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If you offer unlimited bandwidth and it's not working out financially, the solution is one of the two: 1. Increase the price for the subscription 2. Remove un

by jkrems 13y ago

If you offer unlimited bandwidth and it's not working out financially, the solution is one of the two: 1. Increase the price for the subscription 2. Remove unlimited bandwidth for the subscription and go back to volume based models It's pretty simple, really. You offer a product where cost is higher than revenue? Change the product, change your process, or change the price.

twoodfin 13y ago
I don't understand: If under total load, with every customer pulling the maximum possible bandwidth simultaneously, Comcast could give you 250Kbps, you want them to sell a product that only gives you 250Kbps all the time just so their advertising will be accurate? Like everything else, there's fine print: 20Mbps or whatever is described as a maximum speed, and many people actually see burst speeds that high. But as it would be unreasonable to be upset you can't get 20Mbps to Nigeria, it's also somewhat unreasonable to be completely upset at Comcast that you can't get 20Mbps to Netflix if Netflix is paying for cheap ISPs that won't fairly peer. I'm not sufficiently informed to take sides in that dispute, but I can easily imagine that Cogent (for example) is dumping way more traffic into Comcast than Comcast is dumping into it, and trying to get away without paying for that disparity.
- dublinben 13y ago
  It is practically and theoretically impossible for Comcast (a residential ISP with asymmetrical connection speeds) to have a balanced traffic relationship with any Tier 1 ISP. Every typical internet behavior of a Comcast subscriber follows the pattern of sending a small request, and receiving a large amount of data (webpages, music, video, etc.) in return.
  - ericd 13y ago
    Unless they'd like to start allowing their customers to have servers :-)
- __david__ 13y ago
  > If under total load, with every customer pulling the maximum possible bandwidth simultaneously, Comcast could give you 250Kbps, you want them to sell a product that only gives you 250Kbps all the time just so their advertising will be accurate? No, their advertising just needs to be accurate! They need to say "250Kbp bandwidth, max peak 20Mb". The real number has to be the lead, not the BS peak number. There's a parallel here to audio amplifiers. Advertising the peak wattage and not the RMS is stupid and deceptive.
- acdha 13y ago
  There are two key differences: the first is, as other people noted, that they should advertise that range rather than always marketing the highest number. “256KB guaranteed, up to 20Mbs” isn't any harder to sell than telling people they won't always be able drive 65MPH. The bigger issue, however, is whether those limits are based on the underlying limits of the network or artificial caps: this is currently completely opaque. It'd be much better if they were forced to publish any traffic shaping performed so the consumer can actually make an informed decision. This might lead to other questions such as whether they should be refusing to deploy Netflix OpenConnect nodes which would be healthy – and no doubt a key factor in why they won't talk about it unless forced.

by jkrems 13y ago

twoodfin 13y ago

I don't understand: If under total load, with every customer pulling the maximum possible bandwidth simultaneously, Comcast could give you 250Kbps, you want them to sell a product that only gives you 250Kbps all the time just so their advertising will be accurate? Like everything else, there's fine print: 20Mbps or whatever is described as a maximum speed, and many people actually see burst speeds that high. But as it would be unreasonable to be upset you can't get 20Mbps to Nigeria, it's also somewhat unreasonable to be completely upset at Comcast that you can't get 20Mbps to Netflix if Netflix is paying for cheap ISPs that won't fairly peer. I'm not sufficiently informed to take sides in that dispute, but I can easily imagine that Cogent (for example) is dumping way more traffic into Comcast than Comcast is dumping into it, and trying to get away without paying for that disparity.

dublinben 13y ago
It is practically and theoretically impossible for Comcast (a residential ISP with asymmetrical connection speeds) to have a balanced traffic relationship with any Tier 1 ISP. Every typical internet behavior of a Comcast subscriber follows the pattern of sending a small request, and receiving a large amount of data (webpages, music, video, etc.) in return.
- ericd 13y ago
  Unless they'd like to start allowing their customers to have servers :-)
__david__ 13y ago
> If under total load, with every customer pulling the maximum possible bandwidth simultaneously, Comcast could give you 250Kbps, you want them to sell a product that only gives you 250Kbps all the time just so their advertising will be accurate? No, their advertising just needs to be accurate! They need to say "250Kbp bandwidth, max peak 20Mb". The real number has to be the lead, not the BS peak number. There's a parallel here to audio amplifiers. Advertising the peak wattage and not the RMS is stupid and deceptive.
acdha 13y ago
There are two key differences: the first is, as other people noted, that they should advertise that range rather than always marketing the highest number. “256KB guaranteed, up to 20Mbs” isn't any harder to sell than telling people they won't always be able drive 65MPH. The bigger issue, however, is whether those limits are based on the underlying limits of the network or artificial caps: this is currently completely opaque. It'd be much better if they were forced to publish any traffic shaping performed so the consumer can actually make an informed decision. This might lead to other questions such as whether they should be refusing to deploy Netflix OpenConnect nodes which would be healthy – and no doubt a key factor in why they won't talk about it unless forced.