The new Comcast Xbox Xfinity app is the first nail in net neutrality’s coffin

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/124041-the-new-comcast-xbox-xfinity-app-is-the-first-nail-in-net-neutralitys-coffin

by SkippyZA • 14 years ago

192 91 14 years ago

joaorj• 14 years ago

That's ok. Those kind of things only happen there in the US. In Europe we have and will have internet like it is supposed to be. No bandwidth limits at all!

schraeds• 14 years ago

You realize most of Europe is America's pawn right? Only a few countries resist the temptations and pressures of their US/Global overlords. Anyways, Good luck with that additude. What happens in America echoes across the globe. Laugh while we fight our fight, who do you think is next??

giulianob2• 14 years ago

Bandwidth limits are fine. The problem is when they calculate bandwidth prices based on what you are using it for. It would be like the phone company saying "Want to talk to your family members? Well that costs 10c per minute but talking to your friends is only 5c per minute."

What the consumer pays for the bandwidth should be based on the actual cost the ISP incurs for that bandwidth and not on the value the customer is getting. That's none of the ISPs business.

JumpCrisscross5• 14 years ago

>It would be like the phone company saying 'Want to talk to your family members? Well that costs 10c per minute but talking to your friends is only 5c per minute.'

You mean like wireless carriers making in-network calls free? Or Skype making in-network calls free?

>What the consumer pays for the bandwidth should be based on the actual cost the ISP incurs for that bandwidth and not on the value the customer is getting

This is based on the costs the carrier incurs - it costs more to transport traffic through a NAP and across another carrier's network than it does through one's own [1].

Preferring cost-based-pricing, i.e. fixed margin, versus value-based-pricing says carriers are a utility. The wording used implies cost-plus pricing (which has it's own boat of troubles - witness NASA contractor costs versus SpaceX [2]) is inherently superior to market pricing.

[1] http://blog.teracomtraining.com/how-isps-connect-to-the-inte...

[2] http://www.parabolicarc.com/2011/05/31/nasa-analysis-falcon-...

Adirael• 14 years ago

It's more like the phone company saying "calls to landlines are free, calls to X ISP cost 10c, to Y ISP they cost 30c."

guelo2• 14 years ago

Our government's failure to enact network neutrality is the latest sign that it is completely driven by corporate interests and will work against society's overall interest when there is a conflict. The only way to get any true democracy anymore is by creating mass panic as with SOPA, but it isn't possible to achieve that with every issue, and corporations are tirelessly relentless. I believe that without a functioning government this superpower is in a period of decline which will be characterized by increased authoritarianism and chaos as we go from crisis to crisis.

spindritf4• 14 years ago

Enacting network neutrality rules now sounds a lot like premature optimization. Is anyone really putting up any barriers? There's some haggling over prices, some inefficient routes due to ISP tendency to keep traffic within their network, sure, but that doesn't sound like a convincing argument for government intervention with its own (serious) inefficiencies and heavy handedness.

JumpCrisscross5• 14 years ago

Game of Thrones on Xbox not counting towards data cap -> government failure -> chaos, crisis, and collapse of the present world order

guelo2• 14 years ago

That's funny, but I'm not basing my comment on only this one event.

spoiledtechie• 14 years ago

If your really interested in doing something about it, I would suggest taking a look at http://rootstrikers.org/

And without a second lost, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc

That video has changed my point of view on the entire subject and has allowed me to start striking at the root.

driverdan• 14 years ago

Net neutrality isn't the issue, it's a symptom. The problem is government mandated monopolies. Eliminate monopolies, let the free market work, and net neutrality will no longer be an issue.

conradev• 14 years ago

FiOS already does this, in a way.

I recently switched to Verizon FiOS for TV, which necessitated the installation of a FiOS branded Actiontec router, so that the cable boxes can access the Internet over MoCA. The router has QoS rules to prioritize VOD traffic over all other traffic (which is why I purchased an Ethernet to MoCA bridge, so I can use my own router).

jsz02• 14 years ago

AT&T U-Verse also works in a similar way. One pipe carries data and video services. The circuit is provisioned to accommodate video services. AT&T could technically offer faster packages to customers who did not use U-Verse video service. It's very difficult to micro-manage how providers want to utilize their network bandwidth especially when we're looking at services that do not transverse the public Internet.

smhinsey• 14 years ago

There is actually a similar FiOS xbox app as well. I am not familiar enough to say if it gets preferential treatment on the network, but you can stream a subset of live TV channels and use it as an alternative to the cable box, although I don't think it has had enough polish to inspire a full time switch.

omellet• 14 years ago

There are already quite a few nails in that coffin, unfortunately.

spindritf4• 14 years ago

Maybe it's different here in Poland, where ISPs really have next to nothing to offer except for Internet access and maybe some VoIP services, but the whole discussion around net neutrality sounds panicky to me. Using your ISP's services is obviously technically easier and cheaper for them so why wouldn't/shouldn't it be reflected in prices?

Maybe we'll reach a point when consumer connections start to be billed like business ones are now (95th percentile, or whatever) but I don't think there's anything wrong with pricing that better reflects real usage. It may turn out to be a little more expensive for some of us, here on HN in particular, but if we want a better Internet infrastructure, we'll have to pay for it because AFAIR ISPs' ROIs aren't particularly impressive.

victork2• 14 years ago

In the long run not preserving net neutrality will give a competitive advantages to the big companies. Let's imagine that Microsoft does a lot of lobbying with Comcast and they manage to make Bing Videos not count as part of your network cap whereas Youtube will be limited. Who do you think users that want to preserve their caps will turn to? Now imagine that the same scenario with Google vs a small company that does search with a totally revolutionary technology. Same thing, Google lobbies a lot and they come to an agreement and they add 1000 ms to every request that is not made to Google Search. Again, who do you think will win?

Net neutrality is the safeguard of many things but for entrepreneurs it guarantees they get the same treatment as big companies. In other words what matters most is the quality of your product and not the ties you have with ISP.

It works and guarantee pretty much the same thing as the antitrust laws. Fair competition is a huge source of wealth but requires constant care.

My leitmotif is always: Think about the [negative] externalities!

spindritf4• 14 years ago

> Let's imagine that Microsoft does a lot of lobbying with Comcast and they manage to make Bing Videos not count as part of your network cap whereas Youtube will be limited.

OK, let's imagine MS actually puts their servers in Comast's closets or arranges for some sort of direct connection(s) and it becomes cheaper for Comcast to serve Microsoft's content, now hosted on Comcast's own network or topographically close by. Should Comcast not be allowed to pass (some of) those savings to their customers just because a smaller company couldn't afford to keep their servers with multiple providers?

ajross3• 14 years ago

I don't think the idea that a "private" service within the ISP is less expensive is that obvious at all, really. Backbone bandwidth is overbuilt and comparatively cheap. Datacenter space and service management are new costs vs. just letting MS run it on their network.

crusso3• 14 years ago

The problem is that broadband access is a veritable monopoly in most areas in the US. If this were an open market where lots of different providers could compete on price, then I'd agree with you.

Since you're usually locked into one or at best two broadband providers in a given area, it's too easy for them to manipulate the system.

Comcast already has a pretty solid history of abusing its monopoly over cable TV. The frustration I've had just using my "digital ready" TV with Comcast when they insist on renting you cable boxes that you shouldn't need has pretty much eaten through any free market sympathy that I might otherwise have had for them.

roc• 14 years ago

> "Using your ISP's services is obviously technically easier and cheaper for them so why wouldn't/shouldn't it be reflected in prices?"

That's not what Net Neutrality is about.

Truly it's cheaper for, say, Comcast to send VOD data across its own network than it is for Netflix to pay for its own ISP service and the various peering agreements it needs to get its data into Comcast's network. So those differences in costs can be reflected in their respective prices and that's fine. [1]

Net Neutrality concerns come into play if/when Comcast is allowed to set additional arbitrary restrictions on competing services, to make its own offerings more effective. Either by deprioritizing Netflix traffic in favor of its own, interfering with packets connected to services or protocols it would rather Comcast customers not use, outright blocking competing services, charging Netflix an additional fee above and beyond what a non-competing service would pay for a similar amount of packets, or any number of other nefarious schemes that the operator of a network could concoct to degrade the experience of competing services or drive up their prices.

Net Neutrality isn't about taking away an ISP's home court advantage. It's about making sure they can't actively sabotage their competitors.

[1] Trick is: the difference in marginal cost is negligible compared to content costs. So there's no real room for Comcast to 'win' against Netflix on price-advantage alone. Further, Comcast's motivation to violate Net Neutrality isn't to advantage its own IP VOD service against Netflix, but to keep the price of all IP VOD services high, to avoid IP VOD from cannibalizing the profits they earn from broadcast VOD. (Which are priced high because US cable operators often enjoy a local monopoly.)

roboneal• 14 years ago

Comcast claims that the app turns the XBox into essentially a set top box and that all data is streamed over Comcast's "private" network capacity and do not use any of the traditional public facing internet infrastructure.

Standard usage of "On Demand" programming from a DVR or other set top box do not count against the existing data cap quotas.

If this app essentially allows an XBox to plug into this private network capacity like any other set top box, I think this is an important distinction.

ajross3• 14 years ago

It pains me deeply to agree, but this is pretty much right. Comcast is, after all, a company founded on building a private (analog) network over which it delivers paid content to its subscribers. No one cared about "net neutrality" when they were trenching the cable in the 1980's.

The fact that this private content is being delivered over an IP network shared with its "public" internet service changes things a little, but not enough I suspect.

Which brings up the question: what does net neutrality mean for the last-mile ISP? It seems not a lot. It ensures equal treatment of sites on the public internet, but if a Microsoft or whoever wants to pay for "premium" service over a private network, they'll always be able to.

Drbble4• 14 years ago

Are you aware that Comcast's network was built as a joint venture with local governments with special easements to access underground public and private property, and is therefore a regulated monopoly, not a private enterprise?

I didn't give Comcast the right to dig under my house for nothing.

nextstep• 14 years ago

I think you are right, and when they frame this new service as "turning your existing Xbox into a set top box", it sounds benign and rational. But I'm afraid of the dangerous precedent that this sets.

TV-style subscription-based services work with users as consumers: the pipes go one-way, because each subscriber is just a dumb set of eyes with a wallet. But with the internet, and new disruptive content models, everyone is also a creator. The real danger of losing net-neutrality is that individuals will become unable create new media for the internet.

mikeryan2• 14 years ago

Its true (full disclosure I used to work for Comcast - via an acquisition)

One of Comcast's biggest (and most hated) capex expenditures are the cable boxes. They hate with an unholy passion having to upgrade boxes. In this context they're basically trying to get the users to upgrade their boxes on their own dime. When I put on my consultant hat and talk to analysts in this area we've been talking more and more about how connected tv's and OTT Boxes can be beneficial to cable operators. One of the downsides of cable cards is that you never got a guide with it. Combine a cable card and a Samsung Connected TV and you can really do both and get rid of the card all together.

Second they're quickly realizing that maintaining two on-demand infrastructures (Web and traditional VOD) the really sensible thing is to move as much as possible to delivering via your cable modem as opposed to the broadcast channels.

Of course as they do so they're going to have to do something about the bandwidth caps. Stories like this put Comcast in a strange position. They want to deliver more "TV" video content over their internet pipes but apparently can't do so and maintain a cap at the same time.

twoodfin• 14 years ago

That's another reason why the cable companies will be thrilled to help Apple sell televisions next year. Those sets will probably look a lot like your box-less solution on the inside, with the added benefit of a "real" computer and OS developed by a company that has some experience with such things.

The main reason, of course, is that their biggest threat will be taken away: An ever-growing segment of their customer base cancelling $100+ TV service in favor of $50 IP-only service, with the other $50 being spent on NetFlix, iTunes, Hulu.... Required "Apple TV" plans will include whatever mix of traditional signal and IP is needed to deliver a "magical experience" and will be priced accordingly.

doki_pen2• 14 years ago

I find that funny because I looked into replacing my Comcast HD box with my own box and found out that it is nearly impossible. It seems like they want to maintain control over what happens with the content, and to do that, they have to pony up on the cable box. Recently I tried to fast forward through commercials an On Demand TV show and wasn't allowed to! Of course, no 3rd party box would have such a "feature".

brown9-22• 14 years ago

Does streaming content from the Xfinity site on your laptop/iPad cost against your data quota? The article implies it does, even if you are connected to the Internet via Comcast.

jakejake2• 14 years ago

Yes it does

drzaiusapelord2• 14 years ago

Yeah, it sounds like they have a deal with MS to put local caches at Comcast data centers and just have those CDNs mirror content instead of every client stream the content on demand.

So this goes over Comcast's super fast DOCSIS network and never over any internet gateways.

Not sure if this is the NN violation others are assuming it is. It seems like a simple "can we put our junk on your LAN to save bandwidth" deal.

parrots• 14 years ago

I think the nail in net neutrality's coffin will be when they start charging (or discounting) other parties' services. That isn't the case here.

The way I see it you get all their content through a cable box today without paying data usage fees for the bandwidth TV uses on their network (that's the point of the TV subscription fee). Now they're allowing that content on another "set-top box", in this case the XBox. The implementation details (the fact it uses internet streaming vs cable tuner card) shouldn't matter to the end-user. You pay the TV subscription fee, you get it without additional fees.

If the situation were reversed and they were charging data fees for accessing content you already pay for, we'd be up in arms about that, too...

Klinky• 14 years ago

The XBox is not another set-top box though. It does not use the same network as their other boxes, it uses the customer's internet connection. The internet connection is capped at 250GB. If they are going to cap other services using the customers internet connection, they need to cap their own as well. Anything else is hypocritical & anti-competitive.

symbiotic• 14 years ago

I might be wrong but hasn't the Kindle been offering a free internet access to browse its store and even some online content for a while now?

TylerE• 14 years ago

It's "free" in the sense that it's not a subscription. Not free in the sense that Amazon pays the provider (AT&T in the US) to provide the access, the costs for which are rolled into the business model -> Amazon's fees from the publisher -> Content prices.

So you end up paying for it in the end, since say, $0.05 of every dollar (totally made up figure) ends up going to AT&T.

So, to coin a somewhat wordy phrase, it's free-as-in-jet-fuel-when-you-buy-a-plane-ticket.

JumpCrisscross5• 14 years ago

This mangles two issues - discriminating based on source versus path.

Source discrimination is bad. The Internet allows applications and services to run “at the edge” of the network and not centrally; this encourages innovation [1].

Path discrimination is more complicated. Many content providers already pay private networks to transport their traffic on faster than the public internet [2]. There is even a market for traders paying tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for low latency connections [3].

Given that ISPs charge each other for transporting traffic [4] it costs more to broker traffic across others' networks versus its own. It doesn't seem unfair for the ISP to charge less for the latter. This would allow Comcast et al to compete with the Akamais and Level3s that irk them today [5]. Sooner or later they will find it makes more sense to offer the discount for same-network traffic to everyone.

Comcast has made shitty statements about net neutrality before [1]. But it's not okay to vilify anything Comcast says by virtue of it being said by Comcast - that's straight up ad hominem.

[1] http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/Economides_Net_Neutrality....

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/level-3-lands-netflix-strea...

[3] http://www.highfrequencytraders.com/article/682/options-it-o...

[4] http://blog.teracomtraining.com/how-isps-connect-to-the-inte...

[5] http://blog.comcast.com/2010/11/comcast-comments-on-level-3....

megaman8212• 14 years ago

Level 3 was offering to transport the data all the way to Comcast's "internal" network and willing to pay for the equipment required for the high-speed interconnect. How can Comcast complain about not having enough bandwidth for delivery in their last mile (or least need compensation to build out more bandwidth), but then turn around and offer a very similar service and not even have it count against their bandwidth caps? Is there a bandwidth issue in their internal network or not?

I doubt Comcast put in data caps because of interconnect costs. I would love to see what a gig of interconnect data costs them.

JumpCrisscross5• 14 years ago

A September 2008 price sheet for Level 3 priced 10 Gbps at $6/Mbps [1]. The same group projects 2012 transit prices at the minimum commitment around $2.34/Mbps and decreasing at about 60% a year [2]. Another source pegs this at 30% a year for the single price blended rate [3].

In the US we pay about $3/Mbps [4], suggesting a healthy minimum 1/5 profit margin. This happens to be around CMCSA's 1/5 operating margin (suggesting the transit price is lower) [5].

I couldn't find data for internal transit prices, but assuming everyone runs with about a 1/5 margin on transit costs as well (likely too dear) we can take $1.9/Mbps as being a decent relative estimate of internal costs. This is a $0.45/Mbps or 15 percentage point to revenue difference.

[1] http://drpeering.net/AskDrPeering/blog/articles/Peering_vs_T...

[2] http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Internet-Transit-Pricing-H...

[3] http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2011/papers/sigcomm/p...

[4] http://dailyinfographic.com/internet-speeds-around-the-world...

[5] http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ACMCSA

AutoCorrect• 14 years ago

it's total bullshit on Comcast' part. If you remember, the argument was that the top 5% were causing issues for the remaining 95%, and the issues were stated, at the time, to be with the 'last mile' pipe. Just another example of a monopoly being a monopoly.

lucianof• 14 years ago

I agree. The article lost me at this bit: 'The company claims that “content is being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet,” but that’s a meaningless distinction given that Comcast owns the entire pipe and can arbitrarily create private networks any time it’s convenient to do so.'

What does the author mean? Comcast certainly doesn't own the entire Internet, so why is it a meaningless distinction?

tedunangst• 14 years ago

Making that distinction would mean Comcast is justified in pricing it differently, but since we already know Comcast is not justified, the distinction must be meaningless.

Drbble4• 14 years ago

The public Internet is a bunch of connected private networks with peering agreements. So comcast can flip the public bit by turning off peering whenever they want.

onemoreact3• 14 years ago

Local Monopolies have little incentive to improve their infrastructure. When you enable them to charge premiums for degrading existing service to carve out 'bandwidth' for premium service everyone looses so they can make a higher profit from the same crappy service.

Bandwidth is cheap. The bandwidth to give everyone in a mid sized city 100mb internet access costs around 20$/person a month + the cost of the wires. So, if Comcast provides 5mb internet for X$ they can make money providing 100mb for X + 20$. Yet, they want to both charge 3+ times that AND make money on side deals AND keep their local monopoly.

Now, latency is a slightly different issue. I would suggest that it's reasonable to either run an extra line OR host some servers locally to deal with that. But, assuming you have a sane network topology there are vary few cases where latency is actually important. Yet, if Comcast sees an opportunity to profit from the latency game they will do so. They already provide crappy DNS service to slow people down just think what they will do if they think latency is the path to extra profit.

PS: You could replace Comcast with Cox and probably just about any other local cable company and say the same things. But, I just happen to know more about Comcast and they are in the article so I stick with them.

eli• 14 years ago

Where are you getting the $20 number from?

I do not want to be in the position of defending Comcast (who I hate with fiery passion), but that sounds a bit like arguing that the cost of manufacturing an Adobe Photoshop disc is relevant to how much it can or should cost.

ComputerGuru• 14 years ago

Now, latency is a slightly different issue. I would suggest that it's reasonable to either run an extra line OR host some servers locally to deal with that.

How does running an extra line lower your latency? I think you're confusing bandwidth and latency here. Latency would involve replacing your line with better infrastructure (small impact) or changing the route your packets would tend to take to one with fewer hops and shorter distances (big impact).

j_baker• 14 years ago

So if Netflix can already buy bandwidth on Comcast's public network, why can't I stream Netflix without it counting towards my bandwidth cap? Same with hulu or any other video service. If Comcast were offering this service to anyone, I could see your argument being valid. But until that point in time, I'm going to say that this is anti-competitive.

bentlegen• 14 years ago

I agree, but what happens when Comcast then buys out all the content providers?

ricardobeat2• 14 years ago

So, what you're saying is that any ISP could cache whatever they wanted from the web (major sites), offer it unlimited on their own network and then cap/limit/charge more for the rest of the web. What could go wrong with that?

crusso3• 14 years ago

>There is even a market for traders paying tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for l

That's not for consumer broadband access. It's not even for commercial broadband access. It's a specific use, point-to-point network connection. It's important to separate general broadband access from special-purpose network connections for net neutrality purposes.

Paying a company to bring fiber into your area and then leveraging their service over that fiber is very different from consumers dealing with (typically) municipal contractually-enforced monopolies that restrict their access to the internet. I'm a capitalist kind of a guy, but monopolies destroy the dynamics of the free market and have to be kept firmly in check.

>Given that ISPs charge each other for transporting traffic [4] it costs more to broker traffi[...]

I don't think anyone is arguing that there isn't a cost motive for providing tiered pricing. Of course there is.

The issue is that monopolies must either be broken up or they must provide special protections for both consumers and the health of the free market in general. Net neutrality is that protection and it trumps Comcast's cost-based-pricing motives.

Atomus• 14 years ago

A good book to read is Tim Wu's "The Master Switch", which predicts this as something called The Cycle. Reading the book gives you a sense how history repeats itself with new and open technology and how these open systems eventually get molded into closed systems that only a few companies control. It's been done with telephones, the radio and television. It seems the internet is in the early stages of this transistion.

What Comcast is doing is testing the waters. I personally find it just the beginning, as if this is allowed, other companies will follow suit.

pasbesoin2• 14 years ago

Here are a couple of questions to consider:

Does Comcast allow a user to purchase additional bandwidth beyond their 250 GB cap?

If so, how much does that cost?

It's not just a cap, it's a hard limit. If you want more, you are forced to go with the ISP's own "blessed" option.

This is a significant portion of what bothers me with these caps. They are not graduated in a reasonable fashion. Instead, they are a cliff -- either entirely, or through absurdly high "addtional bandwidth" costs, limiting the service that the user can receive.

THEN, the ISP comes along and offers the user a sole way around/past this limit: Purchase whatever subset(s) of the additional service exclusively via the ISP's "value-added" content. (You can only have more bits if you buy your movies (well, movie viewings) from us.)

THAT, my friends, is a monopoly. Especially when you only have one or two ISP options, and they're all doing it. (Again, to you overseas, this is the case for much of the U.S.)

zschallz• 14 years ago

As of right now, the 250GB cap is a soft cap. Going over only risks that after the second warning Comcast will cancel your service and ban you for a year. There are no "blessed" options unless you are a business subscriber.

pasbesoin2• 14 years ago

Purchasing your movie/video viewing from Comcast is the "blessed" option.

And a "soft cap" is a hard cap, if you regularly want/need more than the cap.

P.S. I agree that I may have "waffled" a bit with respect to the option to switch to business class service. However, I understand that business class service is not available in all areas, can itself be a significant price bump (i.e. not an incrementally reasonable amount for incrementally more bandwidth), and requires different equipment and an on-site installation visit -- also at significant cost. (I don't have it, though, so correct me if I'm wrong.)

P.P.S. On the other hand, I have considered their business class product to be an option if and when I need it. At least some sort of higher capacity option. Let's hope they don't take it away, e.g. from residential locations.

pdubs2• 14 years ago

What I love is their statements that "only 1%" of users are affected by the cap. If "only 1%" of your end-users have the ability to disrupt your network, there's something seriously wrong with your network.

That, and the 250GB cap hasn't changed since 2008. In the meantime I can now fit 250GB into less than 1 cubic cm for around $150.

Drbble4• 14 years ago

That's not fair. As a group, 1% of Internet users can DDOS anyone.

unreal373• 14 years ago

I don't understand the outrage here. Comcast is offering something for free to its customers that other ISP's customers have to pay for. It's good to be a Comcast customer I guess.

A lot of the arguments in the article and even some in this comment thread are "imagine if"... Either something is wrong on its face or its not. You shouldn't have to come up with theoretical examples of Comcast charging for unlimited access to Youtube and Netflix in order to make your point.

My cell phone service by the way (Bell Mobility) offers free unlimited access to Twitter, Facebook and Myspace that don't count against my mobile data plan cap. If you consider that against net neutrality, then net neutrality died a long time ago.

gioele3• 14 years ago

> My cell phone service by the way (Bell Mobility) offers free unlimited access to Twitter, Facebook and Myspace that don't count against my mobile data plan cap. If you consider that against net neutrality, then net neutrality died a long time ago.

How isn't this against Net neutrality? Suppose you run a service that competes against Twitter. With Net neutrality you must prove to the users that your service is better thatn Twitter. Without Net neutrality you must prove to your users that your service is so much better than Twitter that it is worth to pay additional money to the phone company to use it. Or you can pay the phone company to add your service to the number of non-data-cap-eating websites.

In the end the phone company is paid twice: a first time by the users and another time by the websites.

unreal373• 14 years ago

I'm assuming Facebook, Twitter and Myspace are not paying Bell Mobility anything for this. Essentially, Bell is offering it to customers as a carrot to sign up with them. "We don't charge you for social networking, which we know you will use every day!" sounds catchy to a lot of people.

IanDrake2• 14 years ago

Net Neutrality legislation scares me. Any legislation of the internet to "protect" you from corporations will most likely include new and invasive powers of government to monitor and control the Internet (like SOPA). No thanks.

Let's see if I understand this article though: I can pay $$$$ dollars a month for 250GB of dumb data transfer a month. If I go over that quota, I have to pay $$$ more or I get shut off or slowed down.

But now Comcast allows me to pay $ to get an unlimited access to certain sites like NetFlix that would otherwise eat up most my "dumb" quota (if I watched movies all day).

That sounds good to me, I'd rather pay $$$$+$ than $$$$+$$$ for the 400GB of NetFlix traffic and 100GB of other traffic I use per month.

In a way, this is the market's solution to the piracy problem. Licensed media sources are offered at a discount while torrent traffic is still allowed, but under general traffic prices. Say what you will but, if the market doesn't create a solution, the government will and I guarantee you won't like their solution.

icebraining• 14 years ago

That sounds good to me, I'd rather pay $$$$+$ than $$$$+$$$ for the 400GB of NetFlix traffic and 100GB of other traffic I use per month.

Sorry, but that's a shortsighted view. You're now glad that you only pay +$, but a year from now you could be paying +$/4 if only the competition hadn't been crushed by these deals.

IanDrake2• 14 years ago

>competition hadn't been crushed by these deals.

I assume you mean NetFlix's competition.

I can see your point there. In a perfect world, as a consumer I would have a choice of ISPs. I wonder if this will become an antitrust issue:

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/06/business/how-coke-pushed-r...

gioele3• 14 years ago

I do not like this trend, but my fears is that Wikipedia is being used in a similar way. You can argue against free XBox traffic, but can you argue against free Wikipedia traffic?

Past HN topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3505922

recoiledsnake• 14 years ago

>Comcast’s FAQ strongly implies that Microsoft is compensating it in some fashion for the new service; the document states several times that the Xfinity app is only available to those with an Xbox Live Gold subscription

>For companies like Comcast, which has railed against the concept of being a dumb pipe, Microsoft’s decision to pay it for free access for Xbox Gold users is a major coup.

Why does the article take as a given that Microsoft is paying Comcast? What if the arrangement is that MS gets more value added to XBox Live Gold subscriptions and Comcast gets more value added to it's TV service? Now this may not be the case, but doesn't seem any less likely than the article's assertions given what we know.

codgercoder• 14 years ago

This was an inevitable outcome of deregulating monopolies, refusing to recognize antitrust violations, and it's not the last shoe to drop.

doki_pen2• 14 years ago

This announcement is contrary to a statement made in July of 2011. Do they suddenly not give a shit about other customers service if it's xbox live traffic?

"If someone's behavior is such that it degrades the quality of service for others nearby -- that's what this threshold is meant to address," said company spokesman Charlie Douglas. "It can negatively affect other people."

http://hothardware.com/News/Comcast-Cuts-Customer-Off/

ricardobeat2• 14 years ago

You can see the danger of this right here in the comments. Everyone is fine with it depending on the way it's presented.

Imagine that suddenly your smaller, lesser-known favorite sites are all bandwidth limited. There are just a couple hundred sanctioned ones that you get "for free". Small endeavours like Reddit or HN don't have a chance to grow fast anymore. That's the future if you are ok with this.

jsz02• 14 years ago

About 90-95% of the bandwidth available 'on the wire' is already being used to deliver Comcast's video service. So if this is the first nail it's been there for an awful long time. The way traditional VOD is delivered (QAMS full of MPEG2 programs) is actually very inefficient. There may be 4-8 QAMS just sitting there inactive if your neighbors aren't watching VOD. The switch to IP delivery eventually will allow Comcast and other MSOs to use their bandwidth more efficiently.

From the customer's perspective nothing really changes. Technically your modem will probably be provisioned differently to support the extra services. So for example if you buy a 50Mbit/sec Internet package and a video package from Comcast your modem would actually be provisioned with multiple service flows -- a 50Mbit/sec for Internet traffic and another 50Mbit/sec reserved for Comcast services. That second 50Mbit/sec service flow allows you to have the same video service functionality as the 2-3Gbit/sec of broadcast video they presently waste 90-95% of their spectrum on. This will be reclaimed for the big general-purpose IP data pipe. Comcast will continue to use some percentage of that pipe for their own services but it will be a much smaller percentage than they use today.

So really everyone wins in the end. IP set tops are cheaper than traditional cable set tops. Consumers get to use Comcast services integrated into devices they already own. Comcast's competitors get a bigger dumb-pipe into people's homes to ride on. I admit it looks bad if you don't understand the technology but it's important to remember the bandwidth crunch that Comcast and other MSOs have is directly related to how they presently deliver their own services. Any effort they make to solve that problem is good for consumers in the end.

Pwnsauce• 14 years ago

Just another point of the Xfinity app's disregard to Net Neutrality is the sensing of "viewership". By "viewership" I mean switching video inputs and finding a nice network error upon returning to xfinity app's input. This was tested yesterday with an HD enabled Samsung and 1st gen Xbox360. I imagine this is just a preview of what is to come when Kinect enabled commercials stop entirely if you are not physically looking at the tv and restart the video so, you have to view in full in order to progress. Can you imagine starbucks making you have to watch a commercial before you drink your macchiato?!

The new Comcast Xbox Xfinity app is the first nail in net neutrality’s coffin

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