Quote:
Originally Posted by GatorB
This has nothing to do with quotas. It's about Comcast not liking Netflix, Itunes, Amazon video on Demand taking away PPV revenue from them. So now Comcast is free to throttle those sites down to dial-up speeds so you'll buy their PPV movies.
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Yep, however things are also changing in a way where where the consumer could be protected by the market.
My town is a great example. For many years the only high speed internet connection they had was through the cable company. They charged a pretty high fee, but if you wanted high speed internet, you had no choice but to pay it.
Then the phone company started offering DSL. It wasn't as fast, but was close and it cost about 1/3rd less. The phone company also started offering cable TV service via the dsl line. The cable company shit their pants as customers moved away from them and over to the phone company service. As a result the cable company has upgraded what they offer and has lowered prices. When I first moved here 5 years ago high speed internet was 3mbps and it cost $49.95 a month. Now they offer 10mbps for $39.95 per month. The 3mbps is now $29.95 and you can get 18mbps for $49.95. When I first moved here their extended basic cable was around $60 and only had about 50 channels. Now the extended basic cable is around $55, but they have about 75 channels and you get free starz, encore and you get the main showtime channel as well as getting starz and movieplex on demand.
So if Comcast starts to throttle every user no matter how you use your internet I won't be surprised that they get a lot of complaints and either have to change their system or they offer an unthrottled version for those who want to just surf and download the occasional thing, but don't burn a ton of bandwidth.