Google accused of 'free ride' - telcos want to block access to YouTube, unless..

probe

Telcos/ISPs want to be paid twice for the “service” they provide you – the latest iteration of this drumbeat is a story in Saturday’s Financial Times. Yet another reason for open fibre to the home – where you become your own ISP, using a Gigabit FTTP connection between your home/office and a network peering point. Shop around for ISPs. Drop a *astard ISP at the drop of a hat! De-monopolize the “last mile”.

“Some of Europe's leading telecoms groups are squaring up for a fight with Google over what they claim is the free ride enjoyed by the technology company's YouTube video-sharing service.

“Telefónica, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom all said Google should start paying them for carrying bandwidth-hungry content such as YouTube video over their networks.

“It underlines how Google's relationship with leading telecoms groups is becoming increasingly fractious, partly because YouTube video is fuelling an explosion of data traffic on their networks.”

More: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/94f9c3ba-4437-11df-b327-00144feab49a.html

Cabaal

Catch 22 really, if google didn't operate youtube and other services then the demand for Broadband "could" be less.

So if google pays ISP's for people using its (googles) services then does that mean boards.ie has to or I have to if people access my website.

Can't see their argument working

probe the ft.com website requires registration to view the story....so doubt many people will be bothered to reg to see it

copacetic

Back a couple of years when BBC player launched this was a reasonably big story

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7336940.stm

Telcos wanted BBC to fund them as it was saturating their networks.

probe

Cabaal wrote: »

probe the ft.com website requires registration to view the story....so doubt many people will be bothered to reg to see it

I can assure you I don't pay the FT a cent (and they don't pay me). I'm not registered. And I managed to read the full story. Use your head....! :-)

probe

"Rick Whitt, a senior policy director at Google in Washington, denied that the internet company was hitching a free ride.

"He said Google was spending large amounts on its own data networks to carry its traffic to the point where it is handed over to telecoms companies round the world."

While google makes itself available for peering in Ireland on INEX, which of the big Irish ISPs peers with google? :-) It would be dumb to suspect that Google is blocking eircom and UPC from peering with its network!

https://www.inex.ie/technical/peeringmatrix

upandcumming

A few ISPs might block it, a few won't and everyone will flock to the latter. Simple.

probe

upandcumming wrote: »

A few ISPs might block it, a few won't and everyone will flock to the latter. Simple.

In reality you only have two wireline ISPs - eircom and UPC. If everyone went on youtube over wireless connections the air interface would be saturated.

The rest of the ISPs are essentially re-sellers of eircom product.

probe

Cabaal wrote: »

probe the ft.com website requires registration to view the story....so doubt many people will be bothered to reg to see it

Interestingly this URL still works without registration where I am. Maybe it only forces registration from the country you are in?

Moriarty

probe wrote: »

In reality you only have two wireline ISPs - eircom and UPC. If everyone went on youtube over wireless connections the air interface would be saturated.

The rest of the ISPs are essentially re-sellers of eircom product.

Which is entirely irrelevant when we're talking about content filtering as that's handled fully and without interference internally in each ISP. Eircom have no control over whether any of the other bitstream providers block or don't block any particular networks.

Sponge Bob

In 1999 the biggest search engine in the world was called Lycos ( anyone remember them ??) .

Telefonica bought it for $13bn in 1999 and ran it into the ground at a rate of $4bn a YEAR because they were unable to monetise searching. It was effectively gone by 2002.

This should have been a hint to Telefonica to stick to what they do at least reasonably well, namely providing bitpipes. Now we have this pack of incompetent pansies whining to the FT

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/94f9c3ba-4437-11df-b327-00144feab49a.html

César Alierta, chairman of Telefónica, said Google should share some of its online advertising revenue with the telecoms groups, so as to compensate the network operators for carrying the technology company's bandwidthhungry content over their infrastructure.

Piss off César, you lot are failures.

DonkeyStyle \o/

“Telefónica, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom all said Google should start paying them for carrying bandwidth-hungry content such as YouTube video over their networks.

Boo-hoo, enforce a download cap and limited speeds on your users then if it's such a problem for your network.
They smell money and want a cut... let's be honest. It's the same reason big companies get sued left right and centre over stupid shít.

probe

Moriarty wrote: »

Which is entirely irrelevant when we're talking about content filtering as that's handled fully and without interference internally in each ISP. Eircom have no control over whether any of the other bitstream providers block or don't block any particular networks.

You have market dominance. You block google and other tube sites. And pull the plug on bitstreamers using your network to "level the playing field" and you can let the arguments run through the court system for ten years or more with appeal after appeal. As eircom has done in the past.

probe

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote: »

Boo-hoo, enforce a download cap and limited speeds on your users then if it's such a problem for your network.
They smell money and want a cut... let's be honest. It's the same reason big companies get sued left right and centre over stupid shít.

The new Cisco CRS-3 carrier router can handle 322 TB / sec and costs about €60,000. It can handle a download of the entire US Library of Congress in about 1 second.

Video is not a problem for networks in 2010.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_030910.html

Sponge Bob

probe wrote: »

The new Cisco CRS-3 carrier router can handle 322 TB / sec and costs about €60,000.

And 10 x 40Gbit lambdas on one fibre.

watty

Google pays cost of connecting YouTube to network at their ends.

Users pay cost of connecting at their own end.

Users may have cap etc. I can't see the problem. YouTube is NOT a p2p parasite like some software from Sky, BBC, C4 etc. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kontiki ).

If Google was using a parasite like Kontiki to avoid their own distribution costs, then there would be merit in the arguement. But they don't. They carry over 10% of the world's Internet traffic on their own network. I'm no Google Fan, but YouTube traffic is the wrong stick to try and beat them with.

However if we want to discuss Privacy Regulation and Monoploy advertising charges and the cut Google give to websites hosting their adverts, that would be a hugely different story. Google are not exploiting ISPs. They ARE exploiting end users (privacy), advertisers (charges) and website providers (payments). Look ath their profits, the lack of clarity on pricing and lack of clarity on privacy and security. You are mad if you use Google's Cloud based application services (gmail, google docs or whatever) for anything mission critical or private.

watty

probe wrote: »

The new Cisco CRS-3 carrier router can handle 322 TB / sec and costs about €60,000. It can handle a download of the entire US Library of Congress in about 1 second.

Video is not a problem for networks in 2010.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_030910.html

It is where the incumbent has obsolete ATM and Pri-ISDN and little gigabit IP based fibre for most of their backhaul.

It is where users are sold Mobile Internet on an infrastructure designed for 12kbps per user voice and not data as Mobile Broadband. A phone mast can support about 3 to 6 users watching video.

Cabaal

probe wrote: »

You have market dominance. You block google and other tube sites. And pull the plug on bitstreamers using your network to "level the playing field" and you can let the arguments run through the court system for ten years or more with appeal after appeal. As eircom has done in the past.

You block google and you'll get so many complaints from your end users that your head will never stop spinning, also comreg, ofcom or whoever applys to what country your in.

Blocking google or youtube is a non-option for these companys and they bloody know it

vibe666

yeah, but they want the monies. google is the cash cow, lets face it at this stage for the average joe, google *is* the internet, and they want in on the action.

if you want to find something on the internet and you don't know any better you "google it" and check out the first few results.

if i could think of a way to get in on some of that action i'd be suing them too!

probe

watty wrote: »

You are mad if you use Google's Cloud based application services (gmail, google docs or whatever) for anything mission critical or private.

Exceedingly dumb perhaps. There are a lot of dumb people out there that would pass a sanity test. (pedantic mode = off). Eejits.

probe

watty wrote: »

It is where the incumbent has obsolete ATM and Pri-ISDN and little gigabit IP based fibre for most of their backhaul.

It is where users are sold Mobile Internet on an infrastructure designed for 12kbps per user voice and not data as Mobile Broadband. A phone mast can support about 3 to 6 users watching video.

You need a far beefier backhaul (compared with SMS and voice) to support wireless internet and you need masses of spectrum or cellsites every few hundred metres if the world moves to multi-media mobile internet. Visual blight and needless EMR polluting every country.

Wireless is a solution for casual internet use (eg checking emails on a train or while visiting a client). It is not a replacement of wireline internet.

Sponge Bob

probe wrote: »

Wireless is a solution for casual internet use (eg checking emails on a train or while visiting a client). It is not a replacement of wireline internet.

Except in Ireland where policy is to 'big' up the penetration of this substandard technology and where smart green policy is to foist this 'solution' on rural Ireland as an endgame.

An endgame it certainly will be ...for the rural economy.

who_me

This sounds backwards to me.

Sites like YouTube create demand for fast broadband. Without sites like that, most people would be happy paying a few euros a month for a 1Mbps line for casual browsing and email.

The ISPs must have a strange business model if the creation of demand for their products is a bad thing.

Nody

I'd be more worried about it going in the other direction, i.e. Google, Sky Sports TV and similar places tell ISPs to pay them to get access to their content; if not you're in the slow file (i.e. we peer if you pay, if not you go on this overly congested line instead).

generalmiaow

Nody wrote: »

I'd be more worried about it going in the other direction, i.e. Google, Sky Sports TV and similar places tell ISPs to pay them to get access to their content; if not you're in the slow file (i.e. we peer if you pay, if not you go on this overly congested line instead).

I wouldn't say it's outside the ethics portfolio of content providers (which google is not) to do that, but it's far less likely given the trends of the last few years.