3 comments

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  MG Siegler

  10 months ago

  True that bandwidth does cost money Duncan, but Comcast also charges us quite a bit of money. The problem here is that this sets a dangerous precedent towards limiting the Internet. Others are sure to follow. It might be wrong to think that technology for serving data cost effectively can keep up with demand, but Comcast and others already limit speeds of downloads. That's why I hope someone (Google or anyone else) is able to come up with a wireless solution via the white space (in the U.S.) or something else. It'll happen eventually, we won't always been using coaxial cable for data transfers, but how long?
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  ianbetteridge

  10 months ago

  Even if (when) Google comes up with such a solution, it will not be free unless they choose to subsidize the service. And experience tells us that subsidized services like that, sooner or later, come with a price - would you use "free" bandwidth from Google if they put interstitials between every few web pages you viewed, for example?
  
  The root of this is really simple economics: someone downloading 100GB of data per month costs Comcast a lot more than someone using 10GB. At some point along the line of how much you download, Comcast stops making a profit on a per-user basis, and starts making a loss. At that point, unless you cut your usage, they're really better off if you're NOT a customer.
  
  Comcast hasn't set that 250GB cap in a vacuum: that's probably close to the point at which it starts to lose money on a per-customer basis (and in fact, that point may even be lower - it may have decided it can afford to subsidize customers who use, say, 100GB-250GB in the short term simply to have a higher cap).
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  GMG

  7 months ago

  This is all about money and everyone knows it. You compare 2gb user to a 2TB user. Great, but they both pay 50 bucks a month. This can been seem in a variety of ways.
  
  1. Comcast is screwing the guy who only uses 2gb.
  2. Comcast is complaining about a non-existant issue. Since there are LOTS of 2gb using people, and FEW 2TB using people. It all evens out. Now, as time progresses and more services become available over internet. The numbers will be reverse.
  
  If you ask me, comcast is simply trying to increase their profits by curbing those who use a lot of throughput. What for? That's to be determined. Perhaps they need more profits to expand their network, make it bigger, make it stronger. Lets look at the big picture here. Comcast has increased their network strength 3 times in the past 3 years for the sake of remaining competative (in the states at least, there's some countries that kick our ass on bandwidth).
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