“US cable provider Comcast has presented its long-term solution for managing broadband traffic. The new system is set at putting to bed a minor scandal that erupted around the company when it was found that Comcast deliberately limited traffic for certain applications. The company said that under its new system, traffic will be analyzed every fifteen minutes. Users who are found to be occupying large amounts of bandwidth will be placed at a lower priority for network access behind users with less bandwidth-intensive traffic. The new system will not replace or be related to the company’s earlier installment of bandwidth caps, which limited a user’s data intake to 250GB per month.”
A commenter on Slashdot asked the obvious question:
“What’s the point of having the internet when you can’t do anything on it?”
Which just about sums up my feelings on the matter. Comcast advertises quite heavily for their “high speed” and “powerboost” services… but if you actually try to use those services, you might get cut off!
This latest policy affects even those people who don’t go anywhere near the bandwidth cap – if you’re found to be using a lot of bandwidth in a short period of time (downloading one very large file, for example, or maybe watching a bunch of videos or flash games) you’ll get bumped to the back of a queue (basically) and your Internet will slow down.
Now, I know that Comcast is doing a lot of this to help manage their network – but really, it seems like a lack of planning to me. You roll out this super-high speed network, and then when people actually start to use it, you realize you don’t have enough capacity for it and you have to start throttling people back just to keep basic quality of service!
The right answer is to enlarge your network to handle the demands placed upon it – that way you can still advertise yourself as being the fastest, without all the negative publicity of limits and caps and so forth. You’ll come out on top by (surprise, surprise) doing the right thing and treating your customers with respect.
Instead, Comcast has elected to try and throttle people back so they don’t have to invest money into their infrastructure – so that they can continue to sqeeze money out of you for their services. They’re also probably going to continue to push hard to get people to switch to their own services (which do not count towards the bandwidth cap or other limits). And that’s just unfair and against the spirit of the Internet (that “net neutrality” thing again).
Now is the time for some other company to start offering high-speed broadband service to compete with Comcast – because I’m willing to bet you’d get a lot of customers to jump ship right about now. I know I’d be one – if only there were a comparable service to jump to!
Of course, Comcast may come to their senses and change their policies and do what is right – but I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.
The Comcast shared loop is 500-2000 households. Verizon FIOS is max 32 households. Maybe someday FIOS will not be able to handle the traffic, but not anytime in the near horizon.
Ahhh, if only FIOS was available around here as an alternative. 🙁 Sadly, of course, it is not. (If it became available tomorrow, I would switch without question.)