Comcast Wants to Cap Downloads: Puts a Damper on Innovation
Today, Comcast announced that it will amend its Acceptable Use Policy and add a clause to it that will establish a "monthly data use threshold" of 250 GB per month. This effectively puts a cap on the amount a Comcast user can download per month and codifies an informal policy Comcast was already enforcing. While 250GB is a large amount of data right now, it won't be once a large number users start watching HD streams which can easily take up numerous GB per hours.
That's a Lot of Data
Comcast's announcement tries to put this limit into context. According to Comcast, 250GB amount to:
- 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
- 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
- 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
- uploading 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)
It's interesting that, judging from this, Comcast seems to add up uploads (photos) and downloads to get to these 250GB, making it an even smaller number - especially for those who upload large numbers of photos or videos, and, of course, for those who share a lot of files on Bittorrent. In Comcast's defense, the cap is agnostic to what service you use to burn up those gigabytes.
But Not if You Are a Power User
Comcast also cites that the median monthly usage be customer is 2-3GB a month. While some commentators have thought that this number is too low, we don't think it really is. For most broadband customers, broadband is simply always-on Internet. They don't necessarily make use of al the services available to them.
The problem here, however, is that the more advanced users also tend to use an exponentially larger amount of data. A standard movie might clock in at 2GB, but an HD movie can take easily take up more than 10GB.
It's All About Video
Also, these kind of limits are bound to stifle innovation in the streaming video business - and not even necessarily because people will start running out of bandwidth, but because there will always be a little voice that will keep nagging Comcast's users that they might be hitting the data cap if they download that movie.
We have to admit, though, that 250GB are a pretty high cap and, as Larry Dignan points out, it sure beats having metered Internet access. However, looking into the future, 250GB might be nothing once more people start using more data-intensive applications.
Will it be the end of the Internet as we know it, especially once other ISPs start announcing similar caps? Probably not - but it might just put a damper on the Internet we had envisioned for the future.
Flickr image courtesy of dmuth
Share
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
In Australia all internet is capped, so I am used to the capped plans. What is the strangest thing about this announcment is not being able to see your usage levels (Webware Article). If you know your limit and can monitor your usage, it makes the process not terrible but annoying when you are used to unlimeted downloads. Also surprised that uploads are counted and they don't have different quotas for peak and off peak times. If they are going to move to a capped system, they need to put usage monitoring tools in place and offer different levels of capped for different types of users. Very poorly executed by Comcast, I would be a very unhappy user if I used them.
I wouldn't worry about it too much. I consider myself a pretty heavy web user, and doing the math, I don't even come close to the 250GB per month:
4 times a week x 3 podcasts x 200MB = 2.4 GB
3 times a week x 50 xm songs x 4mb/ea = 0.6 GB
5 times a week x 4 youtube vids x 5mb = 0.1 GB
7 times a week x 30 websites x 7mb/ea = 1.47 GB
Then I estimate 400MB a week in uploads for work
That's 5.87 GB per week or approximately 23.5 GB per month.
I could still throw in 20 HD movies, which I don't see happening.
If they have to cap it to keep the service good and fast, or whatever their reason is, I think 250GB/mo is pretty generous.
I don't know whether it will kill innovation - there's basically no way that we can switch to a world where people are constantly streaming HD content without significant investment (particularly where ADSL has been used to hack more life out of existing exchanges) - current broadband prices are based largely on existing use.
I see this more as an approach to get rid of a few customers they don't want (the small percentage consuming most of the resources, yet paying the same as the typical customer).
In theory this should drive innovation in the market by creating room for an ISP that does want to support the heavy bittorrent user - provided that user will pay more for more (and that is a big if, seeing as the heavy bittorrent user is largely known for his attitude of avoiding paying for anything he can).
You guys are so lucky. Belgian limits were recently upped to 20Gb...
A bandwidth cap, no matter how big, would keep me worrying about how much I had used. I would enjoy the internet more, and be more productive, if I could just focus on the actual content I'm downloading, not how much I'm downloading. I want to be able to download the next killer app, or visit the newest cool website, without having to worry about how big it is. I wouldn't be able to get anything done.
The same pressures that made them establish this cap (even recognizing that it's far above what most of their users use) will push it up as needed.
As long as the EFF, Consumerist, and widely read blogs are around to spread information, I'm not too worried. :)
One thing that I haven't seen in any of these announcements is how I am supposed to know how close I am to the bandwidth cap. Granted, I am pretty geeky so I can setup a bandwidth stat that I can check and have it roll over on my monthly rollover date, but the less abled won't have any clue how much bandwidth they have left. Of course, it's not in Comcast's best interest to have this meter, just like it's not in the best interests of the cell phone companies to have your remaining minutes show, but they should have it anyway.
I wonder if the 250 total also includes uploads?
Cap or not, this is merely a contractual constraint--what about the physical constraint? At the end of the day there is only so much physical infrastructure out there and as long as telcos don't invest in new inf., bandwidth-heavy innovation will not happen.
The ROI justification simply isn't there. You build a bigger pipe for $Bs and how much extra can you charge on the monthly subscription? $15? Look at FiOS, that project is an ROI train wreck.