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A Sneaky Assault on the Future of the Internet.<\/h5>\nA Sneaky Assault on the Future of the Internet.<\/h5>\nComcast recently announced it was considering extra charges for users who consume more than 250 GB of bandwidth per month<\/strong>. After 250 GB, users could purchase additional bandwidth in 10 GB amounts for $15 each. \u201cI suspect that Comcast is making a preemptive attack to hurt Apple and other downloadable content companies. In effect, Comcast is trying to kill the downloadable content market in its infancy. It sees the future and in that future Comcast may be nothing more than the owner of some dumb pipes that carry everybody else’s valuable content.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n ExtremeTech Story<\/a><\/p>\n Downloadable movies and other similar sorts of content delivery systems are just right over the horizon. The only thing that\u2019s holding off deployment of downloadable movies is bandwidth.<\/p>\n A Sneaky Assault on the Future of the Internet. Comcast recently announced it was considering extra charges for users who consume more than 250 GB of bandwidth per month. After 250 GB, users could purchase additional bandwidth in 10 GB amounts for $15 each. On its face, this plan sounds very reasonable. I\u2019ve monitored my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadband"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOn its face, this plan sounds very reasonable. I\u2019ve monitored my bandwidth usage before, and I\u2019m what many would consider a fairly heavy user. In a good month, I generally wouldn\u2019t exceed 30 GB of bandwidth. That\u2019s a little peer to peer file sharing, a lot of music streaming, occasional software downloads. Maybe a Linux image here and there.
\nBut if you look closer, this is nothing more than an insidious attempt to hijack the future of the internet.
\nJim Lynch over at ExtremeTech called it:<\/p>\n
\nTo make that sort of business model really work, you need fast <\/em>service \u2013 the sort they have in Japan and Korea and Hong Kong, right now \u2013 where download speeds of 50-100 Mb\/s are pretty much standard.
\nAfter years of waiting, speeds like that are coming here soon, with the deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 and FTTH.
\nAt 100 mb\/s, a 6 GB SD movie takes just 6 minutes to download; a 25 GB Blu-Ray movie would take about a half hour.
\nIf you stream the video you can almost watch right away. But this still uses a humongous amount of bandwidth \u2013 Blu-Ray movies streams can consume up to 54 mb\/s of bandwidth.
\nAnd therein lies the problem with Comcast\u2019s plan: you could blow your entire month\u2019s bandwidth allowance by watching just 10 Blu-Ray movies.
\nAdd to that other bandwidth-intensive applications that are also just over the horizon \u2013 like video phones and streaming HD TV shows \u2013 as well as current downloadable content, like video games and other software \u2013 and you might very well find yourself out of bandwidth in a hurry.
\nAnd Comcast knows that these apps are coming. And they fear <\/em>that.
\nFirst and foremost, Comcast is a cable TV company. They make the largest portion of their bucks by delivering content \u2013 programming <\/em>\u2013 over cable TV lines direct to TVs.
\nThe proliferation of downloadable content could easily change that.
\nComcast and the other cable companies offer packages of different TV channels for different price points. Usually, in any channel package you buy, the majority of the channels are junk \u2013 stuff you never ever would watch.
\nBut with downloadable content, that changes. You need only pay what you stream or download. Everything\u2019s a la carte<\/em>. You get to pick and choose and only pay for what you watch. All your favorite TV shows, movies, news, sports \u2013 everything<\/em> will soon be available over the internet and deliverable directly to your HDTV via your Playstation or Xbox (or PC interface).
\nThis scares Comcast absolutely shitless. Why? Because it makes them redundant <\/em>as content providers.
\nAs the author at ExtremeTech said, it relegates them to the position as the simple owner of dumb pipes.
\nSo how do they insure their future as content providers? Oh, they are so, so sneaky. They take pre-emptive action to kill-off all downloadable content not their own, by imposing caps that make downloading non-Comcast content too expensive.<\/em>
\nBut 250 GB of data you say? We\u2019ll never use that much, ever!
\nYeah, right.
\nMy first PC had a 20 MB <\/em>hard drive \u2013 and at the time, that was plenty. Microsoft Word version 1.1 was only about 1.5 KB. It took me a year or so to fill up that 20 MB drive.
\nThen in the late 90\u2019s the first 1-3 GB drives came out. You\u2019ll never fill that up<\/em>, said one of my friends. That of course, was wrong.
\nIn the past few years, VHS tapes went away and were supplanted by DVD\u2019s which held a humongous amount more data (6-8 GB); now DVD\u2019s are being phased out in favor of Blu-Ray discs which hold yet four times more data (up to 48 GB).
\nAnd that 20 MB hard drive I started with wouldn\u2019t even hold the boot-files for Windows Vista.
\nMy current PC has three hard drives with a total of 270 GB locally augmented by a network storage device with one TB <\/em>of space \u2013 which is currently half full (at the rate I\u2019m going, I\u2019ll have to add another TB later this year).
\nSimilarly, in the house of the near future, you\u2019ll burn up a tremendously larger amount of internet bandwidth. How many movies do you normally rent now? 2-3 a week, maybe? That\u2019s not uncommon.
\nSay you watch three Blu-Ray movies per week, streamed <\/em>\u2013 that\u2019s about 75 GB per week (or 300 GB per month). Add other 5-10 hours of other HDTV streaming \u2013 say sports and other TV programming, maybe another 50 GB per week (or 200 GB per month). Maybe some videophone calls here and there at the rate of say 12 Mb\/s. Download two new games off Steam \u2013 25 GB. Buy some songs off Amazon or ITunes. Maybe do a little peer-to-peer. Stream some music from your favorite radio stations.
\nThat\u2019s probably 550 GB of stuff right there. And that\u2019s for just an average sort of user. A \u201cpower\u201d user might do several times that.
\nComcast knows this will come to pass, if the internet business models remain as they are. But with the metered billing, they get their piece of the pie (or kill off the applications, whichever works).
\nSo under the metered billing approach, what would Comcast charge for the 550 GB per month average user?
\nRight now, the top tier Comcast HSI service costs about $60 per month (without cable TV). Using the metered billing approach they\u2019re planning to implement, that 550 GB you may use in one month would cost an extra $450 <\/strong>\u2013 for a total bill of about $510 per month.
\nWith rates like that, how many people will download or stream movies or other HD content?
\nZero.<\/strong><\/em>
\nAnd Comcast knows this. And Comcast loves it.
\nThis makes it more important than ever to pass a net neutrality bill in congress. We must protect our future!<\/strong>
\n![\"Digg!\"](\"http:\/\/digg.com\/img\/badges\/100x20-digg-button.png\")
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