Re: Comcast 250GB Cap Goes Live October 1 - Updated: Comcast confirms our story... - dslreports.com

["David Farber" <dave () farber net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: xkrebstarx [mailto:xkrebstarx () gmail com]
Sent: Thu 8/28/2008 9:18 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] Comcast 250GB Cap Goes Live October 1 - Updated: Comcast confirms our story... - dslreports.com
 
Dave,

For IP.

I have seen this play before; a tragedy. Here is an excerpt from Prodigy's Wikipedia entry (8/28/08)

[snip]


Two of Prodigy's most popular services turned out to be its message boards and email. Because Prodigy's business model 
depended on rapidly growing advertising and online shopping revenue, email was developed primarily to aid shopping, not 
for general communication between users, which in practice is what it became. Additionally, the Prodigy message boards 
turned out to be extremely popular as well, resulting in users being connected to the service far longer than 
originally projected. This resulted in higher than expected expenses, adversely affecting the service's cash flow and 
profitability.

In an attempt to control costs and raise revenue, Prodigy undertook two separate actions. First, in its attempt to 
ration email, Prodigy modified their basic subscriber plans by allowing only thirty e-mail messages free each month, 
while charging 25 cents for each additional e-mail message - a policy that was later rescinded. Then, in the summer of 
1993, in a similar attempt to offset usage costs, it began charging hourly rates for several of its most popular 
features, including its most popular feature, the message boards. Many regular message board users were not fully aware 
of the impact of this price change until they received significantly higher invoices for the previous month's activity, 
in place of the fixed monthly prices for unlimited usage. As a result, tens of thousands of members left the service, 
resulting in a downward slide that Prodigy was never able to recover from, even though it would later rescind the 
hourly rates for message boards.

[snip]

Cameron McInally


On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 7:24 PM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:


THE REPORT PRAISises Comcast for such a generous cap. 1. Will they change their Ads? And when will they start reducing 
the cap down -- I am sure they will. I point out amount of data is less important to system operation then when the 
loads are. djf


http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/Comcast-250GB-Monthly-Cap-Goes-Live-October-1-97294

Comcast 250GB Cap Goes Live October 1
Updated: Comcast confirms our story...
09:30AM Thursday Aug 28 2008 by Karl Bode
tags: business · bandwidth · cable · Comcast
Back in May I broke the news that in addition to throttling back high-consumption users to "DSL like speeds," Comcast 
was considering implementing a 250GB monthly cap as part of their shift toward "protocol agnostic" network management. 
Despite consumer grumbling, that plan is in fact now moving forward. Sources tell me that Comcast will officially 
announce that they're implementing this new system starting October first.

Originally, the source indicated Comcast was considering charging $15 for each 10 GB over the cap customers travel. A 
press release should drop shortly confirming whether this is still the case. The source claims there was also 
consideration of a new system whereby users who received more than four DMCA letters in a twelve month period 
potentially faced account suspension. That's a risky move I would imagine won't make the final cut.

[2491 bytes]
"The intent appears to be to go after the people who consistently download far more than the typical user without 
hurting those who may have a really big month infrequently," says an insider familiar with the project, who prefers to 
remain anonymous. "As far as I am aware, uploads are not affected, at least not initially." According to this source, 
the new system should only impact some 14,000 customers out of Comcast's 14.1 million users (i.e. the top 0.1%).


<snip>

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