Mike to Mike: Put Up or Shut Up
August 1st, 2006 by tkarr |
AT&T and BellSouth mouthpiece Mike McCurry has received a challenge that places his credibility on the line.
In a post at Techdirt, Michael Masnick challenges McCurry to put his money where his mouth is by agreeing to pay Google’s broadband bills. The challenge is a response to McCurry’s fact-challenged op-ed in the Baltimore Sun, in which he asserts that Google’s access to bandwidth doesn’t cost the company a dime.
“That’s a flat out lie,” writes Masnick. “Google pays tremendously large bandwidth bills, and the more they use the more they pay.”
McCurry’s argument is one of the many misleading talking points that he has spread as part of his “Astroturf” effort to discredit Net Neutrality. The Sun editorial mis-identifies McCurry as “co-chair of Hands Off the Internet, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of technology, media and nonprofit organizations,” without informing readers of the telco money behind this grassroots façade.
Masnick slams the telcos and their anti-Neutrality lobbyists for “trotting out lies” in an effort to win over support for legislation that guts Net Neutrality’s basic guarantees of Internet freedom.
He takes particular exception to the oft-repeated lie that content providers don’t pay for serving up their data via the Web. “If McCurry is going to pretend Google ‘never [has] to pay a dime no matter how much bandwidth they use,’ let’s see him put up or shut up,” Masnick writes.
McCurry, the former White House spokesperson turned corporate sock puppet, has yet to come clean and respond to the challenge by paying Google’s bandwidth bills for the rest of 2006.
I doubt even McCurry has the bank account to cover that cost. So, here’s a compromise. Instead of coughing up the cash, McCurry might simply retract the many untruths he has spread since becoming a paid shill for AT&T and BellSouth.
What do you say, Mike?
August 1st, 2006 at 12:48 pm
[…] As reported on the FireDogLake Blog, Senator Stevens is using Cloture to attempt to circumvent Net Neutrality and move up the vote on Telecommunications Reform. Meanwhile, in a post at Techdirt, Mike Masnick has challenged Mike McCurry to Put Up Or Shut Up, and pay Google’s bandwidth bill for the rest of the year, which McCurry has been claiming right along is $0. […]
August 1st, 2006 at 1:58 pm
If you are truly interested in full disclosure, why don’t you ask Google, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, and Microsoft to tell everyone what their actual operating cost of bandwidth is on a monthly or yearly basis?
At Precursor and netcompetition.org, my bandwidth bill is $442 a month for T-1 wireline broadband and I pay an additional ~$60 a month for supplemental wireless broadband bandwidth. So I pay over $6,000.00 a year for bandwidth.
So what is savetheinternet.org’s bandwidth bill?
If you are so sure that your online giant buddies pay their fair share for the bandwidth they use, then get them to disclose it publicly and shut us up once and for all.
Or are you all afraid to discover the truth? And that the truth of the relative paltry amount the online giants pay would get people thinking about the “reverse Robin Hood” impact of you net neutrality stance on fixed income, or less advantaged Americans?
If you are genuinely for net neutrality, maybe you should ask for an amendment to Snowe Dorgan that requires everyone’s broadband bill and their actual bandwidth usage of the Internet — be fully disclosed as a matter of public record? Then we could see if the net was genuinely net neutral to everyone and if everyone was paying for their fair share of the bandwidth being used? Now wouldn’t that be neutral and fair — everyone would be transparent and could ensure that they were not paying anymore than anyone else?
August 1st, 2006 at 3:20 pm
The reason why the telecoms anti-net neutrality campaign has been so successful is because they never had to worry about consumer backlash for their betrayal. If they’re duopoly was threatened they would have backed off a long time ago.
The best defense is a good offense. That’s something people in favor of Net Neutrality will never understand and that’s why the telecoms will most likely win.
August 1st, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Let us assume, as Scott Cleland suggests, that the last-mile wireline owners are not charging content providers on the basis of bandwidth usage, but instead the last-mile wireline owners charge the content providers some nominal access/connection charge unrelated to bandwidth usage. In this scenario, would the S/D amendment prevent the last-mile wireline owners from changing to a pricing scheme that charged content providers on the basis of bandwidth usage? If not, does it make sense to oppose the S/D amendment on the basis that the last-mile wireline owners are not charging content providers on the basis of bandwidth usage when the S/D amendment would not prevent them from doing so? If not, is this argument–that Google gets its bandwidth for free–a red herring, regardless of its factual merit?
August 1st, 2006 at 7:01 pm
I find it amazing how now that the Telco’s have a chance to swing legislation in their direction, they are screaming about the prices people are paying for bandwidth.
I had a nice talk with a relatively intelligent, though misguided fellow about Net Neutrality and how “Google gets a free ride…”
I’ll put the same question to everyone else here. How is it that during the DotCom boom, all these companies OVER spent by $1 Billion, laying infrastructure? The “Rules” of the internet 6 years ago did not have the dual pricing structure (another word for extortion). At the time of the “then” pricing structure of the net, they justified their expenditures. They saw a high Return on Investment. They of course OVERspent, just as many other industries do. Dot Bomb followed.
How is it they could justify their Billion Dollar investment then, but suddenly “We’re not getting paid!!!” come out of their mouths…?
As for Scott’s $6,000/year bandwidth… Do you have as much traffic as Google, or Amazon? If not, then what do you calculate their bills may be? 10X, 20X, 100X?
The assertion that “Google gets a free ride” is ridiculous by your own example. $6000/yr isn’t “Free”. Telco’s assert they may “Nothing”. I’d say this example shows how fees are paid, and Telco’s are lying once again to extort money via plumbing deep pocket companies.
August 1st, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Pardon the last sentence and lack of an editing function. It should read…
“Telco’s assert they PAY “Nothing”. I’d say this example shows how fees are paid, and Telco’s are lying once again to extort money via plumbing deep pocket companies.
August 2nd, 2006 at 1:26 am
Oh wow… I wish I could spend $6k/year to keep my company flush with bandwidth. To bad that our cost is, well, based on our usage =P
Seems like a good way to do it!
August 2nd, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Scott - All companies (including the big telco’s) are generally very closed mouthed about the details of their operating costs. No company wants their competitors and customers to have such info for a host of
legitimate competition related reasons.
However, its reasonable to assume that the 200,000+ servers that google has all over the globe take up a massive amount of bandwidth that google has to pay the bill for. Unlike the residential user, colocation facilities (where the vast majority of content providers house their servers) often use the 95th percentile rule to determine the amount of bandwidth their customers use which means content providers must pay for exactly how much bandwidth they use up. For someone like google that can buy bandwidth in bulk they most likely pay in the $15/mbit range whereas someone like me would have to pay in the $100/mbit range.
ChadB - I think the big telcos have nothing but red herrings to support their power grab however they are making effective use of them with such a large portion of the population relying on mass media to inform them :\
The S/D amendment would in fact prevent the telco’s from charging content providers an access/connection fee since the only way to enforce such charges would be to degrade or block the content provider and S/D says they can’t do this. The telco’s need to focus on providing bandwidth to their end users and getting their money from them rather then trying to re-invent the internet with toll fees for content providers.
August 2nd, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Raz, you have confused me. If a telco wanted to charge Google $30/month as an access/connection fee instead of a price based on bandwidth usage, the telco simply bills Google $30/month, no? Why would the telco have to “degrade” or “block” service? If Google doesn’t pay, Google doesn’t get service. S/D doesn’t guarantee Google service, does it? (In this case, I am assuming that Google is a customer of the telco rather than an intermediary network owner passing Google’s data through its network.)
And I’m not sure all anti-net neutrality arguments are red herrings. Some opponents (e.g. Christoper Yoo) have argued that net neutrality regulation could commoditize broadband access services, preventing the development of diverse networks. Some could provide enhanced QoS; some could have enhanced security protocols; and some could continue openly with TCP/IP. Economic theory recognizes that a loss in product diversity can reduce social welfare, especially where consumer preferences are divergent. The S/D amendment would restrict the ability of network owners to diversify their networks, potentially decreasing consumer welfare. While there are potential countervailing social welfare benefits from net neutrality regulation (e.g. potentially greater innovation and diversity in Internet content and applications), there seems to be a trade-off. Do you disagree?
August 2nd, 2006 at 7:38 pm
ChadB - On what basis is a telco charging google this access/connection fee? Is the telco acting as google’s ISP or are they simply charging them for the ability to access their “last mile” customers? If the latter then the ISP would have to block/degrade a residential customer’s connection to google if google refused to pay the access fee. How else would the ISP get google to pay?
Christopher Yoo’s argument to allow ISP’s to employ discriminatory QoS should not even be considered unless real competition exists among the ISP’s rather then the duopoly we currently have. And there is lots of room for development/improvement of enhanced QoS and other protocols which are non-discriminatory. Technology should always be shaped according to
whats best for the common man. Discriminatory QoS, no matter how many neat things the ISP’s can do with it to make more money, is not supportive of an end-to-end internet which is the very foundation by which so much innovation and expanding communication has taken place.
“Reduced social welfare from loss of product diversity” (i.e. duopoly) is the foundation from which the big telco’s want to operate and they will do everything in their power to protect the status quo. Every argument the telco’s have come up with has been little more then a red herring designed to confuse and lure us away from our common sense. To me it is just common sense that you don’t give a duopoly even more power then they already have.
August 2nd, 2006 at 11:04 pm
ChadB - I re-read your first statement and I see that you were pointing out that the S/D amendment in no way prevents ISP’s from using different pricing schemes for there customers. Your logic does tend to be impeccable so I should have re-read before responding.
However, I still think that any arguments I have seen in support of the Telco’s COPE act are red herring’s.
sylonious - I agree that the ISP duopoly needs to be rectified but I think passing S/D NN is the battle we should be fighting right now. Winning this battle will go a long ways towards winning this war that the duopoly has started.
August 6th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Do I understand this correctly? I pay Comcast a really high amount of money each month to access the web. If I have a web site, AT&T wants me to pay for that, too?
If this is correct, isn’t this scenario sort of like a toll road/highway that you pay to get on and–surprise!–you pay to get off at the end of the road?
You people that are sticking up for the likes of AT&T are either in the industry, or just plain clueless if you think these Telcos EVER did anything in the best interests of the little people.
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