[IP] Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Date: May 7, 2008 8:56:38 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Cc: 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  
> > 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
>
>
> -------------------------------------------


-------------------------------------------