[133745] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matthew Petach)
Thu Dec 16 15:13:26 2010
In-Reply-To: <5A6D953473350C4B9995546AFE9939EE0B14CF96@RWC-EX1.corp.seven.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:13:21 -0800
From: Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com>
To: George Bonser <gbonser@seven.com>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 10:40 PM, George Bonser <gbonser@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
>>
>>
>> =A0 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. =A0For most customers who already have Comcast, they don't
>> have
>> any choice for similar broadband services (speeds). =A0So open market
>> principles don't come into play, and Comcast knows it.
>
> No, you misunderstood. =A0It doesn't matter if you have only one internet
> service provider. =A0If the end customer foots the bill, the incentive fo=
r
> innovation is for the *content* provider to strike a balance between
> quality and cost that the customers want. =A0If 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. =A0If Comcast meters my bandwidth usage and foo.com has good
> quality with a lower bandwidth use, I use foo. =A0In 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-upload=
s/
You may find that simply fewer content providers decide it's worth it to pl=
ay
in that space, under those conditions, which results in fewer choices for t=
he
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 v=
iew
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.)
