Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

Jeff Wheeler jsw at inconcepts.biz
Thu Dec 16 21:22:15 UTC 2010


On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Dave Temkin <davet1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I do.  And yes, they are happy to "fuck with a billion dollar a month
> revenue stream" (that happens to be low margin) in order to set a precedent
> so that when traffic is 60Tbit instead of 6Tbit, across the *same* customer

We disagree on this point.  I do not think anyone knowledgeable at
Comcast realistically believes they will be able to charge a
business-relevant amount of money for access to their customers.  I
think regulators would first but the brakes on our whole industry.
Cable Internet is far from low-margin; in fact, the cable company in
my area, an order of magnitude smaller than Comcast, generates an
order of magnitude more profit from IP than from television.

What I do think, and what people on this list who engage in peering
discussions with Comcast cannot say for fear of reprisal, is that the
peering folks at Comcast are driven entirely by ego, and they lack the
big picture decision-making capacity of business people making
strategy decisions.  They have upper management convinced that
becoming settlement-free is a golden goose.  The peering folks would
be wise to reconsider their positions before upper management realizes
that their ego-driven staff are risking the golden goose they already
have, their captive audience, for little gain.  After all, if they
can't manage to run their IP and transport network more
cost-effectively than they do today, they will never be able to
compete as a transit network, and the golden goose they are chasing
will never lay any eggs.

-- 
Jeff S Wheeler <jsw at inconcepts.biz>
Sr Network Operator  /  Innovative Network Concepts




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