Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

Thu Dec 16 20:13:21 UTC 2010

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 10:40 PM, George Bonser <gbonser at seven.com> wrote:
>> From: JC Dill
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 10:20 PM
>> To: NANOG list
>> Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style
>>
>>
>>   On 15/12/10 10:05 PM, George Bonser wrote:
>> >
>> > If the customer pays the cost of the transport, a provider with
>> better
>> > transport efficiency / quality ratio wins.
>>
>>
>> This (and everything that followed) assumes the customer has a choice
>> of
>> providers.  For most customers who already have Comcast, they don't
>> have
>> any choice for similar broadband services (speeds).  So open market
>> principles don't come into play, and Comcast knows it.
>
> No, you misunderstood.  It doesn't matter if you have only one internet
> service provider.  If the end customer foots the bill, the incentive for
> innovation is for the *content* provider to strike a balance between
> quality and cost that the customers want.  If the *content* provider
> foots the bill, innovation is driven in a way that the content providers
> want.
>
> Lets say I have foo.com and bar.com that offer video services and I am
> on Comcast.  If Comcast meters my bandwidth usage and foo.com has good
> quality with a lower bandwidth use, I use foo.  In the other model, if
> the content providers subsidize the bill, bar.com might be completely
> bloated but they have deep pockets and can pay the subsidy, they drive
> foo.com out of business and Comcast still has a congested network.
>

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/15/yahoo-video-no-longer-accepts-video-uploads/

You may find that simply fewer content providers decide it's worth it to play
in that space, under those conditions, which results in fewer choices for the
consumer, and something closer to a monopoly on the available content
to be consumed.

People *were* happy with only having three national TV networks to choose
from for their major content in the US, right?

bar.com doesn't have to drive foo.com out of business; they just have to
outlast them in the war of attrition driven by the monopoly holder, until
bar.com decides it's no longer worth providing that content anymore.

end game--one monopoly access provider, and one giant content source--and
a huge barrier to entry keeping anyone else from providing an alternative view
of the world.

Matt
(speaking only for myself, and definitely not for any companies named foo, bar,
or any other combination of letters.  Or punctuation marks of any sort.)