Comcast’s decision to cap monthy broadband usage at 250GB is being decried as the end of the Internet as we know it. Maybe so, but it can also be seen as the dawn of the Streaming Era. As the Olympics drew to a close with big numbers – 75.5 million streams (NBCOlympics.com), 40 million (BBC), another 130 million from the European Broadcasting Union, and 100 million Chinese viewers – the networks were already moving on by serving the Democratic National Convention in HD. CBS offered an after-convention netcast with Katie Couric, and CNN promoted “full and complete” streaming coverage of all speeches.
The Comcast move seems more focused on the politics of the FCC decision to rule out Comcast’s filtering of P2P traffic. But BitTorrent and other such traffic is all about downloading, not streaming, and the advent of new look-ahead streaming capabilities in Silverlight suggest that streaming can accommodate DVR-like functionality that makes the value proposition of “owning” the data on a local drive much less important.
It used to be that having physical control of entertainment and other software was critical to the user experience. Record and film companies kept accelerating the quality levels of their products to stay ahead of the pirates and the growing ability of consumers to capture and archive content off the radio and television networks. But as broadband became more available as competition between telcos, cable, and satellite increased, sharing of MP3s and DVR time-shifting had an oddly counter-intuitive impact.
First, the Netflix strategy made renting movies a less onerous process, with no late fees and a large catalogue to choose from. When Blockbuster and Hollywood Video adopted similar MVP programs, the cable and satellite companies were forced to counter-attack with on-demand offerings that were even easier to acquire and in fact were spooled from servers rather than downloaded to home machines.
This, of course, is the same shift software has undergone from shrinkwrap to service, from Outlook to Gmail, Office to Google Apps, and from the hard drive to the cloud. In effect, productivity apps are now streamed to and the data from the user. With the data stored redundantly in the cloud, we are more comfortable with a streaming situation than with the former illusion that we “owned” our data locally.
Read the rest of this entry at TechCrunchIT.
(Photo by Quinn Dombrowski).
Stupid idea for Comcast, if i move to a Comcast area i’ll definitely get DSL instead of cable because of Comcast’s craptastic policies.
Ummm, in case no one noticed, streaming uses a lot of bandwith. It’s the same thing as downloading huge torrents. This cap will retard, not promote, streaming growth.
Not always the case. We have to boycott Comcast (close our Plaxo accounts, promote alternative services, etc). This would be a huge step back in the prehistoric 90’s!
Net Neutrality is dead, it was never a stable way to let the internet grow. Who ever invests in the infrastructure needs to be rewarded for it, otherwise there will never be any new infrastructure, it’s just the way the world works. Any high bandwidth site(streaming, torrent, youtube) will start facing challenges. The only other thing I am waiting for is a national internet sales tax(since the current state sales tax is in shambles as internet purchases keep growing and states keep losing tax revenue). It too is not in equilibrium anymore, just like bandwidth prices as we fill up our infrastructure.
> Who ever invests in the infrastructure needs to be rewarded for it
They have and will continue to be rewarded financially. ATT, Comcast, and others who have helped build the infrastructure so far have made handsome profits on being internet providers. Requiring net neutrality does not affect their profitability.
Mehhh… I think comcast has full right to do this and honestly why not price discriminate? Most people don’t use 250 GB of transfer anyways so it’s really not a problem for me. If you truly use *that* much bandwidth you should probably be charged for it — I much prefer this to the alternative where it is capped/limited by content type.
There is a reason we have anti-trust committee in this country.
They aren’t offering the option to pay for heavy usage. The option is use less than our cap, or be cancelled. In a year, you can sign up for appropriate service (i.e. service they’ll still refuse to sell you.)
You can hardly compare DSL to Cable, DSL is like the new dial-up dragging slow.
Torremts will never die in my opinion… people want their own local copy…
That’s exactly what I think.
Whate else?
Streaming …
… uses a lot of bandwith. Wanna look sth. twice? STREAM IT! No problem! Build new atomic plants!!
… monopolizes the media instead of spreading it by multiplying it. But, spreading is the only way to save media for longer times: More copies = more chances for one media to survive.
… at least, transfers YOUR behaviours from private space (your PC) to public (intrnetz). YEAH! WHY NOT? Let’s make google to world government. No problem.
I still prefer torrents over streaming as people would want to download those videos for some reasons…
http://www.KidT...ru.blogspot.com
Um, I’m sorry am I missing something? I come from the UK and have capped usage (note USAGE)- streaming counts towards your usage. So isn’t this article therefore complete baloney?
Tbh capped usage is fine- we never over run ours and we only have something like 250gb off peak 30gb peak.
Doesn’t streaming eat just as much of your bandwidth as downloading would? While 250 GB is a pretty massive cap (my cap is 60 GB with Rogers in Canada) I think it sets a bad precedent and will only keep coming down and down…
streaming doesn use as much bandwidth as a download, if the whole file is not viewed. a lot of files get downloaded in their entirety and not viewed, the advantage of streaming is savings of unviewed/unlistened to files.
Well, streaming might take less bandwidth but it is still not even close to as good of quality as teh download. I have FIOS and the on demand is all streaming. Honestly, I can’t even watch it as the quality still looks worse the SDTV (better than others I hear), but still bad. I think On Demand will suffer with this until streaming is much better or they DL the movie in HD format.
Yeah, I also have 60 GB on my Rogers access in Canada, and I’ve never gone over it, even with tons of streaming video and podcast downloads. Can you believe Americans complain about 250 GB?
Because we like our freedom, why the cap, except they don’t want to have to spend money on upgrading, today 60 maybe tomorrow 30 or 20, why not like most things once you allow it, it gets abused, or is there a law in canada that says, you can not lower it any more, I would guess not.
ummm steve…..
hate to tell you this. but a cap is a cap!!!
whether you download or stream, you’re using bits.. if comcast is counting, then all bits count. so streaming 4G is the same as downloading them…
Whilst I agree that a cap is a cap and the article is pretty off the mark streaming 4G isnt the same as downloading. Depending upon the streaming protocol there can be more or less bandwidth used than a straight download. For example Move adjust the quality of the file being streamed based on the current bandwidth and the RTMP protocol has various packets that are exchanged that aren’t just audio and/or video. The over head is pretty small though. Of course once recorded/downloaded you can watch/listen at a time suitable to you and also watch multiple times. Whereas with streaming you pay again in bandwidth.
Plus generally there’s ads as well, so that would also bridge the gap between streaming and downloading even if streaming is using less bits.
The UK has had capped broadband as a norm for a number of years. I’m a very heavy net user: streaming video and radion, buying full seasons of TV shows off itunes, countless hours of surfing, rss, e-mail, uploading and downloading large files in my software development work etc.
..and, I have never used more than 17gb in any single month in the last 4 years!
Unless I put up a large, illegal filesharing hub from home, I wouldn’t even be able to use 250gb if I tried my hardest!
I think the only ones affected by this cap are those who run large scale illegal filesharing hubs, or possibly people who run servers for fairly large online businesses from their home network.
Heavy “normal” users, even with the advent of HD content will fall comfortably below the cap.
Good point.
Can’t someone please do the math for this and write up a blog post about it?
That way we could see how much a 250 gb cap will really affect different type of users.
Starting from the type of medium, medium-heavy, to heavy users and then to borderline large scale illegal filesharing.
I really think such an analysis is needed to advance the argument and assess the threat – to consumers and web businesses alike – of this capped broadband pricing.
I’m certainly not for capped or metered broadband, but I’d still like to know how much of a nuisance or threat this will be. I’d like to know what’s the real deal here, even if it should happen to be a conclusion or truth that’s in Comcasts favor!
looks like cuban might be right inn the long term… ship Tbyte drive withall kinds of content… let the user watch as needed…
bottom line, a lot of businesses are about to be seriously fu*ed as they never thought about this in their [;ans…
I must be missing something – does the cap only apply to BitTorrent traffic? Because if it doesn’t then streaming a 10mb file or downloading a 10Mb file results in the same amount of broadband usage.
Mr. Gillmor,
I hate to pile on with Sam above, but Streaming does no better than Torrents, in either scenario you are still limited by the same cap. However, there is no re-upload for ratio. So, as your logic may be terribly flawed in the article, it still does have some truth in the whole.
Now the issue is, who is going to host ALL the different content that users want? My love of The Office episodes may be fulfilled by Apple or NBC, but the next person’s obsession for anime will most likely go unfulfilled by streaming providers. I disagree with you that Torrents will end, the huge networks that we currently have may slowly dissipate, but the end….is not near.
Personally, if I had a cap I would be WAY more likely to use BT than stream video. Stream = watch once per download. BT = watch as many times as you want with a single download.
People are bothered about being capped at 250? Wow, I’m capped at 50 and I never use it all up – and I even use torrents!
Of course, I realise that the Internet is only going to get more bandwidth intensive but, still, I doubt most normal people would go anywhere near that cap
It matters because its setting a precedent. And with more things moving to online (things like Netflix, streaming the Olympics, etc etc), once a precedent is in place, then it can be used as a comparison and adjusted. So it could be 250gb for 5 years, and after a study is done it could be lowered to 25gb, and then you pay more.
DSL will go that way too, they just havent gotten there yet.
Rogers in Canada has been shaping torrent speeds and capping downloads for a while now. The torrent community in Canada has not been affected, just annoyed.
Piracy is the new drugs. If the market for it exists, people will find a way to fill it. Except in this case people can support each other for free instead of paying one supplier. Making it more effective then drugs. A “War on Piracy” would be extremely difficult.
Comcast, owning, silverlight all in one post
Why do I smell the ass of M$ in all of this.
250GB is a huge amount of data and a monthly cap, instead of traffic shaping makes more sense. means you can utilize the speed of your connection to the max, monitor your downloading.
also, nobody is streaming HD anything over the internet. real HD video runs at about 25-30mbits per second if they were streaming that then you realise just how slow the internet really is when it comes to multi-gigabyte video files!
I have to agree with the others’ assertion that a bandwidth cap is a bandwidth cap. Streaming media is nothing more than a progressive download that automatically deletes itself as it goes. Did you really think streaming media just lives “in the cloud”? The cloud is imaginary. Any time you open, close, save, stream, download, or upload something over the network, it uses bandwidth.
[cough] Um, psst — streaming uses bandwidth too.
Yeah, I’m failing to see the connection here. If you want to write an article about streaming, great! Go forth… but the way this article reads is that streaming is the answer to broadband caps, and that just doesn’t make sense.
I wouldn’t both, I’m still trying to figure out the connection between Twitter and Enterprise IT that Mr Gillmor believes exists.
Surely capping usage will just make people use torrents more….so they can download a show once and watch it as much as they want instead of using up their download allowance on multiple viewings? What if the streaming service is slow or breaks – another reason to download!
“…streaming capabilities in Silverlight suggest…” Silverlight doesn’t even work 30% of the time!
I used to have a 20GB cap up until last month (live in Sao Paulo, Brazil)… 250GB still seems like a lot. You should appreciate what you have and quit whining
To all people that say “……you shouldn’t complain because in my [insert location] we pay [insert a ridiculous amount of money] for [insert a crazy small amount of bandwidth] so, stop whining” I say: get your act together and demand more for your money, because you’re being ripped off. You can’t compare something bad with something worse. This is technology we’re talking about. There is an inherent tendency to improve things in this field….not deteriorate them!
….and to Steve I say, essentially what everyone else is saying; “What are you on?” – how’s streaming bandwidth different from bittorrent?
Ha, nice foot.
I abandon Comcast long ago for such policies. I suggest everyone do the same or other companies will adopt Comcast strategies to cut costs as they’ll think “well Comcast does it and they keep they’re customer base, so why shouldn’t we”.
Boycott now or it could all be a big huge snowball effect and we’ll end up with just a few large conglomerates and the internet will become as meaningless as television is today.
uhm, what if there is no other choice but a slow DSL connection, or even no DSL. My only option for years has been web through Cable.
seriously, hello streaming? do you not know how this internet thing works? what kind of post is this from techcrunch?
Not sure you have thought this one through. I disagree completely regarding your projected behavioral switch.
Further if comcast was smart they would have dynamic pricing based on usage.
Even when the obvious strategies to make money lay themselves in front of old media companies they fail to see them and execute.
I had a feeling Bit Torrent was going to get booted sooner or later
http://www.ShawnDrewry.com
Streaming and Downloading are the same exact thing Steve. Except when you stream you just discard the bits rather than save them.
Dumbest post ever.
I was wondering how on earth a TechCrunch writer could claim that streaming dodges bandwidth caps, then I saw that that writer was Steve Gillmor.
At least he didn’t suggest that we could avoid the cap by Twittering movies to each other in binary then copy-and-pasting the 1s and 0s into a video encoder.
You guys are pussies. 250 GB a month is way more than enough bandwidth. I download entire TV series regularly and have a 50 GB cap that is generally enough. 250 GB would be a dream.
No wonder McCain might be the next president. Y’all have lost perspective and have become a nation of digital whiners.
Mr. Hunt,
I don’t think the issue here is the cap number itself, I know I personally, right now, couldn’t touch 250GB per month if I tried. The issue here is the premise of the article and it’s tragic flaw; streaming does not equal the death of bittorrent. Nor does a 250GB cap by Comcast equal a behavioral switch for users of either form of content consumption.
Someone called “Mike Hunt” is calling us pussies? Ha. Ha.
You’re obviously happy with your (yes dear, it’s big) 50GB of TV. Sit back. Tune out. The rest of us are having a discussion you don’t need to concern your pretty little head over.
Make fun of my name if you wish but at least I’m clean-shaved!
Oh and another thing, this has to be one of the dumbest articles I’ve read on TC. What exactly is the difference between streaming and downloading insofar as bandwidth costs go?
More vetting and less whining please.
I must agree to others, this post makes absolutely no sense. Definitively needs a statement from Steve…
Once HD becomes more popular 250GB will be nothing.
This is Comcast’s total cock-block pushing users to HD broadcast (and advertising) rather that streaming.
Disagreed. The footprint for HD is getting smaller and smaller all the time, thanks to advances in codecs.
I’m a bit confused. Is this article seriously telling people to turn to “streaming” media to defeat the bandwidth cap? I mean, isn’t this a huge oversight by the editors at Techcrunch?
As for the actual cap at 250GB, it’s not unbelievably unattainable as many people think. For instance, I have friends that actually stream radio feeds daily for most of the day and can easily approach 3 GB per day. That’s roughly 45GB per month if you were only streaming during the work week. Add in anyone streaming video or movies over the Internet, using Netflix consistently, or downloading content. It isn’t unimaginable that an above average to heavy user can hit the 250 GB cap.
Leaving the obvious streaming/downloading/cap issue aside, the big difference for the average user of new streaming services versus BitTorrent is *usability.* Most of the people streaming the Olympics have never installed BitTorrent and likely don’t know what it is.
That’s precisely why a new generation of p2p applications, like my own LittleShoot, Pando, and others, integrate seamlessly with the browser. With the newer apps, web sites can “stream” videos using p2p behind the scenes without the user even knowing. LittleShoot is coming out of private beta soon, and it does a lot of cool stuff.
I’ll be getting into all of this with my co-panelists at SXSW (please vote for it here: http://panelpic...ideas/view/2097).
It’s not just HD movies and television; Comcast has *really* exaggerated the numbers for normal usage. Think about these numbers:
• Cloud-based syncing & back-ups: 1 – 10 GB per day
• Flash banner ad w/ video – 5 – 10 MB each
• Basic AJAX web page: 1 – 2 MB (per page)
• Rich-media (Flash) website: 3 – 10 MB (per site)
• Internet radio is a MB every 4 – 10 seconds
• VOIP is a MB every 10 seconds
• Video conferencing – 2 MB per second
Don’t be surprised next summer when you’re offered special deals with “our partners” that won’t count against your limit.
Have to agree with the others streaming will use just as much bandwidth as downloading (if quality is equal)(and more if you want to watch the same thing more than once).
What really gets me though, is that anyone really thinks that 250gb is actually a cap! How many people would this actually affect? How many people actually fill a hard-drive every month?
Here in South Africa I pay the equivalent of $60 dollars a month for a 3 lousy gigs! Extra bandwidth costs me $12 / gb.
I still can’t stream HD on the plane or the train, So i’ll keep my local copy. Thanks
Umm…. Streaming counts as your 250/month limit too! There is no difference between streaming a 2 gb movie and downloading it to watch online.
On a related note, this pretty much ends any chance for success with the Xbox/Netflix thing! Oh well.
Um, no it doesn’t. Except maybe for people that watch way too many movies. Even with 3GB movies, you could comfortably watch 2 movies per day (2*3GB*30=180GB) and still have 70GB for other stuff (if there’s time b/w movies)
And what is with the streaming vs. downloading? This post makes zero sense, as EVERYONE seems to be noting.
EXPLANATION??????
You all realize how foolish you all come across with this post, don’t you? You do realize that streaming takes bandwidth. In fact the argument made would make caps even worse: we wouldn’t own the content and therefore may potentially stream the same thing, again and again.
Wow, you all need a tech reviewer before you post online. Seriously.
This guy deserves a Loren Felmann puppet. Is Techcrunch reading articles before publishing them as top stories??
Who is that guy by the way? I can write better IT articles. Sounds like a consultant who has written something that looks relevant but is just pure crap because he doen’t know what it is about.
One more chosen for users, no thing gone.
Actually, streaming will use less bandwidth. How? Well, when you are using, say, BT, you download and you also upload the same data to others. If your not just leaching, you will be constantly uploading the data to others. That 4gb file sitting on your machine could upload 100bg over the coarse of a month to others. Most people dont set upload caps in their client. Also, the quality of streaming will be lower, hence, the amount of bits less. Also…….most of the stuff we are downloading, *****aheemmm****, isnt exactly available to stream……the issues that will arise in the future is when we want to watch all of out TV, and get our NETFLIX thorugh the web. Me, personally watch all my shows that are available from the Networks, like LOST, online in streaming HD (as they call it, I cant verify it is actually “HD”). Also, does anyone know how much data an average hour of online gaming through say XBOX uses?
You can always find ways to make crappy things look relevant, even with the most crappy post ever on Techcrunch. But we all know you are just trying to sounds original. You know for sure this is crap.
And by the way, there are a lot of streaming services out there using p2p content distribution technology. Your point is mere stupidity. Do you have any connection with the author?
Is there any service-level agreement between Techcrunch and its readers on by how much time a useless post should be removed?
Canadians only have 20GB per month, and it’s been that way for years. I will try to find the URL for you.
BTW, there has been a significant update in the Tyler Cavell/Mediascrape story. You can find details here. I’m getting close to something.
http://tinyurl....LER-MEDIASCRAPE
French Canadians are limited to only 20GB, and it’s been that way for the past 5 years.
videotron.com/services/en/internet/comparer-ihv.jsp
Internet Plus 20 Mbps 1 Mbps 20 GB 10 GB
Tyler Cavell’s dad, Charles Cavell, actually ran the company that owned the cable internet monopoly in Eastern Canada. So there is the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon on this story.
I’m still not totally clear on this, but from the full article on http://www.tech...e-of-streaming/
I think Mr. Gillmor may be pushing for streaming services separate from the internet itself like a set top box from comcast that would be a supplemental service. Again not quite sure, and would love to here from Mr. Gillmor on this.
For all those saying that streaming and torrenting have no difference in the amount of data use, think for a minute please, the argument holds up.
BT is a two way system, you upload to others whilst you download from them as well, you’re using far more of your bandwidth than if it was just a one way transfer of information. Also a BT download means that every bit of data is downloaded, a stream may drop some data to keep up with the stream.
I personally don’t pirate anything, I think it’s immoral and those who do it generally give poor excuses, however this argument hinges on one point- if a group of people want to watch the same thing at different times streaming automatically takes twice as much bandwidth as the straight download which can go on DVD and be viewed numerous times- want to really beat the cap? Share discs with friends when you’re done with them.
(That is assuming caps work the same in the states as they do in the UK)
hey ngeek…
i can do a bt download, and not share… but it’s damn slow based upon the sharing algorithm. i can also elect to share, yet not have anyonw download from me, and still download a bt file. so i don’t “need” to upload, in order to download a bt file.
but for the majority of things, streaming can be thought of as being essentially the same as bt/file downloading regarding the xferred bits.
also, when a correctly running/operating streaming app is working, there’s very little in the way of “dropped” bits, due to the look ahead buffering functions. here again, this is a function of the app/algorithms/implementation, etc…
peace
question for all: by using P2P networks like BitTorrent’s, aren’t other people technically using up your personal bandwidth, too? So even if I download a couple big files a month that didn’t exceed 250GB, other people are in effect using my bandwidth and could potentially put me over the 250GB cap…
I don’t think the author understands how the interwebs work. You might want to look up “multicast”. I think that’s what you were aiming at.
And I am very against caps. Comcast and other ISPs keep advertising FASTER DOWNLOADS!!!! Some people have 15-20mbit download now… and thats not even fiber to their home. So they are encouraging people to download more… and then they want to restrict how much you download?
Let me guess what is next: You can download only up to X from someone else, but we will give you unlimited downloads to our ‘preferred” partners?
What happens when you reach that 250GB limit and then you try to call 911 on your Comcastic VOIP phone?
Check out the autor Twitter page: http://twitter....om/stevegillmor
The guy still think he as not written a piece of crap: “I haven’t seen anything that contradicts what I said”.
Oh my god, may Lauren Felmann puppetizes this guy.
I think people will continue to download music at current rates, though streaming music continues to be a nice alternative, as well as a better means to explore new tracks.
The only way this makes sense would be if streaming media took less bandwidth than downloadable media – but that is not always the case. Bit of flawed logic, perhaps?
Dude what’s with that angry avatar?
FYI: you don’t look serious, you look really pissed off.
You are so right! After your comment, however, I am smiling quite broadly!
You are now internet famous Mr. Mad Face:
http://www.brim...-lets-be-honest
Has there ever been a Gillmor post that didn’t rely on some fairy-logic to make sense?
Bandwidth is bandwidth. A cap is a cap. Put it this way. I don’t get charged any less by the utility company if I put all my water in a jug or if I drink it a mouthful at a time out of the tap.