In a year when Netflix hasn't had to sign a deal with every big consumer ISP and my Netflix subscription doesn't cost more than I will believe you.
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What Comcast Really Thinks About You
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In a year when Netflix hasn't had to sign a deal with every big consumer ISP and my Netflix subscription doesn't cost more than I will believe you.
dgz
Supreme [H]ardness
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10x speed increase for a decade doesn't seem particularly good to me.
The US tax payers gave the ISPs tons of money to cover these cost to make it easier for Comcast to service its users. Netflix should not have to cover a bill that Comcast customers have already covered twice- monthly fee and tax dollars
GotNoRice
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The only thing Netflix is paying for is bandwidth and hosting, the same as any other company that has so much as a single website accessible on the internet. What exactly is it that you are suggesting? That Netflix should get free hosting?
Any tax payer subsidization were related to rural coverage, schools, libraries and enabling a minimal level of broadband speeds.
It does not involve subsidizing tens of terabit/s of network bandwidth at a small number of data centers to benefit a few streaming video companies.
If it wasn't allowed to be a service provider and a content provider then most of this crap would never be brought up because it would be in every ISPs best interest to give the best experience to its customers to as much of the internet as possible. But since they have competing products it will never happen. So big companies with tons of money that could upgrade everything for probably less than 1% of their annual profits will let equipment go stagnant. All so can they blackmail their competition and another record breaking profit year. Its complete anticompetitive behavior hidden behind loopholes and paid legislation.
verylostindeed
Gawd
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Do you mean other than they deal they JUST signed that does exactly that?
Break everything up, so that you have a residential ISP, content prover and backbone provider. The backbone provider is still going to demand Netflix (Cogent) pay up for sending so much traffic that it breaks the peering agreement ratio that both sides willingly agreed to.
It doesn't change a thing.
Silentbob343
[H]ard|Gawd
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You know exactly what I meant. Comcast would just upgrade its equipment so they could satisfy the needs of their paying customers. Not have Netflix pay for Comcast's customers to get the access to data they are paying Comcast for.
This video is too serious and the comments are getting heated. I suggest we all take a breather and take a trip back to memory lane and laugh together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilMx7k7mso
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilMx7k7mso
verylostindeed
Gawd
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But . . . Netflix was already paying . . . ok, nevermind, I give up.
I am surprised a capitalist country like the USA can allow that. They would never allow such things here is "socialist" Sweden. We have plenty of companies to choose from and no one has exclusive rights to anything since the monopoly was abolished in the early 90's.
Yall love putting words in peoples mouth. I'm suggesting that Netflix shouldn't have to pay more than one ISP for hosting and they sure the hell shouldn't have to pay every ISP.
pigwalk
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No one has any monopolies on internet service or TV here either. There are options, people just hate that one company has the better options than the other local options.
Shady deals that line a politicians pockets are capitalism and regulations to keep a competitive market are considered socialism. Can't have that evil socialism.
It's really no different than paying one company to pay every ISP. At least now, they'll have better control of the bandwidth and reliability.
It's not like Netflix can't do it, Netflix deals with many, many companies in content licensing.
SunnyD
2[H]4U
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Did you say something about small print?
This is what Comcast users will see when they view their data meter from their account page:
Sorry that you were misinformed.
I'll see your irrelevant misinformation and raise you relevant information. Here's my Comcast account usage meter:
Comcast has been restarted enforcing caps in the Nashville/Huntsville market around August of 2013. They've also started enforcing caps and UBB in select other markets.
Sorry that YOU were misinformed.
quasi-monopoly/duopoloy is still just as bad as a complete monopoly. When there is so few options there is collusion and lack of incentive to upgrade and provide better service and products. Its not they hate that one company is better than another. Its that the companies that have the power to compete with each other on prices and services will stay out of each other markets. So they stay just good enough to be the best in that market which normally isn't much.
AngryArtichoke
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I'd like to also bring up Comcast's terrible service. Their product may or may not suit some user's needs here, but you better not have to call in about any problems with it. Not only does it take quite a while to talk to someone, but they often will spend a long time not fixing the problem. I've had simple issues like constant billing and using my own modem/router that Comcast turned into a hugely complicated procedure. Getting an issue fixed was like pulling teeth, and frequently the issue would not be resolved even when the CS rep said it was.
Luckily, I'm on fiber-optic now.... and I live in an area that may bring Google Fiber in two years. So long story short, screw Comcast and their terrible support.
Luckily, I'm on fiber-optic now.... and I live in an area that may bring Google Fiber in two years. So long story short, screw Comcast and their terrible support.
where do you draw the line then. Should every content provider have to pay every ISP to gets its content to the consumers behind that ISP.
When it's more cost-effective to do so. Clearly, when Netflix accounts for >30% of primetime traffic in the USA, now is the time it needs to make sure it has adequate bandwidth into major networks, instead of relying on a third-party to do it.
The data really should not matter what it is, how much it is, or where it comes from. All data should be treated equally. Whether Netflix existed or not the pipes would still need to get upgraded as more customers get broadband and require more out of it every year anyways. If all traffic was spread equally what would the ISP do then. They would upgrade the equipment. Ever since dial-up there has been content providers that jump ahead of everyone else in traffic. The only reason the amount of Netflix traffic matters is because it has a bigger bar on the quarterly graph then their own competing services.
Many proponents of net neutrality disagree, they say treat data of the same class/type equally but you have the right discriminate against different classes/types of data.
And Comcast right now has adequate bandwidth to handle all Netflix traffic, if they were distributed to more locations, instead of a few peered connections with Cogent. So the issue here is that massively upgrading only a few peered connections benefits only Cogent, Netflix and its users while upgrading all connections benefits all Comcast users.
How about the fact that it massively accounts for more bandwidth than anything else (and #2 is another streaming video service), and streaming video is a terrible fit for the Internet since it requires both relatively high sustained bandwidth and low latency.
BloodDonor
Limp Gawd
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As a New Zealander, even I know how bad Comcast is
M
mls1995
Guest
Yeah, that's the best one!!
blitzkommando
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I find it amusing, in a perverse way, that there used to be more competition in my city 10 years ago with broadband service than today after a decade of 'infrastructure improvements'. A decade ago, this address would have had Verizon or AT&T DSL, TWC or WOW! or Insight cable. Today Verizon no longer carries here and I'm between TWC or WOW! cable or Uverse DSL and they all have major issues with the fastest option being 50mbps service via TWC or WOW! for $92 a month after the 12 months are up ($70 for the first 12). It's also 'funny' how coincidentally for the tiers that are offered the same from the three, all three are priced exactly the same including their 12 month intro price. I fully expect service with TWC to continue to stagnate with the Comcast merger. I also fully expect prices to continue to go up between the services as well. So, yes, I have the illusion of choice wherein any choice is the same except for who I send the check to every month. Fantastic competition.
IMO the solution of deregulation like Texas did to the electrical power industry is the way to go. In the past, wherever you lived dictated who your provider was, and the only choice you had to go with another provider was to sell your house and move.
Now, they simply provide a small reimbursement to the company laying the power lines down, but then any power plant on the grid can sell you electricity, so customers can decide if they prefer X-provider with better customer service, Y-provider with better prices, or Z-provider with more renewable energy percentage... and they all compete with one another, and its only ignorance in some of the market that doesn't realize they can shop that stick with the big ones (like my parents, they were paying 14.1 cents and didn't even realize they had a choice, they are now paying 7.4 cents per KWH... god damn near half!
It doesn't make sense to have six fiberoptic cables routed to your house, you only need one, but even if that model were a viable option unfortunately governments (thanks to lobbying) tend to interfere to ensure that local monopolies are supported.
Parmenides
Supreme [H]ardness
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@GotNoRice are you on their payroll. Man! They don't need your help. Do you lose anything if Comcast has to kowtow to the consumer's demands? It doesn't look like it won't be happening for a long time whether you defend them or not. There are legit complaints. You can't explain away everything. If you're not part of their PR team, then take a chill pill. You don't need the extra stress fighting for the man.
100Mbps?
Don't know what you're paying, but with Cox, they just upped my internet cost to $62 for a 25Mbps connection (It's $100 for 100Mbps). That was a $6 increase, along with a $10 cable increase. If I had another reasonable choice other than a DSL line that might give me 3Mbps, I'd drop cox even though I've been a customer for almost 20 years.
Only lower choice Cox has is a slow 5Mbps connection with a 100mbit cap that they know is too slow/low for most users.
Wierdo
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how is not paying for internet a "hypothetical scenario"...my point was merely that people DO have a choice despite what dude said in the video. Maybe it's a difficult choice to make for most people, or maybe some don't even realize another option exists, I dunno...
I'm referring to the hypothetical scenario of ISPs charging by the MB (some third world countries do that for example), not your ability to find ways to get free service, that ability can potentially go by the wayside once tollbooths are erected across ISP territories.
It logically follows that a system like this would make it more costly for free service to be offered in places such as Starbucks etc, and doing something like tapping someone else's wifi connection, for example, will become theft and punished accordingly. But I have doubts it'll come to that, this is all hypothetical.
Wow, deregulation done right, unlike the so called electrical deregulation they did out here in California. All they did was deregulate generation portion, but actually added more regulation and price controls, resulting in companies and utilities gaming the system until some almost went bankrupt (one of the worse offenders who profited was the city of LA's DWP, but that's another story)
Once their excessive regulations failed, they blamed it on failed deregulation and put even more controls in place, which is one of the reasons California has some of the highest electricity prices in the country.
I hold out no hope that I'll ever see any competition between internet providers or cable companies, or lower prices.
Most cities granted monopolies to cable companies when they first built out the cable systems years ago. These cable companies still have a virtual monopoly because they are protected by the city. The cable company provides freebies to the City Hall, Library, etc., and the city makes it almost impossible (through regulations, costly studies, etc.) for any other company to install a competitive system.
Choice? I can choose Cox cable for my internet service (5mbps, 25mbps, 50mbps, or 100mbps) all for a nice high price that goes up every year (already double what I was paying 10 years ago)
Or I can choose DSL, and since I'm at the end of the street, they can't even guaranty that I'd get 3mbps.
Not really much of a choice.
They pretty much rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 in my area and required it needed to buy a new modem. And you have to pay extra to get any benefit for it. The real reason I figure is that they plan to switch to TV over IP and use their internet infrastructure to transmit television and eliminate 1/2 their hardware (the TV side) and 1/2 their techs. I wonder if some of you will still be blowing them then.
Tell that to the people in the areas where Google is laying fiber. ATT just increased their speeds by a huge amount in Austin, and they say its because of "demand" but everyone with a double digit IQ knows its because Google is now competing with fiber. Who gives a fuck about the "norms"? Norms is MaBell phone company when there was only ONE phone company. We had the "norm" of NOTHING getting better in 50+ years of the phone company. It was only after it was broken up that we saw "norms" die and we ended up with what we have now: every person in the US has a cell phone. and there is no longer "Please add $5 for the next 5 minutes" for "long distance" phone calls.
Again, who gives a SHIT about norms? Norms is conservative speak for "we don't want change". Change and progress are good, something that you seem to think is not. Stagnation is exactly what's going to happen with monopolies, that's a fact.
The problem is that nothing is going to change because we have this mentally inferior, subhuman congress filled with idiots thanks to gerrymanded districts over the last 12 years, and a toothless FCC which is nothing but a revolving door for cable industry and media company lobbyists. No, nothing will change.
The only thing that will change is wherever Google lays fiber, and that's a fact. Every place they go, the "competition" has to do that nasty thing they hate: COMPETE. Everywhere else, they won't do shit. Want 300meg download with Comcast? Pay $250 a month. Google comes to the market, Comcast then "upgrades" your service for free
What a bullshit argument to say this should be the "norm".
GotNoRice
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Tell that to the people in the areas where Google is laying fiber. ATT just increased their speeds by a huge amount in Austin, and they say its because of "demand" but everyone with a double digit IQ knows its because Google is now competing with fiber. Who gives a fuck about the "norms"? Norms is MaBell phone company when there was only ONE phone company. We had the "norm" of NOTHING getting better in 50+ years of the phone company. It was only after it was broken up that we saw "norms" die and we ended up with what we have now: every person in the US has a cell phone. and there is no longer "Please add $5 for the next 5 minutes" for "long distance" phone calls.
Again, who gives a SHIT about norms? Norms is conservative speak for "we don't want change". Change and progress are good, something that you seem to think is not. Stagnation is exactly what's going to happen with monopolies, that's a fact.
The problem is that nothing is going to change because we have this mentally inferior, subhuman congress filled with idiots thanks to gerrymanded districts over the last 12 years, and a toothless FCC which is nothing but a revolving door for cable industry and media company lobbyists. No, nothing will change.
The only thing that will change is wherever Google lays fiber, and that's a fact. Every place they go, the "competition" has to do that nasty thing they hate: COMPETE. Everywhere else, they won't do shit. Want 300meg download with Comcast? Pay $250 a month. Google comes to the market, Comcast then "upgrades" your service for free
What a bullshit argument to say this should be the "norm".
Did you quote the right person? I never used the word "norm" once even though that is the focus of your post.
I'm not in love with Comcast, I just give them credit where due for providing me with what is currently great service. We have AT&T UVerse in our area now but that has only been available for a few years. Most of the upgrades Comcast did to our area actually happened while they were the only real ISP available (aside from traditional slow DSL). The moment they actually give me a reason to be pissed off, I will be, but I'm not going to do so just to jump on the bandwagon.