[IP] 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

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________________________________________

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 in

their 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 multiply

the 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

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