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[ NNSquad ] Re: Comments on NNSquad Purpose


cutting users off at a certain amount is simple,

This is unfriendly. If we did this, we would inconvenience and likely lose the customer. Better just to restrict the improper activity, which often either is going on without the user's knowledge or is recreational rather than essential.
Again, this is about disclosure.

charging them more for going over said amount is simple.

No, that's NOT simple. It requires a much more complex billing system. And users want to pay a flat rate.
I've got no sympathy if you cant write a billing system that can handle this. I've written telecom billing systems in the past, and they're just not that complicated. Every colocation and data provider has the ability to bill clients based on usage, and this just works. There's no significant burden to writing this type of billing system.

Those prohibitions are necessary to the survival of our ISP. 
I disagree.

We have the right to refuse to do business with anyone, and we will not and cannot do business with people who abuse our network or use it to engage in criminal activity.
In Canada you don't. We have non-discrimination provisions in our telecommunications legislation. This recognizes the fact that for an ISP to operate they must use public utilities, roads, easements, and legacy infrastructure paid for when telecom was publicly owned in this country. It is up to the RCMP not the ISP to enforce the laws, and their requirement is simply to comply with court orders -- nothing more. They're not the judge, jury and executioner of web appropriateness -- and nor should they be.

That's the bottom line, we're sticking to it, and no ISP in his right mind would back down on this.
Good thing we're here then...
It's our network, and we have the right to grant users access to it on our terms. If they do not like it, they can go elsewhere. We are not a monopoly; in fact, we are the REASON that there is not a monopoly. If a user cannot abide by reasonable terms of service, we encourage him or her to go to our competitors. Let them destroy the local cable company's network by seeding a torrent -- if the cable company is foolish enough to permit this. I have a family to feed.
Maybe your markets different than ours. I paid taxes for our network, the roads it works upon, the easements they're granted and we even gave them a monopoly to be the only lines running down the street (presumably to prevent wires running everywhere). This makes them MY network as the tax payer, and makes the ISPs simply a private partnership operating it. They get to bill for the service, in exchange for maintenance -- but make no mistake, it cannot operate without taxpayer involvement for which we will expect social considerations, not just a mind to corporate profits.

Further, in my market I cannot go elsewhere. I have exactly two choices -- the cable company or the phone company. Welcome to the duopoly. There are three wires running down my road (cable, phone and power), and as a business, no one is permitted to run another wire.

In some markets (not mine) there is service layering, but the actual wires owner still sets the policy and still bans the users. If a user is banned from one ISP they're banned from all resellers too. Real competition for sure.
or who will be allowed to be a competitor with carrier-offered services like VoIP and Video offerings.

We don't engage in anti-competitive activities. This is one area in which we do believe carriers must be "neutral." But "neutrality" does not mean allowing abuse.

Our ISPs do engage in this activity, many US ISPs have engaged in this activity, and many more are drooling over the prospects of a non-neutral, content-extorted internet. Phrases like 'my pipes' and 'free shipping' and 'transmission tariff' all go to re-enforce our position that what the ISPs want is not benign but in-fact anti-competitive.

Again, though, your definition of abuse and mine differ. You think a user using his cap is abusive. I don't... but maybe theres' common ground on spammers, viruses and worms. These are the type of things deserving of regulation.

I define what is appropriate in my venue. And so does the law.
And because ISPs have misused this privilege, we're asking for that control to be remanded to the federal government.
Maybe you had a different sort of upbringing than I did, but when I grew up I was taught that if you see someone stealing or otherwise violating the law you stop and/or report it. You don't tolerate it or turn a blind eye to it.
Again, there are many legitimate uses for all of these technologies and we have the right (in law) to assume they will be used for lawful purposes. Users also have a right to privacy which I'll speak more on below.

Again, if you do not like the fact that I am ethical and value the quality of my service, you are free to choose another provider.
No I'm not. Duopoly. See previous comments.
However, a provider that allows the sort of activity in which you want to engage is likely to have poor and unreliable service.
If bits are bits and bytes are bytes and you get what you pay for, no, the service should be nice and fast... and I'll know what I'm getting and have the ability to pay for more or less service as appropriate.

I'd argue that your not having access to more upstream bandwidth at a reasonable price is hurting your QoS.

There would never be enough. This illisit software is viral. The abuse would consume as much bandwidth as it was allowed to.
If thats how users want to use their service, thats their choice. It will consume as much as the users want it to. This isn't some virus 'stealing' bandwidth, p2p users recognize that the applications use their service to upload data. They agree to this when they agree to use the app. If this is a problem for your business model, then its your business model that is the problem.

If the user is billed for their usage in a fair manner, than P2P will reflect what it really is, a service that consumers pay for through a portion of the bandwidth they are willing to buy.

This does not work when access is sold at a flat rate. You are coming close to saying that you would like to mandate the end of flat rate pricing.
Works for cell phones, many of which work on flat rate pricing. We even have nifty inventions like rollover, weekend and evening pricing, etc. Maybe for an ISP it makes sense to tell their customers, yes you have a 30gig/mo cap, but all the downloading you do from 11pm to 9am doesn't count towards it. This is all up to you guys in the market place to figure out -- all we want is to know what we're buying and for it to be non-discriminatory.

You've just explained how the user doesn't pay a flat rate. There are different levels of DSL, Cable, Leased lines -- even different caps and throughputs on all those mediums.

These are just different flat rates. 
And they're all different 'plans'.

The user should be allowed to use the service that they pay for --

They are. And our terms of service clearly define what they are paying for. If they try to use things which they are not paying for, they are in breach of contract.
You just said you throttled back users to 128 when they use too much. This doesn't sound clearly defined.

"Increase privacy?" You must be kidding. A "torrent," by definition, is intended to be distributed far and wide.
Its clearly not intended to increase privacy for the tracker, but for the downloader. My ISP has no need to know what torrents streams I watch, especially when they're in competition with many of these new media streams. We have a right to privacy, and to use techniques to technologically increase this privacy.

Not true. Please do not profess to understand the details of our business unless you are in it.
I am in the field, both as a former VoIP architect, a content studio, and a new media producer. I understand what I pay for bandwidth. John has explained his numbers, which I find correct. There's not much point debating the actual figures, these items need professional study -- but even still, it doesn't change the fact that you can bill transparently no matter what the actual cost is, without being prejudicial to applications or services offered over the network.

Kevin McArthur