Calculating the effect of download caps on TV Everywhere

How Much 'TV Everywhere' Will Comcast's Caps Allow? [Bit Rate]

There's an ongoing conversation about the heavy use of bandwidth.  The question is how to create an economic model that supports both consumers who want to use a lot of bandwidth vs. how to create a heavy-usage business model that supports service providers' ability to get a return on their continued investment.  After last week's announcement by Comcast and Time Warner (the content company -- TW CEO Jeff Bewkes pictured here), some users questioned how much consumption is too much consumption when viewing video online.  Todd Spangler at Multichannel News has run the numbers, and online video enthusiasts should breathe a sigh of relief.

Spangler used existing high-quality streaming video episodes at ABC.com to calculate the consumption from an hour of online video.  His conclusion was that it came to roughly the equivalent of 500 megabytes of consumption. Assuming TV Everywhere video weighs in at about the same size, it would take 200 hours of video streaming viewing to consume 100 GB. That's between 6.5 and 7 hours of streaming video viewing, every single day of the month. It seems to me that that's a lot of usage and an amount that would be consumed by very few broadband users. 

This subject goes back to the heart of the usage debate that we've discussed in the past.  I have argued (and endured the subsequent scorn of the opponents of caps) that there was probably a set of limits that would be fair to everyone.  Very heavy users would pay a little more, light users would pay a little less and ISP's would be economically incented to invest in more and more capacity in their networks to support growing usage.

Don't get me wrong.  That's not to say that one package fits all.  Heavy users could have the option to choose a plan that gives them a huge or even unlimited package of bandwidth while light users could opt for a lesser plan that reduces their base monthly rate from today's flat rate billing plan.  Not a new concept -- think cell phones but with much higher consumption levels.

For the time being, Comcast has said that they are not implementing consumption-based billing.  Instead, it simply has set a limit of 250 GB per month on all users.  That's a huge amount of consumption and according to Spangler, it's somewhere around 20 days of watching video, morning, noon and night. I'd say that's certainly more than enough to keep most users entertained, while leaving plenty of room within the cap for other Internet activities.

Comcast has stated that only a tiny fraction of its customers ever surpass the 250 GB download cap, which it instituted to allow a level of reasonable management of its network.  They do this to ensure that all customers have an enjoyable online experience. And even in the age of streaming long-form video, it appears that Comcast's cap allows an enormous amount of online video viewing.

Comments

[DM]

Michael,

Just like commenters on Mr. Spangler's article are pointing out, true high-quality data streams are going to require a lot more bandwidth than what was being used for these calculations.

In my opinion, the "TV Everywhere" concept can only be successful if the video being offered is higher quality than what is generally accessed via the traditional delivery method. If it isn't at least the same quality then there is little value in the service to customers.

[marie72]

DON'T SAY UNLIMITED if it is NOT!!