Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

Thu Dec 16 06:40:58 UTC 2010

> From: JC Dill 
> Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 10:20 PM
> To: NANOG list
> Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style
> 
> 
>   On 15/12/10 10:05 PM, George Bonser wrote:
> >
> > If the customer pays the cost of the transport, a provider with
> better
> > transport efficiency / quality ratio wins.
> 
> 
> This (and everything that followed) assumes the customer has a choice
> of
> providers.  For most customers who already have Comcast, they don't
> have
> any choice for similar broadband services (speeds).  So open market
> principles don't come into play, and Comcast knows it.

No, you misunderstood.  It doesn't matter if you have only one internet
service provider.  If the end customer foots the bill, the incentive for
innovation is for the *content* provider to strike a balance between
quality and cost that the customers want.  If the *content* provider
foots the bill, innovation is driven in a way that the content providers
want.

Lets say I have foo.com and bar.com that offer video services and I am
on Comcast.  If Comcast meters my bandwidth usage and foo.com has good
quality with a lower bandwidth use, I use foo.  In the other model, if
the content providers subsidize the bill, bar.com might be completely
bloated but they have deep pockets and can pay the subsidy, they drive
foo.com out of business and Comcast still has a congested network.