[DM-MUG] downloadable movies : impact on ISPs

[Dave Weis]

On Fri, 8 Sep 2006, Darcy Baston wrote:
> 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.

It goes both ways. I don't think people realize that even though US 
bandwidth prices seem higher than other countries, we don't have the usage 
caps that other countries do and don't have quotas on off-continent 
traffic. The wholesale prices for bandwidth is much higher than consumers 
pay. If you wanted a completely non-oversold connection you could get it 
but it would be about 5-10x higher than you are paying now.

-- 
Dave Weis
djweis at internetsolver.com
http://www.internetsolver.com/