The end of the level playing field

Re:The end of the level playing field by toast0 on Sunday February 05, 2017 @11:44PM (#13576538)

Historically, bandwidth in and out of Australia was super expensive, because there weren't that many undersea cables connecting it to the world; that's why Australian providers would run mirrors with uncapped access, but everything else had high usage fees; I would guess one of the conditions of getting a service zero-rated is connecting to the carrier in Australia, so the carrier isn't footing the international data bill. Likely many of these providers have local caching and serving, and may update their storage when undersea cables are off peak to reduce their own data costs. (OTOH, the undersea capacity has increased a lot, so it may not be as expensive as it once was)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The end of the level playing field by hug on Sunday February 05, 2017 @11:58PM (#13576606)

I used to joke that the reason that Australian data-caps were so low is that they have to get all of the data over by boat.

The way I see things is that having an Internet service that is in high demand is simply incentive for ISPs to peer with you.

Netflix reportedly said (link below) that it regretted offering 'unmetered data' to Australian ISPs, because they feared it would have a chilling effect on the availability of other streaming services.

Their fears were unfounded: Stan & Presto are both available unmetered on certain ISPs. (Quickflix went out of business, but not because of ISP deals, but because they couldn't compete in library size and other major ways -- I suspect there's simply not room for three Australia-based streaming services to license enough content to keep themselves afloat.)

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/netflix...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The end of the level playing field by shermanyo on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @08:42PM (#13594940)

Just a head's up: Presto was owned by FoxTel, and was shut down this month.

Stan seems to be a good competitor, but that's only comparing it to the Australian Netflix library. I'm of the opinion that all competition has done is split the market, as they fight over the same set of exclusives.

I'll often browse US Netflix rather than switch between Aus Netflix and Stan to find a movie I've seen previously. US Netflix seems to have 90% of the missing content Stan offers over Aus Netflix.

[ Parent | on HN ]