Re: Comcast DOCSIS 3.0 Launches, More Speed @ Same Price

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Livingood, Jason" <Jason_Livingood () cable comcast com>
Date: October 23, 2008 10:03:07 AM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>, "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>, <simonli () gmail com>
Subject: RE: [IP] Re:   Comcast DOCSIS 3.0 Launches, More Speed @ Same  
Price

Some replies to Simon and IP inline:

While having more bandwidth for the same price is probably a good  
thing from a consumer standpoint, could this change browsing/ 
downloading habits enough that it would allow users to reach the 250GB  
cap much faster?

On their FAQ, they claim that 99% of the users have not exceeded this  
cap so far, but as discussed in previous threads here, that is likely  
going to change, pretty quickly.  Is Comcast prepared to raise the cap  
if people actually *use* this bandwidth, or might there be some kind  
of creep back to the rumored metered access?

I can tell you from studying previous speed increases that we  
certainly expect the average user consumption to increase (which is  
obviously far, far, far below even 25GB on a monthly basis).  But in  
most cases, the leisure time of our customers isn't doubling, and the  
amount of movie-downloading or email sending isn't doubling (pick your  
application) in the immediate term.  Instead, customers simply get  
their content much faster.

That being said, I'd expect that over time, new applications will  
sprout that take advantage of this higher bandwidth, just as when  
broadband was first released.  Personally, I am really interested to  
see what   kinds of new apps pop up over the next few years that are  
geared towards leveraging wideband-like speeds.  What new apps will be  
developed that are novel or unexpected, surprisingly useful, and  
otherwise interesting to broadband users?  I believe this presents an  
opportunity for some new software innovation.

Jason




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