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Domain: cmcsk.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to cmcsk.com.

Comments · 6

  1. Cost is irrelevant by deAtog · · Score: 1 · on Comcast Discloses Throttling Practices

    Some people have been defending Comcast based on the amount it would cost them to upgrade their network and provide their current customer base with unlimited network bandwidth as advertised. If cost were really an issue, their overall profit would not be nearly as high as stated in their annual and quarterly earnings reports at http://www.cmcsk.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=118591&p=irol-earnings

    Based on these reports Comcast has had plenty revenue to spare which could have been spent on upgrading their network for quite some time. Instead, they choose to throttle their network users in order to increase company profits and earnings per share for their stockholders.

  2. Re:Here come the "In Australia..." posts by mccabem · · Score: 1 · on Comcast To Cap Data Transfers At 250 GB In October

    I costs marginally more to operate a higher-speed network, but you should be able to make more money from it than a lower-speed (older) network. You can support more applications, more users.

    Come on....fiber is cheap, Optical Carriers are OLD TECH and capable of carrying up to 10Gb/s and more. DWDM has allowed a single fiber to carry at least 128 of these 10Gb/s connections since around 2000. That's 1280Gb/s or more on a single fiber!!

    With a terminated OC-192 (10Gb) to distribute to 500 customers, you'd be able to provide every one of them 20Mb/s of dedicated syncronous bandwitdh for $70/month (per FIOS cost) and make $420,000 per year from it. It's only $5000/year from an OC-3 at a little under 20Mb/s for only 7 users. For the record, Comcast claimed to have 13.2 million subscribers on their high-speed internet service at the end of 2007. Using that $70/month number again, that translates to roughly US$1 billion/year in revenue for Comcast.*

    Admittedly those are simple numbers**, but they should still give a fair idea of what dollars the ISP's are working with. Unless they suddenly run out of customers (seems unlikely) or just don't have any business savvy at all (maybe) they will make money on network upgrades.

    The real question nobody seems in a hurry to answer is why aren't they doing the upgrades if making (more) money is their goal? Instead we get a lot of noise about bandwidth caps and metered usage. I fail to see how they plan to make money from either of those strategies.

    -Matt

    * And this is just for hooking up their paid-for (by the TV service they provide) network to the Internet.

    ** There are other costs. You'd never dedicate all that bandwidth to only 500 users as a consumer rate. Those 500 users probably wouldn't all be baseline consumers - a percentage would be higher-value business customers that pay significantly more per month (50%-100% markup) for nothing more than assurance of uptime that you'll already be providing. Only a subset of those 500 users is going to be demanding their full 20Mb/s from the internet simultaneously, so you can support that number of users on a much-smaller-than-OC-192 connection. Et cetera.

  3. Re:Well, here's your problem by JeremyALogan · · Score: 1 · on Suit Seeks 'A La Carte' TV Channel Choices
    This is complete and utter FUD. You (the cable company) control the street going both ways. Us (telivision consumers) need you to get access to the channels we want to watch. They (the content providers) need you to get their shows (and, thus their ads) to us. You are the ONLY ones with any leverage here.

    The only numbers I could find says that in 2005 Comcast had 21.4 million basic subscribers. If we assume an average household size of 2.59 then that means that Comcast alone has about 55 and a half million potential sets of eyeballs (note that this is NOT including digital subscribers).

    You can't tell me that that isn't leveragable against the content providers. You think ESPN wouldn't renegotiate if they were about to lose that many eyeballs? How about if you add in the 53.6 million that Time-Warner controls? These two companies alone control the television choices of 1/3 of the adult American population. NO content provider would negotiate away that much potential revenue. If they did then a competing channel would rise to fill the gap.

    The cable companies are the ones with the power in the us/you/them equation. If they decided to use it they would have no problem implementing the system proposed by this lawsuit (and they'd probably come out ahead).



    But to the networks, YOU ARE NOT THE CUSTOMER, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT.
    If this is true, then why are you charged for us and not paid? In your scenarion you are offering a product (us) to a consumer (the content providers) and you're the one being charged for it. If I walked in to any company offering products for sale and demanded that they pay me to take their products they'd laugh me out of the building... how is this any different?



    The argument also falls apart when you consider that Comcast either owns or is majority owner in over a half-dozen channels. Why can't we a'la cart those?
  4. Re:I work for Comcast. by tkrotchko · · Score: 1 · on Does Comcast Hate Firefox?

    Comcast has set up a web based application/page for your customers to use, find out it doesn't serve a significant minority of their customers, and your response is that Comcast need to raise prices to provide Firefox support (as if they needed an excuse)?

    Let me quote you something from Comcast's 2006 annual report (their latest):

    "We broke all records in 2006, driven by our cable business.(a) Cable revenues increased 12%, to $26.3 billion. Operating cash flow(b) rose 15%, to $10.5 billion, making 2006 our sixth straight year -- capping 26 consecutive quarters -- of double-digit operating cash flow growth. During the year, our customers bought five million new products -- or what we call "revenue-generating units" (RGUs)(c) -- an increase of 69% from 2005. And each of our services -- basic cable, digital cable, high-speed Internet and digital voice -- added more new customers than ever before. We have real momentum. The past year was sensational, but 2007 and the future have the potential to be even better."

    (source: http://www.cmcsk.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=118591&p=irol -reportsAnnual)

    Near as I can tell, Comcast HS internet had revenues of $11B in 2006, and somewhere out of that $11B, they can't take $50K to support anything other than IE 5.5?

    I'm not saying Comcast charges too much, I'm just saying they show a real disregard for their customers when, by their own admission, they have a spectacular year financially, and they won't even do a small thing to support their customers.

  5. Re:Dark Fiber by dsginter · · Score: 4, Informative · on 100Mbps Home Internet Service Next Year in Finland

    Dark Fiber as nothing to do with home broadband.

    Both DSL and cable internet are provided by way of fiber - its just cheaper to convert to another medium for the "last mile". See Comcast's recent dark fiber aquisition.

  6. Re:Somewhat offtopic, but how do people deal with by The+Angry+Mick · · Score: 1 · on Dealing with Intruders?

    Well, a brutish way to make a point is to block all the whole of Comcast's addresses.

    Then, send a polite note to Comcast upper management (here's the list) letting them know what you've done, and why. Suggest that they visit your /. posts to see a very visible reference to their lack of customer service or concern for security. Explain how many people read Slashdot daily. Let them do the math on how many potential customers they risk alienating.