Comcast – The Evil Empire?

The internet is as vital to mainstream America as the phone and television, but increasing bandwidth demanded by online applications and services has prompted a heated debate over the issue of net-neutrality.  Are all internet users created equal?  Should all internet users be equal?  Should companies be able to control the content customers view, when they see it, and how often they’re able to?  These are the issues currently being dealt with that will shape the future of The Web.

Media giant Comcast has been at the forefront of the issue, experiencing massive backlash from the tech-community for the Company’s deceptive conduct.  It started in late February 2007 when former Intel engineer Robb Topolski created an application to prove Comcast was blocking file-sharing software (read more about it in “The Dark Lord of Broadband” in this month’s Wired Magazine).  Comcast, a company largely viewed by its customers as arrogant, unresponsive and overpriced, had made a massive mistake by secretly controlling broadband usage.  Because of the Internet’s reach and viral nature the issue spread rapidly, becoming a nightmare for the Company - and rightly so.  However, in this specific case the issue may have been blown a bit out of proportion.  Though exercising secret policies for capping bandwidth and blocking file-sharing applications is certainly not right, it is rational to establish different levels of service provided customers are given a choice.  This has been in effect with transfer speeds across different ISP’s for a number of years – you pay more for faster service.  It is only recently due to an increasingly clogged infrastructure that data transfer has become an issue.

Though it is both stupid and immoral for Comcast to deceive consumers, I cannot help but understand the reasoning for implementing bandwidth caps.  There are about 100 homes sharing each cable connection.  If one of those homes is using far more bandwidth than the rest, they should pay more to do so.  Don’t agree?  Consider the facts: Comcast is imposing a  250GB/month bandwidth cap – far above global standards (AT&T for instance is experimenting within a range of 5 – 150GB/month).  To exceed the 250GB/month limit, you would have to view over 1,750 hours of YouTube videos – that would require three computers hooked up to the same connection to stream non-stop for a month.

While controling the content that people access on the web should not be regulated, I beleive tiered services across different levels of interenet data transfer, similar to cellular service, is fair and will be the model of the future.  However, preserving net-neutrality and demanding provider transparency is paramount.