Throttle up

Yesterday I was on the bus, going home, and noticed this passionate plea from my mother for Netflix. What?!? So I get home and several of my RSS feeds are lit up with vitriolic posts against Comcast. As a recap, Comcast went to Level3 Communications, Netflix’s ISP, requesting more money or they will throttle back on Netflix’s traffic.

This rubs me wrong! 

If Netflix really is such a bandwidth hog, go to the users. They want the service, let them pay extra for the bandwidth. Comcast knows this will backfire.  So off Comcast goes to extract cash out of another ISP.

An example of this?  Illinois DoT learns that 85% of the heaviest traffic on Illinois roads is going to Milwaukee, so IDoT calls Milwaukee and demands money or IDoT will clog the roads north cutting off the traffic.  How long do you think that would last?

If Comcast has a competing service, they should ask, how can we make it better? Perhaps their interface is bad.  Personally I think it’s the limited access (You can get Netflix on a PS3, XBox360, Wii, iPhone, iPad, PC — and yes, that does include the Mac).  My idea, throttle up their services. Continue normal speeds and bandwidth but if I use Comcast’s streaming service I get the bandwidth free, and the traffic is delivered 20% faster.  Also work on getting the apps and plug-ins so they appeal to more users.  Netflix invested in this end of the market and they should not be punished for it.

But what is really getting under my skin is that I pay extra for higher speed.  This is supposed to by me the “extra bandwidth I need for downloading movies, and music, and for playing games, etc..”, or at least that’s what I was told by Comcast.  What have I been paying for? Are they giving me a refund?

Comcast is just inviting government to start regulating them heavily.  This is the kind of activity that will bring about “Net Neutrality”, with all the heavy regulation and government oversight we really do not want or need.  I’m not a fan of Net Neutrality.  It sounds good when we talk specifics, like this case, but it will put a huge chill on innovation, and private development of the networks that make up the Internet.  It is not a good idea,

As a Comcast customer, I will continue to protest any move to block services or make the use of that service more painful.  I believe Comcast will do far better by being a mench and accepting that their service is lacking … something.  I will support them in their efforts to bring their services to a wide range of platforms with word-of-mouth advertising.  I will continue to pay extra for the right to use more of the fantastic network Comcast has built.  And I will beg them, to please, please stop poking the dragon that is government regulation, before it eats us all.

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