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Dear Comcast High-Speed Internet Customer,

We appreciate your business and strive to provide you with the best online experience possible. One of the ways we do this is through our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The AUP outlines acceptable use of our service as well as steps we take to protect our customers from things that can negatively impact their experience online. This policy has been in place for many years and we update it periodically to keep it current with our customers’ use of our service.

On October 1, 2008, we will post an updated AUP that will go into effect at that time.

In the updated AUP, we clarify that monthly data (or bandwidth) usage of more than 250 Gigabytes (GB) is the specific threshold that defines excessive use of our service. We have an excessive use policy because a fraction of one percent of our customers use such a disproportionate amount of bandwidth every month that they may degrade the online experience of other customers.

250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of bandwidth and it’s very likely that your monthly data usage doesn’t even come close to that amount. In fact, the threshold is approximately 100 times greater than the typical or median residential customer usage, which is 2 to 3 GB/month. To put it in perspective, to reach 250 GB of data usage in one month a customer would have to do any one of the following:

* Send more than 50 million plain text emails (at 5 KB/email);
* Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song); or
* Download 125 standard definition movies (at 2 GB/movie).

And online gamers should know that even the heaviest multi- or single-player gaming activity would not typically come close to this threshold over the course of a month.“

Love the fact that Comcast uses number of emails as a measure of how much you can do with 250GB of download capacity. While this may seem like a lot - it isn’t. Besides the ever-expanding consumption of high quality video from online streaming and download services to your PC, there are many more non-PC devices that are making their way into consumers home that utilize your broadband connection. NewTeeVee has a good article here.

Metering sux.

-E

Interesting article from NewTeeVee today on what is effectively amounting to the death of the Korean DVD market. Sales are at a third this year of what they were in 2002. With broadband penetration at 90% and roughly 50% of the households admitting to downloading movies, it isn’t surprising that sales of DVDs are in a free fall.

Interestingly enough, P2P networks aren’t at the center of the Korean downloading craze. Users are flocking to web-based storage solutions instead. The market for these so-called “webhard” services was originally popularized by LG, but now there are dozens of vendors, with some offering up to 1 Terabyte of storage space for free. The services are monetized through priority access points that guarantee higher speeds. There are supposed to be filters in place, but it’s obvious they don’t work.

I have no doubt that physical media will disappear in the US as well over time. Initial feedback from friends who use the Netflix Roku or the Vudu box is positive - other than needing to attach another box to the TV set. I’ve also been impressed with the Sony Playstation online service which, in my opinion, continues to put the game console in a great position in the home for combined services.

-E

As more and more content becomes available online, service providers (Cablecos, Telcos) are becoming increasingly worried about becoming “just the pipe provider” while broadcasters and studios monitize consumer video consumption via a service provider’s network. We will see unprecidented online coverage of the Olympics, which will push new consumers online to watch some of the 3600 hours of coverage; and while this will be an incredible opportunity for the consumer to enjoy the games in a whole new way, service providers aren’t thrilled with the idea.

They claim P2P traffic already consumes significant portions of their bandwidth and online video consumption is beginning to consumer a greater amount (although actual data is confusing on this topic). Bottom line, their networks were simply not designed to handle the traffic. Attempts to filter traffic based on its type by the service provider have resulted in the net neutrality debate, and have caused service providers to rethink their strategy. Now it appears that US service providers are exploring bandwidth caps similar to what has been done outside the US, as a way to protect their networks (and their revenue).

NBC, who is providing coverage for the olympics, is actively warning subscribers with Internet metering to NOT USE the site (nice). You can see the warning here. Metering is one way that service provider’s can cap video usage while avoiding net neutrality altogether. Recent reports suggest that nearly every major service provider out there, except Verizon, have announced plans to test a bandwidth cap (maximum amount of data transferred per month) and then a surcharge for going beyond the cap. The BBC’s iPlayer site sparked an ongoing debate over who should pay for the infrastructure required to handle the demand.

As consumers, we should be watching this closely and voicing strong concerns to our service provider if they’re considering metering. There are better ways for them to participate in the coming deluge of online content consumption (and revenue) without resorting to caps and metering. Check out thisWeb site dedicated to news on this front.

The family has now made the big move to Los Angeles from the Seattle area where I’ve joined the Disney family. I work in the New Technology Strategy group where I provide internal research on new distribution platforms including IPTV. Aside from leaving good friends and a great area to live in, I’m going to miss not having my Verizon Fios service. After reading this article, I’m going to miss it even more.

Lets be clear. Verizon Fios is NOT IPTV for the simple reason that its video service is not packetized and embedded within Internet Protocol. It looks much more like a cable network in that sense. However, they do provide a broadband pipe and an advanced set-top box with some great broadband capabilities. It looks like they’re going to roll online video and other services integrated into their electronic program guide. Some of the features “feel” a lot like IPTV according to the demos and screenshots and are, quite frankly, cooler than a lot of what is being demo’d on IPTV today. In any case, I don’t think the consumer is going to care whether or not its IPTV - they’re going to use it for the featuers and cost savings.

Will be interesting to see the reaction from consumers and see how this heats the race up between them and AT&T Uverse.

-E

At the IPTV World Forum this week, Joseph Ambeault, director of consumer prodcut development, video services at Verizon talked about how Verizon is “beta testing” over the top video to the TV set for some subscribers. Initial partners include Veoh, Blip.tv, Break.com, and YouTube. More from David Zatz here.

This is a good move by Verizon. Fear is becoming more widespread among service providers worried that ad revenues could suffer from online video consumption. If they can find a way to provide over the top content access, especially at the television set, it could be a win for them especially if they can add value: Quality of service and an interface unified with high value content like linear TV and VOD.