Observations of an Internet Middleman (Level3) (was: RIP Network Neutrality

Jean-Francois Mezei jfmezei_nanog at vaxination.ca
Wed May 14 07:04:11 UTC 2014


On 14-05-13 22:50, Daniel Staal wrote:

> They have the money.  They have the ability to get more money.  *They see 
> no reason to spend money making customers happy.*  They can make more 
> profit without it.

There is the issue of control over the market. But also the pressure
from shareholders for continued growth.

The problem with the internet is that while it had promises of wild
growth in the 90s and 00s, once penetration reaches a certain level,
growth stabilizes.

When you combine this with threath to large incumbents's media and media
distribution endeavours by the likes of Netflix (and cat videos on
Youtube), large incumbents start thinking about how they will be able to
continue to grow revenus/profits when customers will shift spending to
vspecialty channels/cableTV to Netflix and customer growth will not
compensate.

So they seek new sources of revenues, and/or attempt to thwart
competition any way they can.

The current trend is to "if you can't fight them, jon them" where
cablecos start to include the Netflix app into their proprietary set-top
boxes. The idea is that you at least make the customer continue to use
your box and your remote control which makes it easier for them to
switch between netflix and legacy TV.

Would be interesting to see if those cable companies that are agreeing
to add the Netflix app onto their proprietary STBs also  play peering
capacity games to degrade the service or not.



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