By Lewis Rothkop
February 16, 2009
When the major consumer ISPs began to announce that use of their broadband services would be metered, the mainstream and trade press warned: “Bandwidth hogs, beware.” But it’s really publishers and marketers who should be wary.
In Beaumont, Texas, where Time Warner Cable initially began to “trial” metered usage nearly a year ago, Multichannel News reported that the caps would be tested between 5-40GB per month. Think that sounds like more than you’d ever use? Today one of the most popular downloads in the XBOX Live Marketplace is a movie called “Eagle Eye” — which, downloaded in HD, is 5GB. You can see the problem.
As the ISPs expand metering to other markets, they insist that the metering of usage is to prevent those so-called “bandwidth hogs” from slowing down the works for everyone. Indeed, we’ve all experienced frustration at work when our email attachment takes forever to send because “that guy” is watching the latest viral video at his desk. And we’re all well aware of the very real damage done to the entertainment industry caused by those who traffic in pirated content.
To read the rest of the post, visit MediaPost’s Video Insider.