03Dec2010
Comcast Responds to Level 3's Latest Press Release
Level 3 has said nothing new. The fact remains this is a business dispute regarding traffic ratios, commonly referred to as peering, between Comcast and Level 3 which we are committed to resolve fairly and consistently with established industry principles. Industry experts and analysts overwhelmingly agree, as their commentary has shown all week long. The most important thing to know about this dispute is that Comcast will do absolutely nothing to impact our high-speed Internet customers, who can and will be able to access any Internet content they want, including streaming video from all sources.
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Comments (4)
I don't understand how you can say "Comcast will do absolutely nothing to impact our high-speed Internet customers, who can and will be able to access any Internet content they want, including streaming video from all sources." What if Level 3 just tells you, "No, Comcast, we are not going to pay you anything, but we still want to send you 600 Gbps." What will you do at that point? Are you going to say "That's fine, just send us however much data you want and we won't charge you anything."? I don't think that's your position.
Instead I think you'll say "If you don't pay up, we won't accept the data you're sending us, in excess of the 260 Gbps we've already agreed to accept." And if that's your position, you are definitely doing something unethical if not downright illegal. Because then we customers won't be able to download in unlimited amounts the Netflix content that's sitting in the Level 3 CDN. But we are paying our Internet bills every month, on the understanding that we can download whatever we want from whoever we want. If you violate that trust, I think you'd be running afoul of Net Neutrality regulations. If those regulations don't prohibit this behavior, then we need better regulations.
Comcast should have handled this better.
For example on the tech news sites stories such as "Comcast Accused of Starting Web ''Toll Booth''" and "Report: Comcast Ditches Net Neutrality, Starts Demanding Money From Web Firms" were ran by tomshardware.com and dailytech.com respectively. Why doesnt comcast respond to stories like this to defend its public image when this level3 company is distorting the facts and trying to make it look like comcast taking a stand against net neutrality.
Of course the FREEPRESS organization was only too happy to attack comcast again based on this claiming that an out of control company is trying to kill its competition by charging extortianate fees.
Which 'industry experts and analysts' agree that, in 2010, ratios still matter? This is a dated metric, let's move on.
I don't think it's fair to say that this is related to "ratios" or "business as usual", when ratios are a dated metric, and that really doesn't paint a full picture as to what's going on.
I've attempted to explain the situation a bit better here: https://www.voxel.net/blog/2010/12/peering-disputes-comcast-level-3-and-you
As an aside, do you know what Comcast's plans are for upgrading its connections to Tata? I think this is a larger concern to the stability of end-user connectivity, personally.