Zeugma Publishes Broadband Survey

Zeugma published the results of an IDC survey of U.S. 787 consumers that was conducted in August 2008. The survey produced the following conclusions:

On Premium Bandwidth Services:

• 94 percent of respondents saw value in broadband services that dynamically allocate premium bandwidth for certain types of traffic, such as video, VOIP, gaming, and telecommuter VPNs.
• 54 percent would actively seek to change service providers if another offered this service; 26 percent would be willing to pay additional fees for premium bandwidth services.

On Bandwidth Capping and Metering

• 81 percent do not like the idea of establishing a bandwidth cap and charging for use above the cap.
• 51 percent would try to change service providers if their provider imposed bandwidth caps. Interestingly, light and moderate users are even more opposed to capping and metering than are heavy users.
• 83 percent either do not know what a gigabyte is or have no idea how many they use.
• Only 5 percent said unequivocally that “those who use more should pay more

There is a growing gap between the broadband providers and their customers. The Telcos and the cable companies look at the issue from their perspective and are trying to limit traffic growth by punishing power users. This is bad business and policy. Why alienate your best customers?

There is a hidden agenda here. While these caps will not affect many data users, they significantly limit the amount of TV content that can be delivered over the top. The Telcos and cable companies want people to use their own TV services rather than viewing over the top content. This will become a major issue when it becomes apparent to people who want to watch Netflix or CinemaNow content regularly on their TV.

Comcast Defines Net Neutrality

Light Reading has published an article detailing Comcast's plans for providing net neutrality to its broadband customers. Its approach is based on throttling back the performance of the service to users that habitually use large amounts of bandwidth.

Comcast will continuously monitor aggregate traffic usage data for individual network segments. If overall upstream or downstream usage exceeds a predetermined level on a segment, the software then determines which customers are using a disproportionate share of the bandwidth. If certain subscribers are the source of high volumes of network traffic during those customers temporarily will be assigned a lower priority status.

This approach seems to be a blunt tool. Why penalize customers as the first line of defense. Each application has different response time requirements, why not manage traffic to maintain response times within these limits and go after high volume users only when these techniques cannot cope with the loads.

This is a measure of the confusion around this issue. The FCC has not shown that it understands the issue or that it is capable of doing any more than responding to political heat. Hopefully, it will get sorted out over time.

FCC Orders Comcast to End Discriminatory Traffic Management

The U.S. FCC required Comcast to end its traffic management practices that discriminated against peer-to-peer traffic and BitTorrent in particular. The company has 30 days to:

• Disclose the details of its discriminatory traffic management practices to the Commission
• Submit a compliance plan describing how it intends to stop these discriminatory management practices by the end of the year
• Disclose to customers and the Commission the traffic management practices that will replace current practices

This is an important aspect of the Net Neutrality argument. I believe that the crux of this issue is that broadband operators must take an even handed approach to how they manage traffic. They should not use these techniques to play favorites or to improve their own market position.

Net Neutrality

TelecomView has just filed comments with the FCC giving our thoughts on the U.S. Net Neutrality issue. We believe that networks should not be neutral and that preferential treatment should be provided on a service basis. For example, I believe that my Vonage VoIP calls should have higher priority than my wife's file downloads.

We also describe the difference between the broadband services and the Internet services offered over them. Broadband services often include an IPTV service separate from the Internet service today. Our comments also suggest that there should be equal access arrangements available for these IPTV services, so that other content providers can offer video services as part of these IPTV services.

Click on this link to get more information and to request a copy of our comments.