I was wondering today why the cost of using the internet is so high.  It seems to me to be an artificially set price rather than coinciding with any real cost to move the data from point A to point B.  Is that a fair thing to think?

I realize there is cost for R&D and actually laying the pipes and/or equipment involved but after that it's all free money isn't it?  I wonder how I could get into this free money game? 

Laying/maintaining the infrastructure (for wired connections) is a massive cost though. For something like 4g, less of a cost but then there's the cost of buying the licenses to use whatever frequencies from the government.

I suspect in a few years either everything will go mobile (4g can be extremely fast and kinda makes cabled routers and wifi connections look a bit stupid).

OR, less likely but cooler, it may all go decentralised and, aside from some very fat connections which plug into the rest of the net we'll just operate a big mesh network. My router will talk to my neighbours routers which will talk to its neighbours routers etc. etc. Maybe using wired and 4g connections to plug the gaps.

</baseless speculation>

Oh yeah, no doubt about the up front cost.  But over here there are only a handful of companies that provide the majority of the nations internet access, the government has pretty much given them a legal monopoly.  So even after they recouped their investment 10X over they have no motive to reduce the cost.

I was just thinking about the mesh idea.  From what I can remember there was an open source or crowd sourced thing where you'd join and become part of the mesh.  I haven't heard about it in a long time, it must not have been a hit.

I must admit it's something I've mulled over.

Especially when some ISPs charge a fortune for decent bandwidth yet others (but very few now) offer unlimited for a decent much lower price, though probably offer better support.

Whilst people will moan about Sky/Murdoch over here I do now believe they offer a reasonable service which is actually unlimited. I guess they can offer great prices and unlimited bandwidth because they have so many customers so the average data shifted per user isn't too bad meaning they can absorb heavy users.

Also, they definitely need to offer unlimited bandwidth considering they provide a load of catch-up TV services.

That's kind of the Catch-22 isn't it.  If you offered a great, affordable service you'd make money in the volume of users.  Yet most providers keep their prices higher and limit the amount of customers willing to pay for their services.  I've always been a believer in spreading the burden over all users and not trying to get rich off of a only a few.

I was actually very close to starting a WISP in my town when I was still in business.  The major stumbling block was the terrain.  This is a mountainous area and getting customers in the valleys would probably be more work and more cost than it would be worth. 

Yeah mesh networking is inherently inefficient since you're going through way more nodes than you normally would to get anywhere. But that becomes less of an issue as speeds and the tech improve.

There are a few cities (I know Bristol has one) with open, volunteer-run mesh networks. Aimed at poorer people I think, instead of paying an ISP you just hook up to the mesh and you're away. Which I think is awesome. I also know it's used in the 3rd world a fair bit.

Regarding the monopoly, depends what you mean. I think a monopoly on the hardware is a good idea. Otherwise you're going to have 5 companies laying fibre in the same street, which is fucking stupid. But yeah it kinda allows the owners of the hardware to charge what they like to the service providers.

I really think internet access should be a public service paid for through taxes. It's becoming as important and central to our lives and businesses as roads are.

I don't hate Murdoch because his services are shit. I hate Murdoch because he's a loathsome man who controls a massive proportion of the media in the first world. And as such will not touch anything he owns.

Nothing here is provided by tax dollars, well, unless you count our fantastic online backup!

What usually happens is a big player will go into an area and lay the fiber (I'm talking backbone, and also cell towers) and then lease bandwidth and spectrum to the other companies.  This is something they have to do because of the monopoly the government has given them.  I'm not sure how fiber to the curb would work, but I can't imagine multiple companies laying fiber to the same house, let alone the same neighborhood.  That and the fact that fiber is still pretty rare over here.  It's huge news when Google picks a city to light up.

And that's cities I'm talking about.  Rural areas, like where I live are in a pinch.  You basically take what you can and smile.  I was really hoping that the internet over power lines thing that made news years ago would have taken off, everyone (well almost) has electricity so using existing infrastructure would make total sense and reduce the overall costs.

I dunno, I think there has to be a better way, and I don't think flying balloons is the better way I'd pick.  I wish I was rich, I'd love to come up with answers to things like this.

S'why I think the mobile networks are a good bet. Doesn't require digging up the streets, doesn't require additional infrastructure (i.e. the towers are going up anyway, unlike fibre) and we're (unlike with copper wire) not close to utilising the available bandwidth fully.

Was talking to a friend the other day who's got 60Mb both up and down on 4g. That's 10x my downstream and 100x my upstream. I suspect if 4g (and its successors) become the normal way to access the net then prices will plummet.

That's what I mean. Many people avoid Sky because of Murdoch, and I agree with that in principle, I don't like him or his empire. But when they're the only ones who can offer a service I want/require (probably stretching it a bit saying require) I pick them because they are really cheap in comparison.

I really wanted to stay with Be and was willing to pay that bit extra not to move to Sky. Then O2 and Be got sold to Sky so there wasn't much choice unfortunately.

Oh aye, I don't judge anyone who does use that stuff. Much.

:Y

I despise Murdoch and all he stands for and represents. Truly, truly hate his empire.

But Sky gave me an internet connection when I had no money and all they wanted was a tenner to connect the line, when BT wanted to charge about £150.


I am a bad moralist :((

/////// (hugleft) ////////

(tbh I'd cave too in that situation :Y )

We waited 6 months from moving into this house, 10 years ago, to finally have a broadband connection. After all this time, it still achieves heady download speeds of 1MB on a good day. It's looking like we're not even a candidate for the HS broadband rollout because some of the village can get 2MB, so we might not qualify. We're only 5 miles from a city and close to an exchange, but still using ancient copper wiring.

I rarely bother clicking links to video.

Weak. Weak. Weak. :@ It's easy to pretend to have principles when they're never actually tested.

You lot could at least copy those poncy twerps who do carbon offsetting and do Murdoch offsetting - for every pound you give him, you have to convince ten people to stop buying/reading the Sun.

Just because you won't get a phoneline. You can't take part in this discussion.

Never claimed not to be weak :Y

Also we don't want them to stop reading the sun. We'll need an easy way to identify them when the time comes.

That's not principles, that's stupidity. :P

I'm proving of Lucy's point about 4G being a viable option - 3G is mostly good enough for browsing and video, so reliable 4G would be more than fine. (Disagree on prices plummeting though; companies will charge what they can get away with.)

While a minority of people care about/want unlimited/lots of data use they can charge what they want and call it a premium feature.

When it's the norm and everyone who currently had broadband wants that then it become a commodity and competition kicks in more fiercely. And 'what companies can get away with' won't be very much.

Although yeah, that relies on there being more than like 3 carriers -_-

I might not be remembering right, and things were probably different back then due to lower data usage, but did operators charge extra to use 3G when it first came into service? I don't remember them doing so. Haven't checked lately but I think EE charged a premium, certainly over Orange and T-Mobile.

I have read that when Three start 4G service on 800MHz they won't be charging any extra. Basically if you have a phone that supports it you'll get 4G speeds when it's turned on.