Jeff Wheeler wrote:
1) Comcast believes they can exact a great deal of revenue from content networks. For this to be comparable to their captive customers, per-megabit rates must be reminiscent of pre-Level3 days, when $30/Mb was a bargain. This would spell bad news for Netflix. Of course, since cable companies typically must pay network affiliates and media companies great sums for television programming packages, it is in direct opposition to the TV content/delivery model. It would be hard to argue both sides if both businesses were faced with like-minded regulators.
I disagree. Even at $1/Mbit and 6Tbit of traffic (they do more), that's still $72M/year in revenue that they weren't recognizing before. Given that that traffic was actually *costing* them money to absorb before, turning the balance and making that kind of money would be very favorably looked upon in a unit where a customers margin for 6+ months can be eaten up in 1 service call. -Dave