P2P Bill of Rights Deep-Sixed
After about three weeks, Comcast has abandoned their proposed P2P Bill of Rights in favor of collaboratively developing best practices guidelines within the Distributed Computing Industry Association. As I’ve said before, I’m glad to see them openly discussing these issues. Though, I’m not sure Comcast’s Net non-Neutrality stance has changed… Actions speak louder than words and it appears they’re still throttling BitTorrent traffic.
Pondering Bandwidth Caps
According to DSL Reports, Comcast is contemplating a monthly bandwidth cap of 250GB for residential broadband customers. Exceed the limit, and pay an overage fee, with periodical “slip up” forgiveness. Frankly, I think this would be a good policy change… when compared to their current opaque black ops methods. Though, I say that having no idea how much data I move in a given month and just prior to launching a several day ~40GB Mozy online backup. Supposedly the 250GB threshold would only impact 0.1% of Comcast customers.
SDV Shenanigans
Less clear than Cablevision’s SDV customer outreach, Comcast appears to be going down a similar path in southwest Florida. I haven’t confirmed this notice and it’s rather brief but, if accurate, probably indicates regional adoption of switched digital video (SDV):
Our records indicate that you have a Motorola Cable Card(s) that will no longer be compatible with our upgraded cable network as of May 31, 2008. Exchange your Motorola Cable Card(s) into an office today and we’ll give you HBO free and a converter free for 3 months.
No mention which specific portions of the channel lineup may be impacted and no mention of the forthcoming tuning resolver… Just trade in your CableCARDs or else (FUD). I’ll wait for confirmation before providing additional commentary.
