Is Verizon Considering Metered Billing? - Or just fighting regulation that would prohibit the option?

Many customers may be stupid, but they can apparently read Time Warner Cable's 10-K form

said by SuperJoker :

They better not or else people might get angrier than they are now.

said by TKJunkMail :

then I would think they would be smart enough to make it cost neutral for the average user and even a little discount for very light users. And once you get them on the usage plans and their usage starts to rise due to more online video viewing, you got them hooked.

said by aannoonn11235 :

If they want to charge by the byte, then they must be forced to turn internet access into a public utility.

Proper certified meters must be put into place to measure actual usage (exclude spam & DDoS too. Nobody should be charged for access they aren't using).

Start prices really low (connection fee & taxes) add a small fee for modem / router usage/rental.

Do not have speed tiers. Give everybody full access.. The more your consume, the more you pay. The meter will tick tick tick for each and ever byte you upload & download.

Throw awary the "unlimited" $69.99 for 10down/5up bull crap.

It's $0.99 per byte up/down. Prices increases for up/down stream must be voted in/out by the public. No PUC is ever on the side of the citizen. The internet should be seen as a medium of free flowing speach with limited or no censorship. All citizen should have access, just like having fresh water or free access on roads (where tolls aren't allowed).

Otherwise, we need a true municipal non-profit access to the internet. The for-profit companies are abusing the internet & the access points to the internet. For-profit will never be on the side of the citizen/consumer.

Remember, the internet (research and all) was paid for by US citizens. Information should flow freely through it. But there's no reason to gouge citizens/customers for access & services to & from the internet.

Peace!

said by Bit :

Cause you never see the actual tier price drop. It doesn't make service cost less for a single soul, just rapes some customers for even more money.

If these cap promoters were actually telling the truth about light users versus heavy users, you would see a $7.50 "connectivity" fee and then the metered billing. But no, they still want their $45+ base price whether you download a single thing or not and then go up from there.

said by MichaelWacey :

Right now, they cap performance. You sign up for 15/2 and they do not let you go over that, even if there is capacity to do so. So, why is capping usage worse than capping performance? What if they came out with a plan to let performance float but put a cap on usage? What if both usage and performance were metered?

said by Eat Me :

Who ever said that the object of metered billing was to make money from overages?

Metered billing is to protect the video revenue. If you discourage people from Hulu an BitTorrent they will have no choice but to eat the fruit from the walled garden.

said by openbox9 :

So should that family of four or five be charged more money per month than the sole person in a household?

said by S_engineer :

These are hypotheticals that in my opinion are irrelevant.

said by S_engineer :

demanding even more profit at a time when they're showing no capitol improvements towards the network infrastructure

said by S_engineer :

I guess Cash is King still holds true!

said by RARPSL
Your usage is how many miles you drive in the month.
[/BQUOTE :

I know it's analogy and all but you can argue it both ways. You're still paying per-gallon of gas to go however many miles in a month you want. Want to go further, you pay more, want to go shorter distances? You pay less.
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jsz0 @ 28th May 07:45PM:
Re: Video content migrating to IP

Well, they are for-profit companies.
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BioGeek @ 28th May 08:20PM:
Verizon doesn't have as strong of a need to cap.

I could be wrong here, but I have often heard that Verizon is among the elite group of Tier 1 networks. They directly connect to just about everything else and do not need to pay for transit on other Tier 1 networks. (Just as other Tier 1 providers do not need to pay for transit on the VZ network.)

With that in mind.... Comcast, Time Warner, etc have the issue of having to pay for carriage of their data on other networks (or have otherwise worked out a deal). They have a cost associated with bandwidth that can far exceed their own network considerations.

Verizon (and AT&T also) already have immense well established long haul networks. They have their own network costs to worry about of course, but they do not have to worry about any agreements beyond the standard "you carry my traffic and I carry yours" Tier 1 agreement.

Other side to this is that AT&T and Verizon may want ubiquitous capping so that the overall internet traffic flow is held in control so that their networks do not get over loaded. This could be from their own customers or from other networks being carried across theirs.

I would personally prefer no caps. But in my mind, I am not an excessive user and the ideal cap would not affect me. I expect to be able to use Hulu, netflix, xbox live and the like without incurring a cap. I see a cap as targeting torrenters who download and upload immense amounts of data almost 24/7. With any luck, the competition will come from how big your cap is.

Really, if the capping is done right, it shouldn't hurt. Metering though....that is a different animal. Have to set the ranges and price per byte just right so that the average customer has no reason to complain. However, wouldn't making people think about internet traffic the same way they do gas, electric and water really stifle exploration, learning and fun that the internet has become all about?
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danawhitaker @ 28th May 09:29PM:
Re: Time to regulate as a utility.....

I'm not saying that each household should be treated differently - I'm pointing out that for a product that everyone in a household uses, the amount of bandwidth should be large enough to *compensate* for that - for all tiers. It shouldn't be based on the concept that there's only one user in a household using one computer. It needs to be balanced somehow. I get frustrated when I see people talking about average usage and it's just an average per person usage - not an average *household* usage. Companies can't market high speed internet to *families* and then give them usage that's only equivalent to what the average "person" uses in a given week. And if you look at the commercials for a lot of these companies, they're all about how the *family* can use high speed internet. Kids downloading music and playing games and dad browsing his websites. As much as I hate Comcast, they're the only ones who've gotten even remotely close to a reasonable cap of all the ISPs I've seen doing capping in the U.S. and Canada.

Time Warner's 5-40 gig tiers aren't viable for a family. Period. Not even a family of non-piraters. There are too many legitimate and legal uses for bandwidth. They need to reanalyze just what the average amount of bandwidth *households* consume every month rather than the average amount a single person does.
--
You're watching Sports Night on CSC so stick around...
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anon @ 28th May 10:52PM:
Metered billing okay, unfair pricing not okay

There is nothing wrong with metered billing as long as it reflects actual costs plus a reasonable markup.

If the true cost of providing service to your home is $30/month + $0.01/TB then you can reasonably charge $40+0.0125/TB. If the true cost is $5/month + $1/TB then you can reasonably charge $6 + $1.25/TB.

If the true cost is $5/month + $1/GB, which would reasonably allow you to charge $6 + $1.25/GB, then dollars to donuts you aren't a land-line telco. If you are, you are very inefficient and deserve to go out of business.

The problem with recent plans to meter wasn't the meter, it was the rate.
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RARPSL @ 28th May 11:33PM:
Re: They do cap performance

said by jsz0 :

said by RARPSL
Your usage is how many miles you drive in the month.
[/BQUOTE :

I know it's analogy and all but you can argue it both ways. You're still paying per-gallon of gas to go however many miles in a month you want. Want to go further, you pay more, want to go shorter distances? You pay less.

The auto rental scenario that I mentioned is any example of the usage analogy that I mentioned. You are given a designated number of miles you are allowed to drive before you get hit with overage charges. The speeds you drive do not apply (unless the Rental Company monitors your speeds via GPS or an on-board black box [which some companies have done] so they can add an automatic "speeding" surcharge to your bill). Your gas is the equivalent of your electric bill (neither of which have anything to do with the car analogy).
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xdeadhead @ 29th May 12:06AM:
Re: Verizon doesn't have as strong of a need to cap.

ahem. 20/20 fios wide open all the time. if you dont like it, that's your problem. not mine. this is for only 6 months or so.

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Mark F @ 29th May 01:06AM:
Re: They better not or else

And, those of us around here are plenty angry at Verizon as it is.

No wonder they are against using their Media Manager software with Netflix, to stream video to their DVR for TV viewing. They want to control what internet video content can be downloaded and watched on a FIOS-connected TV. And, who can watch it.

And, if you use other methods to watch internet video, that where caps and metered billing might come in.
Mark F.
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anon @ 29th May 01:51AM:
meter billing is just silly

In Canada we have limits but even such horrible companies like telus and bell know that its a really stupid idea. Tho bell doesnt really care about its customers.
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anon @ 29th May 02:41AM:
What about Voip???

If you use magicjack or vonige....did they condider that? Sometimes I spend hours on the phone...
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patcat88 @ 29th May 04:36AM:
Re: meh

said by glinc :

cap downloads im fine with it....but don't cap my upload or i'll have to pay extra for a seedbox!!

I've uploaded over 5TB in a month lol.

Then pay for a seedbox, your use exceeds even a 10mbit ethernet line 24/7/365.
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patcat88 @ 29th May 04:41AM:
Re: If they want metered billing, the make it an actual utility!

said by aaronwt :

At $0.99 per byte, no one would be online any more.

At that price I will get my internet through Optical Telegraph.

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openbox9 @ 29th May 08:20AM:
Re: Time to regulate as a utility.....

The ISPs know exactly how much the average household consumes each month. They have no real means of determining usage per individual in a household. There appears to be a semantics issue here. Given your more defined viewpoint, I equate individual to household and vice verse for usage statistics and rhetoric regarding capping/metering.
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bicker @ 29th May 08:26AM:
Whiners will whine; but they do not deny the value

Of course consumers would prefer low prices for unlimited service with no caps. :uhh: It is irrational, though, to expect service providers to defecate on the interests of their owners and not seek ways to better reflect value delivered in the prices that they charge.

While up-starts will always seek to undersell the market leaders, eventually they up-starts become market leaders and -- Guess what? -- they act like market leaders. If they don't realign pricing with value using metering or using usage caps then they will find some other way. If they don't, they're idiots, or chumps.

And if you think companies that have the ability to provide high-speed Internet service are idiots or chumps, then you're delusional!
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aaronwt @ 29th May 08:51AM:
Re: If they want metered billing, the make it an actual utility!

said by scooper :

$.99 / GIGABYte, maybe...

Even that would be too high.
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danclan @ 29th May 09:24AM:
Re: Whiners will whine; but they do not deny the value

I think you have had too much koolaid

The problem is that they have little costs after their initial investment. They have both ends paying for the pipes, they arent losing money. They want their cake and to eat it too.

They want exclusive content delivery as that provides them with more revenue.

There is no reason for caps other than to squeeze the cash cow. If there were some valid technical reason I might be more lenient but there isnt.

Dial up by the minute didn't sell so well cause folks got off and didnt want to wait on the content.

Now with high speed, content is the key. Sell the content control the pipe...well folks will find other things to do when it becomes expensive or if people feel abused but current provider.

Congress will get involved when the squeaks become loud enough and incumbents greedy enough and stupid....
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bicker @ 29th May 10:16AM:
Re: Whiners will whine; but they do not deny the value

said by danclan :

I think you have had too much koolaid

I think you're expectations are like that of a spoiled child, so I guess we're even.

said by danclan :

The problem is that they have little costs after their initial investment.

Evidently, either my usage of the word "value" went over your head (which I doubt), or you deliberately chose to try to hide from it, and argue the selfish consumerist tilt from a position of ignorance of the reality of value-based pricing, that I had outlined.

I'll say it clearly, so you cannot possibly miss it this time: Service shall be priced based on value. Only suckers price things based on cost. This is America; suckers don't stay in business, here, very long.

said by danclan :

They want their cake and to eat it too.

It sounds like you're describing your position, not theirs, after all you want the service you want, and you want to pay less than it is worth.

As I alluded to earlier, it is a childish expectation to get something for less than it is worth. I know that if I'm investing money in a company, I'm going to choose a company that knows how to respect my investment and get paid for the value they deliver, and as a result gives me, their investor, superior profits in return, instead of the company that just covers its costs and gives me, their investor, piddly profits in return. The great companies -- the ones that have the resources to provide great service -- price based on value, and always will, as long as capitalism is selected over socialism.

said by danclan :

There is no reason for caps other than to squeeze the cash cow.

The reason for caps is to ensure that people receiving more value pay more than people receiving less value.

said by danclan :

If there were some valid technical reason I might be more lenient but there isnt.

In other words, you only have room in your world for suckers providing you service.

said by danclan :

Congress will get involved when the squeaks become loud enough and incumbents greedy enough and stupid....

Keep believing that your socialist knight in shining armor will eventually rescue you from the tower. :uhh:
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axiomatic @ 29th May 11:49AM:
Advertising.

I don't give a damn what any ISP or Web site owner says.

If this kind of metered billing happens ubiquitously with all ISP's the advertising HAS TO GO then.

If I am paying per byte, I have to be able to maximize my moneys worth or I just wont buy my service from that particular ISP.

This also will have to bust open local monopolies. If I only have ONE choice of ISP and they are billing me this way and I have no other choice then its critical that something has to go and that would be all advertising eating up my bandwidth.

These ISP's are not thinking through how their model currently works.
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mdmathis6 @ 29th May 12:24PM:
Verizon,race relations,and .50 per gigabyte!

Verizon is in large degree minority run and owned(the old Behhhll Atlahhhntic as "Darth Vader" used to intone). You won't see anti metering legislation under this present administration though you might see a sudden 60 per cent government ownership and the "net" strictly controlled by "No"Bama's Internet Czar! If any thing metering will be welcomed as a means of the Fed's being then able to tax per gigabyte!

This country is screwwed!
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danclan @ 29th May 02:07PM:
Re: Whiners will whine; but they do not deny the value

See thats just it...you dont get ANYTHING of value with caps. No improvement, nothing. Your experience won't in any way change no matter how you cap. Your quality of internet is completely unaffected by caps. This whole discussion about "reduced user experience" is a straw man argument to allow the carriers to charge users more for less while not in any way enhancing or improving their aging business model and infrastructure.

Your lack of understanding of how networks operate totally destroys your underlying argument.

Your sense of share holder duty is stuck in the short term evidenced that pure capitalist markets fail, try reading a history book about markets and choice. Cable co's are recognizing that verizon, with no caps of any kind to date is kicking their pants. Verizon is doing just fine financially and delivering the content and ooh wait they provide long haul connections to the content providers too...crazy talk...they get paid at BOTH ends...wow.... even Cable companies can deliver content but they want you to to stay on their wire and limit who you can pull content from.

Your understanding of socialism too seems a bit off. Folks already pay for differing tiers of service. Content providers pay for differing tiers of services from multiple providers both short and long haul.

The internet model today is not socialistic. Never has been. The only socialistic aspect is the universal access fee you pay on your POTS line.
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bicker @ 29th May 02:24PM:
Re: Whiners will whine; but they do not deny the value

said by danclan :

See thats just it...you dont get ANYTHING of value with caps.

That's ridiculous. Every bit of usage is value.

said by danclan :

No improvement, nothing.

Please don't take this as condescending, but the way you're replying to this makes it sound like you have no idea... They don't charge you for the cap. They charge your for the usage of the service you make under the cap.

said by danclan :

Your lack of understanding of how networks operate totally destroys your underlying argument.

The reality is that I actually do know how networks operate, but I also know how companies operate, something which comes from working in the management of telecoms (AT&T, PacBell and Ameritech, specifically) for many years, after my stint at Bell Labs.

said by danclan :

Your sense of share holder duty is stuck in the short term evidenced that pure capitalist markets fail, try reading a history book about markets and choice.

Gosh you're so stuck in self-centered consumerist nonsense, you even believe the rhetoric the consumerist advocates feed you to spew. And further evidenced by the fact that you have to lie to make your points: I didn't say anything about short-term anything. You choose to ignore the owners of companies because that doesn't serve your myopic socialist agenda, but long-term shareholder value is what my point is all about, and what will be the foundation of the reality that people reading this thread will experience even if we prefer it is your fantasy was true.

said by danclan :

Cable co's are recognizing that verizon, with no caps of any kind to date is kicking their pants.

Which you would know to expect from a new entrant to a consumer market, if you knew anything about consumer business. You would also know that eventually as a new entrant becomes a market leader they would adopt the value-based pricing protocols of the existing market leaders.

Come back after you've had a few years in the executive boardroom and know a bit more about business, okay son?
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anon @ 29th May 09:11PM:
Re: Whiners will whine; but they do not deny the value

Your very thought process is what's wrong with the failing corporate world. you think about making the rich investor richer and sucker punching the poor schmuck. seems to me that the internet only has value because of all the people that contributed knowledge and new ideas to the infrastructure. Now you can capitalize on the hard work of others as do many other countries. well, at least power companies have a good excuse.. :)
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anon @ 29th May 10:08PM:
Larger familys should be paying more, IF they use more..

"There are too many legitimate and legal uses for bandwidth. They need to reanalyze just what the average amount of bandwidth *households* consume every month rather than the average amount a single person does."

It's not their fault that people decide to have ten kids..

If you think of bandwidth as a commodity item that can be used.
Does a family of ten people pay a higher water bill per month than a single person?

If they start metering, a single person who uses less will probably (hopefully) be paying less than he/sh does now. While a houshold of seven, will have to pay more, and rightly so.

Believe me, I'm not for this, I signed on a LONG time ago to Verizon's "Unlimited" dial-up, and they decided to put a cap on that, now with all these talks of capping/metering DSL I'm a little miffed at how you can sign a contract with them for unlimited, and they can just change the rules whenever they want. But I'm pretty sure rule changing is burried somewhere in the contract.

It will really depend on the size of the cap, if it's reasonable, then people won't care, if it's too small and people are going over every other month and having to pay fees, people will be up in arms.
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Nightwchtr @ 30th May 05:21PM:
Re: They better not or else

If they do I will definately cancel my service, screw that. As much as they have been ripping consumers off that would be the last straw for me. Will just get an HD antenna and watch free tv or watch HULU which is currently free.
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anon @ 2nd Jun 12:05PM:
what about virus adware

so im just wondering what going to happen with all of the bots, virus, spyware, adware.

so now i not only see it that i have to pay for these ads that they want to either inject to are web pages (some isp's are doing this)

now we must pay for the internet that all these bad people want to use to spam and what not and steal are personl info

i can see the isps some how finding another way for them to send us some sorta extra packets and call them some thing like network management blah blah or some such and still racking in another 50 megs a month to charge us

i cant see this any other way then another grab at money

when you see a company try to push some really weak limits and then they stop because of a huge out cry you would thing that they would stop

if you ask me if a peice of shit smells like shit dont try to paint it a differrent color and try to sell it to me again
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danclan @ 2nd Jun 03:34PM:
Re: Whiners will whine; but they do not deny the value

While I know better than to respond a third time I will say this, your managed to validate my points. Its disappointing that you don't even realize it.

As for your alleged board room experience, the fate of those companies speaks for itself even Bell Labs, one of America's greatest private engineering & R&D divisions ever, has been reduced to a mere footnote by the corporate board room.
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bicker @ 2nd Jun 03:35PM:
Re: Whiners will whine; but they do not deny the value

Long after I retired. :uhh:
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bicker @ 2nd Jun 03:40PM:
Re: Whiners will whine; but they do not deny the value

I haven't provided you my thought process. I've simply outlined the reality. Do I "like" it? I respect reality. Whether I like it or not is absolutely inconsequential.

And whether you like it or not is also absolutely inconsequential.

The real crime here, which I'm highlighting, is how folks who hate reality rail against it, covering their eyes, plugging their ears (but not closing their mouths). They insist that their personal view of the world must be "right" and reality must therefore be "wrong". They set themselves up for a never-ending death spiral of disappointment and dissatisfaction, and to the extent that they try to promulgate their own unfounded expectations onto others they're drawing those other folks into the death spiral as well. It is a disservice they're committing.

And that is why I bother participating in forums like this: To try to make sure readers have an opportunity to see both sides of the issue: the hopes and dreams of the idealists, and the hard, cold reality which I describe.
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anon @ 2nd Jun 05:11PM:
uh .. the noise?

You're leaving out the internet "noise" blocked in general by your firewall and/or router ... the hundreds of pings, port scans and other unsolicited traffic hitting your IP address for which your provider will be charging and counting towards your cap. A DoS attack on you could blow your cap without you even opening a browser. There's no way (in practical terms) your ISP could tell the difference nor is there any incentive for them to do so.
It is so different for packets than water molecules or amps in an electical service. The incremental cost per packet when the network is running below capacity approaches zero. Since we are ALREADY charged for some fixed portion of the capacity, in bandwidth terms (dishonest as that may be especially on shared coax), further byte-counting is just plain revenue enhancement. I already buy a huge much larger hunk of bandwidth in FiOS-TV (100+ channels) than I do in internet bandwidth (20/5) yet proportionally I pay much more for the internet packets than the ones running the TV boxes (I know deep-technically it's different but you get the point).
If the programming is available I don't care about what media it comes through. The real problem is cable-style bundling benefits the controllers of the medium, today, not the customers, and we naturally look for ways to get what we want on our terms rather than the terms of those who try to create scarcity on the medium.
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