I can't see that this has been discussed already, but I am curious if WorldxChange have any plans to provide unmetered access to some of the new video offerings coming online from the likes of sky?
With the possibility services like Apple TV on the horizon, and rumors of VoD services from the likes of Video Ezy and Blockbuster, I would not expect that it will be long before an internet channel for the delivery of movies on demand is more common.
I am curious to know if WorldxChange is planning on peering with these providers to provide unmetered access to the content?
Providers of such content are likely to peer on a public peering exchange such as the APE, which WxC is already present on. Does anyone know if the free "local" traffic on WxC includes the peering exchanges they are present on? It ought to, since the cost of peering is so small.
VoD will only come from Akamai if the provider of the VoD content pays Akamai to distribute it. In the case of local providers, they're more likely to just peer since Akamai is very expensive, and peering gets them free traffic to everyone except Telecom and TelstraClear. TVNZ On Demand is a good example of this.
Sky On Demand probably is at Akamai. TVNZ On Demand isn't. Blockbuster/Video Ezy probably can't afford Akamai either, but I may be underestimating them there.
I can understand WxC billing national traffic to Telecom/TelstraClear-connected prefixes, but traffic across the APE/WIX etc (which makes up a fairly significant chunk of most people's national usage - for example Trade Me and Stuff are both accessible across one or both peering exchanges) could be heavily discounted or free without the ISP losing money, as they only have to pay for a connection, not for traffic, and the connection fees are very low.
They had this with the old 2Meg plans. But few people ruined it for everyone by using a NZ DC++ hub and using a lot of bandwidth, i think a 500GB-few Terabytes were used by some of the users.
As I mentioned before though, they don't get charged per-GB to access the APE, the WIX, or any peering exchange. You pay one price for 10Mbit, another for 100Mbit, or another for 1Gbit, and it doesn't matter how much traffic you use. Those prices are very low compared to the equivalent amounts of bandwidth from the likes of Telecom or TelstraClear.
A bunch of people clocking up 1TB per month of DC++ traffic only equates to 34GB a day in your average month, which works out to about 3Mbit across the whole month. WxC will have either 100Mbit or 1Gbit to the peering exchange, so 3Mbit really doesn't make all that much difference.
I'm sure they stopped giving free peering exchange traffic for a good commercial reason, but I'm also pretty sure it wasn't because a bunch of people "spoiled it" for everyone else. WxC isn't a commune, it's a business, and as such they probably just figured they could be charging for that traffic and making more money.
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