Interesting People mailing list archives
Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 21:05:30 -0400
Begin forwarded message:
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com> Date: May 7, 2008 8:56:38 PM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Cc: "lauren () vortex com" <lauren () vortex com> Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees
It's not a question of conspiracies, it's a question of spreadsheets: "For X constraints and limits on the Internet bandwidth that we provide to customers, how much Y increase in subscribers buying *our* content will we obtain?" Also, while PPV via satellite is a shared ("watching at the same time") medium, most PPV on cable or U-verse is not -- it's just another form of video-on-demand that viewers can individually watch at any time (and in most cases start/stop) as they wish. Brett loves to harp about how "inefficient" the Internet is for distributing video. What he fails to mention is that the other telecom-based alternatives he lists (satellite, broadcast, cable channels) are generally only suitable for largescale, mass distribution, usually by folks with fat wallets who can afford to buy their way into those limited distribution channels. Attempts have been made to do data-based (local disk storage) distribution of movies over the air via specialized set-top boxes (there's at least one project like this live right now that I know of). But since they require specialized equipment and have limited playlists their uptake has been minimal. Today, the Internet provides the only practical telecom-based mechanism for the non-mass reaching of *individuals* who wish to receive content. With entertainment, news, and other information sources breaking up into ever smaller segments as we move toward on individualized "on-demand" environment in all of these areas, more and more materials will necessarily migrate to the Net. Multicast is of course only useful in this regard if lots of people are watching the same channels at the same time (or for staging to local disks for later viewing), e.g. a U-verse-like environment as far as ordinary channel distributions are concerned. But with on-demand "on my schedule" as the wave of the future, individualized streams will increasingly be required. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com - - -________________________________________ From: Brett Glass [brett () lariat net] Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 7:32 PM To: David Farber; ip Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees At 08:35 AM 5/7/2008, Lynn wrote:If I purchase a movie view from Comcast (on demand) will that count intheir limit? I doubt it.It shouldn't, because it is not costing Comcast money for Internet bandwidth -- which can be quite expensive, especially outside of major metropolitan areas. Any provider deserves to be paid more to recover this perfectly legitimate cost, which -- due to consolidation in the Internet backbone market -- is increasing at a time when one would normally expect advances in fiber technology to be causing it to decrease dramatically. Another thing to bear in mind when considering this issue is that TCP/IP is the most inefficient method yet devised -- in terms of bandwidth costs, infrastructure costs, and overhead -- for delivering video. Any broadcast medium -- be it a satellite , terrestrial broadcast, or a channel on a coaxial cable -- is much more efficient, because the content is transmitted once (or maybe a few times) and reaches all of the customers who have requested it. Even DVDs delivered via media mail are far more cost-effective than Internet delivery. And "pay per view" cable or satellite is far more efficient, because hundreds of customers who sign up for the pay per view movie or event are served at the same time. Also, there is no upstream traffic, as there would be with TCP/IP (for the acknowledgements) or especially with P2P (which would multiplythe cost exponentially, as the UK's ISPs are finding out from iPlayer).If a customer demands that content be distributed less cost-effectively, it is only reasonable that he or she expect to pay more for it. This isn't corporate malfeasance; it's just fair. Internet bandwidth is not free for anyone -- and especially not for smaller providers. In a truly fair world, smaller providers would be the first to go to overage charges, or even charging entirely by the bit, because excessive bandwidth consumption costs them more than it does bigger ones. However, in the real world, they cannot be first for several reasons. Firstly, consumers absolutely hate surprises (witness their dislike of cell phone overage charges), and so this is not consumer-friendly. Secondly, the average user has no control over most of his or her bandwidth usage -- and lacks the knowledge or expertise necessary to control it. Most software updates are automatic, and if a user gets an insidious P2P program such as Limewire on the system it will run up big bandwidth charges by running continuously in the background without the user's knowledge or consent. And if small ISPs began to charge by the bit, larger ones could defer doing so (they'd lose money, but they could afford it) as an anticompetitive tactic to put competitors out of business. In any event, there's nothing wrong with any business changing its pricing model to align charges to customers more closely with its costs. And -- conspiracy theorists to the contrary -- there's certainly no evidence that it's part of any insidious plot. --Brett Glass ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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Current thread:
- Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 07)
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- Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 07)
- Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 07)
- Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 07)
- Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 07)
- Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 07)
- Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 07)
- Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 07)
- Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 07)
- Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 07)
- Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 07)
- Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 08)
- Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 08)
- Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees David Farber (May 08)