AT&T wants to control the Internet, by controlling the flow of information using a technique called “paid prioritization”. Check out TopLineISV.com, SynapticHosting.com, SynapticCompute.com and/or SynapticStorage.com to find out what you can do about it..
Other sites: SynapticCloud.com and SynapticCloudComputing.com
Net Neutrality is a very confusing subject, mostly because it means different things to different people. Â
At the heart of the whole debate is whether a company who has the responsibility of providing the internet infrastructure (or the “Internet Backbone”) has the right to sell higher speed access to the backbone to those client companies that might want their website to display faster.
There are two ways to look at the this situation, in more or less black and white terms.  Unfortunately, this is anything but a black and white situation, so I admit that this breakdown of terms will be rather simplistic. Here is the nutshell version of each:
People who are AGAINST Net Neutrality want to be able to sell the Googles of the world a far superior connection to the Internet compared to the small business websites.  The major argument here is that allowing these backbone companies to charge more for faster connections gives these companies the necessary incentives to continue to invest in their own networks and infrastructure.
People who are FOR Net Neutrality want the Amazons of the world to have the same visibility on the Internet that the average Small Business website has.  They say that regulations to prevent (or at least restrict) any possible discrimination are required to keep the big businesses of the world from conspiring to limit options of regular users.
For a really good list of articles on the issue, please visit the New York Times Room for Debate topic of “Who Gets Priority on the Web?” There are articles from 9 different Contributors available for your perusal, so you’ll get both sides of the story. Highly recommended read.
Article source: http://www.inmymobileworld.com/2010/08/16/a-wonderful-discussion-about-net-neutrality/
I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge Comcast’s announcement today about modifying their data cap policy. In short, while the data cap remains, it has been raised to 300 GB/month, and Comcast is exploring Usage Based Pricing (or UBP) for overages (the example being given of $10 for 50 GB). Importantly, my concern about users being cut off entirely from the internet for “excessive use” has been addressed, with Comcast claiming they will no longer terminate users for this alleged sin.
That said, it is very important to understand what Comcast is not addressing with today’s announcement — Net Neutrality issues, especially those around Comcast favoring their own services over others on their network. There are several excellent articles summarizing the continuing issue, including this Net Neutrality overview piece from Eduardo Porter of the New York Times, and today’s article on what Comcast said, and did not say, by Stacey Higgenbotham of Gigaom. I highly recommend reading both.
Finally, I wanted to point out that Comcast’s new direction only highlights the questions around Usage Based Pricing that Public Knowledge has requested Comcast (and other ISPs) to respond to by May 25th. These are very important questions, as they not only touch on the reasons for traffic management and data caps, but also issues around Net Neutrality. Specifically, the question of whether Comcast is exempting its own services from the (now new) data cap, and prioritizing Comcast traffic remains.
Answering Public Knowledge’s questions by May 25th will go a long way to assuage concerns that Comcast is protecting its own services from consumer-enabling competition such as Netflix and Hulu. I encourage Comcast (and all other ISPs sent these questions) to respond in a timely manner so a productive conversation may begin.
Related posts:
Article source: http://www.ozymandias.com/comcast-modifies-data-cap-but-net-neutrality-issues-remain
Comcast Tower
Comcast plans to raise its broadband cap to 300 GB per month as it trials two new ways to deal with managing traffic on its network, the nation’s largest cable operator said in a blog post today. The move is a welcome one for those who have hit the existing 250 GB cap, but it neglects to address some of the earlier complaints that have arisen in the last few weeks about Comcast exempting some of its own video on-demand trafficand allegations that the company is prioritizing that traffic in violation of federal rules implemented when it bought NBC-Universal.
Comcast says it plans to trial two types of plans in unnamed markets. The first will offer customers a higher cap at higher tiers of service. So the Internet Essentials, Economy, and Performance Tier customers will have a 300 GB cap while those getting higher speeds (and Comcast offers some pretty high speeds at 100 MBps) will have some undetermined, higher cap. Customers under this plan will also be allowed to buy additional gigabytes for a certain amount. Comcast gave the example of $10 per 50 GB block.
The second trial will offer customers a 300 GB cap across all product lines and will offer customers a chance to buy more bytes for the same price. What’s key in both of these situations is that Comcast is allowing customers to buy more gigabytes after they hit the cap. Previously, it cut customers off. In this way it’s closer to capped plans such as those offered by ATT, which stops users at a 250 or 150 GB per month cap and then charges them $10 for 50 more gigabytes.
The second approach will increase data usage thresholds for all tiers to 300 GB per month and also offer the option to buy more gigabytes. Comcast will also suspend the enforcement of its caps across all of its markets while it tests the new caps and plans.
While Comcast’s decision to expand its caps is good, it’s also sticking to the idea that unlimited broadband is detrimental to the quality of its network. In its blog post and on a conference call discussing the new plans, Comcast repeatedly tied these caps to better network management, but Comcast already has a network management plan that it filed with the FCC after it was caught blocking P2P packets on its network. In that plan, the company noted that when its network became congested it would temporarily slow traffic to customers requiring the most bandwidth. So why does it need the cap?
Many argue that the cap is less about network management and more about protecting Comcast’s pay TV business as customers spend more time watching television via web-based subscription services including Netflix and Hulu. As I said, I’m glad Comcast has raised its cap, but conspicuously missing from the Comcast post is an admission that the cap is problematic when Comcast still offers to exempt some of its services from the cap.
When asked about this, David Cohen, Executive Vice President of Comcast, shut down the discussion, saying, “It is a real stretch to create a discrimination argument here.” He went on to say that the concern over any exempted services should be dramatically reduced because of the increased data threshold. “We’re relieving a hypothetical pressure on usage, here,” he said.
While the cap’s size has created some controversy as more and more customers hit it, the issue is less the size and more the existence of the cap if Comcast continues to offer services that will be exempt from that cap. Even at 300 GB per month, if certain types of traffic don’t count against that cap, then the cap still offers Comcast a competitive advantage over Netflix, YouTube and other over-the-top video services. Cohen repeatedly, however, mentioned a comment from the Netflix earnings call where the CEO of the streaming video provider said that a 250GB cap wasn’t affecting its business.
What Reed Hastings actually said was this:
It’s not a near-term issue with the 250 gigabyte cap. But the core principle [of network neutrality] is important anyway, which is the cap should be applied equally or not at all.
The larger cap also doesn’t address the question of whether or not Comcast is prioritizing its own traffic over other Internet traffic as was alleged earlier this week in a blog post by Bryan Berg, the CTO of MixMedia Labs. Comcast has explained why it believes it is not prioritizing its traffic in a manner that would draw government ire, but in a close reading of its post, what Comcast is describing is highly technical. Essentially it is saying that it is creating a logical as opposed to a physical separation in the traffic, and that it why it is marking packets.
So while Comcast is trumpeting its forward-thinking behavior on caps, there are a lot of questions about the timing of its announcement. Reporters on the call repeatedly asked Cohen about the rationale for increasing the cap. Cohen said its median usage is between 8-10 GB per month or about four percent of the cap and that the “vast, vast majority of users aren’t hitting the cap,” which does beg the question: why change the cap now?
Cohen’s response was, “It’s a matter of messaging way more than it’s a question of capacity.” He reiterated the idea that this is about encouraging users to use and download lawful content on their Comcast service without worrying about the cap. This implies that customers might find the cap inhibiting their behavior or that people questioning the cap are making some headway. So for now, customers get 20 percent more head room on their Comcast cap, and we’ll have to wait and see when and where Comcast rolls out its new plans.
Meanwhile I’ll leave you with Cohen’s suggested headline for this piece: “The headline today should be, we’re out of the cap business.”
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Article source: http://gigaom.com/broadband/comcast-capitulates-on-cap-but-dodges-the-net-neutrality-issue/
https://twitter.com/#!/pranesh_praka…66021932843010
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Article source: http://broadbandforum.in/net-neutrality/78530-anonymous-takes-down-congress-and/
Important for people who stream a whole lot of Internet video, or think they might one day, or would like to make money by streaming a lot of Internet video: Comcast is overhauling its rules which limit the amount of data its broadband subscribers can use.
In short, Comcast is moving from a flat cap to usage-based billing.
It is scrapping its 250-gigabytes a month cap and trying a couple different plans in its place. One version will introduce a 300-gig cap and offer additional tiers of service, with bigger caps, along with the ability to buy more chunks of data. Another version also uses a 300-gig cap and the ability to buy incremental blocks of data as needed.
Comcast, which has more than 18 million high-speed data customers, says it will experiment with the two plans in some of its territories.
It also says that in markets where it’s not trying the new plans, it will scrap its data cap entirely until it settles on a new plan.
The move comes as Comcast has taken heat about the way it treats data on some of its proprietary video services, in particular the Xfinity app for Microsoft’s Xbox console.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has argued that because Comcast doesn’t count data delivered via that service against its usage caps, it is violating “net neutrality” principles. Comcast says it’s in the clear because that data isn’t delivered via the public Internet but on its own network, and doesn’t plan on changing its policy.
Comcast executives referenced the debate as they introduced the new plans today. “There has been a little bit of noise along with the Xfinity Xbox plan,” said Comcast EVP David Cohen. But Comcast also insists that only a small handful of its users come close to using the 250-gig cap today. The company says median usage runs around 8 gigabytes to 10GB a month.
Other broadband providers, notably Time Warner Cable, have also moved to usage-based pricing. If you take the companies at their word, they’re doing it because they need to charge more money to provide more bandwidth because “our network is not an infinite resource, and it is expensive to build it,” as Cohen says.
But usage-based pricing is also a useful tool to have available if cable TV users really do stop subscribing in large numbers, and replace their pay TV packages with Web video. That gives the cable (and telco) guys a way to replace the video revenue they lose with more broadband dollars. A bonus for them: Broadband subscriptions are much more profitable than video subscriptions.
[Shutterstock/Janos Levente]
Article source: http://allthingsd.com/20120517/comcast-turns-the-broadband-meter-on-and-moves-to-usage-based-billing/
I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge Comcast’s announcement today about modifying their data cap policy. In short, while the data cap remains, it has been raised to 300 GB/month, and Comcast is exploring Usage Based Pricing (or UBP) for overages (the example being given of $10 for 50 GB). Importantly, my concern about users being cut off entirely from the internet for “excessive use” has been addressed, with Comcast claiming they will no longer terminate users for this alleged sin.
That said, it is very important to understand what Comcast is not addressing with today’s announcement — Net Neutrality issues, especially those around Comcast favoring their own services over others on their network. There are several excellent articles summarizing the continuing issue, including this Net Neutrality overview piece from Eduardo Porter of the New York Times, and today’s article on what Comcast said, and did not say, by Stacey Higgenbotham of Gigaom. I highly recommend reading both.
Finally, I wanted to point out that Comcast’s new direction only highlights the questions around Usage Based Pricing that Public Knowledge has requested Comcast (and other ISPs) to respond to by May 25th. These are very important questions, as they not only touch on the reasons for traffic management and data caps, but also issues around Net Neutrality. Specifically, the question of whether Comcast is exempting its own services from the (now new) data cap, and prioritizing Comcast traffic remains.
Answering Public Knowledge’s questions by May 25th will go a long way to assuage concerns that Comcast is protecting its own services from consumer-enabling competition such as Netflix and Hulu. I encourage Comcast (and all other ISPs sent these questions) to respond in a timely manner so a productive conversation may begin.
Related posts:
Article source: http://www.ozymandias.com/comcast-modifies-data-cap-but-net-neutrality-issues-remain
Comcast Tower
Comcast plans to raise its broadband cap to 300 GB per month as it trials two new ways to deal with managing traffic on its network, the nation’s largest cable operator said in a blog post today. The move is a welcome one for those who have hit the existing 250 GB cap, but it neglects to address some of the earlier complaints that have arisen in the last few weeks about Comcast exempting some of its own video on-demand trafficand allegations that the company is prioritizing that traffic in violation of federal rules implemented when it bought NBC-Universal.
Comcast says it plans to trial two types of plans in unnamed markets. The first will offer customers a higher cap at higher tiers of service. So the Internet Essentials, Economy, and Performance Tier customers will have a 300 GB cap while those getting higher speeds (and Comcast offers some pretty high speeds at 100 MBps) will have some undetermined, higher cap. Customers under this plan will also be allowed to buy additional gigabytes for a certain amount. Comcast gave the example of $10 per 50 GB block.
The second trial will offer customers a 300 GB cap across all product lines and will offer customers a chance to buy more bytes for the same price. What’s key in both of these situations is that Comcast is allowing customers to buy more gigabytes after they hit the cap. Previously, it cut customers off. In this way it’s closer to capped plans such as those offered by ATT, which stops users at a 250 or 150 GB per month cap and then charges them $10 for 50 more gigabytes.
The second approach will increase data usage thresholds for all tiers to 300 GB per month and also offer the option to buy more gigabytes. Comcast will also suspend the enforcement of its caps across all of its markets while it tests the new caps and plans.
While Comcast’s decision to expand its caps is good, it’s also sticking to the idea that unlimited broadband is detrimental to the quality of its network. In its blog post and on a conference call discussing the new plans, Comcast repeatedly tied these caps to better network management, but Comcast already has a network management plan that it filed with the FCC after it was caught blocking P2P packets on its network. In that plan, the company noted that when its network became congested it would temporarily slow traffic to customers requiring the most bandwidth. So why does it need the cap?
Many argue that the cap is less about network management and more about protecting Comcast’s pay TV business as customers spend more time watching television via web-based subscription services including Netflix and Hulu. As I said, I’m glad Comcast has raised its cap, but conspicuously missing from the Comcast post is an admission that the cap is problematic when Comcast still offers to exempt some of its services from the cap.
When asked about this, David Cohen, Executive Vice President of Comcast, shut down the discussion, saying, “It is a real stretch to create a discrimination argument here.” He went on to say that the concern over any exempted services should be dramatically reduced because of the increased data threshold. “We’re relieving a hypothetical pressure on usage, here,” he said.
While the cap’s size has created some controversy as more and more customers hit it, the issue is less the size and more the existence of the cap if Comcast continues to offer services that will be exempt from that cap. Even at 300 GB per month, if certain types of traffic don’t count against that cap, then the cap still offers Comcast a competitive advantage over Netflix, YouTube and other over-the-top video services. Cohen repeatedly, however, mentioned a comment from the Netflix earnings call where the CEO of the streaming video provider said that a 250GB cap wasn’t affecting its business.
What Reed Hastings actually said was this:
It’s not a near-term issue with the 250 gigabyte cap. But the core principle [of network neutrality] is important anyway, which is the cap should be applied equally or not at all.
The larger cap also doesn’t address the question of whether or not Comcast is prioritizing its own traffic over other Internet traffic as was alleged earlier this week in a blog post by Bryan Berg, the CTO of MixMedia Labs. Comcast has explained why it believes it is not prioritizing its traffic in a manner that would draw government ire, but in a close reading of its post, what Comcast is describing is highly technical. Essentially it is saying that it is creating a logical as opposed to a physical separation in the traffic, and that it why it is marking packets.
So while Comcast is trumpeting its forward-thinking behavior on caps, there are a lot of questions about the timing of its announcement. Reporters on the call repeatedly asked Cohen about the rationale for increasing the cap. Cohen said its median usage is between 8-10 GB per month or about four percent of the cap and that the “vast, vast majority of users aren’t hitting the cap,” which does beg the question: why change the cap now?
Cohen’s response was, “It’s a matter of messaging way more than it’s a question of capacity.” He reiterated the idea that this is about encouraging users to use and download lawful content on their Comcast service without worrying about the cap. This implies that customers might find the cap inhibiting their behavior or that people questioning the cap are making some headway. So for now, customers get 20 percent more head room on their Comcast cap, and we’ll have to wait and see when and where Comcast rolls out its new plans.
Meanwhile I’ll leave you with Cohen’s suggested headline for this piece: “The headline today should be, we’re out of the cap business.”
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Article source: http://gigaom.com/broadband/comcast-capitulates-on-cap-but-dodges-the-net-neutrality-issue/
TechCrunch, May 16, 2012
By Ryan Lawler
Ever since Comcast unveiled its VOD service on the Xbox, it’s come under criticism from those who believe the service violates both the spirit of Net Neutrality and some of the FCC’s conditions on its big NBCUniversal deal. After weeks of staying out of the discussion, the top cable provider explained how the content was being delivered within a subscriber’s home. In short, Comcast is provisioning whatever traffic it’s using to deliver Xbox video separately from whatever traffic is being used by a customer’s Internet connection.
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Article source: http://www.freepress.net/news/2012/5/16/comcasts-non-denial-denial-traffic-prioritization-and-net-neutrality
Comcast network and operations VP, Tony Werner, has responded to Minnesota senator Al Franken’s request to investigate the company for questionable net neutrality practices. According to Werner, Comcast is not prioritizing Xfinity traffic — the company’s IP television service — which is the heart of the debate. …
Article source: http://www.origal.com/comcast-investigated-over-net-neutrality-denies-xfinity-favoritism/
