John Linton or just one more inexplicable peak on the roller coaster charts of the DOW?....and will it lead to the total ban on P2P file sharing - at least by Exetel?
I was cheered to read this earlier today:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123875422560786291.html
as there is seldom anything even vaguely optimistic in the financial media around the world. (I do realise that for 5.1 million Americans a stock market chart is irrelevant to their personal circumstances.) Exetel has yet to notice any 'slow down' in its order intakes across various segments though we have been the 'beneficiary' of 'emergency' orders from two separate small communications providers ceasing business leaving a number of business customers with no SHDSL services. Despite the statements emanating from the current 'Federal Government' - which tend to swing wildly from "nothing to worry about" to "we'll all be rooned" - depending on which financial advice comic book (sorry, graphic novel) they last read - business is better than it's ever been for Exetel pretty much 'across the board' as far as the first three months of this calendar year are concerned.
So despite having to pony up the payment for the new floor space we are buying in North Sydney later this month and additional equipment for the Melbourne PoP and the set up of the Hobart PoP we are inclined to view the financial future (at least as it relates to Exetel's tiny part of it) more sanguinely than we have for over a year. One of the suggestions we received a week or so ago (via the suggestion box) was for a free (to the customer) Astraweb premium newsfeed. Now, similar suggestions have been made in the past and we have rejected them for all the reasons set out by Steve in his blog here:
http://steve.blogs.exetel.com.au/index.php?/archives/182-No-News-is-Good-News.html#comments
which are, basically, a long list of reasons why such a service is not financially viable. However I asked Steve to open a discussion on this topic because there may be reasons why we might like to do this despite the many sound reasons that have existed in the past that has made it financially, as well as operationally, impossible for us to do. Please, should you have technical comments, suggestions or advice on the benefits of offering a premium newsfeed then please share them with Steve via that particular blog entry....I simply don't have the technical competence to either understand the details or be able to reply to questions about a possible news feed.
My rationale for believing that there may now be a sensible case for providing a news service is based on, partly the dog's breakfast iiNet is currently making of its defence of the AFACT law suit (and therefore the possible consequences) and partly based on the dramatic fall in US IP bandwidth transit costs and the costs of EMC raid arrays.
Exetel, since Mach 2004, has been slowly building an off peak (and by that I mean a true off peak period of 12 hours of every day of every week with major IP capacity) capability that as of April 2009 is currently at 60 gb per month. It has taken us five years and more than a few problems along the way but we have been able to sustain it for five years and we have plans to increase the current 60 gb allowance further as time goes by.
I have read various comments over the years about how unnecessary such a large amount of "off peak" allowance is. I have never believed that is the case, as the Exetel period extends to 12 noon each day a fair bit of Exetel's customer's "off peak" is what other ISPs deem to be "peak" and that in itself represents a major additional benefit to every Exetel user allowing them to use a lower cost plan with Exetel because their pre-12 noon usage doesn't need to be included in their plan and therefore they can use a lower cost plan. Exetel also was the object of a great deal of vituperation in various areas of the communications marketplaces for publicly stating that it was going to use hardware and software to control P2P usage on its network - (other comms providers were already doing that but simply denied doing it).
However they weren't our main reasons for embarking on this long and quite often difficult course of action - which still has some way to go. We took a view that, at some time, the main P2P usage would financially damage the recording, movie and software industries so badly that they would find a way of putting a stop to it. While not having any real idea of when or if there would be a major problem with P2P usage in legal or regulatory terms 5 years ago we were very aware of the dangers that may have happened and, 5 years later, pretty much have now happened - or at least have begun to happen. The other thing that has happened, and was always going to happen so no 'points' for making that prediction, was that IP bandwidth and caching hardware prices would continue to fall.
So let's speculate that AFACT wins the current law suit against iiNet and that subsequntly a federal Australian government enshrines that decison in some clear cut legislation that has severe repercussions on an ISP whose users infringe copyright. What to do in such circmstances?
Well, of course, one thing to do is to prohibit all P2P traffic on your network because you have the means to do that and several years experience of being able to do it with 'pin point accuracy'. Effective to keep your ISP completely free from any legal problems and not going to concern the vast majority of your adult users (the ones who pay the bills for their children who are the main offenders in terms of copyright breach). Unfortunately your adult users who do base their intenet use around copyright breaches aren't going to be very happy with any ISP that took that action and will leave to go to an ISP that doesn't take such notice of the laws of Australia.
What percentage of any ISP's customer base would that be? Impossible for me to know but I'm sure other ISPs would have a better idea than I do. If it's more than 20% I would be surprised but not shocked but, as I said, I really have no idea. Would Exetel survive if it lost 20% of its ADSL customers 'overnight'? Yes - and would quite possibly become a more profitable company (not that is an aim of ours).
However that returns us to the point of this meandering exposition on how the falling price of IP and RAID together with a more optimistic financial outlook melds with a customer's suggestion for 'free' newsfeeds.
We could, as an example only, comply with any Federal legislaton affecting P2P by prohibiting it's use on our network (we know how to do that). We could, now it is more financially feasible, provide for a small charge, an Astraweb premium feed service that could only be used in the 12 midnight to 12 noon daily period.
I think there's a pretty reasonable chance that P2P will remain in use but will be signature based for 'legal' content (such as Microsoft's Opsys etc) with the illegal material being identified as breaching copyright and thus capable of being "terminated" by any ISP that decided to do that.
I actually think there's more than a 'pretty reasonable chance' of that happening.
Any suggestions you can make to Steve to improve his 'case' for a free Astraweb service from Exetel would be appreciated:
http://steve.blogs.exetel.com.au/index.php?/archives/182-No-News-is-Good-News.html#comments