ISP offers all-you-can-eat Google traffic

ISP Cinenet, covered on iTnews for the first time earlier this week, has begun offering its business customers all-you-can-eat Google traffic for a flat fee after signing a peering agreement with Pipe Networks.

Traffic from Google services accounts for up to 25 percent of the internet traffic of Cinenet's screen industry customers, according to Cinenet managing director Tony Clark, particularly because their interest in video leads them to consume a lot of YouTube content.

Rather than have this traffic levied on a consumption basis, Cinenet is offering a deal whereby customers get all-you-can-eat access for a flat fee.

All Google traffic becomes "unmetered", so to speak, and Cinenet treats itself to a modest additional margin for the savings this brings about.

Cinenet is among several ISPs that has signed up to Pipe Network's peering service, which provides this flat rate access to Google's fat pipe, revealed earlier today to be leased from Pipe's PPC-1 cable between Sydney and Guam.

Other ISPs are highly likely to be lowering their costs by using the peering service - but not necessarily passing those savings onto customers. That said, ISPs still have to backhaul this data to their points of presence to serve their customers.

Clark told iTnews that the success and failure of cloud computing services relies on the speed and price of network connectivity.

"The key barrier to the adoption of online apps is not whether the data is hosted locally, but whether the pricing scheme for accessing the data is attractive," he said.

"The customer can't afford to be sending huge files over the network if they're to be charged at the usual rate."