[133778] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (George Bonser)
Thu Dec 16 19:01:47 2010
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:01:42 -0800
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTin-tOqjwYMbqA1EpexU9VThKMF1jeh_yJEztZvW@mail.gmail.com>
From: "George Bonser" <gbonser@seven.com>
To: "Jeff Wheeler" <jsw@inconcepts.biz>,
<nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Wheeler [mailto:jsw@inconcepts.biz]
> Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 1:22 PM
> To: nanog@nanog.org
> Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style
>=20
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Dave Temkin <davet1@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I do. =A0And yes, they are happy to "fuck with a billion dollar a =
month
> > revenue stream" (that happens to be low margin) in order to set a
> precedent
> > so that when traffic is 60Tbit instead of 6Tbit, across the *same*
> customer
Turn the question around. What would any provider think if a city said =
"sure, you can have access to our residents' eyeballs. It will cost you =
$5 per subscriber per month". Would Comcast or anyone go for that? =
That is a real question, by the way. For all I know some municipality =
might already do that. But say one with something between 100,000 and =
1,000,000 potential subscribers did that. Would any of the providers =
think that is "fair"? Particularly *after* the provider is already =
providing services to those subscribers and then has the rules changed =
on them after they already have contracts in place with the subscribers?
It just seems to me to be an evil Pandora's box that once opened, there =
is no potential end to. What if several cities ganged up and together =
decided to charge a last mile provider access to eyeballs?
Better in my opinion to let the end user pay for what they use. It =
doesn't have to be strictly metered per meg but can be put into tiers =
(as most providers already do anyway). Sort of like "smart meters" they =
are doing with electricity. People will modify their usage according to =
what they can afford. Pricing bandwidth according to basic principles =
of supply and demand would probably work better. Those that use more =
would pay more, those that use less would pay less.
