Some Words

On moving to Portland, I found that DSL was not available where I had moved. Get on that Qwest, or someone, because now, bandwidth caps are coming from my current provider. I can’t tell you how not happy that makes me, and if I weren’t stuck with it, I’d switch.

All of this of course comes because Comcast’s way of distributing bandwidth is way better for advertising than for actual practical use. People get 4-6 mbps depending on what basic plan you are on, but it’s split among the people in the area, so if you all press go at the same time, you all have to wait a while. DSL is always what they provision you at, even if that is lower than what cable advertises. Now, this (and working for a DSL provider for 2.5 years) had me on the side of DSL, because I’d rather know I always have 1.5 than hope no one else is using it to get 4. Especially with streaming video from youtube, hulu, and netflix, that is a big deal.

But you know what makes those three a bigger deal? Oh, wait, no surprise because I put it at the top of the post. The future of online usage is not speed, but large portions of buffered data, speed matters, but you’re going to hit that bandwidth cap a lot faster than you think. Comcast claims that 99% of their users won’t be affected, but with the number of people who use them as an internet service that’s still thousands of people they are giving the finger, all because their business model really isn’t able to handle streaming video, i.e. the future of the internet. Meanwhile, DSL is rolling out much faster speets, Comcast is advertising up to 20 mbps, though I can’t get anything in the middle of SE Portland.

Comcast probably figures that most people will assume the 1% is a bunch of kids illegally downloading videos. Of course, streaming video is just now coming into its own, so over the next six months, that profile is going to change drastically, as will the percentage of people affected. Comcast is essentially going into a cell phone limited minutes style model. That wouldn’t be crazy, if their competition were doing the same thing.

Way to go Comcast, you made me want Qworst. I just spend years grappling with their tech support, being grumpy about them, and making fun of their phone script, only to wish I could use them.