This article is full of hyperbole and half-truth - I'm not a fan of Comcast (my cable TV costs too much for the few channels I actually watch), but let's get so

This article is full of hyperbole and half-truth - I'm not a fan of Comcast (my cable TV costs too much for the few channels I actually watch), but let's get some facts straight. There may be bandwidth bottlenecks in Comcast's network (the reason for the NetFlix peering charges) but they're not between the fiber-optic transmitter and the home. The HFC network (hybrid fiber-coax) has effectively seen a huge increase in capacity due to the elimination of the analog channels (which consumed 6MHz of bandwidth each). Each 6MHz channel now digitally carries 10-12 MPEG compressed channels. The rest of the available bandwidth can be used for data transmission and with the adoption of the MQAM, the same modulators can be switched between video and data as bandwidth demands. SDV (Switched Digital Video) and DOCSIS 3.0 both help manage the infrastructure's efficency - you probably can't even use all the bandwidth Comcast could provide from the head-end. From the head-end to the Internet is another matter - because the large cable operators grew through acquisition, it's uncommon to have similar data capacities between their "systems". Since Comcast's backbone capacity is miniscule in comparison to their "last mile" capacity, the real problem is where to inject NetFlix data and how to transport that data to each head-end. If NetFlix could peer into each Comcast head-end, this wouldn't even be an issue. (Disclaimer: 20 year CATV industry veteran now in higher education)