Comcast's marginal rate
Aug. 30th, 2008 06:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dsrtaoWhat upsets me is that Comcast's marginal rate is so clearly bogus.
They advertise cable modem Internet service for $33/month if you buy a combo deal from them, and $50/month by itself. Let's say that $33 represents the exact marginal cost to Comcast; that has no profit margin associated with it (bogus) and is 100% of the cost of delivering a 10Mb/s line, equipment, plus 250GB of transfer (bogus).
So, 770Kb/s costs $33/month; a 1Mb/s cap ought to cost $44/month. That gives 82GB on top of the 250 -- 332GB/month.
Each additional 10GB in a month ought to cost $1.38.
What is Comcast actually going to charge? Well, they were going to charge $15 per 10GB, a markup of a mere thousand percent or so. (The current FAQ indicates that they're going to 'counsel' their customers, then boot them off.)
How does this compare to a free market? In the most directly comparable situation I can think of, Cogent will sell a 100Mb/s connection to an office in an already-connected building for less than $1000/month. They have no caps on usage at all (nobody would stand for it!) and so you can see that they charge 75 cents for what Comcast charges $33.
And if Comcast implements the $15/10GB charge, their price goes up to $120.
They advertise cable modem Internet service for $33/month if you buy a combo deal from them, and $50/month by itself. Let's say that $33 represents the exact marginal cost to Comcast; that has no profit margin associated with it (bogus) and is 100% of the cost of delivering a 10Mb/s line, equipment, plus 250GB of transfer (bogus).
So, 770Kb/s costs $33/month; a 1Mb/s cap ought to cost $44/month. That gives 82GB on top of the 250 -- 332GB/month.
Each additional 10GB in a month ought to cost $1.38.
What is Comcast actually going to charge? Well, they were going to charge $15 per 10GB, a markup of a mere thousand percent or so. (The current FAQ indicates that they're going to 'counsel' their customers, then boot them off.)
How does this compare to a free market? In the most directly comparable situation I can think of, Cogent will sell a 100Mb/s connection to an office in an already-connected building for less than $1000/month. They have no caps on usage at all (nobody would stand for it!) and so you can see that they charge 75 cents for what Comcast charges $33.
And if Comcast implements the $15/10GB charge, their price goes up to $120.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-30 11:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-30 04:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-30 09:52 pm (UTC)I despise ComCrap but as Elric point's out this is currently the only game in town for lots of NH residents. It took lots of arm twisting to find out that I'm 26,100 cable feet from the CO, and we all know what the distance limitations on ADSL2+ are, don't we.
Of course, if ComCrap acutally re-engineered their backbone and stopped buying transit, it's costs would go down. On the other hand, they treat their engineers like expendable trash and marketing and sales are all powerful.
And this is after they spent gigabux on Cisco HFRs so they could put in 40Gbit links.
Oh yea, for those reading this who don't know me, I do this stuff for a living and it galls me no end that I can't provide my own service, and I refuse to get a T1.