The Boston Globe has an article about cable companies cutting off access to users who have large data transfer statistics. I’ve also been following the Comcast Broadband dispute blog for a while from a guy who has been cut off.
My focus has primarily been on Comcast’s unfair practices here, setting a limit that’s undisclosed and the implications of a contract with hidden terms and relating it to a road where there’s no posted speed limit but you’ll get a ticket if you’re speeding.
I just realized it’s bigger than that, though. Odds are those high-traffic users are downloading video. Some are just getting ISO’s, I’m sure, but most probably are getting video. This is directly in competition with Comcast’s other, main, business, providing video services. The amount of traffic they’re killing at (~250GB/mo) is probably just about what you need to replace a Comcast video service.
So, I don’t believe this is simply about cherry-picking the low-rent users, it’s about ensuring there’s not a viable means to compete with Comcast using Comcast. I see this as being like the recent FCC ruling where it was clarified that broadband providers must pass VOIP traffic.
Is this legal? Are there common-carrier or local monopoly implications?
Comments welcome.
“Idiot” – I agree with much of what you said, but the McDonald’s analogy misses on two points. #1 – McDonald’s isn’t in any kind of monopoly agreement with government (like Comcast’s local franchise agreements), so the government doesn’t get to regulate McDonald’s in the same way, and #2 – the FCC has already made a ruling about requiring ILEC’s to allow competition (VoIP) on their systems. See the link in the main blog post.
This would be like suing McDonalds because they don’t let you park your ice cream cart in their parkling lot. Monopoly? Hardly. McDonalds doesn’t have a monopoly on ice cream, but the certainly can control their venue to prevent competition in their own space.
This is presuming there is a business on McDonalds property. I’ve been accused of this time and time again. It should be clear there is no business running on their service especially one competing with Comcast. Yes we have a business. We receive photos, negatives and video. Scan it to the computer, create a DVD and mail it back via Fed-Ex or UPS (insured of course). Comcast doesn’t have to worry. Our business is still, well, busy 🙂
I’ll be posting on the blog my bandwidth usage results from both vnstat and Xmission.com’s own monitoring web page (I’ve been watching this closely). Now that we’ve been running with DSL for nearly two weeks, vnstat with the -m option predicts we will use 33 Gigs by the end of this month with the same bandwidth usage we’ve consumed over the last 4 years with Comcast. I’m waiting a little while more before posting my analysis. The more data I capture of our usage the better.
I agree with Bill’s accessment regarding video competition. Since Comcast announced online video sales in October 2006, I’ve seen the level of complaints has increased. It’s interesting to note that some people have used Comcast’s HSI to purchase video from alternative sources (sucy as walmart of Amazon’s unbox). I’m guessing this is the real reason people are being terminated. You should purchase from Comcast or they will terminate.
Of course none of this can be proven. But then again it’s quite the coincidence.
This would be like suing McDonalds because they don’t let you park your ice cream cart in their parkling lot. Monopoly? Hardly. McDonalds doesn’t have a monopoly on ice cream, but the certainly can control their venue to prevent competition in their own space.
Comcast can certainly do the same thing.
But that is hardly the point here. What you are seeing is the effect of the cheapening of the Internet that has occurred in the last few years. Today, unless you are a commercial entity about all you can get is a “burstable” Internet connection. That means that your 1Mb/sec connection does not mean 1Mb/sec 24×7. It never did. If you want that, you are going to have to pay for it, and it isn’t available from a cable company. Even most T-1 circuits aren’t set up for that volume – they are sold as “burstable” also.
250GB a month is probably close to the limit they can provide a single customer without seriously impacting other customers on the same circuit. You want more and you think you are paying for it already? You’re not. Rough guess is they have 10x less capacity than you would think they have and you are suffering because of it.
This is the cost of having $14.95 a month Internet connections. The providers can’t build out fast enough to keep up. If they raise the price, they lose in the market because most people don’t understand the difference between a burstable connection and dedicated bandwidth. And, they aren’t using anywhere near what they would get with dedicated bandwidth.
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