Preventing Broadband Price-Gouging? 420
Wrighter the Pessimist asks: "I've been seeing a lot of stories recently about cable modem companies raising rates and baby bells winning monopolies on broadband. It seems that indeed cable companies are already raising rates, or will be in the near future. Shouldn't broadband be getting cheaper, with improvements in technology? Or has demand already surpassed the capability? Or, have the monopolies just decided to give themselves a raise? What can we as consumers do to prevent prices from going sky high?" The first article mentions the need for higher pricing for users who tend to use more than their fair share of the bandwidth. The second article is about AT&T raising its rates, which is not news to many Slashdot readers, I'm sure. I would think that in situations like this, that a tiered pricing approach might be better than applying a flat rate. Think you are going to be a high bandwidth user? Pay a fair price to your upstream. Web and e-mail only? Pay less. So do you think the current trend in broadband pricing is fair, or are broadband providers pricing themselves out of the market?
Charter Communications in Medford, OR (Score:2, Informative)
.. and they could get away with it here because DSL sucks, and the least expensive DSL here from a 'local' provider (not counting Qwest w/ MSN) is around $75+ and that's not even 1MB down.
Re:Charter Communications in Medford, OR (Score:2)
Currently, you get 1024 kilobit/s down and 128 kilobit/s up at the lowest rate, around $35/month. 15 kilobyte per second can be used for a P2P connection or personal website, but it sucks.
It's more than enough, however, to download from Usenet or large files off the web in reasonable amounts of time.
More and more bandwidth costs more and more per month until you're paying about $300/month for about T1 speeds. I would suggest that most cable operators could probably get this scheme to work. People who are interested in using a lot of bandwidth end up paying for the tier they fit in, while those who are only interested in email and web pay just slightly more than they would for a dial-up account.
Heres what to expect (Score:3, Informative)
Fair prices for what you get there indeed, i would say.
Wouldn't expect it to last however. I'm in southern California and on Adelphia, rumor has it that Charter is the expected winner of the Adelphia fire-sale here in Los Angeles, so i decided to check their pricing plans in the So Cal area... what costs you 50 a month is gonna cost me 113.95.
Here's the prices listed for SoCal Charter Pipeline (from their website):
***
Service plans (select one)
768Kb Down / 128Kb Up Bronze Package: $39.95 Charter Pipeline High Speed Internet Access, no contract. This price does not include the promotional $4.95 modem lease or the $10.00 cable access fee for non-cable television subscribers.
256Kb Down / 64Kb Up Value Package: $29.95 Charter Pipeline High Speed Internet Access, no contract. This price does not include the promotional $4.95 modem lease or the $10.00 cable access fee for non-cable television subscribers.
1Mb Down / 256Kb Up Silver Package: $60.00 Charter Pipeline High Speed Internet Access, no contract. This price does not include the promotional $4.95 modem lease or the $10.00 cable access fee for non-cable television subscribers.
1.5Mb Down / 384Kb up Gold Package: $99.00 Charter Pipeline High Speed Internet Access, no contract. This price does not include the promotional $4.95 modem lease or the $10.00 cable access fee for non-cable television subscribers.
Of course it's fair ... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the same thing that happened with the rash of free webhosting services -- the companies finally realized that their businesses were flawed -- free webhosting just doesn't exist.
And broadband companies are having quite the same epiphany: bandwidth is not free! I am surprised that everyone isn't paying per GB downloaded and/or uploaded yet. Personally I think we should be happy that we got cheap (unmetered) broadband bandwidth for so long.
Re:Of course it's fair ... (Score:2)
Lets see, a burstable T-1 costs $700 a month at my location (worldcom, lowest tier, a clean T-1 that isn't metered at all costs $900) with which I can share this with 20 of my closest neighbors @ $50/month for an income of $1000/month which pays for my time, the aironet hubs and the rest of the equipment to keep the 802.11b cloud humming and relatively secure. Compare that to the $50/month DSL charges and the T-1 price is the same, you get much higher local connection speeds for the LAN and best of all, you actually get a service level agreement so if your line drops for 8 or 12 hours, they have to pay you. Nobody offers SLAs for cablemodem or DSL internet access.
Any suburban subdivision with at least one technogeek in residence is better off getting T-1 than DSL or cablemodem.
Re:Of course it's fair ... (Score:2, Insightful)
If I pay $60/month for access, as it is, I expect to get my $60 worth: a cap of 38GB/month. Given that I pay $1 to be able to get 0.633GB Anything more($) is price-fixing based on a small demand for big bandwidth; a rate higher than dialup.
Not pricing themselves out of the market (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not pricing themselves out of the market (Score:2, Insightful)
Broadband isn't a need for most people (at least in the home consumer market), it's a luxury. Every person has a limit to what they want to pay for broadband for a month and when it's hit they'll go back to dialup.
Re:Not pricing themselves out of the market (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not pricing themselves out of the market (Score:2)
As a note, we have VERY affordable broadband in most of Canada for not much more than the cost of a cable hookup. So the equipment cost argument is mostly bunk.
Also note that the landline voice system was around since 1877 and is as widespread as it is due to government regulation. I seem to recall that AT&T was granted its monopoly by the government in exchange for limitations on pricing and behavior and such. Though I could, of course, be wrong.
Re:Not pricing themselves out of the market (Score:2, Informative)
However, if it's more than what I could get for DSL, I'll switch. There is some broadband competition even though there may not be competing cable companies servicing the same area.
On the other hand, my parents won't get broadband simply because they won't use what they pay for. Some people won't need much motivation to switch back to dial-up. Right now broadband is just becoming available to most people so demand is high. Prices will jump because of it. Once the novelty wears off and people realize how much they actually use for what they are paying, some will jump ship.
Give the market some time, it will eventually level itself out. The greedy companies will fold. Grandma will go back to dialup. And the prices will become somewhat reasonable. :-)
You are correct about lack of competition because of the monopolies. If there was decent competition in the market, the prices would level out to an even more reasonable amount.
Canada is fine (Score:3, Informative)
So I'd say that all you Americans are just living in the wrong country - we're fine up here in the Great White North.
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon [stumbleupon.com]
Get it through the power lines (Score:2, Interesting)
And they said it couldn't be done!
Said it before... (Score:4, Informative)
But it's not.
Even if you ignore the technical aspects of monitoring bandwidth usage and tying it to individual accounts you then run into the business cost overhead increase of changing your billing method.
Which is easier and/or cheaper? Flat-rate billing all of your customers regardless of bandwidth usage or doing it as they suggest and charging the bandwidth pigs extra?
As the overhead goes up that cost gets passed along to the customers as well.
Re:Said it before... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Said it before... (Score:2)
It's often said that it costs the phone company more to bill people for add-on features and what not than the money they make back from them.
I feel somewhat qualified to speak on this matter. You see, i redesigned and rewrote the billing system of a national ISP that used two carrier networks for dialup traffic and which was the first ISP to offer rebranding to buisinesses (you dont think Target has a datacenter handling Target Internet Services that you can get on a CD at the checkout stand, do you ?)
Now, i wasn't getting paid much, but even so, i basically spent 1 summer fulltime on billing system redesign and feature additions. We processed CDR information from two major carriers. One used SNMP traps on all their Ascend terminal servers to see who was connected. They had a state table that generated call initiate and call terminate events. They sent us this data nightly. The call time was recorded with 6 second accuracy.
Sometimes their state table would get corrupted. Sometimes we'd see conflicting events in the CDR
The other carrier had an entirely different CDR format, that was generated in an entirely different way. (carrier A used RADIUS proxies to auth to our servers, carrier B used TACACS and gave us a portal to their TACACS database)
Now, a given "customer" could have multiple "accounts", and each account could login to either carriers termservers. Additionally, each type of account had different rate plans, limits, promotions, and what not.
We also had the foolish concept of "prime time" and "non prime time". The prime-time hours were different to us based on our carrier. The hours we exposed to customers had to be the same regardless of which number they called. They also had to be correct for that users time zone. We didn't know that users time zone.
What the customer wanted was a Bill that was a charge for usage of the previous billperiod, and a pre-billing for service for the upcoming usage period.
Given that i've just described two of the sources of input for dialup / isdn accounts, i hope you begin to see the fucking ridiculous complexity of writing a billing system that has rate schedules, addons, and so forth.
The system was originally written by a contract programmer for a hefty sum of money. Later on i re-wrote it and expanded it to meet the demands of the aggressive sales/branding/marketing/bozo-in-a-suit staff.
The system required a few spendy machines to run in an acceptable amount of time (even after my rewrites caused a 1500% speedup). It required spendy database licenses.
So if i went back there now and played with the data some, i could probably do a calculation that told us how much additional revenue was coming in for rate schedule and add-on option accounts, versus flat accounts, per month. It is left to the reader to figure out how many man hours at hourly rate x are consumed to maintain and improve the system to support additional rate plans (even if you amortize all the work done to begin with to make any of it possible)
Keep in mind that when you're dealing with money, and bills.. and you're a business.. you have to be able to fully reconcile your books. Rounding errors ? No thanks. Getting customer bills wrong is the sort of thing that gets people in a lot of trouble. A lot.
Not a lot of overhead (Score:2)
Worse than that! (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no question in my mind that large-scale tiered pricing would really pour cold water on all of the internet. Alongside every single click we'd make, we'd find ourselves calculating whether this is a wise use of our allotted bandwidth. ("If I watch that BBC video now, I might not have enough allotted bytes left to catch my favorite streaming radio show from France later tonight." "I could check to see what was posted on usenet, but just downloading the headers for the few groups I monitor is over 200MB. I can't afford that!" "Hey, the demo of a game I'm interested in is available for download, but if I get it, my wife won't be able to use the internet for the rest of the month. Better not!")
Basically, Americans would become second-class internet citizens if tiered pricing is put into effect. Video and voice over IP are going to be technologies that only Europeans and Koreans (and maybe some Canadians) will have the unmetered freedom to explore. I'm not sure what the next big application for the internet will be, but when it comes, you can bet it will use a lot of bandwidth, and you can bet that if US broadband is metered and you pay by the byte, Americans won't be anywhere near first to notice and take advantage of its potential. We will be the pedestrians of the internet.
The majority of people on the internet are already non-US-Americans. There is no way to prevent that. However, the USA is still far ahead in terms of buisinesses that make money from the internet. Inertia does not carry you far in this market. Just look at Netscape, Lycos and countless others who seemed invincible not very long ago. What has kept us ahead is that we have a head start on using the net, and we do a good job educating the next generation. As soon as we fall behind, others will be happy to take over our place.
Broadband might look to some like an entertainment service not too different from cable TV. It's a natural assosiation to make, given that they go across the same wire and the bills go to the same place. However, in terms of economic externalities, there is a world of difference. The country gets no benefit from the broad availability of cable TV (yet we regulate the industry to keep the prices low, which seems as stupid as regulating tobacco producers to keep the prices of cigarettes low). There is a huge economic and educational benefit provided by unrestricted and fast internet access. How many billions of dollars flowed into our treasury as a result of kids basically playing on the internet and inventing something? And how many dollars will be lost when their parents drag them away from the computer in fear that their bill will force them to cancel the family vacation?
Yes, I'm close to saying that it is our patriotic duty to see to it that as many Americans as possible have fast and unlimited access to the internet. We will reap the benefits of this later, and they will outweigh the costs by orders of magnitude. Remember, Canada has understood this for a long time, and even though they have a much more scattered population, far more of them have broadband, and they are paying far less than we are (because of direct government action). I understand the situation is similar in Republic of Korea. Anyway, it doesn't take a genius to see where the next generation of internet billionares will come from.
Like electricity and telephone, broadband must be regulated by the government. Actually, if I had my way, the government would just nationalize all the lines, a la Cuba. I honestly think that forward-looking countries would see internet access as a service they must provide for the entire population, for the same reason that the government provides us with basic education. I know that most readers here don't have socialist leanings to the same degree I do, but you won't be laughing at me when you're old and you find we have "unrestricted-capitalismized" ourselves out of a huge emerging market.
One simple question (Score:2, Insightful)
I must say that when I think about having to go back to dial up, the prices would have to just about double before I would even think about it. I love being able to turn on my machine and just be connected. No having to get online to do business, no tying up the phone line to do it. You're just there.
Not to mention, that I can't leave my machines on at home and get to them from work over dialup.
Re:One simple question (Score:2)
Currently, I'm paying more in gas a month than I'm paying in broadband access fees. I'm much more concerned about Bush's campaign contributors lining their pockets on my dime with gas at $1.699 a gallon.
Re:One simple question (Score:2)
Well to my surprise, he returned 2 weeks later with a box of blue in hand. We ran a 400' line stapled to the fence from my house to his. He was happy, I had 2 extra packs of smokes a month.
Well another neighbor, who's a pushy salesman heard about this and asked me if he could hook in too. I said sure but you gotta ask the people in between you and Joe if it's ok to run the wire. He turned right around and began knocking on doors. 7 neighbors all said, "Cool if we can hook in too!"
So now we have 9 houses on one side of the street all hooked together. I should take pictures, people just don't believe me when I tell them. The salesman made me raise my price to $15@mo.So now in addition to the $50@mo I had in the beginning for my DSL I'm getting another $120@mo. My DSL has gone from 384/128 to 1.6-6/384. It's insanely fast when there are no neighbors on. Bandwidth hogging on our network has been an issue (one kid loves his kazza) but everyone has been capped now (except me
Anyways, people can co-op together. I can't really see any geek pulling it together though, lord knows i'm shy as hell. Find 1 salesman on your block and let him do the work, there's one in every neighborhood. Just make sure everyone buys a 4 port switch and knows to keep it plugged in and turned on at all times. With a switch at each house you won't need to worry about the 600' ethernet limit either.
Re:One simple question (Score:2)
Re:One simple question (Score:2)
We Americans have no freaking basis for whining about Gas prices when people in other countries are paying upwards of the equivalent of $7-$8.
Highest gas price I've ever seen was Furnace Creek, CA, in August 2001. $2.64. And it's still nothing compared to what the poor limeys have to pay. And they're one of the largest oil producing nations in the world.
Re:One simple question (Score:2)
Come on, no one is going to go back to dial-up, and fixed line rates are gonna rise.
What you need to do is, get a static IP line in your 'hood. Then, contact 4-5 of your neighbors who want high speed access. You use the static line, and set up an 802.11b access point at your place, and charge your neighbors for the access. You get free internet access, they get cheap wireless (still high speed) access without doing much, and everybody wins. Set it up for 8 people and the total cost for high speed access falls below dialup costs (not even including line fees for the dialup lines).
If you are in an apartment building, this could even be done building wide to give everyone access for $10/mo as a co-op. Maybe $20 if you actually pay someone to supervise it instead of DIYing it.
Wireless scales well. Fixed lines do not.
Re:One simple question (Score:2)
I did. AT&T raised their prices 3 times on me during the year or so I was on the service. The total bill crept from about $40/month to about $50/month. That, with the 128kbps upload cap, caused me to cancel my service. When they asked why, I told them those 2 reasons. When I went to return my modem, I also listed these on a comment card they had handy.
So I went from a $50/month 1.5Mb/128kb broadband to a $20/month 56k dialup. And you know what? I haven't been that put off by it, and neither has my google-addicted wife. Running squid helps a little, but I don't do any heavy downloads from home anymore -- I download to my office workstation and burn to CD.
I know not everyone has such a setup, but it does work for me. And it was more about the principle than the cost. I've changed landline providers 3 times in 4 years at my home. I'm willing to experience a little discomfort in order to "vote with my wallet". I wish more people did...
Re:One simple question (Score:2)
Jacking up the price and offering me features I don't need (like email or a custom home page) is just pissing me off, but I know in my heart that there's no way I'm going back to dial up. Just too much of a hassle.
Demand (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to help solve the problem yourself, stop sucking down MP3z and ISOz all the time.
Re:Demand (Score:2)
Actualy according to our teleco guy, he said ISP's usualy plan for one b channel (honest 56K)for every 30 normal users or 10 bussiness users. Surfing the web when this stuff started had a low duty cycle, typicaly you would read for 3 or 4 times the time you downloaded. Local cacheing and proxy servers helped immensly.
Now there is so much more bandwidth being used, everything from animated gif's to flash on otherwise plain site hurt as much as MP3's and ISO's because everybody get them. Actualy there is a lot of software now that just assumes an internet connection to be there available for it. Now there are alot of machine that'll never really let an internet connection just set idle.
I still think these guys have a lot of un-lit fiber and unused lambda's on lit fiber's to go around, they just need more paying users or capital to justify the equipment to light it up. kind of a chicken or the egg thing.
Re:Demand (Score:2)
There are complainers that bemone the fact that they have a b/w limit, but they are more than welcome to order a leased line.
Re:Demand (Score:2)
Or how about option 4: Cap speeds and charge more for those who want more. It keeps the company afloat and lets those who want more pay for it.
Re:Demand (Score:2)
So, when I downloaded my ISOs of Mandrake 8.2, I'm doing something illegal?
Sprint BBD hiked rates (Score:2)
It would have been ten, but I refused the Earthlink account.
--Blair
Two sides to my opinion... (Score:2)
On the other hand, in a more pragmatic viewpoint, I can understand the bandwidth costs. The state universities share an OC3 backbone network, and my college, which accounts for 20% of the population accounts for 70% of the bandwidth usage. And I imagine from what I've read here that its a similar ratio for cable modem users...a small portion of us get nailed. I can understand paying higher for higher usage...but I refuse to pay higher to my local company, which uses DHCP and will not allow servers to be run in any way...whats the use of having high traffic availability if I cant even run my webpage off my apache server? Or my mailing lists?
I'd be willing to pay more (not excessive, i'm not rich, but more) than the people who use broadband for just email and surfing. But better yet, since those people use next to no bandwidth, why not drop their rates a little too? Make people get what they pay for...and reduce the bandwidth squandered so the little old rich lady down the street can check her email faster while I'm bleeding myself just to be able to browse 3 webpages at once while sharing my remote desktops at the office, etc...
A suprise? hardly. (Score:2)
1) Broadband has been underpriced for some time now. Alot of Ma and Pa's in the world didn't see a need for it beyond dialup. This is now not an issue.
Cable co's are raising rates to make more money and in probably quite a few cases, make money.
2) With the recent ruling against the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (that of *course* wasn't lobbied heavily by the cable co's) most 3rd party dsl providers will soon find themselves in trouble.
Cable co's can now raise prices a little as their main competitor is probably going to face stiffer costs if they can even continue offering service.
Don't tell me that the ruling and the price raises are coincidence...
Things probably won't improve soon (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in Ashburn, Virginia about a mile from UUNET and three miles from AOL and we really have very few options for broadband. Given the number of geeks and techies in the area, there's a significant market that isn't being served.
There's not a whole lot of profit to be made wiring an area and having to compete with other companies given the current economic conditions (especially if Verizon doesn't have to share their copper anymore). Until there is, the incumbent broadband providers are pretty much free to charge whatever they feel like.
Our cable company is offering Internet access at a reasonable price (if you consider a single DHCP and a lot of restrictions on what you can do reasonable). There is virtually no DSL available other than IDSL (and that's about $129/month for 5 IPs at 128k). We may soon get 802.11 access in the area, but that's only a pipedream at this point.
Until we're able to get some REAL competition into the area (and I suspect that this is the case in many other areas), things will only get worse for the consumer.
Well, the answer is quite obvious (Score:4, Informative)
OK, I'm not being 100% truthful. In a free market system, prices are tied to demand. The higher the demand, the higher the price. However, I didn't mention the one way out of this because it would involve sacrifice, which seems [slashdot.org] to be [slashdot.org] a foreign concept to most of Slashdot's readership. That's right, kids, you'd have to boycott broadband and live with 56k until enough people dropped the services that the providers would be forced to lower rates to attract people back.
There really isn't any other way to deal with "gouging", except to pass more laws and create more government bureaucracy in an ill-concieved attempt to implement price controls. This is obviously a bad idea, so basically it boils down to "if you don't like it, don't buy it."
Re:Well, the answer is quite obvious (Score:2)
Perhaps you will soon find out that these "monopolies" are operating on some really thin margins.
Re:Well, the answer is quite obvious (Score:2)
Re:Well, the answer is quite obvious (Score:2)
Don't be a moron (Score:2)
Long distance was more expensive in the past because of the limitations of past technology. There has been a huge increase in the last decade in the capacity of long distance voice networks that brought a corresponding drop in prices, independent of whether there was a monopoly and competition.
Besides, it's hardly fair to compare phone service to consumer-class broadband data connections. Phone service is an essential, you didn't really have a second or third choice for instantaneous communication at the time that Ma Bell was broken up. In contrast, you can downgrade your internet connection at any time and still connect to the internet if you find that you don't want to pay for broadband. You're still connected to the internet and getting the same service, you just can't pirate movies as fast as you could before.
AT&T is raising upstream bandwidth!! (Score:4, Informative)
Take a look at this:
Hello! Welcome to the Online Customer Support Center for AT&T Broadband service. A message from a customer care specialist should appear in the chat window shortly. Your session ID # is 2142439.
In-Kevin Roberts has joined this session!
In-Kevin Roberts says, Hello and thank you for contacting AT&T Broadband. My
name is Kevin & I'll be glad to assist you today. I see you have a question regarding higher upload speed . Can you please give me a little more detail ?
You say, Is there a service plan which provides me with greater upload speeds
than 128k?
In-Kevin Roberts says, Yes, AT&T broadband is coming up with higher upload speed.
You say, when will this be available?
In-Kevin Roberts says, This will happen anytime between May 2002 to December 2002.
You say, what is the pricing?
In-Kevin Roberts says, The pricing will be the same.
You say, what will be the new speed?
In-Kevin Roberts says, The new speed will be 256kbps.
So, to appease cable modem customers, AT&T is rolling out more bandwidth on the upstream side. If you'd like to confirm this, log in to AT&T member services and join a chat room of theirs -- that is what this transcript is from.
I hope this helps those of you who are concerned about higher prices. I, for one, am a very satisfied AT&T cable modem customer.
Unofficial Confirmation.. (Score:2)
Question: Does anybody have a fairly reliable way for me to test my upload just to make sure I didnt just get lucky?
It's clear prices can go down. (Score:3, Interesting)
Because here, in Edmonton, it costs me $40.00 a month for a cable modem. That's Canadian money. And I get 8MBit down, and 768k up. DSL costs about the same, and gets you 1Mbit up and down. If you like, you can pay more for more bandwidth.
I have no transfer quotas, just guidelines. No running porn sites, I can't affect the backbone, don't download to the maximum capacity of the modem 24/7...things like that.
Cable and Phone companies have TONNES of money. They can afford to make basically nothing on the service (which they are) and try and get you for the little extras (more web space, email addresses, etc.) Plain and simple: you're being ripped off.
I'm just worried that now that it seems to be a worldwide trend, the providers in this country will decide to try to bend everyone over.
Re:It's clear prices can go down. (Score:2)
Bell charges 39.99/month, which has just been increased to $44.99/month with 5gig up and a 5gig down limit after that you pay per gig. I get 1mb downstream services and only 128kb upstream.
Cogeco charges about $49.99 ($10 less if you are a cable tv subscriber)I believe you get about 10mb shared connection and 256 upstream. They haven't said anything about limits but i'm going to guess they will follow suit. There are some smaller providers too but they don't really have the bandwidth to give that great of service.
Rob Peter, Pay Pal (Score:2)
Home access prices have to go up to make up the difference in revenues - baby needs fresh minks, and the yacht would look better with new paint.
Note how broadband-only providers are not raising the rates as fast as AT&T and compadres. Yet.
The price will rise to whatever the market will bear...
Here's the deal. (Score:2, Insightful)
The only ways to lower broadband prices altogether are:
roll your own.
(this is being done in some cities (see roll your own dsl, guerilla networks, etc.)
steal it till prices come down.
(this is being done alot from college and corporate networks, and personally I think it's justified by the prices we consumers already pay both colleges and corporations).
Install a large government infrastructure as is being done in cananda.
(not likely to happen since at least in the US, if not all of europe/asia also, the government is OWNED by corporations (think cheney/enron, etc. etc. ad nauseum ad hysterical rage).
so really I don't see the broadband situation improving for at least another 10 years. When monopolies own the technology, they abuse it and limit it's ability as long as they can, and with governments being owned by those monopolies, that is forever, or until millions die in a revolution. The best example I can think of to outline this scenario is microsoft, though there is far too much cowardice to have a revolution about it in this country any time soon.
and to think we had our revolution against brittain over 2% taxes!!! what the hell happened to us? anyone read any late roman history?
rhy
But I want my DSL. (Score:2)
Wireless Co-ops (Score:3, Interesting)
The Bell's not having to share their copper may also increase commercial wireless opportunities. I work for a minicipal electric utility that has access to many street light poles for wireless access points, along with provisions (empty underground conduit) for future data comm. Might be a business for some utilities to get into...
no cable for me (Score:2)
Lack of competition (Score:2)
Local monopolies (Score:3, Insightful)
The cost of producing bandwith is fixed, it is not three times as expensive to give someone 1.5 MBps than
But still, since at this stage the users are paying for the building of the networks, tiered or even metered price is a good way to split the costs somewhat fairly. Yet again, who pays for the highways, airports, seaports etc etc. Taxpayers. Why isn't Internet, the infrastructure of the 21st century to a greater extent paid for by our taxes ?
The local monopolies will maximize their short term gains, not do what's best in the long run for the consumers.
Are you nuts? (Score:2)
Wrong. Bandwidth is a variable cost over time. Let's say I'm an ISP with DSL customers. (Okay, so I'm nuts.) If I am maxxing out the oc-XXs on my regional aggregates and my backbone because of warez puppies, I have to lease more lines from the telco. That's not free. There are both setup fees and recurring fixed costs for each circuit. Not only do I have to buy more lines, I have to get more cards for the Junipers and Ciscos, run BGP to the extra interfaces (causing even greater overhead), and I may have to get additional routers as well. If I start saturating my private peers, then I have to renegotiate peering arrangements with them, which can also be a pain in the ass all by itself.
This can and does mean the difference between reasonable profit and big loss, for most companies.
By the way, don't assume that a bigger pipe is always going to be priced by the telco less than or equal to the equivalent bandwidth across smaller pipes. In many areas, there are special rate plans in effect, with max amounts the telcos are able to charge for one or two types of circuits, like frame relay or 0-mile T-1s, etc. The telco makes up what it thinks it is missing in revenue by raising the rates on higher bandwidth circuits.
Re:Local monopolies (Score:2)
Try again.
If you and I both consign a company to supply me a service (say electricity), and I use 3x as much electricity as you, should I pay more?
The car in your example is equivalent to your computer. If you use that three times as much, you don't pay anymore.
in the land of dsl... (Score:3, Interesting)
640k/s * 60s/min * 60min/hr * 24hr/day * 30.5day/month = 1.686528 * 10^9 k/month.
Let me put it this way. By putting a limit on my uplink and downlink, I have essentially bought an amount of bandwidth per month (as detailed above). It makes no sense to charge me for using too much because I cannot physically use more than my allotted amount unless their system breaks, in which case it is not my fault. The telecoms are already charging me for how much bandwidth I use, so the idea of me using too much is silly. If they want to change to a different method of billing then they should take off my speed cap, because the speed cap defines the amount of bandwidth I am allowed to use per month/pay period.
Re:in the land of dsl... (Score:2)
You haven't bought that amount of sustained bandwidth. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to have the burst transfer rate that is comparable to a T1, while paying a cost that reflects my average transfer rate, which is what it is. Just look at the numbers, and tell me -- is broadband closer in price to a dialup, or to a commercial grade T1 connection ?
If they want to change to a different method of billing then they should take off my speed cap, because the speed cap defines the amount of bandwidth I am allowed to use per month/pay period.
Would you prefer they capped your speed at 14.4k ? Because that's what they'd need to do to sell you service at dialup prices.
Here's the problem in my area anyway (Score:2, Informative)
1MB used to be 2 years ago sufficent for oversubsription to 100 customers while still maintaining an acceptable quality of service for each customer. Now the ratio is more like 50-75 per megabyte. And getting worse every month.
In part P2P file sharing is responsible (as that now makes up over 40% of total traffic on average) but the basic jist of it is people are using the pipe more than they used to and as a result the costs of providing that service are higher.
Cable modems themselves are cheaper ($80 US rather than $399) but that cost is insignificant next to bandwidth costs and wages and training for additional staff needed as more non-technical users come on to broadband.
Sure in some cases there is price gouging going on, but for the most part it's just a reflection of the cost of providing the service that customers demand.
Broadband is cheap--too cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Er, you were undercharged before... (Score:2, Insightful)
What the hell is the point then? (Score:2, Insightful)
Web and e-mail only? Get Dialup!
The reason I pay for broadband is because I want lots of speed and bandwidth. Why should my price be increased because I am using what I signed up for in the first place?
From a definition of broadband [everything2.com] from E2:
"In the US the predominant telephonic carrier system is SONET, which is very similar to SDH but uses different frame sizes, hence the usual definition of broadband is determined by the size of a DS1 frame, which is 1.544 Mbits/s."
Broadband should give me 1.5 Mbps, and that is what it is capped at anyway, so I don't see how people are using too much bandwidth by getting what they should be. Infact, this might have some sort of legal precedent as false advertising, but thats a stretch. Anyway, paying more because you use your connection the way it was intended is rediculous.
Re:What the hell is the point then? (Score:2)
A lot of people who are primarily using web and email might want the convenience of a connection that's fast, and up 24/7. It certainly makes downloading much more convenient.
The reason I pay for broadband is because I want lots of speed and bandwidth. Why should my price be increased because I am using what I signed up for in the first place?
The problem is that "lots of speed and bandwidth" means different things to different people. Basically, if the other users are subsidising you and the company are running on thin margins, then your prices should indeed be increased.
Broadband should give me 1.5 Mbps, and that is what it is capped at anyway, so I don't see how people are using too much bandwidth by getting what they should be.
"Should " this, "should" that. You can "should" all you like, but it's not going to alter the fact that you are not going to get a T1 for the price of a dialup. If you want or need that much bandwidth, pay for it. The problem here is that you want a T1 connection, but you don't want to pay for it.
Here's some news for you -- broadband as in cable modem or DSL is NOT the same as a T1 connection. It gives you a good burst transfer rate at a low price, but in terms of sustained throughput, it doesn't give you a whole lot. The nice thing about broadband is that it makes it possible for ISPs to offer very high transfer rates at a cost comparable to a dialup. The problem is that sustained throughput is expensive (because it is reflected in the ISPs costs), and you have to pay for that. You can bitch about it all you like, but it's not going to alter the fact that what you're asking for costs more money than you're willing to spend.
Insignificant Broadband Market Segment? (Score:2, Insightful)
It is more than fair for a user like myself with 7 machines in a network, my own domain complete with DNS server, and other hosts. I am a high bandwidth user. My machines are on 24x7 and I use them throughout the day and even more in the evenings and weekends.
However, I make ABSOLUTELY NO MONEY WHATSOEVER by having a broadband Internet connection. Because of this, I do not believe that a pricing structure that assumes I am a business and therefore using my bandwidth to generate revenue is fair at all.
I pay $45 per month for 1.5 Mbit/sec down and 384 kbiit/sec up. This is barely adequate for my use. Especially the upstream. I would be willing to pay $100 to $200 per month for 5 mbit/sec up and 5 mbit sec (10 mbit/sec total). I think that would be quite fair. I would even be willing to limit high-bandwidth usage to weekends and off-peak hours. Of course, this is an ideal...
I would be willing to pay $100 per month for good solid 1 mbit/sec up and 2 to 10 mbit/sec down. The problem is that there is no deal. The cable company has one-size-fits-all and won't deal with individuals.. or in this case an entire legion of what I like to call "power geeks."
PowerGeeks are folks like myself who are NOT running a business, but who typically have home LANs and higher-than-average bandwidth usage. Also, if the other people in this group are anything like me, we are WILLING to pay more to go faster, but not a lot more.
There is just nothing in between the one-size-fits-all 2 or so mbit/sec down and 256 or so kbit/sec up and a T1 which is just not a practical cost for a hobbiest. This market segment could, in my opinion, be "milked" a lot better. I have about $200 per month to spend and my cable company is getting 1/4 of that from me. If they could offer something a bit faster, they could get considerably more of my money. I have called and asked. I have spoken to the VP of my local ISP, and while he is sympathetic, there just isn't anything in the works.
What do you folks think? Am I being anywhere near realistic? I am talking throuhgput of about 4 GByte per week upstream and sometimes as much as twice that downstream. I'd like to go faster, and I'm willing to pay some more for it.
Vortran out
Pay Less? (Score:2, Informative)
Sounds good but in my area noone will be paying less. We currently have 1.1Mbit DSL for $40 CDN/ month, now we have a choice of:
same speed with a brand new 3GB max for $45/month
slightly faster with 10GB max for $60/month
And the price hikes for cable are on their way..
Long term the price is going down (Score:2)
This is probably a short term thing though- if the price goes too high, competition becomes higher- sure lots of people THINK they live in a monopoly, but if the price goes too high then technologies like WiFi become more competitive. If you go far enough across WiFi you can always get to cheaper bandwidth eventually. And there's always satellite if you're prepared to wait; or Modems if you're REALLY prepared to wait ;-)
As a CLEC employee... (Score:2)
..I always wondered how Canada could possibly have much lower rates than the US.
I know how much it costs to put in DSLAMS. I know what the monthly equipment space rentals are at Central Offices. I know what it generally costs to maintain the network infrastructure to support a DSL userbase. And, let me tell you, for $40/month, people like us aren't making huge profits (mind you, we do make money now, but not in the bucketfulls that people here seem to be implying).
Even considering being an ILEC vs a CLEC here in the USA, about the only way I can see the big Canadian DSL providers being able to provide such cheap service is through subsidizing them, either from their other (e.g. voice) businesses, or from the government (e.g. tax credits, direct payments, "access fee" taxes, etc).
Don't get me wrong - that's a perfectly valid way to deliver cheap broadband. The USA did it with Voice service. However, I'm not sure that's the best thing in the long run for Data. In the end, I expect that Voice and Data regulations here in the USA will converge (since there really is no sane reason for keeping them apart anymore). I'd rather see a bit less regulation than tying the whole data network up with the mess of voice regulations. (which isn't the same thing as the ILEC's want - they want voice and data to be UNregulated. Not a good thing either, so long as they control the physical last-mile).
Anyhow, the current price see-saws in the USA are an inevitable adjustment while the companies get the economics right; let's be honest: most broadband companies didn't do a good job judging network usage and layout. They're trying to make new decisions based on the past 4 years of experience, and they'll make more mistakes; but I'm guessing that it will be a better take this time around.
And, also, with all the outcry over raised rates, I don't see anyone mentioning that Several Broadbrand providers DROPPED rates (I'm biased, 'cause I work for Covad, and we dropped ours, but we're not the only ones). It's not ALL bad news.
In the long-run, I expect that broadband will remain unmetered (because, let me tell you, the metric captures are a pain-in-the-ass), but you'll see finer-grained pipe structures: for instance, you may have a 400kbps service for $30, 800kbps service for $40, 1.5Mbps for $60, and 5Mbps for $100, rather than a single 1.5Mbps service for $50. It's a far easier way to segragate the "hogs" from everyone else, and gets them to pay more for the service they use, but not unfairly limit them.
Bottom line here: don't like the service or support you're getting? Vote with your feet and dollars - use something else. There is ALWAYS something else these days, even if it's not what you expected.
-erik
Two sides (Score:4, Interesting)
Short-range communications, such as LAN technologies, roughly follow Moore's law. We have gone from 10Base2/5/T to 100Base-T(X) to 1000Base-T/FX and so on. Wireless went from 11Mbps to 54Mbps, and Linksys is working on wireless with burst modes to 70Mbps. Prices on existing technologies keep dropping, and new technologies take the place of those that fell out. Common sense.
Long range communications do not. If it did, our bandwidth would be improving every month, and/or cost of service would go down every month. Actually, once you have your connection via cable or dsl, your bandwidth is most likely going to lower, due to extra users hopping on the network in your area, and prices will rise due to higher costs to maintain a larger network and regular old inflation. This is the opposite of Moore's Law.
I think this is what has me, and many others, a little disappointed, and possibly even angry at telephone and cable companies.
For the optimists:
This is the way I look at it: if I wanted to make a direct connection between two computers that were in the same room at, say, 15Kbps, it would cost me about ten bucks for a null-modem serial cable and maybe a few fractions of a cent per month for electricity in that little cable. If I wanted to do the same thing to a location across the city _without_ the help of a third party, it would cost me a few thousand dollars to set up (for wireless, I'd need a couple towers, for standard cat5, I'd need a ton of cable, a bunch of repeaters, and a whole lot of time and effort into installation and maintenance), and a few hundred a month to maintain. Now imagine if I wanted to connect to a computer in, say, Austin, TX, from my location here in Grand Rapids, MI. The costs would be insane (like I said, no third parties, so if I wanted satellite, I'd have to launch my own, if I wanted wireless, I'd need a tower every few miles for repeating the signal, and so on).
My local ISP is providing me this service at much greater speeds (as much as 250KB/s from some web sites) to websites possibly around the world. What are they charging me? Around $45 a month.
tiered pricing (Score:2)
In particular, I can point to Time Warner, of whom I am a customer, due to the recent report that they would be instituting bandwidth caps. Do I really believe that AOL, the biggest ISP in the world by far (and part of the AOL/Time Warner megacorp) is hard up for cash?? And even if that's the case, turn first to cutting internal costs, don't make customers take care of the bloat themselves.
Competition is heating up, customers are at stake here, not like it was 2 years or even 1 year ago...
Broadband comapnies should be more honest (Score:4, Interesting)
rather than say 'heres a 1.5Mbit/s connection with a 3GB cap', they should say that 3GB over 30 days is really a ~70kbps connection with a 1.5Mbit/s burst speed (which you will be charged extra for using, assuming constant usage of your 70kbps bandwidth)
Personally, i am not averse to paying for pipe. But if i pay for the pipe, then i expect to be able to use the pipe i was sold for the purpose it was sold to me without being branded a 'problem user', a 'criminal' or a 'bandwidth hog'
Why don't the cable comanies just be honest about it and sell me a 70kbps pipe for $50/month, a 150 kbps pipe for $100 a month and a 1.5Mbps pipe for $1000/month?
Maybe because it doesn't sound like a very good deal at all?
In reality, the cable/ADSL companies are simply trying to limit aggregate bandwith usage to exactly what they used to have when the majority of their customers were on dialup.
Its quite likely you would be much better off with 2 channel-bonded 56k dialups if you are a heavy bandwidth user, while it is the light users who want small amounts of high-speed net access that benefit most from 'broadband'
And then they wonder why there is so much dark fiber laying around because of 'lack of demand'
Re:Broadband comapnies should be more honest (Score:2)
Because they are marketing based on max throughput, not on constant rate. If they sold you constant rate 70kbps, and you ended up using only 35kkbps, you'd ask for 1/2 your money back. But within those days, you might have hours of virtual dead time and then spikes as you download the latest isos, or whatever.
Its quite likely you would be much better off with 2 channel-bonded 56k dialups if you are a heavy bandwidth user, while it is the light users who want small amounts of high-speed net access that benefit most from 'broadband'
It's that kind of thinking (bonding data channels) that got ISDN started. =)
Nucking Futs! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ten years ago I was paying $19.99 a month for 2400 baud access. Five years ago I was paying 25$ a month for 28.8K access. This year I am paying $49 for 1.5Mbps access. That's an awesome deal. It's like moving from a studio apartment to a ten bedroom mansion for only twice the rent.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:We've seen the cable pricing model before! (Score:2)
RCN in San Francisco Bay Area (Score:5, Informative)
- cable tv
- broadband
- phone line
for about $80/month. No contracts!
All services are _great_. Trust me I know. I have been with AT&T and other DSL providers. By far RCN is far better. I only had to contact their customer service a couple of times at start and they were very knowledgeble. The average service rep knew about
Their upstream cap is around 700kbps (that cool compared to the 128kbps by AT&T and all other DSL providers). I get about 700-1500 kpbs downstream. I just use SSH but even if I ran a small FTP/webserver they are not that anal. I have LimeWire running and people have been downloading stuff off me @ crazy speeds (e.g 100 kBps, yes with a capital B). I don't share any illegal crap, just typical opensource programs and some copylefted MP3s.
If you are in the same area, please consider these guys.
Price Gouging? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a bunch of whiny geeks.
--sam
broadband isn't profitable... (Score:2, Insightful)
One issue that's been missed ... (Score:2)
In my own case, getting 1.5/128 from Charter was only affordable because I got a good package deal on cable TV, too. Raise the broadband rates and give me a ridiculous download cap like 3-5 gigs a month and I'll just go back to dial-up - more significatly to them, I'll also get rid of the cable access and get another satellite dish. They may be losing money from me as a broadband subscriber, but they're making money from me as a cable TV subscriber. Eliminate one, they eliminate both - cable broadband is the only reason I have cable TV.
It makes sense (Score:2)
Travoltus' Broadband murder/mayhem recipebook (Score:2)
Ingredients
1 market zone with 3 or more $49.95 DSL providers offering 768K down/128K up
50,000 potential customers
10,000 DSL subscribers
1 major cable company ready to offer 1.5 mbps up and down for $39.95/month
Pour the 1 market zone and 10,000 existing DSL subscribers into a, say, 200,000 person city. Then add in the 50,000 potential customers. Stir.
Now add the major cable company into the mix. Just pour it right on top and do not stir.
Let sit until the DSL customers and subscribers alike float right towards the cable company ingredient, seeking the el cheapo $39.95 and 1.5mbps up/down deal.
Stir.
The DSL ingredient will turn green, and then dark red, as the cable modem ingredient neutralizes them into bankruptcy and also makes your mix more sweet and also homogenous.
As the last DSL ingredient is neutralized, take note of how the cable modem ingredient changes color. The cost goes up to $69.95 a month, your upstream is cut to 128Kbps, you are slapped with usage fees for going over 1 kilobyte a month,
and your city is now screwed royally.
Welcome to capitalism.
Re:They have never gotten into my market (Score:2)
I started needing broadband w/ Linux
Then, I started working from home and needing to have a speedy connection to my Rackspace servers. Now, I VPN to various locations and broadband is essential to my livelihood. Essential enough that when searching for a house to move into, "location, location, location" became "location, location, broadband"
Re:Moderators: Mark parent +1 funny! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Repeat after me (Score:3, Insightful)
Would that be your attitude if your phone company did that? I doubt it since life in America virtually requires you to have a phone. (Which is why phone rates are so heavily controlled...)
The problem is that the internet is becoming a requirement in a lot of households. A lot of us have jobs that require us to have an active connection to the net. If the ISP's get too greedy, what do we do?
My situation, in particular, is a little more unique. I don't have a phone line, just a cell phone. If I got a phone line, it'd be almost strictly for getting on the net with. It'd cost between $20 and $30 a month for me to get the phone line, and another $10-$20 for internet service. I pay $55 for cable modem right now. If my cable modem gets too expensive, it won't suddenly get much cheaper for me to get 1/25th of service.
I could find myself in a spot of trouble if AT&T gets too greedy. Capitalism may work, but not without seriously screwing me in the process.
Re:Repeat after me (Score:2)
So get your job to pay for it. Work pays for my desk, my computer, my lighting, my heat, my phone... All requirments that must be met for most people to work for a company. If your job requires you to have internet access, make them pay for it. Duh.
Re:Repeat after me (Score:2)
In other words, McDonald's makes a reasonable assumption that you have a way of getting to work. They don't care how you do it, that's part of what your salary is for.
Re:Repeat after me (Score:2)
If you have a few social skills and good relations with your neighbors, throw up an 802.11b cloud, get a T-1 line and charge $60 a month for access. Get your customers first and then you'll end up having the same or more practical bandwidth, control over your own future (there's a lot more competition for T-1 lines) and you'll actually make a small profit you can bank in case you suddenly lose a lot of customers.
Re:Repeat after me; fuck that. (Score:2)
2) I am not on good terms with many of my neighbors.
3) What about my neighbors who are happy paying Charter $40 a month? Why should they pay me $60?
4) What about my neighbors who don't have any computers at all - geez, in 802.11 range, I think my market is about, one jerkwad plus myself.
5) Yeah, like I want to dick around trying to shoehorn an 802.11 card into everybody's busted ass old PII 133 running Windows 95, find a driver and make sure there's no interrupt conflicts.
6) Yeah, like I want to take phone calls at 2am because granny's email client wont connect, or Joe Bob can't download his pr0n. The T1 goes down and guess what, I'M responsible for the outage. Fuck that.
I suspect the solution is to move to Japan or Canada where the market forces that have drivin US Broadband services to $50/month apparently don't exist for some strange reason. . .
Re:Repeat after me (Score:2)
Re:Repeat after me (Score:2)
Is there any possiblity of bouncing the radio signal off the building?
Re:Repeat after me (Score:2)
That's a fair question. I don't mind if AT&T says "It'll cost you another $5 to maintain your service". It bugs me when they say "Despite our promises of unlimited bandwidth, we're charging you by the gig now." (Note: They haven't told me that, but there are rumors to that effect...)
It used to be that I'd save $10/mo. if I owned my own cable modem. According to what I've read recently (Note: Haven't personally verified this...) it'll cost $7 a month more to use a non-leased modem.
I damn near bought a cable modem because it'd pay for itself in a year. Now I'd be pissed to find that my 'investment' would end up costing me money. I haven't heard a good explanation as to why they'd charge more.
If this isn't a profitable business model for AT&T or anybody else, TELL ME THAT so I can make fair decisions about what I want to do! What's the point of jumping ship to DSL if they have the same problem?
Re:Repeat after me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Repeat after me (Score:2)
Actually, it is Capitalism. It is not a Free Market, which is, I think, what you meant to say. They are not the same thing, but are often confused, especially by Americans, due to our political leader's tendancy to mash Capitalism, Democracy, and the Free Market together into a single, nebulous ideology.
Why is it still Capitalism? because the goal of Capitalism is to amass Capital, and the best way to do that is by establishing a monopoly.
It's a small point, really. Other than that I completely agree with you.
Re:Repeat after me (Score:2)
Economics isn't about the little toy-models that you grab from game theory, it's about unthinkably complex open systems - if they can even be called systems - with limited and often incorrect information.
I'll tell you what part. (Score:2)
Re:Yes, master.... (Score:2)
Funny, those leftist pro-choicers want the stem cell variant that puts the maximum amount of money in the pockets of the drug companies. Who would have thought that?
Re:Fair Share? (Score:2)
Re:Pay per use is fair (Score:2)
It's still a question of degrees though.. you can't ever use more than that 64Kb "trickle". The only variable is time. With a broadband internet connection, there's a world of difference between Mom and Pop checking email and casual web surfing, and Joe L337 Haxor running a 24/7 Gnutella node, and downloading gigs of porn, isos, mp3s, and divx, know what I mean?
Re:the old cabling monopoly problem... (Score:2)
Because the courts just threw out that that part ot the Telecom Reform Act of 96.
Re:Not just price gouging, other coercive business (Score:2)
We won't go into the 8000 users hanging off a single router that was served by a pair of OC3's. That was 8000 users each expecting 1.53k/sec downloads. You do the math.
Cable modems were/are at least as bad. While I was on a cable modem system (a municipal system, who contracted out their cable modem service) The entire city - with about 1000 users - was served by 6 T1 lines. The only reason the service didn't suck all the time was because I was one of the few users who actually used their allocated bandwidth. That may be an extreme example, but it's not that different for the larger providers.
They ALL over-subscribe their services, and they still manage to lose money on them. Broadband (actually a misnomer in most cases) isn't cheap to provide. They have to raise prices to pay for the increased pipe the users are finally getting around to using. The monopolization doesn't help any, but simple economics is behind this one at least as much as their desire to see some black ink.
Re:Unpredictable Use (Score:2)
Re:Utility (Score:2)
Broadband is expensive? (Score:2, Insightful)
Try looking at commercial quality, clear-channel T1. $1800-3500/month.
And you think that cablemodem and DSL service is EXPENSIVE?
It's barely more than the cost of a second phone line and a decent dialup ISP! And you have the ability to pull down data at rates rivalling T1 throughput. For what? 1/30th to 1/60th the price?
As they said, less than 1% of the user base is accounting for over 30% of total traffic.
Now I'm not suggesting they go per-megabyte or anything. Far from it.
But if they divided the service into 3-4 pricing tiers, it might go a long way towards, if not relieving the bandwidth consumption issues, at least getting it on a basis where they're not losing money hand over fist. AND, it should allow them to have more accurate data on hand for future capacity planning.
And I don't mind paying a premium for premium service levels.
Re:Metered service (Score:2, Insightful)
Remeber if it is not profitable to do something a company won't do it for long, so if 15% of their customers are seriously impacting the bottom line, they want to do something that affects only the 15% that are unprofitable. The part of this that bothers me is that it smacks of the bait and switch. If you tell me something is unlimited, don't bitch when I use the crap out of it, So the companies either need to change their advertising or they need to suck it up. Of course they still want it both ways.
As for your cable tv example things just don't work that way, for the Cable company it cost nearly the same to send 120 chanesl as it does to send 50, while at the same time it costs less to send all 120 to you than to give you just the 8 that you want while at the same time giving your spanish speaking neighbor a measly 6 chanels that they can comfortably understand, and the religeous lady across the street some choice as to which thief to send her money to and always giving you the opportunity to watch something you would have never admited to wanting to a salesman (admit it you gotton hooked watching some guy install under floor heating). So what i am saying is that to give you only the TV chanels that you want it would end up costing you much more than you currently pay.