To wonder who pays for the internet

[BreathesOutSlowly]

Who is paying for the massive data centres that support the internet? The ton of energy that it costs to have bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? It must be us but how? In our mobile phone tariffs, via general taxes?

It's worldwide but who pays for it in other countries. Do any refuse?

Does anyone know the answer? It's been bugging me for ages

Thanks 😊

The companies that run them pay for them!

Yes. But who pays them?

Well I pay a hefty monthly fee for internet “use” which I assume includes the infrastructure to support this.

Companies and households pay for it. What don't you understand about that?

The companies that use the facilities / servers / infrastructure will pay to use them. They will then charge their customers a fee for the internet.

Anyone who puts something on there. So MN will pay a hosting fee and the ‘charge’ to us is our data and the Ads.

Reminds of a friend of mine who thought ‘the cloud’ didn’t use any energy 🤔

So the amount I pay for WiFi covers my share of the whole internet infrastructure? It just feels like a small thing supporting a very big thing.

So does buying and selling bitcoin pay for the existence of bitcoin which is incredibly energy intensive? Or is it partially covered by my WiFi rental cost?

Is it a sustainable model given how much we all use the internet?

This is like asking, “Who pays for the warehouses where companies store their stock and who pays for the lorries to transport all the stock.”

The end user does. When you buy food from Tesco, you’re not just paying for that physical item. You are paying for the production, storage and transport, personnel etc.

When you pay for broadband, part of that fee goes towards infrastructure.

That's the opposite of me. As I understand it it all uses loads of energy. In fact if we didn't have the internet maybe there wouldn't be an energy crisis?

What are you going on about bitcoin for? It has nothing to do with your internet.

People who require server farms will pay for their own server farms.

So utilities started off being privately ran, then became public and are now back to being privatised. Does this mean that it is likely the internet will one day be nationalised as an essential service?

No

Why not?

I don't know why you've got such a negative response- I think it's a good question.
I think asking who owns the data centres is important. My understanding is that there are lots in china. If a lot of UK life requires the internet (eg personal banking) then do we have enough stat centres to support this if other countries turn off the connection. Or does it work in some other way?

Data centres

The big ones like
google - adverts , and they also sell data centre space to others
Amazon - whenever you buy anything from Amazon
Facebook - adverts mostly
Netflix - you pay subs

Bitcoin I think tend to buy resources from one of the big providers like google or Amazon

Then they also harvest unused resources on peoples computers - eg if you have a virus , then it's your energy they use

I think you don't quite understand what 'the internet' is. It isn't a central thing, co-ordinated by one entity and delivered to the public. In essence it is simply data packets sent and received by two (or more) computers, usually privately owned.

The infrastructure to send the data packets is owned in the same way that telephone line infrastructure is. It is entirely separate from the internet and is just a means of facilitating it.

Data centres are owned by millions of separate companies all around the world. Any website owner will buy space from a hosting company, who will either own their own data centre or sub-let space from a bigger data centre, like Amazon's. It is totally decentralised and not something that can be 'owned and paid for'.
So you don't pay for the internet, but you do rent the lines (fibre or copper etc) that delivers it to your home.

Your comms company pays the bill for the network that connects you to the data centre and the money from ghat comes from your comms bill

This is a good point. I am not convinced that everyone " going paperless" is any better for the environment .

For the life of me I can't remember the name of the company that I think provided the data centres for the UK free catch up TV services - but the telly company pays them , and the telly company uses adverts or lisence fee money for that

You phrased what I have been thinking much better. We are so utterly reliant on it these days.

I don't worry per se that China will start to run the world. They might very well do a better job of it than the West at a macro level at least. However I do worry what will happen if someone starts kicking up a fuss about the increasing cost of maintaining the infrastructure and where that might lead.

Going paperless is better for the environment

Try to avoid downloading huge videos in ultra HD

If you listen to the same music over and over again, buy the CD

Banks I would guess use their own in house facilities ( that can be a bad thing if they don't have the right skills or employ enough IT support staff and keep it up to date )

ot will be legally restricted as to where the data can be located and who can own the data centre

The internet is hard to nationalise

You could nationalise basic infrastructure - broadband - you could nationalise the TV

But many of the normal resources you use every day are not UK owned

But that's why China have their own versions of things like google and Facebook