Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Joel Snyder <Joel.Snyder () Opus1 COM>
Date: May 7, 2008 10:59:21 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>, rs9174 () gmail com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:  Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees

> 250GB would give you the bandwidth to download how many movies per
> month?  0? 1? 5? 25?

A DVD is either 4-ish or 7-ish Gigabytes (single/double layer), but  
most movies by themselves will fit in 4 GB; it's the extras that take  
up all that space.  Assuming that it's 250GB and not 250Gb, that'd be  
around 60 movies a month.

But what's the point of the question?  That Comcast might want to sell  
you a movie downloading service that somehow doesn't count against  
your quota?  Or that this is not enough?

I think this is great.  ISPs got into a stupid, stupid situation when  
they caved to consumer preferences and agreed to deliver unlimited  
dialup (first) and bandwidth (later) for a price that could not  
support it.  And then, when customers took advantage of *UNLIMITED*  
bandwidth with tools like Napster and other P2P systems, the ISPs had  
to work around their own stupidity by doing bandwidth management and  
throttling---essentially, patching the problem rather than solving the  
problem.

Fundamentally, the ISPs built their own torture devices by buying a  
product that is sold by volume ('the bit' and 'the bandwidth') and  
then reselling it by time ('the month').  If any ISP has the cojones  
to actually start having their sales prices reflect their costs  
(rather than cross-subsidizing the folks who need 4 movies a day with  
my mom who logs on once a week), then I have to say "It's about time."

The number of mom-and-pop ISPs offering broadband service is in steady  
and constant decline because of the cost model that the large ISPs  
have imposed on the market.  Now that they have a lock and are clearly  
going to win in the long run, it'd be nice if they stopped being  
insane about their products and services and pricing and started to  
replace the niche of the small ISP that they have so successfully  
eradicated.


jms

--
Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719
Senior Partner, Opus One       Phone: +1 520 324 0494
jms () Opus1 COM                http://www.opus1.com/jms


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