RSSWhy do people think data transfer is free?
Mar 17
In this article on the politics of UBB, I saw this quote from the Liberal party:
“We fundamentally disagree with the Commission’s description of the Internet as analogous to a utility or the provision of electricity or water. Electricity and water are both limited resources. The transfer of electricity and water are limited both by supply of the good and size of the pipe. Data over the Internet however, is unlimited. While the size of the pipe may be constrained, the amount of data is not. A more appropriate analogy is a highway, in this case an information highway.”
The only thing that’s worse about people who don’t know about technology trying to talk like they do is people who don’t know about technology trying to set policy on it.
Even looking at their supposed analogy – a highway – this is still ridiculous. It costs significantly more to run and maintain an 8-lane highway that handles 1 million cars a day compared to 1 thousand, right? Maintenance costs, policing, monitoring, etc. It’s not free to add more cars once the road is built. The cost to add one more car can probably be considered to be zero (which isn’t exactly true – we’re rounding it to zero), which I think is why people incorrectly assume you can add any number of cars for free.
The same is true for data transmission. The infrastructure and costs associated with increasing data capacity at a data center aren’t just the fixed cost of adding more lines. Hardware needs upgraded and maintenance and monitoring all go up. Again, transferring 1 more byte is free. Transferring 100 more terabytes isn’t free.
I still think some form of UBB is fine and inevitable (almost all of us already have it) but the rates are way too high, especially those proposed by the CRTC to charge resellers. They proposed charging $2/GB and I’m sure it doesn’t cost Bell anywhere close to that to move a GB, all costs considered.
Mar 18, 2011 @ 09:11:54
I’m not sure where I fall on this issue, but I get both sides.
Is broadband access a right? Well, it’s definitely a resource without which you can’t compete globally, or even locally. Okay, so how much broadband are you entitled to?
The costs to add one more user when you’ve already got the network in place is usually low, but keep in mind that you have to completely upgrade the entire infrastructure every few years.
Remember back in the dial-up days, AOL ruled the net. But when broadband came along, they made a strategic decision not to upgrade, but to keep selling dial-up. Look where that got them.
Today, we have phone companies rushing to upgrade every cell tower to 4G so millions of people can watch netflix on demand on their phone while driving. 3G was considered amazing a couple years ago, now it’s actually embarrassing.
The UBBs of today are based on today’s bandwidths. But bandwidth has been increasing exponentially for years. Someone’s got to pay that upgrade cost. You can have all the AOL you want, or you can pay more for top-of-the-line service.
Of course, if you’ve got a monopoly running your broadband, *cou-Rogers-gh* they can charge whatever they want for as little bandwidth as they want. That’s the real problem. Bring in a couple new telcos to offer packages at various pricepoints and watch how fast bandwidth limits soar.
Mar 18, 2011 @ 10:03:14
I think universal access to reasonably-priced broadband could be considered a right. I don’t think unlimited transfer for a (low) fixed price should be considered a right. Water and electricity are much more important yet we don’t get unlimited access to either for free.
I think the government has pressured the industry to somewhat equalize rates amongst urban and rural customers, since it’s typically much more expensive to hook up a rural customer. This is important, and a good role for government, because otherwise we’d end up with a technology (and knowledge) gap. That’s why I think reasonably-priced access could be considered a right.
Mar 21, 2011 @ 07:52:04
For Canada, it’s a population density problem. 80% of the country’s area is sparsely populated to completely undeveloped. Some rich doctor retires to some huge cheap acreage in the boonies and he has a right expect you to run fiber optics out to his house so his son can play MMORPGs with a high enough ping to pwn nwbs?
As usual, technology will come to the rescue. What’s called for here is some kind of cheap satellite internet option for people too far from civilization to be reached by cable. Then you could live anywhere in Canada and still get high speed internet.