For many years in the early aughts, broadband providers insisted they needed to impose usage caps and costly overage fees to help manage network congestion. By 2015, leaked documents from Comcast revealed that was never true. In the years since, even industry CEOs have acknowledged that the limits are little more than an additional tax on captive customers in uncompetitive U.S. broadband markets.
As COVID-19 struck, ISPs quickly bowed to pressure to eliminate such restrictions so home-bound Americans weren't inundated with significantly higher bills. In a press release, Comcast makes it clear that its network has (gasp), performed perfectly well under the added load -- despite a 32% increase in upstream traffic and 18% increase in downstream traffic. There's been a 77% surge in gaming downloads, a 37% bump in streaming video consumption, and a 228% bump in VOIP and teleconferencing use. This is, Comcast says, causing no issues for Comcast:
"Our ongoing, proactive network investment to add fiber and capacity has put us in a good position to manage the increases that we are experiencing today. While the COVID-19 experience is new and unprecedented, the Internet ecosystem is flexible and performing the way it was designed. We engineer the network to handle spikes and shifts in usage, and what we have seen so far with COVID-19 is within our capacity."
Many ISPs, like Comcast, backed off the "congestion" claims a few years ago after their own memos, and numerous researchers and journalists, kept debunking them.
(Score: 2, Funny) by gmby on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:57PM (1 child)
It's coming; already in space. The INet2 will be the savor of us all! Thanks to Elon Muck
Now if he could host our sites in the SpaceNebula(c) all will be cool. No country could claim ownership.
Bye
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Freeman on Wednesday April 29 2020, @12:44AM
I for one have high hopes for Starlink. Probably too high, but any competition in the telecom business is good. Just look at google fiber. They barely made a dent, but everywhere they went, AT&T, et al, magically made their service better.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"