[DM-MUG] downloadable movies : impact on ISPs

[Darcy Baston]

Amazon has launched their UnBoxed.com service, that lets Windows  
users download full DVD quality movies (2 hours of content = 2.1 GB  
+-). You can watch it while it's downloading, but they suggest a 54  
minute wait to cache/buffer enough on a 1.5 Mbps broadband connection.

Rumors are flying of course about Apple launching their own lower  
priced movie buy/rent service next week.

If Apple follows suit next week or not, are the world's Internet  
Service Providers ready for the sudden jump in bandwidth consumption?  
Has anyone thought of what impact motivating people who usually check  
email, browse the web and buy 2-3 iTunes songs a month, to start  
gobbling up multiple gigs of bandwidth at a time as they begin to  
adopt this convenience?

Can you imagine how huge a spike there will be around midnight on a  
Thursday, when people choose to start their downloads to have them  
transfer overnight in preparation for a Friday night family viewing?  
Tt can take 4-7 hours on a slower broadband connection to download  
one of these 2 gig movies, so I would do it overnight and sleep on it.

I'm sure it's an ISP's nightmare to have its hundreds to thousands of  
customers jump from 5 gigs a month of consumption each, to 20 gigs  
each (assuming a modest one movie purchase/rental per week).

Or, will it be their blessing that they can have a new marketable  
reason for offering more expensive monthly packages for customers who  
want to jump into movie downloads? Maybe they can then catch the  
dollars of a bunch of enthusiastic torrent users too?

Any thoughts?

Darcy