[LINK] Australian ISPs offer US advice, smugness, on net neutrality

[Michael Skeggs mike@bystander.net]

A large driver of the bandwidth caps in Oz, and the lack in the US, is
the historical peering arrangements. An American start-up ISP could
peer into a major node and get the vast bulk of their traffic free, in
Australia they need to pay for every drop of transit.
The various regional peering points here tried to get around it, with
IMO limited success against the gang of four.
In the US I am aware the big players are now operating peering
policies that only allow no cost peering with similar scaled ISPs, but
the horse had bolted in the late 1990s to the point where unlimited
was the default offering for home users.
Regards,
Michael


2008/10/1 Scott Howard <scott at doc.net.au>:
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 4:10 PM, Stilgherrian <stil at stilgherrian.com> wrote:
>
>> And let's add in the idiocy of iPhone plans with appallingly small
>> data allowances...
>
>
> Hmm.. that chestnut again...
>
> As luck would have it I went into an AT&T store yesterday with a friend
> while he bought an iPhone.  The plan he ended up selecting was the unlimited
> "minutes" (ie, calls), unlimited text, "unlimited" data.  It cost US$149.95
> per month, which today equals about A$183 per month.  That doesn't include
> the ability to sync with his corporate Exchange mail system (US$15/month
> extra), and despite being unlimited data, does NOT allow using the phone as
> a modem connected to a computer.
>
> The equivalent Optus plan?  A$129 per month, including 3 GB of data.  And as
> far as I'm aware that includes Exchange sync, and no specific restrictions
> around using it as a modem.
>
> ie, the Australian plan was around 30% cheaper than the US equivalent, with
> the only difference being unlimited v's 3GB data.
>
> OK, so 3GB isn't "unlimited", but isn't that exactly what we're talking
> about here - the fact that "unlimited" isn't always the best option?
>
> For what it's worth, 3GB/month is around 30 hours/week of 128kb/sec Internet
> radio...
>
>  Scott
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