[Stuart]

Originally Posted by indie1982

But STM doesn't stop me downloading, I still use (legal) torrents, I still share and watch video on YouTube, I still download HD movie trailers etc.

They're still having to pay for the bandwidth as STM doesn't make me think about the way I use bandwidth, it just gets to me slower.

Bandwidth (at least how VM measure it) is actually the amount of data being carried at ony one time. It is not the total amount of data carried. If you are using (say) 20 Meg, you are using that amount of bandwidth whether you download a 1 meg file or a 1,000 meg file. You are just using it for longer if you are download a larger file.

They aren't trying to stop people downloading (if they were, they'd have hard caps, so your download stops at a certain point, or they'd charge for downloads above this point). What they are trying to do is reduce the strain on the network of people downloading.

I am not saying whether that way is right or wrong though.

The way we use the internet has changed from what we did 10 years ago, media rich online learning, high bandwidth AV content, purchasing music and films online, software distribution and all the others things we now do.

VM have to evolve with this and increase the bandwidth available at their peering points not STM their customers. How they afford this is up to them, if they can't afford to do it because of the ridiculously low broadband prices they offer people they shouldn't be doing that.

They are suffering (now) from a lack of foresight years ago. When I first started using the net in 1994, there were small signs that this sort of stuff (streaming TV, music downloads). Admittedly, nothing specific, but there were signs that broadcasting was coming.

There *is* a technology available that if enabled, would reduce a lot of bandwidth requirements (at least for live streams). Multicasting. The standard way of transmission on the Internet requires a connection from the server to the user, so the server may end up dealing with 10,000 users (and use a lot of bandwidth). This is called Unicasting. Multicasting uses routers along the way to cache and distribute the data. So, if an ISP has (say) 10,000 people watching a live stream, with Unicasting, they'll have 10,000 copies of the same data travelling over their links to the Internet. If they use Multicasting, their own routers will handle distribution of the data, and they'll only have a few copies of the data travelling over their link.

The trouble is, Multicasting only works for live streams, and only works if every network the data travels through is multicast enabled. As such, it is unlikely to happen.

Wholesale IP transit charges have come down in the last 10 years, not gone up, yes we're using more of it but I was still paying £30 a month 10 years ago for a 33kbit/s connection and using less bandwidth. Where has the investment been?

What do you base the assertion that wholesale transit charges have gone down on? The broadband ISP market (in this country anyway) has traditionally run on loans, venture capital, cross subsidy from other products and loss leading products, so the prices we are charged probably bear little resemblance to what it actually costs for any ISP to serve us.