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The Facts & Fiction of Bandwidth Caps
wjamesau writes "What's the deal with broadband caps, like Comcast's 250GB/month data transfer limit, which goes into effect tomorrow? Om Malik at GigaOM has a whitepaper laying out the facts and fiction about Comcast's short-sightedness (which other carriers are mimicking), and how it will impact the future Internet: 'Given the growth trend due to consumers' changes in content consumption, today's power users are tomorrow's average users. By 2012, the bill for data access is projected to be around $215 per month.' Ouch." The white paper is embedded at the link using Scribd; for a PDF version you'll have to give up an email address.
There is actually a term for that, it's called a Cartel.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
for a PDF version you'll have to give up an email address.
Fortunately, those aren't hard to come by.
Just thought that I'd point out that netflix has been doing DVD-quality video streams for quite a while now... (and it's included in the price of your subscription!)
People *are not* tied to a single provider. I can go with Comcast, Verizon, Road Runner, SprintPCS, and others.
That's rare. The reality for most people is you have one DSL provider and one cable provider.
And the point you miss... those aren't burst speeds; they are constant. You can run at 20Mb continuously all day long with no drop in speed, no indication you're approaching any limit, and no consequence of passing the limit. You won't know anything until you get the next bill or your connection is terminated. (How many 20k$ cell phone bills have we heard about over the last few years?) Nobody likes the DirectWay traffic shaping system, but that's exactly what is called for here. As I have said a thousand times, if they are capping bandwidth "for the health of the network", they would be rate shaping lines; raping your wallet at the end of the month does nothing at all for network health, but sure as shit will line their pockets. To put it another way, this has nothing to do with "the network" and everything to do with increasing profits.