Level 3 Communications Issues Statement Concerning Comcast'sActions

Tue Nov 30 16:07:20 UTC 2010

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 9:47 AM, William Warren
<hescominsoon at emmanuelcomputerconsulting.com> wrote:
> On 11/30/2010 12:09 AM, Andrew Koch wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 22:17, William Herrin<bill at herrin.us>  wrote:
>>
>>> So you're saying: treat it like electrical service. I have a 200 amp
>>> electrical service at my house. But I don't pay for a 200 amp service,
>>> I pay for kilowatt-hours of usage.
>>>
>>> There are several problems transplanting that billing model to
>>> Internet service. The first you've already noticed - marketing
>>> activity has rendered it unsalable. But that's not the only problem.
>>
>> Not quite.  Look at mobile data plans.  A very few are unlimited, most
>> are per byte.
>
> I don't know of a single data plan that's unlimited.  they all have either 5
> gig or lower transfer caps.  That's not unlimited no matter what the lawyers
> or marketers day.

William,

My Verizon Blackberry plan says unlimited data. Including the tether.

IIRC, Clear's 4G service has no monthly cap.

Regardless, we were talking about residential Internet, not mobile
Internet. There's a market expectation that mobile systems cost more
than their wireline counterparts and have usage-based billing even if
their wireline counterparts don't. Moving the market expectations for
wireline Internet in the face of your competitor's ability to move a
different way is tough.

This, by the way, is where Verizon is going to take some of you to the
cleaners. With fiber all the way to the premises and control of the
key transit-free who everyone else either peers with or pays, they can
jack up their data capacity much more cost effectively than you can.
And let's face it, when they tell you that you're upgrading your
peering port from 10G to 100G in order to keep it, you will comply
rather than lose reciprocal peering. The more you complain, the rosier
they'll smell replying that, "Oh, we don't see the problem. We just
increased our data rates. We only see a need for caution on the highly
competitive wireless side which because of competition doesn't need
regulation anyway."

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004