One of the least discussed properties of DOCSIS or cable broadband is that the more popular it is in you neighborhood, the less you can expect from it. With DOCSIS 3, this property is magnified. In comparison to a direct fiber connection it will only deliver consistently good performance if the take rate is low or if subscriber usage is limited.

Comcast is only bonding two channels down, one channel up for this service right now, which means they can offer 80 Mbps down and 30 up. But it’s not like that’s per-subscriber. That’s per neighborhood – to be shared among potentially 400 people (although at $150 a month, expect uptake to be substantially less than 100%).

But compare that to Verizon’s Fios, in which a maximum of 32 people share 622 Mbps downstream and 155 upstream. So when Comcast says their new offering is comparable to Fios in speed and price, that’s really bullhockey. On the upside stream we’re talking about hundreds of people sharing 30 Mbps up, compared to 32 people sharing 155. (ZDnet)

Cable has a dirty little secret. The faster speeds they are selling are a large scale shared resource. The sum of bandwidth as sold is exponentially larger than the amount of shared bandwidth available on their infrastructure. This is probably why most cable guys will attempt to throttle their customers sustained usage, and blame poor performance on “over usage” by “bandwidth hogs”. The cable guy needs to come clean. DOCSIS was designed to deliver stunning performance in an era of static content. If that is how the cable guy expects his customers will use his service then he should spell in out. If we had real competition, DOCSIS would soon find its proper place in the museum.

Is Comcast Bipolar? While working furiously to limit some traffic, they are also offering 50MBPS service in limited markets. The offering is made possible by DOCSIS 3.0, a technology standard that uses multiple connections to the nearest node to delivery higher speeds.

The new premium service was launched in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis-St. Paul, and marks a leap in connection speeds for Comcast. The new service offers speeds starting at 50 megabits per second, compared with the previous fastest connection speeds of 16 mb per second.

Comcast said the new service is aimed at residential and business customers. But at $149.95 a month, compared with about $50 a month for its usual service, it is likely to attract businesses or very heavy residential users, such as video game players or movie download fans. (Reuters)

I think I get it. If you want unfettered access, you need to move to a neighborhood where Comcasts DOCSIS 3 is available, be sure you move to premises where the DOCSIS 3 limits have not been reached and then pay more than the average triple play customer for internet service alone.

Well now, we find out they are bugging out of some States. Well now some enterprisng souls have been doing some sluething on the qualify of HD signals coming from Comcast. And what do they say? –

The Comcast channels with added compression are listed as follows, grouped by QAM.

Discovery Channel
SciFi
USA

Food
NatGeo
UHD

A&E
HGTV
Starz

Cinemax
HBO
TLC

Animal Planet
Discovery HD Theater
History HD

Extra compression was also applied to several other channels, presumably to make room for future channel additions. MHD is one such example.

So the question has to be asked. Is Comcast REALLY delivering HD or what I will coin a as BHD, [Botched HD]. All for the convenience of cramming more channels in infrastructure that needs upgrades and a move to DOCSIS3. So lets recap here –

• They pack public venues.
• They mislead customers.
• They Exit markets not wanting to compete.
• They have service you could die for — as in you will be dead before you get it.

I am glad I am no longer a customer.

Link to thread.

Like a thief in the night, Comcast is preparing to exit again the VoIP market in a couple of States. Specifically Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania. Service is to be discontinued by April 29th. Affected customers were notified in Jan. of this change of service. 911 emergency services will continue till end of May.

This is the third time we have reported Comcast’s exit of the VoIP market in other States. The question we have to ask is why does Comcast still keep advertising triple play services? Go to their website. They still advertise Digital Voice services. Ok yeah, in selected markets they have it. But that is not informing the customer. When making a purchase decision would you consider a triple play opportunity if you knew that they have already exited 10 States would you not consider their offer less than genuine?

And again we ask — if Comcast is continuing to exit the VoIP markets do they not just leave it open to the Verizon’s and AT&T’s. Vonage with its legal history of late is a wounded tiger in the VoIP market. Dangerous but reduced capacity. So the customer gets fewer and fewer choices.

FCC Notice.

After fighting to keep file sharing off of their network, Comcast is making a public about face and working with BitTorrent. While it could be largely a PR move, use of the technology could have benificial uses in Comcast’s content distribution.

Comcast Corp. says it will stop targeting BitTorrent on the Internet, according to an announcement to be made today.

Seeking to defuse tensions in a government investigation, Comcast says it will halt its practice of interfering only with BitTorrent file-sharing programs when the Internet congests and slows speeds for everyone.

The Philadelphia cable company also will boost broadband capacity to make it easier to transmit online video and other rich media, it says. At times, BitTorrent accounts for 50 percent of the traffic on the Internet, with 40 million to 45 million users around the globe.

As part of the agreement, BitTorrent Inc., based in San Francisco, will make its free software more efficient and will make sure software developers learn of those efficiencies. (Philly.com)

Comcast’s actions rarely live up to the extent of their PR spin. Until we see evidence that real action has been taken, I’m calling this a ploy to get the FCC dogs off their trail. Please prove me wrong Comcast!

[Dr. Dog] Not only do I concur, but doubly so. I figure somebody on the tech side got to management and informed them that a tech battle between them and FOSS would end badly for Comcast. They probably read the first draft of the RFC proposal for the next iteration of P2P and realized the jig was up. Comcast would have faced a continual escalating ports royal with equipment upgrades with no end to the capital drain.

It will be interesting to see if the stick to this proposal. Still does not solve their long term problem with TVoIP. That is a bigger fish that will require attention. And as it is right now I don’t see how they can turn those folks off. It would seem to be a legitimise use of bandwidth. Just like channel 276 on their own service.

After fighting to keep file sharing off of their network, Comcast is making a public about face and working with BitTorrent. While it could be largely a PR move, use of the technology could have benificial uses in Comcast’s content distribution.

Comcast Corp. says it will stop targeting BitTorrent on the Internet, according to an announcement to be made today.

Seeking to defuse tensions in a government investigation, Comcast says it will halt its practice of interfering only with BitTorrent file-sharing programs when the Internet congests and slows speeds for everyone.

The Philadelphia cable company also will boost broadband capacity to make it easier to transmit online video and other rich media, it says. At times, BitTorrent accounts for 50 percent of the traffic on the Internet, with 40 million to 45 million users around the globe.

As part of the agreement, BitTorrent Inc., based in San Francisco, will make its free software more efficient and will make sure software developers learn of those efficiencies. (Philly.com)

Comcast’s actions rarely live up to the extent of their PR spin. Until we see evidence that real action has been taken, I’m calling this a ploy to get the FCC dogs off their trail. Please prove me wrong Comcast!

If you don’t pay your Comcast bill they turn you off right? Well it looks like Comcast doesn’t think it works the other way when they own the bills to somebody else. Or at least they don’t to the Williams family. –

HANNIBAL, MO. (AP) — Some Comcast customers feel they have lighter wallets these days, but they’re not alone.

You might remember earlier in March, Comcast, the cable company that took over Insight, informed customers it would raise rates in April.

That came just months after telling the city of Quincy it wouldn’t raise rates soon after it took over operations.

We heard from a Northeast Missouri family who says Comcast isn’t paying its bills like it should.

KHQA dug deeper to get facts in this FactFinder report.

Kay Williams says Comcast has rented her land for the location of a tower, but even though the land is still in use, she says she hasn’t seen any rent checks for six months.

Personally I think the Williams’ ought to hit them with a late charge like the do to subscribers. Good for the Goose is….

Whole story here.

Funny thing about an un-competitive market like the one we have for broadband and wireless communication in the USA. The companies in the game still go to war with each other, but the wars are like mafia turf battles, with little or not real benefit to consumers. We may be seeing the beginning of a wireless turn battle. The cable guys have long been looking for a new way to retaliate against the telcos for invading thier pay tv turf. Wireless may be the ticket.

According to unnamed sources, the companies are discussing a plan to provide funding for a new wireless company that would be operated by Sprint Nextel and Clearwire. The new company would use network spectrum and assets from both companies to form a nationwide wireless network using WiMax.

Last summer, Sprint and Clearwire announced they’d be working together to build a nationwide network. In November, they terminated their agreement, but each company has said separately that it is talking to the other about ways to work together. For months, rumors have floated around that Sprint would spin off its WiMax network, known as Xohm, and combine it with Clearwire’s network.

The Journal said the companies are now trying to raise $3 billion to create the joint venture. Comcast, the nation’s largest cable operator, would put in about $1 billion, while Time Warner, the second largest cable operator in the country, is willing to pony up $500 million, the Journal said.

Bright House Networks, a smaller cable operator, is also supposedly in the talks and could contribute around $100 million to $200 million. Intel might be contributing $1 billion, and Google could throw in a couple of hundred million too, the article said. (Cnet)

It would be great to get Xohm completed. Too bad it may be under the thumb of the cable guys. It’s kind of like bringing the local Don in.

As Comcast spirals downward in customer aspects at all levels; rather than opening up and trying to embrace the customer base they take the ‘Man the Ramparts’ defense. The Visgoths in this corporate tale is the FCC. Now I can fault the FCC on many issues but poor customer service and poor corporate service is not one of them –

The man who spoke for Comcast at Harvard last month has told the Federal Communications Commission that the agency has no legal power to stop the cable giant from engaging in what it calls “network management practices” (critics call it peer-to-peer traffic blocking). Comcast vice president David L. Cohen’s latest filing with the Commission claims that regulators can do nothing even if they conclude that Comcast’s behavior runs afoul of the FCC’s Internet neutrality guidelines.

“The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful,” concludes Cohen’s thinly-veiled warning to the FCC, filed on March 11. “Bearing these facts in mind should obviate the need for the Commission to test its legal authority.”
Related Stories

* Comcast, net neutrality advocates to square off Monday
* Cable and telcos side with Comcast in FCC BitTorrent dispute
* Comcast, net neutrality advocates clash at FCC hearing

Should we read “test” as in “test an FCC Order on ISP network management in Federal court”? Cohen presented Comcast’s case at the FCC’s February 25th net neutrality hearing, held at Harvard Law School. Whatever the merits of his March 11 claims, they should be examined carefully. They may represent the framework for a legal challenge against any action the FCC takes to protect consumers.

So rather than open up to public discourse and open discussion Comcast pays employees to pack a public meeting. Rather than embrace the customer they shun them. Rather than work to improve thru the system they will throw up legal roadblocks. This is the tactics of a company on the run.

Hold any Comcast stock? Sell and go short.

From ArsTechnica.

Verizon seems to be interested in supporting a new P2P protocol called P4P. It promises to move more data with less strain on the network. I’m betting that V is taking a hard look at using it for their own content distribution. I’m all for that as long as they give non Verizon content equal treatment. As a side benefit, it would add a fun new twist to the Comcast net management debate.

P4P, which stands for Proactive network Provider Participation for P2P, ultimately aims to decrease backbone traffic and bring down network operation costs by enabling service providers to communicate information about network conditions to client applications for the purpose of facilitating improved P2P file transfer performance. Instead of selecting peers at random, the P4P protocol leverages network topology data so that peers can be selected in a manner that increases routing efficiency.

Ars spoke with Verizon senior technologist and P4P workgroup co-chair Doug Pasko, who tells us that Verizon observed download performance improvements of approximately 200 percent during tests conducted with Pando. The performance boost can climb as high as 600 percent in some cases. Verizon believes that P2P technology is moving into the mainstream and is being legitimized for large-scale commercial content delivery. The company sees P4P as a way to enable broader commercial adoption of P2P tech while unclogging the tubes and relieving network congestion.

Since the efficacy of the P4P protocol largely relies on the availability of network topology information, Verizon and the P4P workgroup aim to make the new protocol an industrywide standard and convince other carriers to share their own data and participate. “Quite frankly, any carrier should benefit from this,” Pasko told Ars. The initiative has drawn support from a number of ISPs, including Comcast, which is currently facing scrutiny for impeding peer-to-peer traffic on its own network. (from Ars Technica)