Moffett: Cut The Cord And Cable Will Meter Broadband

He is probably right. As long as the FCC and FTC do not clamp down on these mopolists acting in collusion, these things will happen.

I have to agree with him here. Cable will protect their revenue stream at all costs and if people start cutting their TV pkgs and only using the internet to get their TV, then cable will start charging more for internet only access to make up the difference.

I agree with this poster. If basic cable offered more choices and programming that was something more family oriented, with perhaps fewer religious and home shopping channels, I would be watching more on the TV and less on the Internet. As it stands now.. there is NOTHING on TV and I can be easily entertained by finding an interesting video on the internet, which btw costs more now than basic cable does.

I agree. And people are speculating as to how long Netflix will remain in operation. As it is cheaper then Itunes, and cheaper then pay per view.

Could it be that Netflix does not care about "Big Billion Dollar Profits"?

FCC and FTC wont do anything cause we all know $$ was involved.

So, they want to shoot this country in the foot? I wonder where we will stand in the OECD rankings then.. Japan is 50% fiber.. the US, less than 2%

Here are the statistics.. »www.oecd.org/sti/ict/broadband

Netflix is a good option, even via mail. ("sneakernet")

I like independent views and foreign cinema..

Most cable programming is geared towards 13 year olds. I dropped all the extra channels last month.. my wife and I looked at the bill and we both looked at each other.. and said. screw this.. we were paying more than $50 a month for a bunch of stuff we NEVER watch.

We just don't like it. Its for teenagers and we don't have kids..

Its not worth paying money for. There are channels we would pay for, but you can't "ust" pick them.. Noooo.. they wont let you do that.

If they allowed people to pick ONLY the channels they wanted and priced them reasonably, we would soon see what kind of programming people want. They don't do that for some reason. I propose its because they are scared of what they would find out. So, they force us to buy a lot of crap to get that one or two good channels.. Just like record companies and CDs.. before ITunes "unbundled" the songs. The programming is a mixed bag.. There is some great stuff, true.. but there also is way too much crap.

If you watch European TV you will see what I mean.. Its like night and day.

Even cops get sick of cop shows, I bet.

It'll just make it that much easier for new ISPs to start up and/or existing ISPs to increase their subscriber base. Flat rate billing works just fine.

And how do you think that will work out? The costs of entry in this market are astronomical. Only the existing mega-players have the financial backing to get in to each others territories. The cable companies and telcos, thru temporary price cuts, can crush any competitors crazy enough to try. Only taxpayer subsidized gov't entities could try and if they make major inroads the results(bigger & bigger gov't ever further in to our lives) would be even worse.

Gov't farther into our lives, like say Lafayette Municipal Fiber? Sometimes, it IS a good thing, where the consumer wind out and corporations who are gigantic monopolies have to actually compete.

Except that the gigantic monopolies have shown time and time again that they'll fight tooth and nail against having to compete. If a place isn't being served (or is served poorly) and the citizens decide they'd like municipal fiber, the telecos suddenly get very interested in the place, make tons of promises about building new networks there, call government intervention "unfair competition" and lobby (aka pay off) politicians to kill the project. Then, when the project is killed, the promises made fade away (even if the reason for killing the project *was* the promises made).

Except with this one, the huge corporations lost

time and time again government has had to create competition because the businesses stifle it. it's not new, but businesses fight it every step of the way.

well said

How about this commie idea: Make all the last mile infrastructure public!

Yes! Communism solves everything!

Just as unregulated laissez-faire capitalism has worked out so well too (*cough* bankers *cough* derivatives).

Of course we have never had that. What we have is regulated industries. But regulation that is incompetent.

Communism works well on paper, too, based on human conscience and people not gaming the system.

Last I checked, laissez-faire capitalism doesn't include the government writing billion dollar checks to socialize the losses.

Capitalism without risk nor the right to fail is not capitalism.

I'm 65. I was raised on a north central farm, but my father was manager of a farm cooperative, which sold tractors and seed and bought grain. He was a Taft Republican [Isolationist in the time of Eisenhower]. Always feeling comfortable with the isolationist right wing anarchist farmers, I went off to a small liberal arts college, where I learned that political ideology is a 360 degree circle and roughly 180 degrees from the mainstream, left meets right -- or rather extreme left meets extreme right. They both hate big gov't. The left just wants a co-op, like my extreme right wing father was managing and the right wanted the gov't to go away, except when they had some kind of check for a flood or something. To be honest, my father farmed as a hobby and he agonized over taking those checks from the gov't, but he did.

You forgot about the white space association ... hahah big G and big M will save us. LOL

There's not going to be enough "white space" to meet the demand if everyone shifts to IP for TV viewing.

Not at all, I'm doing two independent ISP. It doesn't take vast amounts of cash, it takes vast amounts of knowledge to build and run it properly. More customers for me to sign up, so let them dig their own consumer graves, I'll be glad to shovel in the dirt.

Out of curiosity, what are you doing for your "last mile"?

No such thing when you are using a wireless infrastructure. Basically if you have a house above ground within 10 miles of a tower, you are set to get at least 3 mbps Internet and can get all the way up to 30 mbps. We compete directly with cable companies because of this.

It's no different than cell phones except the speeds are 100x faster and no bandwidth caps. Thank all the free public frequencies and Linux for that. The commercial stuff out there on limited bandwidth is what makes it appear to be so expensive. Why spend $100k on tower equipment when you can build it yourself with Linux for $1k and it's faster, easier to setup?

The only thing holding anyone back is the time and effort it takes to get started. Once you get past that hurtle, the rest is network management.

Just curious, mate. Are you using a radio backhaul or are you buying it from the incumbents? I thought of doing something here using multiple radio-based backhauls to the data center. The incumbent(Verizon) wants a fortune.

"doesn't cost much" Yeah...right...cable (whether it be coaxial, twisted pair, or optical) isn't expensive, cosidering the quantities needed for a typical outside plant. And of course the expense of getting access to those pesky rights-of-way is trivial too. This is also not to mention it's just cheap as all get-out to repair when storms and stupid drivers take out said cables strung across said rights-of-way.

It doesn't take much imagination to think why, especially economically, it is nontrivial to create a competitive service. Just ask Verizon shareholders about the costs of FiOS deployment; I'm quite sure they're quite substantial, and they have a leg-up on that one by already having their cables in rights-of-way, and just adding more cable.

This complaint isn't valid. Any company with more than a trivial amount of outside plant would have insurance to protect that INVESTMENT. Most years the insurance winds up costing you more than the damage that you repair but insurance is a known cost that's easy to budget for. Damages are not. They range from the trivial (drunk driver knocks down one telephone pole) to the extreme (Hurricane Katrina).

The only way you can invalidate my claim is to posit that said insurance is a trivial expense, regardless of whether it is a budget item or not. And honestly, I don't know the answer to that, as I've never had to purchase that insurance, but for the moment I'm going to guess it's on the hefty side.

Don't get me wrong; I'd LOVE for there to be more power, Internet, phone, mobile phone, cable TV, natural gas, etc. competition, but the staggering economics have a way of busting my dreams up pretty well.

Most of the Utilities are self insured for reasons given even their vehicles. They spend their insurance money on lawyers that win their cases.

Wireless?

I have a feeling in the coming years, Wireless might be able to compete more if Cable companies decide to go this route. Who knows...

The CATV industry is just about the most hated industry in the country, and just where is any serious competition to it?

If you were right, we'd have our competition now, already.

Break the Cable and Telephone Companies into transport and service providers. Customers could then choose their entertainment provider, voice services provider and ISP . Forcing Cable and Telephone companies to open their networks to competitors will provide an immediate fix to the problem. There is nothing new when it comes to pricing internet access in this manor. In the days of dial-up internet access customers ordered a telephone line for transport and set up an account with an internet access provider.

While I enjoy the internet I could live without it.
While I enjoy my cellphone I could live without it.
I never had cable or satellite TV so I am living without it.

I figure I am paying about $ 360 a month for cellphones for five people and fast cable internet service. For that kind of money I could be eating the fancy cat food out of a can instead of dry dog food.

... if you don't sit around streaming netflix/hulu in the background for noise and are happy with xvid quality I don't see how they could resonably ask me for more than the $72.95 I pay Comcast for Internet Only right now.

I think cord cutting has greater benefits than just money saving. Increased productivity, more time with family & friends (monopoly anyone?) and less sleep deprivation probably

I did not watch tv all weekend.
Saturday I caught up on a couple episodes of SGU. Did a few things online.
Talked for a while to my mom and a friend in Brazil on webcam.
Cleaned the garage and listened to radio streaming on my touch.
Few hours at cafe with friends.
Sunday I was in the gym from 4am to sunrise.did some things around the house....then made a pot of green tea and read a book on the balcony in sunny 75 degree weather for rest of the day.
Always get 8 hours sleep..

With Cox HSI and the iPhone/iPad in 3G all together I don't think I get anywhere near 20 gig/mo. with streaming with netflix,hulu,huluplus,ABC app,etc.....even using the Slingplayer.
Cable/Sat is just not worth the cost.

I didn't think about that way.... I am a cord cutter via OTA and a HTPC. I blast through the mind numbing network commercials via time slip and enjoy streaming many of the off-beat foreign films from Netflix. Via IPTV there is a whole other world that awaits you.

I tell the wife, yeah cable 200 channels and nothing is on..

And apple (iTunes), soon google join their efforts to fight introducing caps if that was to happen in our country?

All this idiot is going to do is lower my monthly bills. I am so sick of these greedy freaking corporations & their bullshit reasons for their greed. I do not need their cable, or their broadband.

P.S. Soon i will be hearing about how this is business. So to those people who back these greedy corporations, you can kiss my ass to.

This is what happens when there are hardly any regulations to protect consumers from price gouging.

If ISPs are going to make where I can only do basic surfing and check e-mail then heck I dont need 10, 16, 25, 50 meg or whatever speed. I can check e-mail and the weather with 1 mbps $20 a month plan. So please go ahead and lose even more money. This Moffett guy is a total tool.

destoyed demand. think it would't happen with a non-essential for life?

think again, especially those companies who've invested millions to billions on infrastruture.

This is already the ONLY reason why there are caps and usage based billing. They know internet video is slowly eroding traditional cable TV so they have put a screeching halt to unlimited internet. While cutting the cord should save you money, in Canada at least, you'll exceed your download caps easily. They are making up their loss from cord cutters, no doubt about that. All other reasons that caps and usage based billing are necessary are nonsense. Even if it was about network congestion (which it isn't), then at the very least there would be no usage metering during AM hours or even weekends. I worked for an ISP and during those times network usage decreases by half. Also if they believe in metered billing why is my bill not $0 when I don't use it?

I can and that is not signing up for anything that I feel restricts me from doing what I want on the internet....and no, I do NOT download movies illegally or anything illegal

But I will not be buying another iPad unless the 2gb restriction is pulled and I will NOT be paying money for an internet service that gives me caps anywhere near low....

Some say I will not soon find anyone offering service without low caps....and if that means doing extreme measures for cheap, cheap....I will do that

I still fume about the 2gb cap on my iPad as I get close to it monthly all the while doing NOTHING heavy and strictly doing what AT&T and Apple constantly harp on using the iPad for....news, some music, email, etc....

I cut a different cord. I dumped the landline and the satellite and cut my bill in half. I now have cable VIOP, BB, HD and VOD for about $100 a month.

The $20 or $30 most cable companies charge for telephone service still sounds absolutely outrageous to me. If you buy your own ATA or IP phone you can get service thats as good or better for a fraction of that.

The problem is Rural America where a can of diced tomatoes cost $2.25 and phone companies routinely charge $20 for local service only plus taxes plus $0.05 to $0.20 to call the neighbor across the street. $30 unlimited is a bargain plus I get terrific service - which I NEVER got from Century Telephone. The problem I had with the telephone company is equipment. The hangup on nuisance calls did not disconnect and free my line. The excuse was they couldn't do it; they didn't know how. My answer was AT&T could do that 50 years ago and I Cut the Cord. I never had another nuisance call.

Vonage was a disaster too. They charged me for 4 months service after the equipment they provided stopped working. Their tech support is a joke. And it took two hours of arguing before they discontinued my service.

I have unlimited VOIP, Skye, cell, cable, BB, and life is good. For living in an area that is 50 miles from civilization I get a BIG BANG for my buck. The telephone company charged $128 plus tax for unlimited phone and dial-up speed broadband; it was THAT bad. It is a real shock to come off AT&T onto a rinky-dinky wannabe that pretends to provide broad band at a whopping speed of 512kbps down. That is not 5,120. I actually had better speed in rural OK on my old 56k dial up modem - plus the tech support was 1000 times better.

Currently I have the best that is available and it isn't shabby for a small telephone company in a small town that serves customers in a 50 mile wide area. .

Cable *will* meter? what? they ALL are already capping to defeat cord cutters!

why bother wasting money stringing fiber or whatever on the poles if they want to choke it . if i can't use the internet the way i want and its only going to be for email i can get $7 a month dial up that will work good enough for that. i don't need DSL , cable or fios if its just gonna be capped.

Broadband metering will not stop people from cutting the cord. In this worsening economy, fewer and fewer people will be able to afford the luxury of paying $100+ a month for the privilege of watching TV. If consumers are forced to choose between spending money on cable TV versus paying for a reliable internet connection, then of course the internet connection will win every time. Higher incomes are needed to keep up with rising cable prices:

»www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Go ahead and meter the bandwidth. It will not stop the cord cutting. It means we will continue to get our Netflix DVDs through the mail. Kids will also have more time to text and play video games. I engage in my own form of metering: Without cable, it will be easier to limit the TV shows and movies my children are allowed to watch.

Mr. Moffett knows that the cable/satellite TV industry is doomed. It is only a matter of time before tens of thousands (millions?) of people cut the cord. Cable TV will suffer the same as the newspaper industry. The newspaper industry has been serving up crap for decades, so why should Zombie Cable/Satellite be an exception:

»www.voltairenet.org/arti ··· 121.html

The only service that will keep cable and satellite companies solvent is internet access. Feel lucky that I am a broadband internet customer, Mr. Moffett. I would argue that metering is a form of censorship. I hope that companies such as Google, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, et al. file class action lawsuits soon. Your data usage metering is limiting my access to their content, and these companies know it.

I'd rather spend the money I'd put towards a cable bill on a nice dinner out. Paying for cable would make me more likely to stay in and cook ;p

Hi!

You people should push for open networks. There is this initiative in Norway that is kalled bynett (citynet directly translated). It means the fiber connection and services are separate. The residents own the fiber connection, and can can choose what TV, telephone and internet providers they want. This is real competition and the providers try to differentiate themselves by for instance including several real IPs so you don't have to run NAT.

You guys should spread the word and create some mind share about this. It would probably stop ISPs from capping and holding back on IPv6.

»www.bynett.no/
»www.bynett.net/

Cool.. thank you.. The radio waves are similar.. no need to use the wires, even.. fiber is similar because even just ONE fiber can carry MANY different cable systems. Not channels.. systems..

Good find! THANK YOU..

to buy internet services through one of the overpriced cable providers.. "or else". That's idiotic. They made investments that were gambles. I am sure they are making money, if not, that is the way it goes. The government doesn't bail homeowners out, it should not bail cable companes out when their grandiose schemes hit cold hard reality. People are saving money because their jobs are vanishing and their healthcare costs are spiraling out of control.. Can you blame them? No.. People cut nonessentials.. everything except for rent and food is basically nonessential, would it really be that bad if people went a bit back to the old way of living their lives.... hanging out with friends..whatever... No.

I think a lot of Americans are realizing that most cable programming is trash, and they have better things to do.. watch a movie, for example.. You don't need cable to watch Netflix.. unless you want to watch TV in low res.. sigh..

Why not throw the poles and airwaves open to anyone who wants to provide services of any kind. Many countries have broadband that is much more affordable than the US - I think we are being very stupid if we don't look at some of the other technologies that are out there, for example, mesh networks and fixed wireless internet.

Here is the OECD survey on the cost of broadband and value comparisons.. basically, we are 14th in the world, which IMO is actually not so bad considering relative incomes these days. But we could do much better. Many parts of the US still don't have access to broadband, which is a very scary situation as we enter the 21st century. How can people learn without access to the Internet?

Its important, otherwise, how are those areas going to compete economically?

I think we should view broadband as an essential service and drop the cable tv mental model.. If I lived in one of those areas I would band together with my neighbors and do what we used to do, set up our own informal ISP I would be willing to pay a small tax to fund research on mesh networking so that we would not be dependent on cable or fiiber providers for broadband.

Rural areas could get access using long-haul 802.11b (now 802.11g) This technology works elsewhere too.. perhaps we could set aside some bandwidth for nonprofit community wireless networks that didn't depend on the big corporate model. When I first got on the Internet people set up their own ISPs, using leased lines - that model could work again using the many unused copper wires or radio.. i.e., mesh networking..

____cut here_____

OECD broadband statistics (December 2009)

Data and charts available at: »www.oecd.org/sti/ict/broadband

The OECD has released new statistics today on broadband penetration in OECD countries as of December 2009. These include the number of broadband subscribers per country, broadband subscriptions by technology and the percentage of fibre connection in total broadband.

Please note that data on satellite and terrestrial fixed wireless connections have been removed and will now be reported as a separate wireless broadband indicator. We aim to have these available from September.

• There were 283 million broadband subscriptions in OECD in December 2009 with the inclusion of Chile as a member of the OECD. The average penetration rate across the OECD has grown to 23.3 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants up from 22.8 in June 2009.

• Fibre continues its growth relative to other broadband technologies with fibre accounting for half of all broadband connections in Japan (54%) and Korea (49%). Other leading countries include the Slovak Republic (28%) and Sweden (23%).

• DSL is still the dominant technology in the OECD, accounting for 60% of all lines. Cable makes up 29% and fibre based connections have grown to 11% of all lines.

• Chile has a broadband penetration of 9.6 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants.

For comment on broadband, please contact Taylor Reynolds of the OECD’s Science, Technology and Industry division at + 33 1 45 24 93 84.