Comcast XFINITY → Re: [BW Meter] New Limit on BW Meter?

A pair of articles on the GigaOM site today about ISP caps:

As broadband caps turn 4, it’s time for the FCC to take action
By Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM - October 1, 2012
»gigaom.com/2012/10/01/da ··· aps-fcc/

and:

Which ISPs are capping your broadband, and why?
By Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM - October 1, 2012
»gigaom.com/2012/10/01/da ··· s-chart/

FCC commissioner Ajit Pai has warned that they could attempt to regulate the pricing of usage-based broadband packages next year if its net neutrality rules are upheld by an appellate court:

FCC could attempt to regulate usage-based broadband pricing, commissioner Pai warns
By Steve Donohue, FierceCable - December 7, 2012
»www.fiercecable.com/stor ··· 12-12-07

An article on the Multichannel News site today:

NCTA Funds Study Claiming Usage-Based Broadband Pricing Is Pro-Consumer
Free Press Disputes Findings of Paper Authored by Michigan State Professors
By Todd Spangler, Multichannel News - December 14, 2012
»www.multichannel.com/cab ··· r/140728

That's a joke - here's the most important and truthful part of the article:

Disputing the papers findings, Matt Wood, policy director of consumer-advocacy group Free Press, said usage-based pricing models are designed simply to make more money for ISPs.

The idea that the cable industry would charge people less for broadband access, if only it were allowed to do so, is laughable, Wood said. So is the claim that higher cable profits will result in savings and benefits that trickle down to consumers. Nothing but effective competition will drive prices down, and cable operators already make exorbitant returns on their Internet offerings should they care to pass some of that cash back along to their paying customers.

In other words - without effective competition for wired HSI, metered plans will only be a money grab. No more, no less. No one should be surprised by this, because the FCC and Congress blew it long ago when they had a chance to make cable a common carrier open to all ISPs but didn't. As long as they're closed pipes with effective monopolies and little oversight, they can do whatever they want pricing-wise and the FCC will look the other way.

Very interesting. Not all cable companies have implemented caps. But I think it is more telling that, among the DSL providers, only AT&T (U-verse TV) and CenturyLink (Prism TV) have implemented caps. This looks suspiciously like preserving the TV revenue stream.

But we already knew that ...

U-Verse does not have an enforced cap because they still don't have an accurate way of separating TV traffic from internet traffic. Go figure, but the stated 250GB cap is not in place right now.

AT&T DSL on the other hand has a 150GB cap and it is used to charge you extra at $10 per 50GB.

That cap is not enforced, either.

The fact that AT&T and Comcast are not, currently, enforcing their caps does not mitigate the fact that they have implemented caps.

BTW, I was not one of AT&T's "bandwidth hogs"; my last full month with them I only had 95GB reported on their meter, but I quit service over their caps. I could have gone with Comcast, whose caps are more generous, but I chose a CLEC DSL provider, Sonic.net, LLC, which does not have caps.

A blog item by Todd Spangler of Multichannel News discussing both sides of the issue:

Broadband Usage Pricing: Let It Flourish
By Todd Spangler, Multichannel News - December 20, 2012
»www.multichannel.com/blo ··· flourish

Another Spangler article worth ignoring. I love this part:

Critics have cooked up the conspiracy theory that usage-based pricing is a way for cable or telco TV operators to protect their TV businesses (by making watching online video less attractive). But FreedomPop and ViaSat dont have TV businesses. They have finite bandwidth resources that theyre trying to monetize in the best possible way.

Um yeah, apple meet orange. Cableco caps have nothing to do with wireless ISP caps. It is not a 'conspiracy' theory to suggest that cable might want to protect the video side of the house with caps, and it has nothing to do with a non-TV provider's reasons for doing so.