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Comcast Predicts Usage Cap Within 5 Years
finalcutmonstar (1862890) writes "With net neutrality dying a slow painful death, it is no surprise that in an investor call yesterday Comcast executive VP(and Darth Vader impersonator) David Cohen predicts bandwidth caps within the next 5 years. The cap would start at 300 GB and cost the customer subscriber an extra 10 USD for 50 GB. But, Cohen stated that 'I would also predict that the vast majority of our customers would never be caught in the buying the additional buckets of usage, that we will always want to say the basic level of usage at a sufficiently high level that the vast majority of our customers are not implicated by the usage-based billing plan.'" Update: 05/15 13:58 GMT by T : Correction: Cohen is actually talking about data transferred, rather than stored (as headline originally had it), as reader MAXOMENOS points out.
Caps will definitely come. Not because they are "needed to help manage network congestion" or some other reason that the ISPs will trot out. They'll come for four simple reasons.
1) Video over the Internet threatens their own video services. Caps help make Internet video more expensive (via overage fees) and will help drive people away from Internet video.
2) Even if people use Internet video, the ISPs will get more money and they can never resist the smell of money.
3) The ISPs have monopolies (or near monopolies) in their service areas so they can do whatever they want and the public needs to take it.
4) They are big and powerful enough that they will make sure they have enough politicians "donated to" to prevent any government action against them.
Of course, they will keep on trotting out the "small group of users is slowing everyone's speeds down and caps will make them pay their fair share" line to justify the caps. The real cause of any slowdown will be because they take their profits and don't reinvest them into upgrading their networks. After all, why upgrade? It's not like there are any competitors to beat in the market or any government officials with backbone to pressure them into speeding up connections.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I predict in 5 years ill have a laundry list of null routes for various advertising providers and comcast hardware. I'll torrent every show and every song because to listen to them again on pandora will put me over my 'cap.' I'll have constructed a cantenna out of an array of garbage cans strapped to the roof of my house and have an army of ASIC hardware working round the clock to crack every WPA and WEP AP i see.
Oh, and I'll switch to dryline DSL and robocall every politician in my state asking for municipal high speed fiber. I and everyone youve ever infuriated with deep packet traffic shaping 'its comcastic' advertising blitzkreig will petition our government to bury you as we boycott your shit-tier service.
Good people go to bed earlier.
1. Void all local agreements giving exclusive access to a community to one internet provider.
2. Mandate that they are able to accommodate ALL the bandwidth they sell at any time.
3. Separate the businesses into a content side and a Access Provider side. Content side pays the same as all other content providers. Access Provider charges the same to all Content Providers.
4. NO limits on what you can do with your bandwidth.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
2. Mandate that they are able to accommodate ALL the bandwidth they sell at any time.
We already have this. Go look up leasing a T3 connection for your home; Guaranteed 44Mb line. Expect to pay several thousand dollars per month.
Your home broadband connection is oversold, and that's fine. That's why it's cheap, and it is very cheap. The problem is that they didn't tell you that that was how it was, and instead sold you on "up to $Mb download speed". Now that there are services that will actually saturate your 20Mb line 24/7 (bittorrent, netflix, whatever) the connections are congested. It's like putting all of the cars on the motorway at once; Nobody will get anywhere.
If the model was shifted to paying for the data you use regardless of your line speed, at least it would be fair; You get what you pay for, no more, no less. I watch netflix, I download ISOs and games on Steam, and I rarely hit north of 150GB in a month. This scheme seems fine to me. Then again, I'm looking at this through the rose-tinted glasses of a consumer, not a greedy corporate sociopath. I'm sure they'll have us bent over again soon enough.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
My solution is, and will continue to be, last mile is owned by Municipality. Bring it into a centralize COLO facility, and provide access (by auction) to the top 5 bidders., each given exactly the same space. This way, a residential unit (household) can go to the five, request prices / services and pick the one they like the best. The COLO configures the switch and the residential unit is serviced with exactly what they want, at a price they can shop against.
The problem isn't last mile, that problem has been solved. The problem is servicing the last mile in a way that allows for competition. COLO is the only way to provide open and free marketplace to the customers AND providers.
But this requires a shift from leased right of ways to Municipal Managed last mile.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.