[wellylug] International charges for national connections

[Pete Black]

Hi there,

I am writing to voice my extreme displeasure at Telstras recent choice 
to depeer from the WIX.

As of 11am this morning, you are now charging me (a Wellington resident) 
international traffic costs to access other Wellington-based content 
(e.g. ftp.citylink.co.nz). It is ridiculous for you to route connections 
to a machine no more than a few kilometers away through 18-19 hops via 
Los Angeles.

Especially since you specifically chose to sever a much more efficient 
route, and also when you have a number of WIX-connected ISPs who do have 
interconnect agreements  with you, but with whom you choose not to route 
the traffic through, presumably to force international traffic charges 
on your customers.

Not only does this incur a 10x price penalty on me, the customer, it 
subjects me to international latencies and potential reliability issues.

I can only conclude you simply wish to charge customers more money for 
less bandwidth, and to essentially 'double charge' content providers 
(they pay to connect to your customers, your customers pay to connect to 
them)

This is a clear breach of the service agreement I signed up for - I 
signed up for 1/10 bandwidth charges for national traffic. I did not 
sign up for '1/10 bandwidth charges for whoever Telstra Clear arbitarily 
defines as preferred providers'.

Regardless of the choices you make w/regard to the entries in your 
routing tables, I think you will have a hard time in small claims court 
convincing a judge that a connection across the city is not what is 
meant by 'national traffic'.

And thats what it will come to if you decide to pursue this retarded 
strategy, because I refuse to pay international traffic for downloading 
content from a machine  a couple of suburbs away.

I will be taking this matter to the Commerce Commission if Telstra Clear 
do not either reinstate their WIX peering arrangement, or take other 
measures to ensure that traffic to and from sites in New Zealand (i.e. 
national traffic) is billed as such.

Not only has this move proven to me that you are not interested in 
providing a quality service at low cost, but that your company is part 
of the problem with regard to internet access, the growth of innovation 
and online expression for New Zealanders, not part of the solution.

I hope you will rethink this utterly brain-dead move for the benefit of 
myself and all commercial and residential New Zealand internet users.

Regards

-Peter Black

Paradise.Net customer

ph. 972-7859
email: pete at marchingcubes.com