Tuesday, July 08, 2008

ISP Cap Problem

This blog post, The ISP Conundrum, is something you would hear at ISPCON in the old days.

"Now that the mom & pop ISPs have been forced out by DSL and cable, the companies are in a sort of ‘mutual detente with disorganized collusion’ mode of operation. That is, they are openly hostile to each other, but at some level they agree to keep rates close to equal, and cooperate on certain aspects of service.

It goes on to talk about caps:

"Now the companies, cable and telco, are complaining about the fact that when we all signed up to unlimited accounts, we actually thought they meant what they said. Amazing concept, that – taking something at face value. Now they want to place caps on us because we have had the temerity to actually use what we have been paying for."

The article on Ars that the blog references is here, "Opinion: Ever feel like cell carriers and ISPs don't like you?" Ars has another article about how we got to BW Caps:

"How did we get into this position? It's a result of cable ISPs essentially doing the equivalent of an airline overbooking a flight. But instead of getting bumped to the next available flight and being given a free roundtrip ticket anywhere in the lower 48, like airline passengers, cable customers get lower speeds and bandwidth caps. Although there's plenty of fine print about actual speed and performance from cable ISPs, they've historically marketed their services as fast and unlimited in scope."

There's an article per day about the caps; about truth in advertising; about how caps will stall the growth of broadband and the economy; and about how there just might be collusion between the cablecos and the ILECs. We need stronger government agency oversight (FTC, FCC, SEC).

No comments: