Fix Bend Broadband - FixBBB

I hate to push the recently posted video featuring the incredibly well-spoken Walt Mossberg down a post, but I wanted to say a few things before the protest on Saturday. This article I’ve written is being posted jointly between the Bend gamer blog deadgopher.com (Robin), and FixBBB.com (Justin). It is an attempt to inform as many people as possible as to how great a threat capping bandwidth is becoming to our lifestyle and the people who work hard to make it possible, even if we don’t realize it.

It’s no secret, at least to the people I know, and readers of my blog, that I am an advocate of digital distribution. It saves space on my shelves and provides me fast access to a large selection of games and music, including titles that are no longer available locally. I save money by not driving to Best Buy or Gamestop, and I don’t have to pray that a popular new title is in stock if I didn’t pre-order. Those are just some of the benefits the consumer enjoys by purchasing media from a digital distribution service.

The developers and artists receive many benefits from digital distribution as well. They make more money from each sale because they don’t have to pay packaging, shipping, or even publishing costs. At most, the digital distribution service takes a small commission from each sale in order to keep the service active — much smaller than the costs of producing and selling physical media. Since the media is digital, there is no chance of selling out, resulting in more sales.

Let’s say you’re an indie game developer with the next big indie sleeper hit. It’s a 2GB download priced at $10, delivered from your BendBroadband business connection. It’s got all the bells and whistles: DirectX 10, voiceovers, great music and gameplay. You’re not sure how well your game will sell, if at all, but word of mouth spreads and you do pretty well for yourself at 500 copies sold in the first month. You’ve just made a cool $5,000 — and your internet bill contains $1,275 of overages, over a fifth of your profit. If you’re working full time on your project, these overages would hurt much more than if you were working on it after your everyday nine-to-five.

Coming back to the consumer point of view, and a decidedly geeky one at that, we’re seeing new content delivery systems like Apple TV and streaming Netflix video begin to surge in popularity. We like our content served up hot, fresh and made-to-order. I’m one of those people that dreams about paying for products in “credits” as I swipe the chip embedded in my palm over an automated scanning device. I dream about how cool it will be when I can buy all my favorite products without having myself or anyone else pour hundreds of dollars into their gas tanks for transportation to the stores.

The digital lifestyle is the future everyday lifestyle for every person on this planet. To simply stand aside and allow a company that feels threatened by the next revolution in content delivery smash to pieces what so many have worked very hard to achieve is unacceptable. Help fight for digital distribution and the future of the internet. Call BendBroadband at 541-382-5551 and tell them what you think of their absurd usage caps. If you’re able, cancel all of your cable services and call for DSL or rural wifi installation. Join us at the protest at noon on June 7 at the entrance to BendBroadband on Empire Ave, and show them that we won’t put up with their desire to choke the last breath from the emerging digital lifestyle.

You can read about the events here at Blip.TV

You can read all about it at Gizmodo, but I found this interesting

The reasons behind the rush to curb heavy data users, whether or not they’re asshole pirates, are simultaneously simple and complex, but one of the major reasons is that content flowing over the pipes increasingly competes with cable’s TV offerings.

Read

At the entrance of Bend Broadband on Empire.  Due to a rainy forecast, the protest has been delayed by one week.

With the advancement of IPTV, streaming video services, and digital distribution, having an internet cap is proving to be anti-competitive to there cable TV business model.  Over the next few days, I am going to show you what services are net dependent, how much bandwidth they use, and what kind of connection you will need.  I will also show you how to get uncapped internet and TV service for less than what Bend Broadband is charging.  Finally, I will show you what other ISPs are offering here in the states.  You will see very quickly that what we are being offered is a very poor service in comparison.  Even with the speed increase, we are slower and have a smaller cap than most ISPs that use a cap.  This includes rural ISPs.  By the end of summer, Quest DSL is rumored to increase the speed of its internet service without a cap that compares to Bend Broadband’s upcoming speed.

View Larger Map
Should be interesting.

Penny Arcade and Hothead Games have released the first episode of Penny Arcade Adventures, entitled On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. The game is only available via digital distribution services Greenhouse and Xbox Live Marketplace. PA and Hothead plan to release these episodes every four months, with the first episode clocking in at ~210MB. Luckily, that’s not terribly damaging to your usage cap, but with digital distribution quickly becoming the norm thanks to the success of Xbox Live Marketplace and Steam, the little things like this will add up fast, especially when combined with “full” digital releases like Assassin’s Creed, Unreal Tournament III and the Half-Life 2 epsiodes.

With over 10,000 movies already available to stream from NetFlix, they announced that they will soon be distributing HD content at 6mbps.

Netflix is planning HD streaming, and this box will support it. When Netflix gets HD streaming content, they’ll update the box by firmware to support HD resolutions at higher bitrates of 4-6mbps, including 5.1 surround (everything is stereo now).

You can read about it here

Here is my main problem with the internet cap. It doesn’t solve the bandwidth problem that they propose is effecting “99%” of their customers. The truth of the matter is that ISP foresee an issue down the road where bandwidth will be limited do to the increased demand from the internet. If someone is abusing the service, its possible for people in that area to be effected resulting in degraded service. But here is the issue with an internet cap. It doesn’t fix that issue at all. Here is an example

There are two people using Bend Broadband service after the July 1st change
One person uses (download/upload) 300gb in about one week at an average of 600k a sec.
While another person uses 50gb at full capacity (16mbits per sec on gold service) in 7 hours.

If the “pipe” can only hold so much traffic at any given time (lets just say it can hold 32mbits max per neighborhood), the person who downloads 300gb will use about 1/4th less traffic (12.5% of the total 32mbits)than the person downloading 50gb (50% of the total 32mbits) while in use. So the individual download 300gb will have a far less effect on their neighbors, yet they will still get charged $300 in fees.

The myth here is that bandwidth is charged per megabyte. In reality, its charged by speed.

Here is some suggestions to Bend Broadband that will solve some of our issues. These suggestions are being used by other ISPs as well

We are willing to meet you in the middle, lets hope you will do the same.

Bend Broadband announced today that all tiers as of July 1st will have a 100gb limit.  This eliminates the 10, 30, and 50gb tiers.  Business accounts will have a 150gb limit despite previous statements suggesting that business accounts will be cap free.  This is not unlike the proposed cap under consideration by Comcast.  The main difference here is that Comcast is considerably faster, and has a 250gb limit instead of 100gb.

Robert Rose, a local here at Bend had this to say.

Think about it before you celebrate…  What happens when iTunes starts offering 1080p movie downloads?  Those files are gonna be 10-20gb each.  We’re handicapping this country’s technological and economic progress by tolerating this crap.  Vote with your money, get DSL.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) stepped in front of a group of tech executives in Washington this morning to deliver a caffeinated and surprisingly sharp defense of network neutrality. Pledging to use “every ounce of my energy to protect network neutrality,” Wyden had a message for ISPs who might be pondering new charges for various forms of access: “think twice.” If ISPs start down that road, they might soon find that they lose key legal protections including “safe harbors” and tax freedom.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080506-senator-to-isps-think-twice-about-net-neutrality-or-else.html

What Bend Broadband is also not telling you is that they are not currently able to “accurately” measure bandwidth usage.  The numbers they have been posting to date have been proven to be erroneous.  Is this really just a means to buy them more time to work out the kinks before they implement a true metered service?

Read more to see the post delivered by Bend Broadband.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a reminder that a public protest is planned for May 31st.  The location is nearly set.  I  had to make sure everything was in place before the spot was announced.  It should be ready sometime this week.