[ NNSquad ] Re: Comcast's FCC Filing Today

[Ted Koppel <tkoppel@comcast.net>]

Jason,

I'm a residential high speed customer with Comcast, as well as a 
long-term NNSquad reader.  Earlier this week I received the official 
e-mail from Comcast notifying me of the 250gb limits and assuring me 
that only a small percentage of customers would be affected.  Wonderful.

As a customer, a reasonably heavy user of bandwidth for VOIP and file 
transfer (for work, not P2P or entertainment) and a reasonably savvy 
person on these issues, I see two big omissions in the announcement and 
the policy.  I would appreciate it if you could address them publicly.

1) How will Comcast make it possible for me to know what my usage is on 
an ongoing basis during the month, so that (if necesssary) I can adjust 
my usage to remain under the limit each month.  Telling me afterwards 
(on my bill) is too late.   How will Comcast provide me 
close-to-real-time usage numbers?  (If Comcast can't or won't, then we 
have a classic fox-watching-the-henhouse situation.   How do I know 
whether to believe the bill?)

2) If I do exceed the 250gb limit, what are the consequences?  Is my 
connection disabled?  Is my hand slapped?   When?  How fast is the 
feedback when the limit is reached.

I don't quarrel with the need for limits, but as a customer and a 
reasonaly fair person, I think they should be implemented with 
transparency and honesty so that users can get a clear picture of use 
and santions.

Ted Koppel
tkoppel@comcast.net

Livingood, Jason wrote:
> A short time ago, we filed our response electronically with the FCC. 
> Those documents will be made available to the public shortly (I'm 
> guessing within 2 hours) on our Network Management website at
>
> _http://www.comcast.net/networkmanagement/_. News outlets are starting 
> to report on the story now, including ArsTechnica here at 
> _http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080919-comcast-loses-p2p-religion-goes-agnostic-on-throttling.html_. 
>
>
> I hope you will agree that we've shared a great deal of information 
> with the FCC in an effort to be fully transparent anasisd share lots 
> of technical details. As an engineering leader who has been playing a 
> key role in the trials of our new congestion management technique, and 
> the transition to our new technique, I'm happy to answer technical 
> questions the best I can. :-)  ((As a regular reader and occasional 
> poster to the NNSquad list, I'll be watching the list over the weekend 
> and into next week if anyone has technical questions that I can try to 
> answer.))
>
> Regards,
>
> Jason Livingood
> Comcast
> National Engineering & Technical Operations
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