Comcast Adding Caps
According to DSLReports, Comcast is instituting a cap on its broadband customers. The cap will be 250GB a month, with one "freebie" month, where you can go over this amount without repercussion.
As caps go, this is one of the more reasonable. However, I expect to see other broadband companies following suit since one of the major players has now made a cap move. Eventually, this will most likely end up in front of the FCC, Congress, or court, as these companies will be forced to provide detailed operation information in order to assess whether they really have a congestion problem, or if their actions are anti-trust. This will also lead to questions about how much these companies reinvest profits back into infrastructure.
I also don't see how caps are going to overcome problems with congestion, because people could use most of their bandwidth allotment during peak times. Wasn't that the purpose of caps? To reduce congestion?
Comments
"I also don't see how caps are going to overcome problems with congestion, because people could use most of their bandwidth allotment during peak times." - they *could*. But the people who are superTorrenters tend to download a huge amount too (they aren't torrenting just to be altruists ...). So this is a way of telling them to cut down, even though it's possible the problem users could subvert the spirit of the idea by rules-hacking the letter of the policy.
I'm not sure the issue is the torrenting folks, or people like me who cancel their cable and get their entertainment from the net. The cap is set just right to disrupt those who are using the internet for their television.
Luckily, I'm AT&T.
Your comment regarding the size of cap targeting people getting tv over the Internet raises the issue well. I watch *some* tv over the Internet. The selection experience over the Internet is superior, the viewing experience over the Internets is less even with super compressed hd on cable.
More competition would be quite welcome. Why should an entertainment company own the pipes? It will take a decade for this to play out.