Re: AT&T Monthly Bandwidth Caps Are Here

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
Date: November 4, 2008 11:41:37 AM EST
To: dave () farber net, "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] AT&T Monthly Bandwidth Caps Are Here

> Surveying the broadband landscape in this country, It's either caps  
> or slowdowns or filters. (Unless you're on Comcast, then it's a two- 
> for-one.) Caps seem like the lesser of the three evils, if only  
> because they're fairly transparent—filtering and slowdowns are more  
> insidious, since you might not be immediately aware it's happening.  
> They're essentially legitimized forms of sabotage.

In my opinion, the term "sabotage" is unduly pejorative and  
inflammatory, as well as simply inaccurate. In all cases, the goal is  
simply to lower costs to consumers by preventing them from consuming  
more bandwidth than they pay for (and thus causing the provider to  
lose money). Absent such constraints, the price of broadband service  
would have to be increased substantially, especially as consumers  
begin to use more bandwidth-intensive services (such as streaming  
video). Or it would have to be metered by the bit, a strategy which  
consumers have overwhelmingly rejected.

Explicit caps are the tactic least liked by consumers, who despise the  
"surprise" overage fees imposed by cellular providers. Throttling and  
filtering impose implicit limits which the user, in most cases, does  
not notice and which actually improve his experience by preventing him  
from slowing down or degrading his own highest priority traffic (e.g.  
VoIP) by running a low priority application (e.g. a file transfer) at  
the same time.

--Brett Glass




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