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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."
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.
AT&T capped my 6mb DSL account at 150GB a month.
AT&T.
Life is not for the lazy.
Meredith Attwell Baker. Four months after approving the deal, she was hired to serve as senior vice president for government affairs for the Comcast-controlled NBC Universal. In other words, after approving the deal, she left the FCC to become one of Comcast's top lobbyists. I say get rid of all corporate lobbyists in Washington. They don't belong there.
If it wasn't for lobbyists, the 99% would be about the 80%.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
The real problem is that consumers have little to no choice of internet providers due to government regulations. In my area, I basically have the choice between Comcast and no internet. That isn't really a choice so they have a monopoly. The government is supposed to break up and prevent monopolies, not enforce and encourage them. If there were more providers they would be heavily incentivized to have no cap so that they could snatch up mine, and countless others, business from Comcast. I would gladly switch to such a provider and be willing to pay more for the service. We have no such alternative, that is the problem.
Got that right.
One good example is Cox in Phoenix. They have one of the most capable systems and most recently upgraded, at least according to subcontractors and employees I have talked to.
Their configuration is a fiber link from the head end to each neighborhood node. This link runs at 1-3GB with the newer ones at 3GB. It might be possible to run this link in the future at (maybe) 10GB but that would require a lot of new hardware at both ends. Connected to the node are either 500 or 1000 homes - they are splitting up the 1000-home nodes to make 500-home nodes, but that is as far as they are going. You can expect a lot of systems in the US to be running 1GB to the node and 1000 homes on the node.
A little simple division makes the problem pretty clear. Assuming there is no cable TV anymore on the head end to node link that means there is 3GB available to 500 homes in the best areas and in the oldest, slowest areas it is 1GB for 1000 homes. That is 6Mb/sec best case for every house or 1Mb/sec at the worst. There is no more capacity that that.
Oh, and the cable TV offerings are taking a pretty big slice of that bandwidth today, so it is far more likely that even in the best areas there is a max of 1Mb/sec to 500 homes - if they are all using it. For the last five years or so it has worked wonderfully because 1 in 10 (or more likely 50) homes was using any sort of streaming IPTV service. So instead of 1Mb/sec per home it worked out to be more like 10Mb/sec for the homes using it. The rest? Just email and web surfing. Now, you move 50% of the homes to trying to use IPTV services and the whole system collapses - the bandwidth simply isn't there. And, it is unlikely that it will be any time soon. The last time the cable systems were upgraded it took about 10 years from start to end. Maybe if we are lucky by 2020 we could have guaranteed 20Mb/sec to every home on the cable system which would require a 100GB fiber link from the node to the head end. I don't know about you, but I don't think there is any 100GB link that goes any distance.
Maybe what is required is a separate fiber run from every house to the head end. Yeah, that would work. You can get that today if you don't mind spending about $3K a month and I don't think it is going to get a lot cheaper any time soon.
This is not government regulation... this is LACK of government regulation. Get it right for once.
It's funny, I live in a small country (Finland) with only 5.2 million people, but I have a choice of at least a dozen internet providers and mobile operators (individually, not combined). Every time I visit the US, it seems at best you have 2 or 3 sources for either and none of them are good. Here we have real competition, good prices and good service. No caps either on broadband or mobile. You have unregulated free market capitalism that is running crazy, but not in a good way.
Then they just pull a Newt Gingrich. "No, I'm not a "lobbyist". I just happen to know a lot of people who are really influential that owe me favors... Now where's my "consultant" fee?"
"But this one goes to 11!"