The Ethics of Bandwidth

Here’s an interesting question that came up last week about cable modems and Internet access – and exactly what each customer is entitled to under a supposedly “unlimited” service agreement. According to the news reports, Comcast Cable has decided to cap their customers’ Internet downloads at 250 gigabytes per residential account per month, calling this amount excessive for a residential customer. A quick check will tell you that this will come out to over 50 million average emails, or 124 full-length movies downloaded at standard resolution, which does seem a bit excessive for only 30 days, but the real issue here is what “unlimited” actually means in practice – and if the company has an ethical responsibility to the rest of its customers to protect them from having their cable modems jammed by a single user who is downloading 4 or five movies a day (or the equivalent). It seemed like it might be worth a closer look…

The first question that comes to mind is what a customer can reasonably expect from a service that is described (and sold) as being effectively infinite. In practice, most “unlimited” service contracts for whatever form of media delivery (cell phone, text message, Internet, etc.) have only meant that the customer does not pay any additional fees for service, regardless of the actual volume of data they use. These service plans would more correctly be called “flat rate” services, and in fact are usually called just that in the contracts, along with a deeply-buried clause about cancellation for excessive use. Thus, the debate on deceptive marketing and misleading advertising goes back to before the customer ever signs up. It is quite possible that some of the people who saw the term “unlimited” in print ads or on television actually had an expectation of unlimited usage, and failed to read the fine print that said otherwise…

In most states, however, not reading (or claiming that you didn’t read) a contract will not protect you from the consequences of signing it. California, in particular, is sometimes called the “Anybody can contract to do anything” State, because you are assumed to have read, understood and agreed to anything you actually sign. If you signed a contract that specified that you could be billed extra (or disconnected) for “excessive use” you can go to court and argue whether 250 gigabytes is actually excessive, but you can’t expect to get an infinite amount of downloads just because you thought you could. And as long as Comcast isn’t actually charging you more for your monthly service than their usual flat rate, you can’t contend that they are in violation of your contract…

A much more interesting point is how the “rights” of these extreme high-end users impact the rest of the customers on the system. Modern fiber-optic systems can carry a lot of data in a relatively small physical space, but there are still hard limits to how much volume can be transmitted over a specific cable line – and cable modems are already infamous for slowing down if a lot of people are attempting to use the same line. So if there’s a power user on your block, downloading over 250 gigabytes each month, and this usage is making your Internet service run slower, does the company have a responsibility to restrict the power user and free up bandwidth for you? Or should the company just let the download speeds fall where they may? Should Comcast be legally required to expand its capacity to give everyone all of the downloads they want? What if the cost of expanding their capacity bankrupts the company, putting thousands of people out of work and destroying the fortunes of their shareholders?

It’s worth thinking about…