Saturday, April 4. 2009The Beginning Of The End; The End Of The Beginning.......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 Trackbacks
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G'day John
It will be interesting to see what impact IPREDator has as it becomes more popular. http://www.geek.com/articles/news/the-pirate-bay-to-offer-true-online-anonymity-with-ipredator-20090325/ It's a paid-for VPN anonymising product. I guess like many things on the Internet; as soon as someone makes a block; someone else finds a way around it. On the negative side, I'm not sure what impact it will have on your network. On the positive side, you wouldn't get AFACT notices to worry about. Comment (1)
Im no expert at all on news feeds, but after reading Steve's post also - it seems to confirm my understanding in a basic sense.
The people that want "free" news feeds - want the binary feeds. Not the text based discussions, which would of course be tiny amounts of data in todays youtube world. Text discussions can be had by email lists, blogs or forums and use such a minescule amount of data that no one would worry about it. Unless news groups have become the popular way of distributing linux distrubutions - arent they simply just another way of distributing copyrighted material? I can understand that the 'caching' concept and economies of scale that come with hosting your own news server would bring benefits to your customers if enough of them used it. This would be not dissimiliar to your current p2p caching system. What I dont understand is why you would even entertain the concept of 'banning p2p' and then providing news feed where people could simply download their copyrighted files from. perhaps im missing something... Comment (1)
Exetel has no interest in banning any type of traffic.
My speculation was that maybe governemnts all round the world will ban it based on its use for copy right theft. If 'non-signature'P2P was to be banned then what would various ISPs do? Knowing less than nothing about 'newsfeeds' personally (never used one/have no idea what they are used for) I only used Astraweb in the context of providing a legally 'clean' source of downloads. Comments (3)
If governments ban non-signature P2P, what will the next step be as the file traders move underground and use encrypted VPNs?
Is it really possible for VPN traffic to be banned? Comment (1)
If getting customers is the main goal then what u need is more agents and perhaps ads on TV/radio like all the other large telco's have.
Sure you'll no doubt get a bunch of technically inept customers with which you want to avoid, but a customer is $$$ which then means u can reduce my plan I'd rather the cost of a plan be reduced than have added quota, NTP servers, steam servers or even WoW crap. Comment (1)
To be honest, I think P2P is a bit like water: No matter what obstacle you put in it's path it'll just find another way. The only thing that could ever diminish it in any meaningful way would be a new business model by the rights holders that removes the need or desire to infringe. Who knows if that'll ever happen.
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John ,
Exetel is walking a tightrope whilst people seek a refuge from high prices during this economic downturn which forces people to cut their household expenditure - Exetel will Flourish. BUT Should P2P not be able to be accessed through Exetel due to AFACT affecting current followed Exetel procedure -- then Exetel will be one of the ISPs affected the most, due to the type of customers attracted over the years by large offpeak download allowances. When you offer large download allowances Exetel will attract large downloading customers. You need Usenet Premium feed offered if P2P is ever stopped / blocked or otherwise affected or altered by Exetel. When someone downloads off Usenet they do not share that file whilst downloading -- saving Exetel on upload costs from customers, they also do not connect to many users to download files, just their Usenet Supplier. The stopping of P2P by ISPs will affect Exetel more than most ISP.... Comment (1)
Perhaps you're right - I disagree.
I think we have prepared for such an eventuality for five years and can deal with whatever comes, if anything, better than any other ISP who hasn't put in place a contingency plan for various eventualities. I have been wrong before. Comments (3)
I believe people use P2P for two main reasons, it is free and they know about it. If a binary newsfeed was free I am sure people would switch once they discovered it and see how fast the downloads can be.
The ISP benefits by less traffic going out as their is almost no upload and by losing the copyright/theft problem as usenet is not currently monitored. If it's affordable then bring it on. Comment (1)
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Joannah http://2gbmemory.net Comment (1)
I do believe Skype uses p2p so would that get blocked as well ?
Comment (1)
I'm simply specualting - I wouldn't know.
I think Skype will run into trouble with the carriers real soon now. Comments (3)
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