August 2008

Susan Crawford worries about the implications of Comcast’s bandwidth cap:

Comcast sees a future in which people use the internet to send a few emails or look at a few web pages. They don’t want people watching HD content from other sources online, because that doesn’t fit their business model. So rather than increase capacity, they’d rather lower expectations. 250GB/month is about 50-60 HD movies a month, but we’re not necessarily going to be watching movies. Maybe we’ll be doing constant HD video sessions with other freelancers, or interacting with big groups all over the world in real-time. Who knows what we’ll be doing – it’s all in the future.

But rather than build towards a user-powered future, Comcast wants to shape that future — in advance — in its own image. The company is not offering additional bandwidth packages to people who want more. They just want to be able to shut service off at a particular point – a point of bandwidth use that most people aren’t using right now, so that they won’t be unhappy. By the time we all want to be doing everything online, Comcast users (the company hopes) won’t expect anything better.

There are several observations to make here. In the first place, there isn’t an either-or choice between building more capacity and limiting current users. Comcast is doing both. They’re upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0 at the same time they’re experimenting with new usage limits. Obviously, the ideal situation is when capacity upgrades are sufficient to accommodate increased demand. But if it’s not, network owners have to do something about it. A high and transparent bandwidth cap isn’t a terrible approach.

Second, this cap really is quite high. 250 GB/month is roughly 1 Mbps for every waking hour, or 10 Mbps (which is faster than my current broadband connection) for about 2 hours a day. Her estimate of 50-60 HD movies a month sounds high to me, but certainly there’s enough bandwidth there to download more HD movies than the average family watches in a month.

Third, there’s absolutely no reason to think that this cap is permanent, or that they won’t give consumers reasonable options to get more bandwidth. Comcast is in business to make money. There’s lots of valuable content on the Internet. Therefore, it’s in Comcast’s interest to sell consumers the bandwidth they need to access the Internet content they want. Now, Comcast might charge more for a really high-speed, high-cap Internet access plan. That’s their right, and I’m at a loss to see why it would be a problem. Infrastructure upgrades cost money. It’s only fair to charge the most to the people who use the infrastructure the most. Provided that users do have the option to access the content they want, I fail to see what the problem is.

Finally, Crawford is upset that usage of Comcast’s digital voice service isn’t counted against the cap. But VoIP uses so little bandwidth that as a practical matter, this will matter very little. More to the point, if Crawford is worried about Comcast dedicating bandwidth to its own proprietary services, I’ve got a much bigger target for her to worry about: cable television. Comcast’s cable service has been sucking up bandwidth that could have otherwise gone to Internet connectivity for decades. Does Crawford think it’s unethical for Comcast to offer traditional cable television service? If not, then how is offering dedicated bandwidth to Comcast’s VoIP offering any different?

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The Federal Communications Commission picks winners and losers, which is why we ought to get rid of it. During the chairmanship of Reed E. Hundt, the losers were incumbent phone companies, whom Hundt considered too Republican. Now it is a cable company, who some consider too Democratic.

The FCC issued an order last week concluding that Comcast acted discriminatorily and arbitrarily to squelch the dynamic benefits of an open and accessible Internet, and that its failure to disclose it’s practices to its customers has compounded the harm. Wow. The FCC will require Comcast to end its network management practices and submit a compliance plan, which is code for submitting to bureaucratic micromanagement.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin recently asked, “Would you be OK with the post office opening your mail, deciding they didn’t want to bother delivering it, and hiding that fact by sending it back to you stamped ‘address unknown – return to sender’?”

Martin, who the Wall Street Journal identifies as one of the Bush administration’s more questionable personnel picks, lately has become a bit excitable.

Martin is upset with Comcast because it rejects his hypothesis that allowing consumers to pay only for the cable channels they prefer would reduce cable rates.

Martin sided with the commission’s two Democrats to slam Comcast for managing its broadband network like a traffic cop who works hard to prevent gridlock.

Continue reading →

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Bruce Schneier has a very good op-ed on the Transportation Security Administration’s airport security programs in the Los Angeles Times today. The winner line: “That’s the TSA: Not doing the right things. Not even doing right the things it does.”

In fairness, security is hard. By their nature, federal agencies aren’t smart and nimble. I argued that the TSA should be scrapped in a March, 2005 Reason magazine debate.

Along similar lines, I found this amusing:

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