FCC Slaps Comcast, But Lays Foundation For Future Bandwidth Restrictions

[croc]

[citation][nom]SomeJoe7777[/nom]Let's hold up a minute. Two separate issues are getting confused here. The FCC hearings and ruling are about DISCRIMINATORY traffic management practices. i.e. Comcast is not allowed to treat some traffic with one set of policies and other traffic with a different set of policies.The related, but separate practice, is traffic management in general. There are no rules against Comcast applying bandwidth throttling to traffic. But the FCC is making it clear that such a practice has to be applied without regard to the TYPE of traffic.The case for/against traffic management as a whole will be fought out in the marketplace, where customers will choose a different internet provider if they don't like Comcast's bandwidth management policies.Do not attempt to extend the FCC's ruling and decision to bandwidth management as a whole. That's not what it's about. And mixing that into this article shows a lack of understanding of the case.[/citation]

I think that it would help if all ISP's used a fair, published, bandwidth cap, over which the user got billed a bit extra. By my calculations, 10mb/s calculates out to 270GB / month. I couldn't imagine a (legal) reason to burn up that much bandwidth.

Monthly caps are the norm here in AUS, mine is so high (for me) that I have never bumped the cap limit. Of course, the caps are published for your rate plan, in all adverts, etc.

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]SomeJoe7777[/nom]The case for/against traffic management as a whole will be fought out in the marketplace, where customers will choose a different internet provider if they don't like Comcast's bandwidth management policies.Do not attempt to extend the FCC's ruling and decision to bandwidth management as a whole. That's not what it's about. And mixing that into this article shows a lack of understanding of the case.[/citation]
Actually, it does partially cover that subject as well, though not 100% directly, when the ruling commented on Comcast "misleadingly disclaimed any responsibility for the customers’ [bandwidth] problems." Technically, a throttle very, VERY much qualifies as a bandwidth problem, even if it is contractually agreed upon; it's just that in that case, it's agreed upon and fair.

However, it's pretty clear that in these cases, it's not something that is made clear to the subscriber until AFTER they have paid and signed a contract for the service, where they learn that the service that they are getting has a general-traffic throttle applied to everyone, that is NOT mentioned at all in their advertisements; in other words, that the 6mpbs "better than DSL" speeds advertised are impossible to achieve.

What you have there, is called "Deceptive Advertising," and is thoroughly illegal. Of course, that tends to be handled by the FTC, rather than the FCC... But in any case, when corporations partake in illegal actions such as marketplace deception, the capitalist marketplace CANNOT actually sort out the companies on its own, because one or more of those companies are cheating.
[citation][nom]croc[/nom]I couldn't imagine a (legal) reason to burn up that much bandwidth.Monthly caps are the norm here in AUS, mine is so high (for me) that I have never bumped the cap limit. Of course, the caps are published for your rate plan, in all adverts, etc.[/citation]
270GB a month? There are 2,592,000 seconds in a 30-day month, so that would be nearly 3 terabytes of data at 1.125 MB/sec. (10mbps)

No legal use for that much bandwidth, even 270 GB? Well, perhaps you're not as serious an Internet user as a number of people are. I can think of loads of ways to burn through a few terabytes every month, for months on end, without ever stepping toes on any law; the "all high bandwidth-users must be pirates" argument falls very flat when you consider that while there are loads of illegal (pirated) downloads and transfers of multi-gigabyte files for video, audio, and game content, there are ways to also legally acquire the same content across the Internet as well.

Remember that there are not just free downloads for some content, but also PAID content as well; and in this day and age, if you want people to pay for your video content, it better be in high-definition, which means that even after compression, you're talking something that's going to be in the tens of gigabytes. Similar file sizes go through if you're buying and downloading a game from Direct2Drive or Steam.