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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'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.
"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
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.
Hulu will soon no longer be an option for those with no cable at all. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/tv_in_real_dime_ph0GiKk7rC9agDUEkHae2I
Don't allow Comcast the rights to broadcast Sony properties, including working with PS Network. I'm sure Comcast would concede.
Ahh and there's the beauty of it. Who would you believe to be violating some form of neutrality, if you were watching a hulu/youtube/redtube;) clip and it was blocked to you by the content owner because they didn't like your choice of ISP?
The thing is Comcast simply said "Oh normal data is so expensive, woe is us! But we're able to provide XFINITY content through a magical data pipe that doesn't need to worry about this!" With that, it becomes Sony's (and Netflix's!) fault for obviously creating (or having, in Netflix's case) a product that uses up so much magical interpipe juice.
Although what you say is very true, aside from signing distribution deals with Xfinity, the only way for the content providers to not get reamed (in the ATT pays Apple per iPhone sold sense), is to play some form of hardball with the ISPs. But my example of what the public perception would look like is exactly why these companies are taking the more passive and whiny route for now.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.