Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

Fri Dec 17 00:01:42 UTC 2010

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Wheeler [mailto:jsw at inconcepts.biz]
> Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 1:22 PM
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style
> 
> 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

Turn the question around.  What would any provider think if a city said "sure, you can have access to our residents' eyeballs.  It will cost you $5 per subscriber per month".  Would Comcast or anyone go for that?  That is a real question, by the way.  For all I know some municipality might already do that.  But say one with something between 100,000 and 1,000,000 potential subscribers did that.  Would any of the providers think that is "fair"?  Particularly *after* the provider is already providing services to those subscribers and then has the rules changed on them after they already have contracts in place with the subscribers?

It just seems to me to be an evil Pandora's box that once opened, there is no potential end to.  What if several cities ganged up and together decided to charge a last mile provider access to eyeballs?

Better in my opinion to let the end user pay for what they use.  It doesn't have to be strictly metered per meg but can be put into tiers (as most providers already do anyway).  Sort of like "smart meters" they are doing with electricity.  People will modify their usage according to what they can afford.  Pricing bandwidth according to basic principles of supply and demand would probably work better.  Those that use more would pay more, those that use less would pay less.