[DM-MUG] downloadable movies : impact on ISPs

[jim lagnese]

I know Verizon went FO on the east coast and a friend of mine is getting BB
at something like 10mb or better. I have 7mb at home, but in reality, it's
more like 3-5 depending on the connection...At best. We all knew this would
happen. 


On 9/8/06 7:04 AM, "Darcy Baston" <darcybaston at mac.com> wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Dmmug mailing list
> Use this Address to send mail to the list:
> Dmmug at dmmug.org
> Use this page to modify subscription options:
> http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/dmmug