[AusNOG] CloudFlare: The Relative Cost of Bandwidth Around the World

[Ben Grubb]

"That Telstra has a lot of customers, and is using them to grab some extra
money, isn't great, and it should be publicised.  But it ain't an issue of
net neutrality, unless Telstra (or someone else) is actually doing (or is
planning on doing) the sort of things that US carriers *are* doing."

They perhaps aren't slowing down services or prioritising one over another
like some in the US, no. Though they were planning
<http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/telstra-to-clamp-down-on-peertopeer-20130205-2dvus.html>
to do that a while back and the ACCC eventually raised its eyebrows
<http://www.afr.com/p/technology/accc_takes_aim_at_internet_slowdowns_DNxYfamGg7IZdqO1IcZC1L>
.

But aren't they speeding up those who pay and therefore creating an
artificial slow lane for every other service?

Your service has to go through more hops unless you pay them or a transit
provider money. This happens around the globe with other monopolies, sure,
but it doesn't mean it's right. Hence by question over whether we should
regulate interconnection.

"Frankly, if Netflix wanted to really put the cat amongst the pigeons, it'd
come in with a great service and pay Telstra for "transit" (only actually
using them as a last-resort provider for routes it can't get elsewhere, to
minimise traffic costs) -- for a time."

They could so that.... but why would they when they could just open in a
market where it's cheaper before here?

As CloudFlare points out, it's 20X Europe for bandwidth here and Telstra is
apparently to blame for a lot of this.



Regards,
Ben Grubb


On 27 August 2014 09:28, Matt Palmer <mpalmer at hezmatt.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 12:08:53AM +1000, Ben Grubb wrote:
> > Net neutrality has barely rated a mention in Australia since 2008.
>
> That's because Net Neutrality, in the terms it is discussed in the US,
> isn't
> an issue here.  No provider here can (currently) pull the sort of
> shenanigans that the big US providers can, because if they did they would
> lose a lot of market share, because we have competition.  The core issue in
> the debate in the US isn't the Internet, it's monopolies behaving badly.
> I'm not talking about "dominant market positions", either (a la Telstra),
> but rather honest-to-goodness "we're the phone^Wcable company, we don't
> have
> to care" exploitation of the fact that there is only one provider of
> Internet services across large portions of the US.
>
> That Telstra has a lot of customers, and is using them to grab some extra
> money, isn't great, and it should be publicised.  But it ain't an issue of
> net neutrality, unless Telstra (or someone else) is actually doing (or is
> planning on doing) the sort of things that US carriers *are* doing.
>
> Frankly, if Netflix wanted to really put the cat amongst the pigeons, it'd
> come in with a great service and pay Telstra for "transit" (only actually
> using them as a last-resort provider for routes it can't get elsewhere, to
> minimise traffic costs) -- for a time.  Collect up a huge pile of Telstra
> customers, then say "oh, we've realised that it isn't cost-effective to
> service Telstra customers their Netflix, so we'd suggest moving to another
> provider because Telstra customers are going to lose their Netflix as of
> date X".  I don't *know* what would happen, but I'd suspect that, given
> that
> people have a lot more choice in ISP than they do in movie provider,
> Telstra
> would lose a lot more customers than Netflix would.  And, given that
> Netflix
> would no longer be paying for Telstra "transit", it'd be a net win on the
> balance sheet.
>
> Normally I wouldn't imagine any company doing that sort of thing, but given
> Netflix' recent forays into displaying "Your video is shit because $ISP is
> congested" messages (something I'd long-thought they *should* do, but never
> imagined they *would* do) I think there's some small chance they might
> actually do something like that.  They can't do it in the US, because over
> there, as much as you might *want* to change ISPs, you physically *can't*.
> Over here... not so much.
>
> - Matt
>
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