Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

Thu Dec 16 19:24:34 UTC 2010

> All that said, the whole issue of 'local content' is going to continue to rage on
> for years to come.  Getting the content closer to the end user is going to be a
> key to reducing costs for the long-tail providers to homes and businesses.
> Should it be incumbent on the CDNs to pay for colo at the headend?  That's a
> business decision that will entirely be driven by these ongoing disputes.

What I still don't understand is this (and please pardon my ignorance):

If the issue is the costs that long-tail providers must bear to transit content across their own network, and the solution is to move the content closer to the providers' customers, (why) is the content provider obligated to subsidize that?

If collocating equipment to the headend is truly the correct response (if it truly reduces the ISP's costs to provide access to that content, and truly results in a better customer experience), then surely the savings would cover the ISP's cost of collocating equipment at that ISP's own headends?  It seems reasonable to expect that a content provider come up with the equipment to be collocated, as well as bear the cost-burden of supporting that equipment, so there can't be a significant capex for the ISP...

The idea of buying colocation from a last-mile ISP to reduce that last-mile ISP's costs seems (at first glance) to be a hysterically unfair proposition - though it seems that incumbent ISPs may have great enough leverage to extract this revenue if they really want to.  Or am I off my rocker?

What is in the best interests of the customer?

Nathan