On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Bret Clark <bclark@spectraaccess.com> wrote:
On 11/29/2010 07:55 PM, Ren Provo wrote:
http://blog.comcast.com/2010/11/comcast-comments-on-level-3.html
On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Dave CROCKER<dhc2@dcrocker.net> wrote:
Okay's let's say L3 gives in to Comcast and pays them. L3 then turns around and charges us (providers) more to cover the additional money they have to pay Comcast now. In the meantime Comcast continues to undercut the market it sells into making it harder for me as a service provider to compete...that just isn't right. Maybe Comcast should raise their prices to their customers to cover the cost of upgrading there network, but then they wouldn't be able to undercut me anymore...monopolies are a dangerous thing!
From the spectator sport perspective...I would have loved to see what would have happened had Level3 said essentially "your customers want more data from me, go bill them for it." Would Comcast really de-peer Level3? Where would that 500Gbps of traffic try to flow? I rather doubt the TATA pathway would be able to take more than 20% of it before melting down; and it's pretty clear that Comcast has been working to phase out their previous relationship with GlobalCrossing, or at least to depreference it over other pathways, so I doubt it could pick up the slack. And, at the end of the day, if Comcast *did* try to call Level3's bluff, and depeered them...whose support phone lines would be likely to melt down first? Would the Comcast customers call Level3 to complain, or would they call Comcast to say "what the hell, I pay $8.99/month to be able to stream Netflix, and now I can't reach them anymore--go fix it!"
It would be an ugly, ugly day for the US bits of the Internet...but it would be fun to watch from the sidelines. ^_^ Matt