Comcast One-Ups Time Warner Cable
June 5th, 2008
Not to be outdone by rival Time Warner Cable, Comcast has announced their new bandwidth cap policy and it makes even less sense than Time Warner Cable’s. Instead of charging customers for overages, Comcast will simply scale back network throughput to customers who use a lot of bandwidth. At least Time Warner Cable’s tax is arguably in place to pay for infrastructure enhancements. Comcast’s strategy is to slow down power users and drive them from their Internet service. I’m not sure alienating power users is a good business strategy. The power users are the ones that the aunts, uncles, grandmas, and grandpas go to for advise when selecting an ISP. Since when is alienating influencers a sound business strategy?
These companies just don’t seem to get it. Increased bandwidth usage by virtually every subscriber is inevitable. Digital delivery is here to stay and bandwidth usage is only going to increase. Instead of trying to keep users on their current infrastructure and punishing them when their use causes the system to groan, Comcast and Time Warner Cable should be focusing on updating their infrastructure like their competitors, the telcos, are doing.
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