Law To Ban Broadband Caps Moves Forward

from the not-the-best-solution... dept

We've already noted that NY Congressman Eric Massa believes broadband caps raise First Amendment issues, though we have trouble understanding exactly what those issues are. We're not fans of the caps by any stretch of the imagination -- and, in fact, think that they're bad for innovation and bad for everyone (including the broadband providers implementing them). However, that doesn't make them First Amendment issues. Still, Massa seems committed to introducing new regulations against caps, which may be as misguided as the caps themselves. The real issue shouldn't be whether or not the caps exist; it should be how we can enable more competition in the broadband space, such that caps are no longer an issue. Massa claims his bill will "seek to increase competition among broadband providers," but didn't provide any explanation of what that actually meant. It would be great to see more competition, but it seems unlikely that what's being cooked up here will do the trick.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps, competition, eric massa, regulations

Look At That: Competition Helps Stop Broadband Caps

from the it's-all-about-the-competition dept

For years, many people have been pointing out that the real problem with broadband in the US isn't an issue of net neutrality or broadband caps, but the lack of competition. While having only two providers in a region usually isn't enough to ensure reasonable broadband practices, it may actually be working in upstate NY. While Frontier Communications has been talking about really low usage caps, it seems that now that Time Warner Cable has decided to launch capped broadband in one of Frontier's regions, the company may be thinking about going in the other direction, potentially even running a whole ad campaign about why TWC customers should switch to avoid the caps. Of course, given Frontier's previous statements about caps, it's difficult to believe that customers will be all that well protected from an eventual capped broadband anyway. But, still, this demonstrates that competition can sometimes keep these things in check. But, what you really need is more than just two players.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps, competition, upstate new york
Companies: frontier communications, time warner cable

Frontier DSL Stands By Its Caps... Even As It Decreases Broadband Speeds

from the that's-called-not-investing dept

Frontier Communications last year was a big supporter of capping broadband usage at 5gigs (both up and down). The company is still hyping this up, claiming "It is important that customers that use less don't subsidize those that use the most." That sounds nice, and we'll be hearing that a lot from various broadband providers over the next few months and years -- but there's no proof that it's true. For example, no one seems to be offering cheaper plans for those customers who use "less." So if they were subsidizing the high end users before... what's happening to that money now? It certainly doesn't appear to be going into infrastructure improvements. As Broadband Reports points out, many Frontier customers have recently had their broadband speeds decreased from 6Mbps to 3Mbps.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps
Companies: frontier

Why Internet Companies And Content Companies Should Oppose Broadband Caps

from the it's-going-to-stifle-innovation dept

I've been on record for quite some time as being opposed to metered broadband caps by ISPs. Plenty of others -- including some of the other Techdirt writers -- disagree, insisting that they will work fine allowing ISPs to "differentiate" service levels. I find that to be quite optimistic, as most of the examples we've seen so far have really only involved ISPs putting in ridiculously low caps in order to squeeze excess money out of people. And, before anyone says it, there's no evidence that ISPs "need" to cap usage to avoid a bandwidth crunch. Such things have been disproved time and time again.

But, my biggest reason for opposing broadband caps is that it will stifle online innovation in a variety of ways. First, bandwidth caps don't give ISPs much real incentive to invest in more bandwidth (contrary to their claims). That's because the more "congested" they can show their network is, the more they can charge more for basic usage. It sets up incentives for the ISPs to want more congestion, rather than less. Second, it will greatly limit the adoption of new and innovative services. Suddenly there's an additional "bandwidth" cost to testing out certain types of apps. This makes people less willing to even bother, and basically knocks out any (relatively) high bandwidth service before it can even get started.

For example, look at Larry Lessig's recent experience while traveling in New Zealand. He's apparently "subscribed" to the TV show House via iTunes. So, at the hotel in New Zealand, he paid for expensive broadband service that mentioned, in the fine print, that his access was limited to a grand total of 1 gig. He logged in and started checking email. In the background, iTunes started downloading the latest (high def) episode of House which itself ran 1.5 gigs. So half an hour later, not only is his broadband cut off, but a message pops up telling him he's being fined for "violating ethical rules." It's troubling enough that the provider somehow thinks it's an ethical violation -- but this shows how bandwidth caps can easily stifle perfectly legitimate activities and aren't (as many have implied) about "stopping pirates."

And, it's for this reason that many entertainment companies should also reconsider their support of caps. Many in the entertainment business have supported caps as one (of many) ways to combat "piracy." But now, as more and more legitimate, authorized content services are available online, these caps are going to do serious harm to their online business as well. Now, perhaps some of them (stupidly) think that this is okay, because it will just drive people back to the "old way" of doing things, that's unlikely to happen. It's just going to piss people off. Once you've shown them that they can do something, people don't tend to like having that option taken away from them.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps, cable, innovation, lessig, tiered service

On The Importance Of Unfettered Broadband

from the it-goes-beyond-just-movies dept

A little over a year ago, I tried to explain why metered broadband or capped broadband slows down innovation. However, many have responded that as long as the basic caps are reasonably high, it shouldn't be a big deal, because, "how much bandwidth do you really need?" People note that the only ones who might be using up the 250GB caps announced from Comcast can only be downloading non-stop movies. But that's not really the point. The real question is what innovations are we not seeing because of limited bandwidth. Not so long ago, the very idea of something like YouTube was preposterous, but thanks to abundant bandwidth it became possible. But something like YouTube is just a tiny way down the path to what's possible.

Tim Lee has a great post making the point that it goes well beyond just "how much bandwidth does a single person need" or even looking at what specifically they're downloading, to recognizing the change in tradeoffs for creating applications if bandwidth is effectively unlimited. As he notes, in any engineering situation, there are resource tradeoffs. If you're building an application, there are tradeoffs to making a client side app vs. a web-based app, for example. However, if bandwidth is truly abundant, the very nature of those tradeoffs change and it allows for entirely different types of development, often in ways that are difficult to fathom right now.

Lee gives a few random examples of what unlimited bandwidth might allow as the tradeoffs change:

People with cable or satellite TV service are used to near-instantaneous, flawless video content, which is difficult to stream reliably over a packet-switched network. So the television of the future is likely to be a peer-to-peer client that downloads anything it thinks its owner might want to see and caches it for later viewing. This isn't strictly necessary, but it would improve the user experience. Likewise, there may be circumstances where users want to quickly load up their portable devices with several gigabytes of data for later offline viewing.

Finally, and probably most importantly, higher bandwidth allows us to economize on the time of the engineers building online applications. One of the consistent trends in the computer industry has been towards greater abstraction. There was a time when everyone wrote software in machine language. Now, a lot of software is written in high-level languages like Java, Perl, or Python that run slower but make life a lot easier for programmers. A decade ago, people trying to build rich web applications had to waste a lot of time optimizing their web applications to achieve acceptable performance on the slow hardware of the day. Today, computers are fast enough that developers can use high-level frameworks that are much more powerful but consume a lot more resources. Developers spend more time adding new features and less time trying to squeeze better performance out of the features they already have. Which means users get more and better applications.

The same principle is likely to apply to increased bandwidth, even beyond the point where we all have enough bandwidth to stream high-def video. Right now, web developers need to pay a fair amount of attention to whether data is stored on the client or the server and how to efficiently transmit it from one place to another. A world of abundant bandwidth will allow developers to do whatever makes the most sense computationally without worrying about the bandwidth constraints.

So the question is not how much bandwidth does any person really need. It's how will the entire ecosystem of what we can do change when bandwidth is completely abundant?

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps, tradeoffs

Please Stop Telling Us How Many Emails Fit Under A Broadband Cap

from the it's-really-avoiding-the-point dept

Earlier this year, we pointed out that if you're a broadband provider implementing some kind of broadband cap, and you're hyping it up by showing off just how many emails can be sent under the cap, there's a problem. Obviously, ISPs are using the number of emails as a criteria because emails use up almost no bandwidth -- so no matter what the cap is, the answer is "a lot." But, of course, the number of emails you can send is meaningless. There's no big email epidemic that is what has ISPs claiming they need to put in place limits. As Broadband Reports notes, it's all incredibly demeaning to focus on the number of emails you can send:

Those would all be relevant measurement criteria, were we all idiots.

People don't care about how many emails they can send. They want to know if they'll actually be able to download more than half an HD movie. Focusing on emails is like telling someone that a full tank of gas in their car will allow them to travel six hundred million millimeters. That's meaningless for someone who wants to know if they can actually get from San Francisco to Los Angeles on a single tank of gas. If these ISPs really feel the need to implement caps, at least be honest about what it means for customers.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps, email

AT&T Jumps Into The Metered Broadband Game

from the not-too-surprising dept

As was widely expected, AT&T has officially jumped into the metered broadband game, initiating a system in Reno, with caps ranging from 20 to 150 gigabytes per month, depending on tier, and overage fees at $1/gigabyte. These caps are significantly lower than Comcast's caps, though higher than we've seen elsewhere. At this point, it's become pretty clear that all of the major ISPs seem to want to adopt such tiers and overage fees, which I still think will come back to bite them. It would be an opportunity for others to offer more competitive offerings if the FCC hadn't done everything possible to kill off competition in the broadband space.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps, tiered service
Companies: at&t

Even Light Users Would Look For Alternatives If Their ISP Uses Broadband Caps

from the would-certainly-help-if-there-was-competition dept

Longtime readers know that I'm no fan of metered broadband or it's half-sibling "broadband caps." They're not the worst thing in the world, but they set in place the wrong incentives, making an internet connection a lot less valuable. There are certainly those who disagree, but we've lived in worlds with metered internet access and phone systems before, and it leads to decreased overall usage -- and that's not a good thing. It acts as disincentive to creating the next great internet service that could be a boon to the economy.

Customers recognize this implicitly. They hate the idea of any sort of mental transaction cost associated with "watching" their bandwidth usage -- especially since they have no clue how much bandwidth they really use. A recent study highlights this pretty clearly. 83% had no idea how much bandwidth they use -- with many not even having an idea of how much data one gigabyte represented. 81% of those surveyed stated they were against the caps, and 51% said they'd look for alternative providers if their ISPs implemented such a cap. Interestingly, even light users were against such plans. That seems to go against what ISPs tell everyone, claiming that light users would be able to get cheaper access. Yet, those light users recognize that it would more likely end up with them keeping the same price, but with more limits.

Now, some will be quick to respond that of course people surveyed will hate broadband caps. It's like asking people if they want to get less for the same price. But the key point here is how many people would look for alternative providers, combined with the fact that, for most users, there really aren't many choices. Once again, this highlights the key problem with US broadband: there's almost no real competition. You have the duopoly of the telcos and cablecos, and not much else that represents real competition. Most of the biggest providers (Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable) have made it clear that they intend to cap broadband. The only really big holdout is Verizon, who is betting that its FiOS offering won't require similar caps. But FiOS is still limited in its footprint, and it will be worth watching what happens over time. So while there are plenty of skirmishes about things like net neutrality and broadband caps, don't lose site of the real issue: the lack of significant competition for broadband in most markets.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps, competition

Comcast Officially Caps Broadband That It Had Already Secretly Capped

from the fair-enough dept

As was rumored back in May, Comcast has finally come out and officially announced that it's capping its broadband at 250 GB per month as of October 1. Despite earlier reports, there was no confirmation of any overage fees for those who go beyond that. While I still think that tiered broadband is an overall mistake, Comcast's plan is a lot better than most other ISPs who are putting in broadband caps that are often ridiculously low. And, since Comcast has already had a secret cap, all this new plan does is finally reveal what that cap is. So, realistically speaking, this is a step in the right direction, in that Comcast is actually revealing what its secret cap is and it's made the cap so high that it shouldn't impact most users.

Filed Under: broadband caps
Companies: comcast

Time Warner Cable Using Incentives And Fine Print To Lock Customers Into Broadband Caps

from the read-the-fine-print dept

Back in January, Time Warner Cable admitted that it was considering adding usage caps and overage fees to broadband users. It recently started signing up new customers for these offerings (sometimes with absurdly low usage caps). Of course, it knows it can't just change existing customers over to such plans, realizing they'd be in for quite a set of lawsuits for selling people one thing and then completely changing the terms. However, it's now working on a way around this: trying to convince existing customers to upgrade to special triple play packages with "locked in" pricing for a year and then burying in the fine print that they also agree to the usage caps. Sneaky. Soon it won't be long before you won't be able to change anything on your plan without also agreeing to the new usage caps.

Filed Under: broadband caps, fine print, incentives
Companies: time warner cable