Look Forward To Per-Service, Per-Page Fees

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired: "[Two] companies, Allot Communications and Openet — suppliers to large wireless companies including AT&T and Verizon — showed off a new product in a web seminar Tuesday, which included a PowerPoint presentation (1.5-MB .pdf) that was sent to Wired by a trusted source. The idea? Make it possible for your wireless provider to monitor everything you do online and charge you extra for using Facebook, Skype or Netflix. For instance, in the seventh slide of the above PowerPoint, a Vodafone user would be charged two cents per MB for using Facebook, three euros a month to use Skype and $0.50 monthly for a speed-limited version of YouTube."

Money talks

[Manfre]

If my cell provider implements this, I'll switch carriers. If they all try this, then I'll just drop to a pay as you go phone without internet access. Checking my email and surfing the web for those rare moments when I'm not near a desktop or laptop are a luxury I can do without. I can think of many other better uses for the ~$150/mo I'm paying now for multiple lines.

Deep packet inspection is not the problem

[tepples]

with DPI in ever router and switch

As Anonymous Coward pointed out [slashdot.org], you don't need deep packet inspection to see whether one of your customers is connecting to an IPv4 address in a block that appears to belong to Facebook or to YouTube, a Google company.

Re:Disneyland Analogy

[ffejie]

The internet might be free to you and me after a flat monthly charge, but it hasn't been free for a long time. There are billions of dollars flowing into online advertising that are supporting nearly every site you go on. Aside from Wikipedia and state run sites (think *.gov) I can't name a site that I go to that doesn't have ads or a monthly subscription. Can you?

Re:scary for net neutrality

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

That being said, you got to look a slide #6: it's one of the best expression of greed I have ever seen.

The entire slideshow makes me want to throw up. But I really think slide 18 takes the cake:

Use Case: Split Billing

• First 15 minutes of the movie streamed for free to user as a promotion
• If user doesn't purchase movie, content provider is billed for the 15 minutes of network consumption
• If user purchases movie, revenue is shared between operator and content provider

Are you kidding me! So someone else actually creates content worth viewing and for some reason Verizon gets a cut no matter whether I buy it or not? I just have to preview it. Verizon already benefits from there being interesting things on the internet, it makes people buy network connections. And it's not like they're hurting if you use your connection for high bandwidth content because a user gets the speed they pay for. If there are more interesting videos on the internet then users will pay for faster network connections.

I really can't express my outrage well enough. I want to scream, cry, and throw up all at once after having read through that presentation. The worst part is that we'll all suffer as a result of this. Even if you can find and ISP who wouldn't pull this shit, all the content providers will still have to pay shakedown money to the big ISPs in order to get their stuff in front of people's eyes. This will create monopolies where only the big boys can afford to pay for play. The smaller guys, or the ones who refuse to pay extortion will suffer and probably not be able to compete. So even if you can find an ISP who won't play these games, and even if there are content providers that don't want to pay up, they'll be few and far between because the youtubes and the hulus and the ABCs of the world will pay for better service and the others will go out of business.

I love slide 5 which shows the ISPs valiantly trying to carry popular services on their backs as money flows out of their pockets and sweat drips off their brow. <ispviewpoint>Yeah, what jerks facebook, youtube, and skype are for creating popular services that our users actually want to use, that actually make the service we provide useful. We'd have it so much easier if only there weren't popular services on the internet. Why can't everyone just buy expensive connections, and then not use them, that would totally be the best.</ispviewpoint>.

Re:Lawsuits to stop municipal Internet

[Simon80]

That shouldn't be a reason to stop trying. As awareness is raised, this behaviour will become unacceptable. Alternatively, if communities stop trying, nothing will change.

Re:scary for net neutrality

[CodeBuster]

You too could invest a paltry $15K to avoid electric bills for the rest of your time in your house

The middle class in the United States is under tremendous pressure right now what with the recession, high unemployment and the collapsed housing market. They don't have an extra $15k to invest and their home equity is negative so where are they going to get the money? Have you tried to get an unsecured consumer loan lately? It's tough. As I have already said, the solar subsidies primarily benefit the upper middle class (pseudo-rich) and the wealthy ($250K+ households) at the expense of the broader group of working class Americans.

Re:If they're so fond of DPI, let's give it to the

[Antisyzygy]

Telecom industry owes us for running their lines on public properties and also their access to public locations.