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Sony Put Video Service on Hold Due to Comcast Data Caps
suraj.sun writes with more fallout from Comcast's bandwidth caps that give preference to their own video services. From the article: "An executive from Sony said Monday that concerns about Comcast's discriminatory data cap are giving the firm second thoughts about launching an Internet video service, that would compete with cable and satellite TV services. In March,Comcast announced that video streamed to the Xbox from Comcast's own video service would be exempted from the cable giant's 250 GB monthly bandwidth cap. 'These guys have the pipe and the bandwidth,' he said. 'If they start capping things, it gets difficult.' Sony isn't the first Comcast rival to complain about the bandwidth cap. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has also blasted Comcast's discriminatory bandwidth cap as a violation of network neutrality. Comcast controls more than 20 percent of the residential broadband market, which means that Comcast effectively controls access to one-fifth of any American Internet video service's potential customers."
Mergers like Comcast/NBC should be illegal. Once content providers are also content distributers, they can pull shenanigans like these.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
I just wish there was a third viable option in the US (or at least where I live). But I guess two will do.
Comcastic!
Its a pejorative.
I'm nowhere near my monthly data c
Comcast has been up to no good for years. We all remember the torrent throttling and god knows what else. They need to have the thumb screws put to them so they stop trying to squeeze every penny out of every MB by throttling traffic, applying data caps and the like. I hate Comcast's business practices but they're usually pretty damn fast.... there needs to be another choice. 20% is too large for a dickweed company that pulls this bull-shlaka.
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
"These guys have the pipe and the bandwidth"
Yeah, but you own a bulk of the content they provide. Don't allow Comcast the rights to broadcast Sony properties, including working with PS Network. I'm sure Comcast would concede.
How odd it is to see Sony on the side of good in this one particular battle.
250 GB is a lot compared to the caps enforced here in Belgium.
50 GB or even less is not an exception here and this is from companies asking more than €30/month.
"Aragon reportedly said Sony was 'waiting on clarity' ...about whether regulators would allow Comcast to exempt its own video services from the broadband cap."
This is probably how discussion on Net Neutrality starts. Hopefully this leads to some sort of law forcing ISPs to provide real evidence to justify implementing any sort of bandwidth cap.
As it stands, it's all bullshit. The difference between a light and a heavy user, as far as the ISP is concerned, is that the heavy user continues downloading/browsing/streaming heavily on off-peak hours (read: overnight). About the only major cost for the ISP, assuming they even HAVE the capability to lower their system capacity at night, would be the extra power usage for their network hardware, and even THAT becomes substantially cheaper at night.
As this is Slashdot:
It's like charging cars by the number of hours spent on the road because of traffic congestion, and as a result, taxing cars at a heavier rate for driving at 3 in the morning, when there's no congestion to contribute to.
I remember when Comcast put on the extremely low 250GB caps per month, a lot of people around here said that anybody using more than 250GB a month was probably a pirate.
Does anybody still believe that?
What 250GB caps really means is that your ISP won't invest in infrastructure, because its expensive.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
My cap here in Québec is only 35GB per month for download+upload combined. I can't change ISP because they have a monopoly in this remote region.
because ISPs will cap ( and charge ) for downloads.
Yours In Boca Raton,
Kilgore Trout
AT&T capped my 6mb DSL account at 150GB a month.
AT&T.
Life is not for the lazy.
There is a reason Comcast won Comsumerist's Worst Corporation in America contest in 2010. Comcast should be disassembled and shot into space toward the sun.
Let's hope that this will draw more attention to the issue of caps in general, and biased caps in particular, as being detrimental to things that ordinary people want to use, and big companies want to sell.
"Net Neutrality" is a confusing thing to most people, but "Sony won't sell you videos on demand because of Comcast's biased data caps" is much easier. I think even Congresscritters might be able to understand that one.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Why do you hate the free market, Sony?
--
BMO
“Comcast controls more than 20 percent of the residential broadband market, which means that Comcast effectively controls access to one-fifth of any American Internet video service's potential customers.”
Comcast controls more than 20 percent of the residential broadband market, which means that Comcast effectively controls access to one-fifth of any American Internet video service's potential customers."
Redundant much? Good thing that you explained that 20% = 1/5th otherwise we would have never figured that out. I was first going to guess that controlling 20% of the home broadband market meant that they controlled 300% of these potential customers but I'm glad you were there to set me straight.
to come down with hard regulation on such ISPs.
If they want to have the advantages of a common carrier - free access to rights of way, and a monopoly on services, then they better behave like a content neutral common carrier. If they want to take the attitude that it's their network and they can control it any way they want, then they can also negotiate rights-of-way individually with the millions of property owners whose land their cables cross.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
In the US you can at least still Get 'Unlimited Bandwidth' packages!
Up here in 'The Great White North' they have done away with All forms of unlimited bandwidth internet services.
Needless to say, High Throughput is (nearly) worthless if you can use up your entire months' worth of bandwidth in a day or two.
Of course, we have Ball Canada to thank for this, as they have an uncontested Monopoly on the country-wide trunk lines, and have EVERYONE hostage to their rates, so they can set whatever prices they want for data and voice.
Oh, did I mention that they were Uncontested? That's right. Canada's legislative control body, the CRTC has no powers over them, as they are now 'Unregulated'.
I found this out the hard way when we switched our assorted core services to another provider, and Bell summarily cut off our phone,(and locked our phone number) when we dropped the internet and TV services to go with Cogeco Cable. We had a Great long distance package and an easy-to-remember number, but "a 'mistake' was made during your service adjustments, and we can no longer support or reinstate your service. You will have to resolve the issue before we can give you a new number, as that one will go back into the available pool.".
Yes, Virginia. There is a Monopoly (in Canada), and the CRTC has had its hands tied.
Beware of this happening in the US next!
Core providers capping bandwidth to keep the Streaming Content from taking off, and driving up profitability on those Smartphones that are ALWAYS connected to their networks, constantly tapping into Twitter, e-mail and any form of Instant Messaging, as well as GPS and routing, weather reports, stock quotes, the latest episode of your Soap Opera...
Wanna stream the Big Game in HD on your G4 iPad? Watch your Bill for the Big Game to come back and Bite you in the Bandwidth!
Eventually it will come down to capping speed or total usage. I don't think the backbone infrastructure is designed to handle so much traffic, and I doubt Comcast is willing to spend millions on upgrading.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Ok "Free Market" Dick Breathers, let's hear your rationalizations.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I was just before the start date of MSNBC. About 10 to 15 years ago. When Bill Gates wanted to produce a set top box. It was deemed a conflict of interest. Bill Got mad, I assume, and bought 40% of both Comcast and NBC. Thus the birth of MSNBC and a big cable player to carry it. Today MS has a set top box its called the X-box.
So you can see its not hard to get the votes for things like Merger when one party holds big piles of shares. You can almost expect random votes to push you over 50%.
It only follows a take over of all of the Internet By the interests of a few, and another way of extracting cash from the rest of us.
Sounds like a straight-up case of anti-competitive business practice and why content producers in the content delivery business should be fairly and soundly regulated if they're allowed in the first place.
In the UK this would doubtlessly be referred to the Competition Comission.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
go back to its great company status Comcast is probably doing everyone a favour as who know what DRM scheme/root kits would be involved in order to watch the Sony video streams.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I always think about over the air (OTA) broadcast and not have to deal with streaming video issues (throughput, routers, IP addr conflicts, bandwidth issues, data dropouts, corp shenenigans, etc.) though antennas can be a pain particularly if you are living in a condo. OTA already exists but TV stations are garbage these days, I remember in 20th century when local TV stations played movies (older movies when women dressed like women).
mfwright@batnet.com
> Comcast's discriminatory bandwidth cap as a violation of network neutrality
Forget about network neutrality, this has "Microsoft flashback" written all over it. And if you think that Microsoft sticking its IE as default into OS was outrageous, how outrageous is this?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
These caps are super anti-competive in areas where companies like Comcast have exclusive franchise agreements that prevent other companies from offering uncapped high speed cable based internet. Sounds like a good reason to quit bitching to the FCC and start complaining about the uncompetitive behavior to the cable franchise boards instead...
Is there an advantage to having the media libraries inside Comcast's network so that Comcast does not need to pay at their border? Does Comcast get charged upstream for their bandwidth?
Also, Comcast wants to serve media via its xfinity web offerings. Cannot Sony leverage that since many of those titles will belong to Sony?
Not the streaming. (much lower resolution - which does not matter for people like me who do it on the background just enough to not to forget common English)
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Mergers should be illegal?
Your post implies that shenanigans should be illegal. Where do you think you going with this?
The whole idea of a business competition is to abuse/exploit/break/violate existing rules in a more industrious (and that's the etymology of the word "industry" for you right there in this adjective) way than your competitor.
Corporations may be became people now, but that does not mean that Supreme Court decree also enriched them with morals.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I used to work at an ISP and honestly, as much as it would annoy me as a consumer, Comcast has a reasonable base to exempt their own streaming data while not exempting an external service.
Simply put ... Comcast, like anyone else, has costs involved with pumping data from the outside to their customers. On the other hand, with a good data distribution/caching system, they can pump data full-time from their own network to their customers attached to that network for virtually nothing.
Does that make this 100% fair? No. But it most definitely gives a reason to their madness. Sorry to disappoint folks who grew up thinking bandwidth was free ... but it isn't ... it is actually big business. Technologies like broadband multicast have the capability to alleviate this somewhat ... and yeah, Comcast and their like are going to resist any such change ... but the realities of today should still be factored in.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
OK, let's say you work out a deal with a McDonalds to sell you hamburgers at half price as long as you buy 100 at a time. So you set up a stand across from the McDonalds and start selling hamburgers cheaper than McDonalds does. You have incredible sales for the first week or so.
Of course, based on that you get a couple of friends to loan you money to expand your business and start trying to negotiate a similar deal with a different McDonalds across town.
How long do you really think it is going to take McDonalds to figure out they are supplying you with hamburgers that you are using to take their customers away from them? Does this really sound like a viable business model?
The cable (and DSL) Internet providers are waking up to the fact that they are supplying a service which is being used to take their customers away from them. Why should Comcast supply a service that is used to get people to drop their cable TV subscription? It is like the phone company supplying DSL service so their customers can drop the phone service and go with Vonage. You can say the cable TV service should be independent of the cable Internet service all you want, but the truth is that one has subsidized the other since the beginning. For DSL the service wouldn't even exist without the driver of phone landline service to begin with. We are starting to see the fallout of this. Certainly the cable companies are realizing they are assisting in the cannibalization of their own customer base - and they are going to stop doing that, one way or another. Hulu is just the beginning.
I know I have a 250GB cap on my Cox account. Cox doesn't necessarily degrade connections after that but the penalties right now are nebulous.
And I know Time Warner also plays games with caps. The FCC needs to step in and stop this bullshit post haste!
As long as they apply the same rules to everyone, it could be considered neutral to not count "internal" traffic towards the cap. My own ISP has said that their upstream internet costs are significant and growing so this isn't so far-fetched.
The logical solution is for Sony to install a local caching server inside the Comcast network--if Comcast were to prevent that, then it would violate net neutrality.
I work from home but my team is on the other side of the country. VPN sessions open constantly, I timeshift TV shows via the net, etc. Normally I'm below 60GB.
Governments (Federal/State/Local) all have an rules and regulations that prevent more competition in the marketplace. In a normal economic model you would see the high-end users move towards the carrier that provides the best value (probably one without caps). However, many jurisdictions have made Comcast a legal monopoly.
Personally, I don't like the Comcast DVR and I've had awful response from their customer service people. I will pay more to go elsewhere.
A company only cares about money, if it can compete unfairly, it will. Regulation is necessary where competition is limited.
Until there is literally blood in the streets. I don't know whose it will be, but the ccorporations are making it clear that they are both greedy enough and clueless enough to push things at least that far.
Comcast has 22.8 million subscribers. They have a market cap of 87 billion. So that is $3815 dollars per household, Spread over 2 years that is $158.00 probably exactly what you are paying right now. Just fucking buy the assholes out. Fire all the executives and turn it into a coop.
Roughly how much is a two hour movie in terms of MB/GB? Is it really a concern of someone using a Sony/Netflix service that watching a movie per day would put them over the limit?
Sony is hesitant to start a new video internet-based streaming service because Comcast places a 250GB per month data cap on its customers. However, the other ISPs also place a data cap on their customers as well.
Plus, let's take a look at how much data you need to consume to get anywhere near that cap. According to AT&T (http://www.att.com/standalone/data-calculator/), 250GB = approximately 30 hours of full HD streaming video.
The solution is, Comcast will need to reconsider it's data-cap policy if video services like this become the norm. To compensate, they can jack up everyone's rates to compensate for the additional bandwidth, or they can charge more for "power users" who regularly go over their cap. Which option sounds more fair?
There probably is something else here, and Sony may just using Comcast's capping as an excuse...
a) Comcast's cap is not a "cap and charge overages", but a "cap, warn, and terminate or get them to upgrade to uncapped business service": Actually enforcing the cap for Comcast is very costly, because they lose customers. This makes it far less anticompetitive than other caps, but really targeted against abuse of service.
b) Comcast's cap is reasonably large. Netflix's HD stream is ~1.8 GB/hour, and other streams are less. So a 250 GB cap is >4.5 hours of HD video a day through streaming, which is a LOT.
I have a serious problem with other ISP's much lower "Cap and Overage" model, where the goal is to use the cap to increase revenue. And such caps are far more likely to be anticompetitive.
I suspect its Sony having issues with TV networks and other interests, and they are using Comcast's cap as an excuse.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Sony/DRM/rootkit issues aside, this is a story of bandwidth caps directly killing new services/innovation.
I think they maybe need to outlaw these kind of bandwidth caps, they do nothing but harm...
Does anyone know of any metering applications for Ubuntu 10.04.1?
I'm curious as to how much bandwidth I actually consume. SaskTel has no download caps, and I do download a LOT, but I'm curious as to whether I would exceed Comcast's cap or not.
I download every TV show that catches my interest, and watch maybe an hour to two per week out of all those downloads. I download every movie that hits the Pirate Bay's top 100, and watch maybe 1-2 per month at most.
As literally 95% of what I download is "just in case" I want to watch it later, I think I've probably got about the maximum downloads a single user could possibly put on the network.
So if I'm not exceeding the 250Gb cap, I'd have to say the furor over the cap is a tempest in a teapot.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I have Comcast and I've seen this happen. So I try to use their movies, since I'm paying subscription fees, and holy crap their selections suck, I mean really suck balls.
Now I'm seeing TV channels that are soooooo compressed that the basic cable I'm paying for is taking a massive hit in quality viewing. Pictures pixelate all the time, sound cuts out several times an hour. It's horrible. AUGH!
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
This is just the free market. If you don't like it then you're a communist.
Dear Roger, This is to inform you that, in the judgement of the board, your "lobbying" (wink) efforts in Washington have been wildly successful - far more so than our wildest hopes. What could have been a serious threat to our monopoly on delivery of television programming appears to have been thwarted. Due to your work, and the "friendly" regulatory climate it has produced, we can impose bandwidth caps and other measures that will effectively crush any competition that might seek to use that internet thing to compete with us.
Well done. Look for another fat bonus again this year.
I don't mean to fanboy, just letting you know that TekSavvy still has unlimited plans. They fought (fight) Bell Canada tooth and nail to keep it that way too.
I despise Comcast, but I'm a customer because their only competition is the phone company, who is even worse. Some free market.
Yes, we need to get rid of lobbyists, but the phenomenon you speak of is a different animal. If lobbying were illegal, then she would have received some other cushy job at NBC Universal. This whole "screw over the voters/taxpayers for Acme Corp, then get a cushy job with Acme Corp" routine happens in just about every part of the government, even the military.
What we need to do is make it illegal for any high-ranking government employee to get a job with any corporation that is regulated by or a contractor for that employee's position. Generals can't get jobs with military contractors, FTC execs can't get jobs with Wall Street firms, FAA execs can't get jobs with airlines, etc., etc.
I know what I am proposing sounds draconian, but this tactic has an incredibly corrupting influence over government, and this is the only thing I can think of to put an absolute stop to it. If anyone has any other ideas, I'm more than willing to listen.
I tried DSL, streaming video over it just sucked balls, and when it failed the phone co's customer service was terrible. Fios? Maybe in 10 years if I'm lucky.
I'd like to see all of the content providers having servers at the MAN level. Content there would be delivered at full network bandwidth. In other words, if the link supports 1Gbps, the content should be delivered over a 1Gbps connection. I'd also like to see routing rules set-up so that all local ISPs are hooked up into the MAN. EG: users from Verizon and Comcast can access the local TV station's servers without the station having to set up two separate links.
MAN content would, of course, not be metered as the bandwidth available is ridiculously large.
Upstream (to Internet) bandwidth would be distributed by level of pay. Those who pay more would have a larger number of upstream bandwidth links available to them, and QoS mods would be made as well.
What is it about conservative/authoritarian political movements that causes them to do this? The Nazis were convinced they were being persecuted by Jews even as they stuffed them into ovens en masse. Apartheid South Africans were convinced they were being persecuted by dark-skinned Africans. And of course American conservolibertarians are convinced that the rich are being persecuted by the poor, men are being persecuted by women, Christians are being persecuted by homosexuals, whites are being persecuted by minorities, etc.
It's not just that they are convinced they are victims. They are convinced they are victims when precisely the opposite is happening. I cannot fathom the level of delusion necessary to make people think this way, but it seems that every major conservative political movement does this.
Get their business service branded as Business Class. Pretty much the same price without any new sign-up discounts, no contracts, no credit checks, no caps, 4hr resolution SLA, generally burst speeds are higher for longer, and you can run your own server within the TOS. Sure you have to lease their crummy SMC router/cable modem at $7/mo or go find yourself a SB6120. The down sides are it's a completely different account, your house will get classified as a business address in their DB, their CSRs can get confused at times even though I call the residential number for my TV service and the business number for the internets.
If they start asking a whole lot of questions of why you're not getting their residential service, just say you work from home and may hit that residential cap. If you have their residential TV as well, you'll still get adverts for their residential internet service.
They should only have caps at peak usage hours
I would be jubilating with a 250GB limit, we have 60GB/month here in Quebec under a normal contract.
I think its time to breakup Comcast into several smaller competing companies, like MA Bell. It's the only way to let the free market work as intended.
Perhaps Sony can start an ISP.... and offer unlimited streaming :)
4.5 hours a day sounds like a lot until you realize households often have more than one person.
4.5 hours of HD video a day through streaming. How is that a LOT? Even one person could easily hit 3-4 hours per night if they like watching streaming video. More on weekends. And God help you if you have two teenagers both trying to stream their entertainment!
>So a 250 GB cap is >4.5 hours of HD video a day through streaming, which is a LOT.
Only if you assume that there is only one user/device in this scenario. Start dividing that 4.5 hours between multiple devices, and suddenly it's not so generous.
As far as data caps go on residential connections, 250GB a month is not very generous. 500 would be nicer, 1TB ideal.
But these are just the opinions of an alleged 'network abuser', if you're to believe Comcast propaganda.
Instead of backing down, they should sue. I rarely suggest suits, but in this case i think its needed as it would protect consumers in the process if Sony won.
If they lose, then its all over and at least we know the rules.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
you would do anything to avoid a contract with sony too
Sony and everyone else dont have cable maintence to pay for so how is this far to comcast? They own the lines and the bandwith that travels through it.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Does Uncle Enzo run Comcast, too?!
b) Comcast's cap is reasonably large. Netflix's HD stream is ~1.8 GB/hour, and other streams are less. So a 250 GB cap is >4.5 hours of HD video a day through streaming, which is a LOT.
That's only a lot if everyone is home at the same time and only one television show is watched at a time. That's the case in my home, but there's only two of us here.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I love how everyone is up in arms at a 250GB cap.
The caps here in Canada are WAY worse. I just had my cap increased to 80GB from 60GB which it has been for years. Most people probably have a 20-30GB cap.
Canada is great for some things, but we exist in the dark ages for our internet.
Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light!!!
If you can't be good, be good at it!
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has also blasted Comcast's discriminatory bandwidth cap as a violation of network neutrality.
Exactly what network neutrality is he referring to??
No sig for you! Come back one year!
4.5 hours might be a lot for a single user. Although you need to take into account all other internet use: patches, email, browsing, etc... It isn't just video.
Where 4.5 hours fails, is in multi-user connections. Especially internet savvy families. 2 kids, 2 parents and your down to 2.25 hours of video a day, assuming the kids watch cartoons on netflix and the parents watch something else. When I am over at relatives houses, it is more likely that the youngest kid watches a 30 minute cartoon, the older kid watches a 30 minute teen show, one parent watches something like mad men while cooking, the other parent watches some online news or a documentary while doing the laundry. So that is 3 hours right there. Then the kids go to bed and the parents want to watch 1 or two shows before bed. They are now over the cap.