Comcast E-mailing Customers About Caps > Typical for me...

reply to jbgroup1

Re: Typical for me...

I have my own issues with the impending 250GB but on the subject of VOIP, I use T-Mobile's VOIP, but I understand why Comcast excludes their own VOIP from the cap, simply it's because the users pay a VOIP fee on top of their Comcast connection where as other VOIP users do not pay Comcast any additional fee's.

Two posts above yours it's pointed out that VOIP doesn't use very much bandwidth at all. And that is correct.

reply to BF69
You are right, Vonage users using Comcast pay Vonage for their VOIP. But they do not pay Comcast for their VOIP. Vonage gets away with using other people's (in this case Comcast) infrastructure for free. Which is why Vonage is cheaper than Comcast. The cost of Vonage using Comcast infrastructure is spread out to all the comcast users.

If your to-the-house telephone wires are owned by say Quest, then you use Sprint for local telephone service, Quest recoups the cost of the to-the-home infrastructure from Sprint. Not so with Comcast and Vonage.

If it were measurable, could I set a cap or charge advertisers that utilize my senses? I'd give large corporations huge discounts on my sound and vision package. They can pipe all their advertisements through my eyes and ears for only a few dollars each month. If they exceed their allotted bandwidth limit, I'll send them a bill for few thousand dollars and we can work out a settlement.

reply to BF69
Didn't I read someplace that Comcast actually splits their VOIP offering out from their internet service?

Basically, while it is technically VoIP services, It doesn't actually use the same IP network as their consumer internet does. If that's the case, then I can easily see them not running into any legal trouble since it's technically not using the same connection/network as other VoIP providers.

And before people complain about Comcast not giving Vonage/etc access to the same network/connection Connection, I'd like to see how that would work in the first place. If Comcast is basically just using VoIP for the last mile, but is switching everything like a "traditional" phone service the rest of the way, then I don't see how vonage or other VoIP providers can complain since their connection to the "traditional" phone network is located much further from the end user.

(NOTE: "Traditional phone service" in this day an age is still switched digitally, but the network routes and operates very differently from the internet... And the phone network is also seperate from the internet network.)

reply to BF69

In case anyone cares, I made a calculation error in the above. I used three too few zeros for 250GB. So at Vonage's 50kbps setting, I should have more like 11,000 hours of talk time per month. I should be able to say everything I need to say in this amount of time. Plus 11,000 hours vastly exceeds the amount of time anyone can talk in a month.