Begin forwarded message:
From: "Livingood, Jason" <Jason_Livingood@cable.comcast.com>
Date: October 23, 2008 10:03:07 AM EDT
Subject: RE: [IP] Re: Comcast DOCSIS 3.0 Launches, More Speed @ Same Price
Some replies to Simon and IP inline:
While having more bandwidth for the same price is probably a good thing from a consumer standpoint, could this change browsing/downloading habits enough that it would allow users to reach the 250GB cap much faster?On their FAQ, they claim that 99% of the users have not exceeded this cap so far, but as discussed in previous threads here, that is likely going to change, pretty quickly. Is Comcast prepared to raise the cap if people actually *use* this bandwidth, or might there be some kind of creep back to the rumored metered access?
I can tell you from studying previous speed increases that we certainly expect the average user consumption to increase (which is obviously far, far, far below even 25GB on a monthly basis). But in most cases, the leisure time of our customers isn't doubling, and the amount of movie-downloading or email sending isn't doubling (pick your application) in the immediate term. Instead, customers simply get their content much faster.That being said, I'd expect that over time, new applications will sprout that take advantage of this higher bandwidth, just as when broadband was first released. Personally, I am really interested to see what kinds of new apps pop up over the next few years that are geared towards leveraging wideband-like speeds. What new apps will be developed that are novel or unexpected, surprisingly useful, and otherwise interesting to broadband users? I believe this presents an opportunity for some new software innovation.Jason