Editorial: Comcast’s Cap is Small Piece of Larger Issue
Comcast made headlines Sept. 1 when the company announced any residential Internet customer who downloads and/or uploads more than 250 GB of data per month would first be notified of their overuse, and if a user receives a second notice within six months of the first, Comcast may terminate their account for one year.
The policy is Comcast’s attempt to limit atypical “excessive users,” who they say are by far the top consumers of residential bandwidth. Comcast claims these users are in the minority and “…negatively impact the online service for other customers.”
Comcast’s new plan raises bigger questions about the current state of the U.S.’s broadband market. A May 1 special report by the Information Technology & Innovation foundation titled “Explaining International Broadband Leadership” explored why some countries are ahead of others in providing broadband speed and access.
The report found that government polices explain only about one-quarter of the difference between countries; the other three-quarters involve technical or infrastructure differences between the countries reviewed.
The report illustrates that the conversation over U.S. broadband isn’t as simple as whether to increase government control over expanding our digital networks or to cap user bandwidth at a certain level, but is a blend of extremely complex issues that need to be studied at length to find what works best for our country as a whole.
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Comcast’s Bandwidth Cap: How to you could reach 250 GB in one month?
– Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
– Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
– Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
– Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)
– Download 31.25 HD movies (at 8 GB/movie)
Source: Comcast and Guardsman Research
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For more information:
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation: “Explaining International Broadband Leadership”