If Comcast is charging providers to carry bits, how long until Verizon does the same? it becomes an "everyone else is getting paid" situation. I think it is better for the the content providers to be financially responsible for efficiency of transmission, which only happens when they (not the consumer) pays per byte. The consumer is already paying on a sliding scale to (Netflix). You want 1 dvd a month, that is X dollars, you want Blueray as well, that is X+Y dollars. I cannot image that it will be too long before Netflix has an SD package and an HD package. Consumers are most interested in paying for unlimited access, unless it is overly expensive. I would rather pay comcast and netflix a set fee each month instead of getting charged .$00001 each time I check my email. On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 12:22 PM, JC Dill <jcdill.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
On 16/12/10 8:52 AM, Jack Bates wrote:
On 12/16/2010 9:17 AM, Mikel Waxler wrote:
Comcast can now charge its customers only for upkeep of its network and use the income they get as an "end point delivery network" to offset customer cost. Comcast's cost, which are upkeep and expansion of its physical network, now scale proportionally with its customer base.
The problem with your layout is that, as a netflix user, I pay more to netflix so that you can have their service over comcast, and my provider doesn't get income from the netflix streams as it is sub 100k users (so I still have to pay for my provider's upgrades to handle the netflix which percentage wise will be higher than comcast due to less ideal bandwidth discounts and the locality which may even drive up the overall percentage of netflix streams per customer base).
Problem? For Comcast, none of this is a problem. (Do you see the problem now?)
Again, I predict that things ARE heading in this direction, and that market forces and the current regulatory climate encourages it. Dire news for small providers. Saying you "want" it to be different[1] won't change anything. I don't know what the solution is (if there is a solution) but so far all I see are people complaining "but if that happens, it's bad for me and for others". Yes, it's bad. What are you going to do to stop it? If Comcast can continue to force other networks to pay it to carry data to Comcast's users, it will create a tidal wave of momentum in their favor for lowering rates and pushing other eyeball networks aside, buying them up or just taking over their territory and customers.
jc
[1] I want a pony, etc.