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DampierPhillip M Dampier
join:2003-03-23
Rochester, NY
2 edits | reply to just nuts
Some Facts to Consider (Was Er, no.) I have to agree with those who have criticized the original editorial as being naive. As someone who has been involved in the political arena and have witnessed first hand a public relations lobbying narrative being established in order to pursue an agenda, I am not surprised the original author has been co-opted right into that narrative.
I am not afraid to challenge the cable industry narrative here. I have been doing it for well over a decade. As someone who wrote news articles for one Time-Warner division, I even got into hot water for publishing an unbiased neutral review of the competing DSL product from the local telephone company, and that article appeared on Time Warner's own website. When something is honest, fair, and based in reality, one should have the strength to make that case. But too often what one assumes as such, but in reality is based on only part of the story, it's critical to know more of the facts before rendering judgment.
Make no mistake. There is a very extensive, professionally run, and expensive public relations effort underway to create the narrative of a crisis in bandwidth in the United States. In order to pursue this agenda, the first step is to suggest and define a problem which requires immediate legislative or public policy action.
By using third parties (registered lobbyists, public relations firms, and supposedly independent 'institutes' and 'foundations' and their respective lackeys in the educational and professional fields) to first lay the foundation for the problem, the cable industry can then use this foundation as ammunition to suggest legislative changes and/or impose changes to their services supposedly to deal with said crisis.
Of course, few Americans are aware that the same people who suggest "first responder" measures like usage caps to relieve the crisis are precisely the same people who hired the public relations and lobbying firms to invent and promote the "crisis" in the first place.
It's a neat trick, and is done all the time on virtually every issue where big money is involved.
Best of all, this same practice is often successful at co-opting consumers who are naive about the manufactured narrative to serve as distractions or, in some cases, become unintentionally co-opted opinion leaders who are literally fighting against their own self-interests.
I don't honestly blame these people. They are up against a lobbying industry that has spent millions using psychology and focus group testing to perfect the arguments they use to help get them consumer allies to invest their time and efforts into becoming third party water carriers for the lobbying objectives. Of course, in the end they are rewarded with a reduced level of service carrying increased costs and penalties, and the hearty thanks of those corporations laughing all the way to the bank on the increased profits they can now earn.
In this case, the industry is employing the familiar "us vs. them" argument. The objective is to pit cable modem customers against one another by suggesting ones' neighbor is downloading too much, which somehow creates higher costs for the person that is not. Of course, this ignores the fact the pricing model for the cable broadband product has significant built-in profit and has, in most markets, remained unchanged for more than a decade and will remain unchanged in price, caps or not.
That's an example of what the lobbyists call, "the Shiny Keys Syndrome." While they press their argument with the people that matter, others are distracted with in-fighting about who is using too much of a resource that has a "shortage" only because the industry claims it does. Don't look at the many holes and hidden agendas in the lobbying campaign. Look at the shiny keys being waived by someone who claims that the equivalent of a Cadillac-driving welfare queen is stealing your bandwidth and making you pay for it.
There is a reason why lobbyists earn big bucks. Their distraction efforts are often successful, especially when they utilize evidence that often arrives in the form of secretly biased data from well-connected (and often financed) "independent" groups delivering the convenient arguments necessary to build the narrative. You wouldn't believe bandwidth was running dry if the cable company said it, but you might begin to if an "institute" either directly or indirectly financed by the cable company (but secretly) said it was the truth and other "experts" who made themselves available for press interviews strongly agreed.
The cable industry is seeking additional profits and reduced costs during this financially challenging period of time. With increased programming costs always forcing annual rate increases on the core video service tiers, and shareholders demanding returns that are simply not tenable in today's economy, corporations are looking for ways to appease shareholders. That means taking a second look at the cable broadband product line, which has been unregulated since its inception. It remains highly profitable, and the cable industry has regularly admitted such since the telephone company's DSL product began being aggressively marketed. Cable companies in general do not compete on price, but rather take some of the extra profits they earn and make sure they can market their product as the fastest Internet access in a service area.
With the growing, but well anticipated demand for increasing bandwidth, shareholders are not surprisingly unhappy with cable companies making these necessary investments, to continue to meet that demand. Price increases on a secondary product line like cable broadband are generally out of the question, particularly in markets with DSL competition which usually does compete on price (although not usually on speed). FIOS increases the competition question exponentially. Therefore, the best opportunity to increase return on this product is to reduce the amount of network investment required to maintain it at its projected growth and current price level. Imposing a cap on usage automatically accomplishes that, allowing the division to spend less and thus enjoy higher returns at existing price points.
The demand generated by this product line is, of course, a self-fulfilled prophecy when one examines the marketing of it. Consumers are encouraged to sign up for cable broadband specifically to download movies, music, TV shows, and other high bandwidth content at the fastest speeds possible. Road Runner specifically markets itself in most communities as the fastest ISP in town. So it should come as no surprise that customers do exactly as they were invited to do on their network.
To date, most cable divisions regulate most of their own product offerings. Road Runner, for example, offers different speeds and services across its many divisions. Some have had usage caps since the product was rolled out. But most have found such caps to be competitively untenable in most markets. What the Beaumont test suggests is that for the first time, this is not a test conducted by a single division for the purposes of possibly imposing it only locally. Instead, this is much more similar to the testing Road Runner did when it created a national speed cap in the late 1990s. (Those with Road Runner in 1998 usually enjoyed connections which had no speed limit beyond what the network itself could support.)
Such a test in one town in Texas has clear national implications should the corporate heads impose such usage caps on all Road Runner divisions. There is precedent for this behavior.
For those of us who have followed this business since its earliest days, the cable industry as a whole tends to follow familiar patterns to achieve its objectives, be it deregulation, rejection of new regulation, or generating alarmist publicity to justify price increases or service changes.
This is no different. Those arguing that such usage caps are an end run around net neutrality are on the right path, although to the cable industry this is more of a side benefit. Controlling illegal distribution of content usually involves the same applications which often give the network a real workout. By imposing financial disincentives on customers who use those applications, it may prove to be as effective, if not more so, than using punitive enforcement measures. It's a win-win. The content providers are happy because illegal trading of their content is down. The cable companies are happy because of the reduction in network traffic.
But always keep in mind usage caps have a convenient loophole for the content owners. To date, all such proposed caps come with an exemption - unlimited access to cable company-controlled websites and portals through which their licensed content can be accessed. New platforms are in development today that will allow consumers to download video-on-demand content to ones' computer or multimedia device, all while the usage meter is off for that "approved" content.
This upends the level playing field the Internet was intended to provide. Once again, an artificial cost barrier will be imposed on independent content producers who will now face the challenge of justifying a business plan to investors who ask why a consumer would access their product, eating away their available bandwidth balance, when they could view cable-owned or licensed content with no reduction in that balance.
While the demand for broadband content continues to expand, so does the network infrastructure available to support it, at costs far lower than what they were at the time of the original business model for cable modem pricing.
Do other broadband competitors see the bandwidth crisis that the cable companies are crying about? Certainly not the DSL, FIOS and related platforms which continue to see profits from their existing "all you can eat" menu pricing established in their business plans. Such networks continue to expand. FIOS at a rate even faster than earlier imagined.
The industry sector investing perhaps the most substantial amount of money with limited return for the immediate future is the wireless broadband technology being deployed by mobile companies, which have introduced some usage caps to maintain some control over their still adolescent network infrastructure.
In fact, for a cable broadband provider like Road Runner to suggest caps comparable to what wireless mobile providers are offering on those networks only highlights their greed factor.
What makes better sense is a modification of the currently reasonable policy that the most egregious bandwidth offenders who violate the terms of service in different cable divisions can continue to be dealt with informally with a request they reduce their usage, without establishing a hard and fast cap (which will become more egregious as bandwidth intense applications continue to be developed and will not likely expand with the rollout of those applications).
And doing anything but strongly condemning and opposing, using every legal and legislative means available to consumers, the kind of draconian limits being suggested by Road Runner, is to intentionally or otherwise become complicit in the cable industry's end run around the truth, all at your personal expense and against your own best interests.
The Road Runner is not an ostrich. No one reading this should be either. Keep your head out of the sand and fight these caps by contacting your elected officials, state attorneys general, the FCC, and your local media and suggest they investigate the cable industry for anti competitive behavior. And continue to support net neutrality. It will ultimately support your best interests. | |
Core0000Premium
join:2008-05-04
Somerset, KY | Very good read you posted up. | | |
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| reply to Dampier
The cable industry is seeking additional profits and reduced costs during this financially challenging period of time. With increased programming costs always forcing annual rate increases on the core video service tiers, and shareholders demanding returns that are simply not tenable in today's economy, corporations are looking for ways to appease shareholders. That means taking a second look at the cable broadband product line, which has been unregulated since its inception. It remains highly profitable, and the cable industry has regularly admitted such since the telephone company's DSL product began being aggressively marketed. Cable companies in general do not compete on price, but rather take some of the extra profits they earn and make sure they can market their product as the fastest Internet access in a service area.
With the growing, but well anticipated demand for increasing bandwidth, shareholders are not surprisingly unhappy with cable companies making these necessary investments, to continue to meet that demand. Price increases on a secondary product line like cable broadband are generally out of the question, particularly in markets with DSL competition which usually does compete on price (although not usually on speed). FIOS increases the competition question exponentially. Therefore, the best opportunity to increase return on this product is to reduce the amount of network investment required to maintain it at its projected growth and current price level. Imposing a cap on usage automatically accomplishes that, allowing the division to spend less and thus enjoy higher returns at existing price points. One of the best posts I've read on this website in a decade....and I'm refreshed to see someone understand how the industry's policy and lobbying gurus have constructed a manufactured (and unsubstantiated) crisis that now needs "fixing" by offering consumers less for more and crushing third-party video delivery mechanisms. | |
| said by Karl Bode:The cable industry is seeking additional profits and reduced costs during this financially challenging period of time. With increased programming costs always forcing annual rate increases on the core video service tiers, and shareholders demanding returns that are simply not tenable in today's economy, corporations are looking for ways to appease shareholders. That means taking a second look at the cable broadband product line, which has been unregulated since its inception. It remains highly profitable, and the cable industry has regularly admitted such since the telephone company's DSL product began being aggressively marketed. Cable companies in general do not compete on price, but rather take some of the extra profits they earn and make sure they can market their product as the fastest Internet access in a service area.
With the growing, but well anticipated demand for increasing bandwidth, shareholders are not surprisingly unhappy with cable companies making these necessary investments, to continue to meet that demand. Price increases on a secondary product line like cable broadband are generally out of the question, particularly in markets with DSL competition which usually does compete on price (although not usually on speed). FIOS increases the competition question exponentially. Therefore, the best opportunity to increase return on this product is to reduce the amount of network investment required to maintain it at its projected growth and current price level. Imposing a cap on usage automatically accomplishes that, allowing the division to spend less and thus enjoy higher returns at existing price points. One of the best posts I've read on this website in a decade....and I'm refreshed to see someone understand how the industry's policy and lobbying gurus have constructed a manufactured (and unsubstantiated) crisis that now needs "fixing" by offering consumers less for more and crushing third-party video delivery mechanisms. Agreed.
One just has to look to the comments of Mirko Bibic, head of regulatory affairs for Bell when he said.
"We'll have to be realistic here and the answer lies in building, in managing the network, in pricing plans as well, and it's not unlike congestion on a highway. If you have a two-lane highway and you have congestion at rush hour, you're not going to build 20 lanes because those 18 other lanes just won't be needed during non-rush periods."
Someone who seems to have no vision of the future.
Something tells me anyone that was planning a network for the next 5-10 years would see that 20 lanes might come in handy when demand increases 10,50,100 times over this period (And not just with todays needs). We are just in the infancy of the online media boom. | |
| reply to Dampier
Someone actually gets it. As someone said earlier, one of the best posts I have ever read on this board.
As for the poster that posted what Mark Cubans thoughts are....WTF cares? I wonder what Cubans thoughts would be if he still owned broadcast.com and his subscribers were leaving because the caps prevented those customers from accessing his service. Cuban is a moron.
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"There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots" | |
| said by kfsutops:Someone actually gets it. As someone said earlier, one of the best posts I have ever read on this board. As for the poster that posted what Mark Cubans thoughts are....WTF cares? I wonder what Cubans thoughts would be if he still owned broadcast.com and his subscribers were leaving because the caps prevented those customers from accessing his service. Cuban is a moron. Cuban on Dancing with the Morons, er, Stars was funny. He's gotten fat, fat, fat. Did he join Scientology?
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Saving the world keeps me busy. However, I find Earth very primitive from my home planet of Krypton.
-Supergirl | |
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