Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

Mon Dec 20 04:47:40 UTC 2010

On Dec 19, 2010, at 6:21 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:

> On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 05:58:26PM -0800, Leo Bicknell wrote:
>> 
>> I dream of a day where we have municipal fiber to the home, leased to 
>> any ISP who wants to show up at the local central office for a dollar 
>> a two a month so there can be true competition in end-user services.
> 
> Take a second and think about what THAT would do to the ratio wars. 
> Imagine if any hosting/content provider, with potentially hundreds or 
> thousands of gigabits of unused inbound capacity on their networks, 
> could easily get into providing IP service to eyeballs. Even ignoring 
> the existing 95th percentile silliness like "free inbound transit", 
> which would no doubt rapidly evaporate under this kind of model, the 
> difference in efficiencies between the highly competetive hosting world 
> and the highly non-competetive last mile world are simply staggering. 

You say this as if having such a disruption would be a bad thing.

> For many content networks, it would be an opportunity to start making 
> money on their bits instead of paying for them, and networks without 
> content expertise would be in serious trouble.
> 
I'm not seeing the problem here. Like any business in a changing climate,
they would have to either develop expertise or perish.

> I personally can't think of a single thing with more potential for 
> massive disruption to the business models of incumbent providers. There 
> are so many billions of dollars at stake protecting the status quo that 
> it's not even funny, which IMHO is why you'll never see any of this 
> happen in the US, in any kind of scale at any rate. :)
> 
Yes... This is where the "market makes it best" philosophy fails. When the
market has become entrenched in one way of doing things, a better way
can face serious opposition because of this very fact.

Personally, I don't see such a disruption as a down-side. I think it would
be the introduction of a relatively level playing field in an area where the
playing field has long been very uneven.

Owen