[IP] That 5 gigabit cap is pulled back

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: Dave Burstein [daveb@dslprime.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 7:00 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: That 5 gigabit cap is pulled back

Dave

Frontier tells me this they are not imposing a cap, and will have a notice up shortly that makes clear they will not cut off anyone, even if they use over 100 gigabytes.  Brigid Smith of Frontier tells me they are reviewing their terms of service, but definitely will not be imposing such a cap or shutting off people for their usage.

I believe they have backed off because of the publicity, including this list, DSL Reports, and GigaOm. Last Wednesday, they officially confirmed they would have a 5 gigabyte limit.

This is a good result.  More battles are likely, because charging per bit/caps are fair if they are reasonable, like Comcast's suggested 250 gigabytes. That should go up to 500 gig in 3 or 4 years, as Moore's Law brings bandwidth costs down, enough for most to have a choice to watch the TV they want over the net. Bandwidth is cheap, but not free.

    Frontier's 5 gigabyte, 2 HD movie caps is not reasonable. Time Warner's 40 gigabyte cap is also unreasonable, based on everything I know about bandwidth costs and the economics of cable data. It represents less than an hour a day of TV, now that most American homes have or will soon buy HD.

   I already see lobbyists try to twist "Metering is fair if it's reasonable" to "All metering is fair, even if it's so low it prevents you from watching video and has no basis in cost?"  I confirmed today with Verizon they have no need for bandwidth caps, and hope Verizon and Comcast will inspire others not to prevent me from watching much of my TV over the net.
db




I believe the coming battle will be over whether



based on the actual cost to a large company
db


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