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Comcast CEO Brian Roberts Opens Mouth, Inserts Foot

Posted by timothy on from the contortions-of-all-kinds dept.

lpress (707742) writes "At a recent conference, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts rationalized charging Netflix to deliver content by comparing Comcast to the Post Office, saying that Netflix pays to mail DVDs to its customers but now expects to be able to deliver the same content over the internet for free. He forgot to mention that the Post Office does not charge recipients for those DVDs. The underlying issue in this debate is who will invest in the Internet infrastructure that we badly need? Comcast has a disincentive to invest because, if things bog down, people will blame content providers like Netflix and the ISP will be able to charge the content provider for adequate service. If ISPs have insufficient incentive to invest in infrastructure, who will? Google? Telephone companies? Government (at all levels)? Premises owners?"

17 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. He also forgot to mention... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That everyone has to pay for access to the Internet, including Netflix. They've already paid, but Comcast arbitrarily expects them to pay even more just because their own customers want to use Netflix, which makes zero fucking sense.

    1. Re:He also forgot to mention... by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What's more, his analogy actually supports Comcast NOT charging Netflix, rather than the other way around.
      Being a Canadian resident, if I want to send a letter to someone in Canada, I pay Canada Post to deliver it.
      If, on the other hand, I want to send a letter to someone in a different country, say, the USA, or England, I pay Canada Post to deliver it. I do not have to pay the United States Postal Service or Royal Mail to deliver my letter sent from Canada.

      In this analogy, countries and regional postal services are equivalent to ISPs. If I want to send a network packet (letter) to someone on a different ISP (in a different country), I pay my local ISP (postal service) to deliver it. Any ISP (country) beyond that is not my responsibility.

      --
      "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
    2. Re:He also forgot to mention... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think you have this wrong unless I'm not understanding correctly what you mean.

      If this was the case for you with your video game services then you already buying into some good data centers into the backbone and then later on some ISP's backbone link is congested they would then charge you extra to deliver your service to their customers even though you've already paid to be in the internet backbone in your data centers! It's ridiculous that any ISP thinks this is reasonable.
      I've paid for my bandwidth, the service (Netflix in this case/your video game service) has paid for their bandwidth now Comcast is double dipping because it knows it can since it has a monopoly.

      Have any ISP in any other country try this if there is competition I bet you they will not last long.

    3. Re:He also forgot to mention... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The problem was that Netflix didn't give a shit about some customers because they paid the lowest bidder to be their bandwidth host.

      Concern with network issues is why Netflix has offered CDN appliances at no cost for more than two years to ISPs. Comcast chose to refuse Netflix's offer to colo within their own DCs on their own internal network, which would have reduced latency and bandwidth costs to nothing. I tend to believe that Comcast is more concerned with Netflix's effect on their own content offerings, and pushing the additional costs to Netflix has the additional benefit of making *them* take the PR hit for any price increases that result.

    4. Re:He also forgot to mention... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If that were true, then Comcast wouldn't have a complaint about network congestion - it wouldn't happen.

      Any congestion would only occur at the Netflix connection point. Thus, once again, Comcast doesn't have a problem.

      If the congestion occurs at the COMCAST connection to the backbone, then COMCAST has a problem. Not Netflix. If Comcast wants to service their customers, they need to upgrade THEIR connection to the backbone - not force Netflix to pay a bribe to Comcast to NOT IMPOSE CONGESTION. This is commonly known as "extortion".

    5. Re: He also forgot to mention... by poptix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're missing the fact that Netflix is in all of those data centers. The problem is that Comcast is intentionally degrading their peering in those data centers meet-me rooms in an attempt to get more direct customers.

      Furthermore, if you're large enough Netflix will actually supply servers that you can plug into your network to provide the top x percentile of content -- for free.

      This is purely a Comcast wants more money and hates video competition issue.

      --
      Just because you disagree doesn't mean it's not true.
    6. Re: He also forgot to mention... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well it makes a bit of sense for the average ISP - their fees are based on presumed overcommit rates and it's possible to break those assumptions if everybody pumps enough traffic. Everybody is stuck on fixed-rate billing so the grandma doing webmail pays as much as the 10-meg-up-24x7 torrenter when the costs are way different. I even heard an ISP owner say that customers couldn't understand usage-based billing (these are people who pay electric bills). Insistence on fixed-rate billing will inevitably lead to bureaucrats central planning the Internet. If you put emotion before economics, you'll get exactly what you deserve. A libre Internet will eventually require per-packet billed routing (fractional shatoshi?) but if everybody insists on a gratis Internet they won't get the libre one.

      Comcast's anti-competitive bullshit is a red herring in the neutrality debate if you understand that what's really happening is that the overcommit gamble is starting to no longer pay off and they're mostly looking to soften that blow to their failing business model.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    7. Re: He also forgot to mention... by Namarrgon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The point is that, in both cases, the sender/content provider has already paid. If there's an additional cost to transmitting the content across a boundary (different country or different peering service), then in both cases that has already been factored into the cost of sending it, and paid to the local provider (post office or ISP).

      By Comcast's reasoning, the parcel sender should also expect a bill from any countries the parcel travels through, despite paying the full postage when sending. If Comcast wants more money for transmitting content, they need to take it up with their neighbour peering providers, not with the content producers or consumers.

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  2. Classify net access as a utility? by Mr0bvious · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This may be an absurd suggestion, but given that internet access is somewhat required to participate in society today, perhaps it's time to class internet access as a utility like water and electricity/gas.

    --
    Never happened. True story.
    1. Re:Classify net access as a utility? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My water pipes and electric lines have been working perfectly 24/7 for several years now. I have never been unhappy with the speed and quality of the water coming from my taps.

      Countries like Japan, S.Korea and Sweden seem to have no problem providing an internet service as high-quality as tap water.

      Meanwhile, US citizens pay $80/month for access to the village well.

    2. Re:Classify net access as a utility? by hawguy · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, not unless you would like your Internet access technologies refreshed and upgraded about as often as your water pipes or electric lines are. Which is to say approximately never.

      In the past 10 years, I have never turned on my water tap and had no water come out. In the past 5 years (which is as far back as I have log files from my UPS), I've experienced 2 power failures lasting longer than a few minutes (I recorded 7 outages lasting less than a few minutes, but some of those were when I unplugged the UPS or turned off a breaker to do some electrical work), one was a regional power outage, and one was caused when a car accident took down a utility pole.

      However, I experience regular internet outages, the last one was last week, and lasted for 3 hours, cable TV was fine, but internet (for me and a neighbor down the street) was out. It took 30 minutes to get someone at Comcast to realize that there was a problem, but they had no idea what was wrong, nor any ETA for a fix.

      So I *wish* my internet connection was managed as well as water and power.

  3. Re: Govermental oversight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It doesn't need regulation, it needs competition. Can't wait for an alternative to ditch fucking Comcast.

  4. Re:treat Netflix like a television network by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, that's fucking brilliant. Let's package Netflix along with 105 other online services we'll never use, all for only $125 a month.

    Moron.

  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  6. The Universal Postal Union by westlake · · Score: 5, Informative

    I want to send a letter to someone in a different country, say, the USA, or England, I pay Canada Post to deliver it. I do not have to pay the United States Postal Service or Royal Mail to deliver my letter sent from Canada.

    Postal settlements for delivery abroad are made peer-to-peer.

    The Universal Postal Union (UPU, French: Union postale universelle) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates postal policies among member nations.

    In 1969, the UPU introduced a new system of payment where fees were payable between countries according to the difference in the total weight of mail between them. These fees were called terminal dues. Ultimately, this new system was fairer when traffic was heavier in one direction than the other. As a matter of example, in 2012, terminal dues for transit from China to the USA was 0.635 SDR/kg, or about 1 USD/kg.

    As this affected the cost of the delivery of periodicals, the UPU devised a new ''threshold'' system, which it later implemented in 1991. The system sets separate letter and periodical rates for countries which receive at least 150 tonnes of mail annually. For countries with less mail, the original flat rate is still maintained. The United States has negotiated a separate terminal dues formula with thirteen European countries that includes a rate per piece plus a rate per kilogram; it has a similar arrangement with Canada.

    Universal Postal Union

  7. Invest with all the money I pay you scumbags by wiredlogic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My Comcast bill is $57.99 for 10Mbps internet only. I just got a couple of "threat" letters saying that my "promotional" pricing is about to expire and I will pay even more for their lovely service. Never mind that my promotional pricing actually ended six months ago.

    They are already making money hand over fist off their customers. They should use that money to invest in their own infrastructure improvements.

    --
    I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
  8. USPS is not a publisher. by Kaenneth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Postal Service also doesn't publish a lot of material it mails for itself.

    Comcast/Xfinity should be forced to separate from their content creation side. (NBC/Universal)