Image via CrunchBase
From yesterday, Comcast has started implementing a 250 GB
bandwidth cap on users browsing the net with their service. They argue that
this will stop power users from hijacking the pipe in a neighborhood. This is
pretty insane and it has evoked lots of criticism from the blogosphere including
the “Metering will limit Innovation” post at GigaOm. Comcast is not the only company that is unleashing
this approach on the users. Time Warner Cable has been testing out an insanely
limiting offering at Beaumont, TX. Their plans start from 30 bucks for a slow
(768 Kbps) service with a 5 GB cap and goes all the way up to a faster (15 Mbps)
service with a 40 GB cap. Compared to this, Comcast’s cap is definitely more
liberal but, in my opinion, such caps on broadband usage severely limits the user’s web
experience.
The blogosphere is filled with posts about how such capping is going to
affect the web experience of users with an emphasis on how it will destroy the web
video (Is this the reason cable companies, whose primary business interests are in
television, are resorting to such regressive measures? 
), including high
definition videos. There are also arguments that talk about the impact of such cap on the proliferation of VOIP. I am not going to repeat these arguments again. I am going to look at it from a totally different perspective and
analyze the impact of such bandwidth capping measures on the cloud computing.
As we move from the traditional desktop era to the new cloud computing era,
we assume the ubiquitous and unmetered availability of broadband internet. This
becomes one of the most important requirements for the success of cloud
computing. Broadband acts as a bridge between the consumers and the cloud and
plays a vital role in the user experience with respect to cloud computing. The
high speed internet is one of the major factors in users getting desktop like
reliable experience when using SaaS applications. The high speed internet is
also the single most important link between the users and their data in the
clouds. By imposing limits on the broadband connectivity, cable companies are
severely limiting the cloud computing experience of their customers.
I live in the clouds and this limitation is going to affect the
way I use cloud computing. This is true for every other user of cloud computing.
I have backed up all my data (approximately 200 GB), including my music, photos,
videos, documents, etc., in the clouds. I use SaaS based applications for all my
productivity needs. My video consumption is from the clouds. I stream the music I
have stored in the clouds to my Laptop and other audio systems in my house. However, I am
not one of those power users running torrent sites or a busy webserver from my
home. I am just a regular user who lives in the clouds enjoying the latest
innovations offered by this new technology. I will be totally crippled by the
limits imposed by Time Warner and I will feel suffocated by the limits imposed
by Comcast. Such limits will eventually kill my life in the computing clouds and
make these innovative technologies completely useless for me. This is true for
all the users of cloud computing technologies.
One of the hottest trends today is the emergence of netbooks, the light
weight notebooks with flash memory that relies completely on the cloud computing
to take care of users’ computing needs. The netbook users will consume more
bandwidth than the regular laptop and desktop users because none of their data
is stored locally and it has to be retrieved from the web every time the user
wants a document, photo, video or music. This cable company imposed bandwidth
capping means that we cannot rely on netbooks for our daily computing needs any
more. These limiting tactics are not just innovation killers but, rather, they are
productivity killers and lifestyle destroyers. There is a real danger of cutting down the lifeline of many users, especially the new breed of knowledge workers called web workers, who
are increasing in numbers every day and rely on clouds extensively.
In short, the bandwidth capping is a short sighted vision of cable companies
that could potentially derail the very proliferation of cloud computing. It is
time for these companies to do a rethinking on their strategy for the benefit of
all the users. I know of many grandmas and grandpas who use the broadband to
check email once a day and check their bank accounts on web once a week. Cable
companies are not paying back the money they charge these light users. They
don’t offer free months to these light users because their internet use is
almost negligible in comparison to the whole network traffic. Under such
circumstances, putting such bandwidth limiting tactics on “heavy” users and
banning the users who overshoot this limit is just naive and
anti-capitalistic.
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In Cloud Computing, we pay for what we compute. Similary when it comes to network bandwidth we should only pay for what we surf. I remember writing a white paper about this in my MBA. Paying for what we surf is the just and fair model.
Shankar
If you read my post carefully, you will understand that that is exactly my point. It is easy for anyone to see that flat rate is used by companies to make up for the usage of small number of heavy users by a big number of light users. If they really want to make heavy users pay for their use, they should shift to utility pricing where people pay for what they use irrespective of whether they are light users or heavy users. Cable companies cannot want to have the cake and eat it too.