Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

Thu Dec 16 20:17:54 UTC 2010

On Thu, 2010-12-16 at 09:47 -1000, Paul Graydon wrote:
> (...) All we're ending up with is what is mostly hearsay being treated as facts.

One consumer organization in France during the ongoing debate with
regulators on network neutrality called for network operator to publish
some verifiable information on their bandwidth issues:

http://www.arcep.fr/index.php?id=10387
http://www.alain-bazot.fr/index.php/neutralite-du-net-n-oublions-pas-l-interet-du-consommateur/
http://www.pcinpact.com/actu/news/55827-alain-bazot-neutralite-ufc-arcep.htm

Alain Bazot, president of "UFC - Que Choisir" a well-known french
consumer organization wrote on his blog:
<<
(...) Avant toute intervention, l’opérateur devrait prouver qu’il y a un
réel problème sur son réseau, comme une congestion. Alors que les
témoignages quant à la réalité de la saturation des réseaux divergent,
cette condition me semble essentielle. (...)
>>

My poor translation:
<<
(...) Before any change the network operator must prove he has a real
congestion issue. Since informations on the reality of network
saturation are divergent, this condition seems essential to me. (...)
>>

Regulators and the public need data for proper regulation and future
changes in regulation, and the issue is the same everywhere :).

Sincerely,

Laurent

PS: sorry for my miscalculation AMSIX 1.2Tbit/s cost is $2.25 per
month per Comcast subscriber assuming 16 millions customers and
$30/Mbit/s/month transit but as pointed out by participants of this list
for a 10G port at Comcast cost is likely to be closer to $3 Mbit/s so it
all cancels out to my original erroneous $0.225 :).