Re: Comcast Cuts Off Heavy Internet Users and Modems and Webcams and VoIP and web servers and ...

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

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <bob37-2 () bobf frankston com>
Date: August 27, 2007 12:11:20 AM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>, <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: "'Brett Glass'" <brett () lariat net>, "'Dewayne Hendricks'"  
<dewayne () warpspeed com>, "'Lauren Weinstein'" <lauren () vortex com>
Subject: RE: [IP] Re:  Comcast Cuts Off Heavy Internet Users and  
Modems and Webcams and VoIP and web servers and ...

Here we go again! Haven’t we seen this before when modems were  
destroying the fabric of the country and when webcams were abuses? If  
we follow this line of reasoning then running a gigabit network in my  
house must be very wasteful – will I get cut off too?

If you think about the history of the phone network – originally the  
failure to use the phone and list your number impeded others’ ability  
to send and receive information. We’ve gone from encouraging  
communication to discouraging it even as the capacity keeps  
increasing. Tragedy? Comedy?

They do have a point as we’ve seen with the discussion on ATT’s  
inability to find a business model in this new world.
They cannot afford to let us use our, oops, I mean, their network.  
It’s not that it’s expensive – almost all the fiber is lying fallow.  
And in another recent discussion we learned that the cable companies  
are realizing that they are wasting all that redundant broadband in  
broadcast mode – they want to increase the capacity for their  
services but not to make that Internet available to us to use. The  
problem is that they don’t have a business model so we can’t have a  
life model.

There is some (more) (Moore?) irony here – they compete on broadband  
speed but then cite us for actually using it? Huh? They reason they  
have to use the “we’ll know it when we see it” policy is that they  
are applying metrics suitable to 1934 in 2007. It is indeed like  
obscenity.

The question is why we put up with this nonsense. Why do we act is if  
the Internet is something we consumed like electricity rather than  
something to which we call can contribute. Why do we accept such  
limits on public safety, education etc? (There is a longer discussion  
on the problem of the Internet opportunity dynamic meeting telecom’s  
one-size-fits-all dynamic).

One reason is that we confuse the artifice of carrier pricing with  
reality.

Brett is caught in the middle – he’s really a broker for his users  
and not a provider. The carrier pricing is his reality. But it’s more  
fun to identify with the carriers rather than his fellow users. His  
problems are real but must not be the basis for larger policy decisions.

The investors better start asking hard questions if they are putting  
money into businesses which fear abundance.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dfarber () cs cmu edu]
Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2007 21:32
To: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: [IP] Re: Comcast Cuts Off Heavy Internet Users



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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