of their customers are demanding more speed and bandwidth they'll start making the switch, but right now it makes little sense.
Most cable operators have at least started to move into a hybrid topology where there is fiber all the way to the local distribution office and/or last mile. That means that more of that bandwidth will be available at the customers home (and/or neighborhood).
Oh, and that 5 meg/house is if you have that many customers using it at once, which is only going to happen during "busy hours" of 5-8ish and weekends.
Also, saying it will cost MORE to roll out to more customers is forgetting that as technology devlops prices go down. The first 20 million customers might have cost $20 billion, but the technology part of that cost will continue to decrease. It will still be expensive since a lot of that cost is due to the digging, but it shouldn't be $1,000/customer
Overselling is just a reality of residential internet service, though. The idea is that most customers are not going to be using the service all the time, and because of this you can sell to more customers and offer them higher speeds than you can actually carry.
It's a sound idea and it's the reason residential broadband services are affordable. If you want dedicated bandwidth go price something like a T1, it will cost way more than a residential connection and you'll only have 1.544Mbps to show for it. But you can use the connection in any way you want, max the upload and download 24/7. The provider won't mind, because that's what the connection is designed for.
Exactly. Oversubscription isn't the issue, and to a point isn't a problem (if it's excessive then it is a problem obviously). There is no reason to have a dedicated amount of bandwidth for each customer 24/7, unless you're using the connection for some sort of business pursuit. For residential lines though, oversubscription is fine.
Or you just price the service on a per-use model. Everyone gets as fast a speed as possible, those who abuse the system pay for it, those who don't do not pay as much.
But oh the horrors of the blogosphere! We're bittorrenting moves because we don't want to pay for them. And dammit if corporations are screwing me over by making me pay for them! That's the whole point to the internet, not having to pay for anything!
That is an interesting idea. I like the premise, but I think more of a tiered approach would work better then simply $1/gb or whatever. For example, you pay for service like now until you hit a reasonable cap. Say for a 15/2 connection, you get 100 gb (face it, most people don't even use 100 gb in a few months). For each gb from 100-200 you pay $.50, then for 200-250 gb you pay $1.00, and keep ramping it up. This will create financial consequences for those who abuse bandwidth, and not interfere with most people.
see not everyone wants that or cares about that. TBH all im worried about is that if we say FUCK IT to net neut ISPs will begin only allowing you access to the shit they want. IE block youtube or hulu and make you use their paid video streaming service / block certain websites simply because they offer a different point of view then what the ISP supports,.....
Yeah, China's view of the internet should not be replicated here in the states by companies.
Facebook
Twitter