Verizon and Others Will Soon Time-meter Internet Useage

[barman]

Radio stations shouldn't throw the transmitters away just yet. Verizon New England will begin charging users by the hour or amount of internet access, similar to how you pay for electricity or water. This means that people who listen to radio streams online could actually have to pay for their "free" radio, complete with commercials. I suppose the other option is to pay a little more for satellite having many non-commercial channels but at least you can listen to what you want for as long as you want at the same rate. Even with cellphones capable of receiving the internet, a time-useage pay scenario looms.

The days of "free" radio online could be coming to an end. The only "free" radio could be over-air.

 

[carnyfeet]

If Verizon started to do this to me, I would:

A) wait to see my first bill, to see if it ends up being less than the static $xx a month charge I paid before
B) jump ship and find an internet provider that didn't charge like this.

Besides this: radio's biggest problem is not the internet. Terrestrial radio is it's own worst enemy.

 

[Oldbones]

Radio stations shouldn't throw the transmitters away just yet. Verizon New England will begin charging users by the hour or amount of internet access, similar to how you pay for electricity or water. Even with cellphones capable of receiving the internet, a time-useage pay scenario looms.

Do you have a (reliable) source for this info? I wonder if it's related to the 5¢ per email rumor that goes around periodically.

From a business standpoint, it only makes sense to charge customers for something by the amount they use it, though it's kind of tough to implement after-the-fact. I wouldn't be surprised if future delivery methods (fiber? Wimax?) were metered. Isn't cell-based internet access metered?

 

[barman]

Radio stations shouldn't throw the transmitters away just yet. Verizon New England will begin charging users by the hour or amount of internet access, similar to how you pay for electricity or water. Even with cellphones capable of receiving the internet, a time-useage pay scenario looms.

Do you have a (reliable) source for this info? I wonder if it's related to the 5¢ per email rumor that goes around periodically.

Do I have a reliable source?

The article in the Herald I read was about Verizon, but it looks like Time Warner is doing this, too. Check out the link.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080602/tec_time_warner_cable_internet.html

 

[imhomerjay]

And according to the news in the article about the trial, 95% of the customers won't be impacted. You're talking about a fraction of people who go over a large limit included in their flat fee. More likely to be heavy gamers or people who transfer huge amounts of data constantly--not people casually listening to some online music.

 

[aindik]

I'm sure if they were going to meter, it wouldn't be per hour connected. It would be per kilobyte downloaded and uploaded. They don't charge you for electricity by the hour. They charge by the kilowatt-hour. How much you use, not how often it's on versus not on.

Streaming audio is nothing bandwidth-wise compered to people downloading things like HD movies from the iTunes store (or similar illegal downloads).

 

[DToTheJ]

I guess this would be a way to single out those who might be involved with illegal downloading.

As an aside, I wonder how the increase would affect Internet audio streamers?

 

[carnyfeet]

Content providers like iTunes will fight stuff like this, as much as they're able to, anyway. Streaming content like movies and TV shows is going to replace the current model of content delivery as we know it. As aindik mentioned, streaming audio is just a fraction of that bandwidth. So there's no way this goes over well.

Comparing the internet providers to the electric company and kilobytes to kilowatt-hours is a poor analogy anyway. I don't pay the cable company per hour of television I watch, so why should I pay the internet company per KB downloaded?

 

[aindik]

I guess this would be a way to single out those who might be involved with illegal downloading.

That's going to be harder to do as more legal, legitimate methods for downloading large files come online. iTunes sells (and, I think, rents) movies in HD for use with the AppleTV, Amazon sells them in high quality SD with HD coming, Microsoft sells movies and TV shows in HD for the XBox 360, and DirecTV's "on demand" service is over the internet. Some software companies permit downloads of really large software, too. That doesn't even include streaming stuff like NetFlix.

Comparing the internet providers to the electric company and kilobytes to kilowatt-hours is a poor analogy anyway. I don't pay the cable company per hour of television I watch, so why should I pay the internet company per KB downloaded?

You don't tax the cable company infrastructure when you watch more TV. It's broadcast all the time whether you're watching it or not. Not so for the internet.

 

[carnyfeet]

You don't tax the cable company infrastructure when you watch more TV. It's broadcast all the time whether you're watching it or not. Not so for the internet.

Maybe in the past it worked like that, but I would suspect it works a little differently now with satellite and digital cable becoming the norms. When you turn your Comcast box on and turn to the Phillies game, you're streaming data just like you would if you were watching the game on MLB.tv. The same goes for onDemand services that are becoming more and more popular.

I guess my point is that if the Internet is a medium - the successor to TV, radio, and print - then what possible benefit do the ISPs stand to make by treating it like a utility, like water, electricity, or gas heat? There's an established business model in place there, people recognize it, and if they stray from it, they will lose customers. Any gains from charging on a per-unit basis will be lost immediately when disgruntled customers jump ship to their competitors.

 

[passtheword]

Comparing the internet providers to the electric company and kilobytes to kilowatt-hours is a poor analogy anyway. I don't pay the cable company per hour of television I watch, so why should I pay the internet company per KB downloaded?

Shhh! Don't give them any ideas...


_______________________
What If...
Radio Didn't Exist?
www.LifeWithoutRadio.com

 

[aindik]

You don't tax the cable company infrastructure when you watch more TV. It's broadcast all the time whether you're watching it or not. Not so for the internet.

Maybe in the past it worked like that, but I would suspect it works a little differently now with satellite and digital cable becoming the norms. When you turn your Comcast box on and turn to the Phillies game, you're streaming data just like you would if you were watching the game on MLB.tv.

I'm not streaming data. I'm tuning in to a stream of data that would stream whether I tuned in or not. Same as it was with analog cable.

The same goes for onDemand services that are becoming more and more popular.

This is true. On Demand and switched digital video alter the broadcasting paradigm. With them, the thing doesn't necessarily stream unless someone is watching it.

I guess my point is that if the Internet is a medium - the successor to TV, radio, and print - then what possible benefit do the ISPs stand to make by treating it like a utility, like water, electricity, or gas heat? There's an established business model in place there, people recognize it, and if they stray from it, they will lose customers. Any gains from charging on a per-unit basis will be lost immediately when disgruntled customers jump ship to their competitors.

I never said it made business sense. it probably doesn't. I said it made technical sense.

 

[ccuphl]

Didn't I read something recently about the FCC studying free WiFi access?

 

[And Awaayy We Go!!]

Didn't I read something recently about the FCC studying free WiFi access?

That's an idea that crashed and burned when some cities tried it. Since the service providers who were commercial companies were going to lose so much revenue in order to set up this infrastructure, they all dropped out. Wifi that's public and free will have to be supported by tax dollars, I'm afraid, and that's about as likely as your electricity being provided that way. WiFi is even less likely to be free the way things stand now since there is quite a bit of competition in the realm of ISPs.

As for metering the internet, I had also been hearing about it, and I think it's coming. They've already taken that first step, and it probably just ramps up from here. The "trial" part of what that article above points to is they're probably just trying their metering equipment to make sure it works (that's what's being "tried" in other words) or "trying" to see if they can profit more from time-metering or byte-metering.