Re: Comcast Cuts Off Heavy Internet Users

[David Farber <dfarber () cs cmu edu>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
Date: August 26, 2007 7:02:09 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:  Comcast Cuts Off Heavy Internet Users

R J Riley writes:

> It seems to me that Comcast is using deceptive advertising and that
> their
> conduct should be subject to review by agencies like the FTC and also
> could
> be addressed with civil litigation.  Perhaps someone with legal  
> training
> should look into the legality of advertising unlimited use and then
> arbitrarily cutting off service.

Here's the problem, from an Internet provider's point of view. The  
moment
an explicit cap is set, a competitors can offer a larger one... and
another one can offer one that's still larger, and so on. Pretty soon,
everyone's back to "unlimited," which none of the providers can afford.
So, rather than engaging in this sort of "competition," they try to act
quietly.

We don't play that game.

Our company explicitly states that it shapes traffic (rather than  
cutting
users off, it merely holds them back) and publishes its traffic shaping
policies. Users can measure the capacities of their connections and
actually see that we're giving them what we promise.

But we pay for our honesty when a competitor states the maximum speed of
the modem as the user's speed. (Both the cable and telephone  
companies in
our area do this.) A business user says, "Wow -- 8 megabits per second
over a cable modem for $150 per month is cheaper than you per megabit;
I'll go with them." They test a connection, see it burst close to 8 Mbps
during the test, and assume they'll always get that capacity. And they
switch.

We've lost three business customers this year due to this sort of
situation.

But if the business is really using 8 megabits per second, the cable
company is taking a bath. Even with their great financial clout, they
just cannot get backbone bandwidth for $20 per megabit per second in
our state. No one can. So, at some point the cable company -- in this
case, Bresnan -- must either throttle or lose money.

We've resigned ourselves to letting go of the customers who really
believe that they will be able to saturate an "8 Mbps" cable modem
connection ($125/month) or a "7 Mbps" DSL connection ($69/month) 24x7.
We figure that if our competitors are forced to live up to those
claims, they'll take a loss, and that's good for us. And
if they renege on those claims (which is more likely), we'll get the
customer back in a few years. It's happened a few times already.
But it's painful for a small business to lose customers and have to
wait for the users' contracts to expire before they come back.

It's just a shame that little guys like our small ISP have to try to
compete with large companies' deceptive marketing tactics.

--Brett Glass, LARIAT.NET



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