Comcast appears to be preparing to limit residential internet users’ bandwidth, starting October 1st. Comcast’s Network Management Policy website puts this limit at 250 gigabits per month. As a user of Comcast internet, I find this a little bit of a bummer. I don’t make a habit of analyzing my monthly internet usage (anyone remember AOL when you had to stay under a certain number of minutes online per month?), but I’ll have to start paying a bit of attention. However, it’s highly unlikely that I personally exceed this limit, despite enjoying Hulu and other online video, downloading songs, tons of files for work and using a filesync program to keep my home and work computers files the same. I do worry about how this will affect startups and new internet business ideas.
Several things about Comcast’s bandwidth limit do really annoy me:
- Working from home. What will this do to information workers who work from home on a regular basis? I imagine that self-employed computer programmers who work from their home office could be particularly hurt. What about people who edit movies and other media from their home office? Will they be unable to upload their files? Telemedicine - doctors on call use the internet to look at medical images from home before heading into the hospital. Those high resolution images are very large, and can you imagine a doctor saying to a patient, “well, I don’t want to go over my bandwidth limit this month, so you’re going to have to wait for me to get to the hospital to see the ALL the scans we took of your brain…” Sure, you are probably supposed to get a “commercial” internet subscription if you do these things, but do you really feel that someone who works from home on Fridays should have to??
- New startups founded in people’s garages and basements. Imagine a group of 20 year-olds launch a website from their basement or apartment and it suddenly takes off… it doesn’t take too much popularity for a startup to use some serious bandwidth, particularly if video is involved. I’ve met a number of founders who have had their startups take off at amazing velocity right from their homes. (Think of the people who start websites as a hobby, only to have them grow like wild…) Anything that jeopardizes the growth trajectory of a brand new startup could have serious long term consequences on a business’ potential size and the value that the founders are able to achieve. Also, many founders are leveraging offshore or outsourced developers to help them create their sites - how will all that code get shared and iterated and bug checked easily?
- Gamers. Pretty graphics are BIG (although I do realize a lot of this is rendered on the home computer/game system.) The video/computer gaming industry is now larger than the movie industry in the US. Is it possible that residential bandwidth limits will hurt the industry?
- New media models. HD movies are typically 4-5 gigs. Other content is large too… will this crimp online video on demand and other new media startups?
- Video conferencing. Will video conferencing, due to the high bandwidth needed for HD video streams, forever be destined to be the “Technology of the Future?”
My fear is that even the idea of bandwidth limits will cause people to carefully regulate their consumption of online services. Hit someone with an overuse fee a couple of times and I bet they are MUCH less likely to spend time online, or are much more likely to try to stay away from sites and services that have the impression that they are high bandwidth.
I do understand that it’s not easy for a company like Comcast to supply unlimited bandwidth to everyone. But I am very afraid bandwidth limits could negatively impact the US’ dominance in online business. As if we don’t have enough problems in the US already!
Anyone know if parts of the world like Korea, where there is high bandwidth penetration and usage, have regulations on the amount of bandwidth that can be consumed?
Of course, I guess the other solution is FIOS, which I hear is awesome. But it’s also not available on my street…
