Here’s my $0.02 (and then some).

The idea behind this is to identify (and punish) the high bandwidth users. Comcast (and other broadband companies) have skated by for years on this “bucket-of-bits” concept where you buy a bucket of bits (we’ve all seen the UPTO 16MB commercials). This is a whole additional discussion which I don’t want to get into here, but in short I refer to that advertisement as fraudband.

So with this bucket-of-bits concept you pay a monthly fee for a connection and you use it as much as you want. The problem is that the *more* you use it, the *less* the provider makes for your usage. This is an upside down business model and I’ve tried to think of other companies that are incented to sell you a product that you shouldn’t use (help me out by commenting if you know of a successful business model that follows this upside down paradigm (and don’t say cell phone companies)).

What they are doing by opening this door is saying that your monthly fee (let’s say it’s $34.99) is good for upto 250GB of usage. If you exceed this amount you will get less traffic or have to pay an additional fee. But what happens for those *good* broadband users who don’t use their allocated 250GB? Do they get to a refund on the unused portion of their bits? How about roll-over bits?

If the formula is $34.99 for upto 250GB of data … can I pay upto $34.99 for what I actually use?

I work from home and as such am probably one of the heavier users. I also watch Netflix on demand on my TV via my TivoHD XL. I rent online movies from Amazon as well. I use Vonage. I don’t do it regularly (as it makes my VoIP phone almost unusable), but I have been known to share files via P2P and download a lot of content from non P2P sites as well.

My guess is that I’m a heavier user and that I’d exceed the upto usage, but when I don’t I will be doing everything I can to get credited for what I didn’t use in a particular month.

What’s amazing about the numbers is that 15% more adults are watching online videos than using social networking sites. Another number that’s amazing is the “near-universal” use by 18-29 year olds (old media beware).

I work with a lot of communities who still think that “broadband” is just high-speed internet and nothing more (which granted, all this online video viewing is occurring over today’s broadband). I often coach them on the fact that broadband will deliver all of your telecom services in the future including services we don’t even know about yet as well as those we do (like cable TV, telephone, etc.).  As more and more folks experience video online, they will pressure their local community leaders to become active in promoting broadband availability and broadband adoption so that they can experience the same services that those of us who live in more urban or suburban areas do.

Personally, I watch videos on my TV over Netflix from my Tivo, but also have a MythTV computer acting as a video server where I have ripped most of my DVDs and downloaded (mostly legal) videos.  I also watch plenty of youtube, google video and plenty of old media sites (like comedy central).

If you don’t have broadband, why not?  Is it too expensive or is it not available?  If it’s not available, contact your local elected officials and ask what they are doing to bring broadband to your area. It’s not just for browsing the web anymore and has serious economic development impacts on your locality.

• My cable modem works fine, why would anyone need more speed?
• What does fiber get me that DSL or Cable HSD does not?
• Just how fast is fiber?
• What can I do with fiber that I can’t do with my current broadband?
• 640K of memory should be enough for anybody.
• Should I have more fiber in my diet?

In addition to discussions around the economic development benefits of broadband, I am often looking for methods to demonstrate the difference between different technologies.  I came across a Windows application from some site in the Netherlands (it had a .nl extension) that is sort of what I’m looking for (you can dig around on the Dutch language site and eventually find an English application).

The application is very simple but effective. I would think that just about any computer science student could gen up something like this.  The only problem with the application is that it doesn’t have Cable Modem services which are quite common in the areas where I speak. Some additional features I would like to see would be the ability to customize the application and maybe enter in custom speeds, custom file sizes, or even indicate higher quality of service through a simulated data stream (like a choppy video vs. a smooth video).

Tools like these make demonstrating some of the more difficult concepts to grasp to network neophytes easier. You can almost see a light bulb go off above someone’s head when you show them the differences for something like an Xray or an engineering drawing.

If anyone knows of other offline or standalone demonstration tools, I would be very interested in seeing them and trying to integrate them into public meetings and education events.

Online tools are nice and I would be interested in seeing them as well. However, I am often speaking in locations without internet access which is why I would like offline and standalone applications.