DAN COSTA
Metered Net Good for Mom Comcast finally went public with the fact that it is putting a hard cap on its customers’ Internet usage. The average user may be initially shocked to find out you can’t just download—or upload—as much as you want, but the truth is that Comcast’s limits won’t affect the average user—at least not right now. This cap does represent a major shift in the broadband industry, a shift that should concern casual browsers and power users alike. But putting the larger issue of Net neutrality aside, I just don’t think my mother and I should pay the same rate for Internet usage. My mom has a cable modem. She hits the Web every day to get news, forward
close to the same service. In fact, I already pay Optimum more to get my “enhanced” 20-megabit-per-second cable connection instead of the standard 10-Mbps connection. If I want to use my system as a multimedia server to distribute content across the globe, I don’t have a problem paying a few bucks more than my mom, who uses her connection for e-mail and light surfing. Of course, I would like to know exactly what I’m getting for my money. And ISPs have been a bit dodgy on that issue. Last October, Comcast began officially limiting usage for its 12.9 million customers, although the company had been doing this quietly since 2005. The difference is,
It does seem clear that we need a new pricing scheme for Internet access. The one we have now doesn’t make sense. Metering access deserves a chance. inspirational e-mails, and send me photos of the latest varmint or reptile that has wandered into her backyard. I doubt she reaches 1MB of data per day. I have a cable modem too, but my usage looks a lot different. When I’m home, I’m constantly online, blogging, writing, and sending files and high-resolution artwork back and forth to my coworkers at PCMag .com. I also download music, videos, and podcasts from iTunes, grab old TV shows from BitTorrent, and stream movies through Netflix, and I’ve recently started playing Warhawk with others online on my PlayStation 3. All are bandwidth-intensive applications. On a busy weeknight, I can blow through a few gigabytes of traffic, easy. On weekends: much, much more. No reasonable person would say that my mom and I should pay the same price for our service. It’s a fundamental issue of fairness. We both want our Web pages to load quickly, but we aren’t using anything
for all those years no one knew what the “magic cap” was until Comcast came calling to tell you that you’d gone over. If after that you continued to exceed the secret cap, the company canceled your service. Now, thanks to an FCC sanction this summer, we have a number. And that number is 250GB per month. That’s pretty generous, actually. Especially when compared with the pricing scheme that Time Warner is testing in Beaumont, Texas. There, the caps start as low as 5GB, which goes for $30 a month. For $55 per month you get 40GB. After that every extra gigabyte you use in a month costs you a buck. Not cheap, but it does seem clear that we need a new pricing scheme for Internet access. The one we have now just doesn’t make sense. Metering access deserves a chance. Of course, for metering to work, ISPs need to tell users exactly what they are using. Sprint’s WiMAX XOHM network
went live in Baltimore recently, and the service includes some cryptic legalese that will let Sprint manage network traffic. The company is clear about the fact that it reserves the right to do just about anything it wants to control the volume of traffic you use. The usage policy reads: To ensure a high-quality experience for its entire subscriber base, XOHM may use various tools and techniques designed to limit the bandwidth available for certain bandwidth-intensive applications or protocols, such as file sharing. That is the biggest blank check since Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asked for $700 billion. Where are the specifics? Comcast didn’t want to come clean with the details, but the FCC forced it to. Sprint should spell out its plans. For that matter, so should every other broadband supplier. If a provider wants to charge per megabit, the least it can do is explain what you’re getting for your buck. And it wouldn’t be difficult to let users know exactly what they are using. Better still, express usage in a desktop widget. That way, a user can track it in real time. You can do this with tools like the Multi Router Traffic Grapher (oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg), but it really should be an app your ISP gives you. I realize I’m simplifying the issue of Net neutrality, if not bypassing it altogether. I haven’t touched on the stifling effect that tiered pricing would have on the technology industry or ISPs’ not-so-veiled efforts to shut down online content providers. Or even the fact that we currently have some of the highest prices for broadband access—and some of the lowest rates of adoption—in the civilized world. And I haven’t even mentioned Google. But that is for another column. For now, can’t we all agree that my mom and I shouldn’t be paying the same price for broadband? TALK BACK TO DAN E-mail your thoughts to dan_costa@ziffdavis.com. JANUARY 2009 PC MAGAZINE 55
