Begining of the end of broadband as we know it
Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/67eu5w
Our beloved communications company, Comcast, has posted an ammendment to it’s Network Management Policy stating that starting October 1st, it will be implementing broadband usage caps to 250GB per month.Yes that’s right, it’s like our cell phone plans now. Exceed your caps and pay more to Comcast. Well not quite!
If a customer surpasses 250 GB and is one of the top users of the service for a second time within a six-month timeframe, his or her service will be subject to termination for one year. After the one year period expires, the customer may resume service by subscribing to a service plan appropriate to his or her needs
To start with, the problem is Comcast has provided no details on how and if it will implement real-time metering of internet usage. It seems like a hidden black-box with no further information of whether users will have a choice of monitoring in real-time their active usage for the month. With my cell phone, I can call anytime and figure out how many minutes are left in my plan and cut down my usage accordingly. And If I exceed my cell phone minutes, I pay for the excess minutes: I am not asked to move to a higher plan nor is my service terminated!
As people move away from traditional cable and TV media to watching videos online, Comcast has come up with the classic approach of trying to limit online usage. Comcast however thinks differently
250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. Currently, the median monthly data usage by our residential customers is approximately 2 - 3 GB. To put 250 GB of monthly usage in perspective, a customer would have to do any one of the following:
- Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
- Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
- Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)
- Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
All of these numbers are meaningless and they don’t reflect real usage. I and I am fairly confident to speak for most consumers, no one sends 50 million e-mails. What I however do is watch movies online from Netflix or maybe watch LOST at ABC.com. How many of those can I really watch? That is what really matters and comcast owes it to its paying customer base to advertise those numbers as well. Very cleverly, comcast chooses to talk about standard-def movides that can be streamed or download vs HD or quality higher than standard def which is where we are heading.
As streaming services from the likes of Netflix are taking off, this is a huge blow for consumers who now have a great choice of watching movies online. This will seriously impact online video sites as well. So what next is in store: Daytime and night and weekend internet broadband minutes? So, readers, make some noise lest you want to see the begining of the end of broadband internet as you know it.
