[ NNSquad ] Re: NYT: Differing views on Time Warner's Bandwidth Cap Experiment

[Dave Kristol <dmk-nnsquad@kristol.org>]

Rahul Tongia wrote:
> [...]
> So, if only a few percent of people are using up "too much" bandwidth 
> perhaps a solution would involve congestion pricing and/or graceful 
> degradation only for those who go above reasonable fair use caps.  Is 
> there too much complexity in this? If I want to download something huge, 
> there should be ways for the system/network to signal "off-peak" 
> pricing. I think we need some new protocols/tweaks/out-of-channel 
> signalling for that.  Given these are all happening on the last mile, it 
> shouldn't be hard to program that in (in a layered, scalable, manner).

Broadband ISPs that also offer TV service have an obvious conflict of 
interest.  If you can download video from the Internet that's comparable 
to what the ISP's standard TV service (e.g., cable TV, FiOS) offers, the 
ISP would have an incentive to make the video-over-Internet not work 
well, to induce you to use their TV service.  They have much more 
control over the TV part, including monitoring (if there's a two-way 
set-top box) and ad insertion.

Dave Kristol