In a message written on Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 10:59:25PM -0600, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
I believe that's what I said. To be perfectly clear, what I'm saying is:
* Comcast acted first by demanding fees * Level 3 went public first by whining about it after they agreed to pay * Comcast was well prepared to win the PR war, and had a large pile of content that sounds good to the uninformed layperson ready to go.
I think I can make this very simple. What I am saying is that you're missing a step before your 3 bullet points. Before any of the three things you describe, Level 3 demanded fees from Comcast. Level 3 is doing a great job of getting folks to ignore that fact. Comcast is a customer of L3, and pays them for service. Brining on Netflix will cause Comcast to pay L3 more. More interestingly, in this case it's likely Level 3 went to Comcast and said we don't think your existing customer ports will handle the additional traffic....so...um...you should buy more customer ports. Does network neutrality work both ways? If it is bad for Comcast to hold the users hostage to extort more money from Level 3, is it also bad for Level 3 to hold the content hostage to extort more money from Comcast? -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/