While on the conference call to announce the TV Everywhere initiative being promoted by Time Warner (s twx) and Comcast (s cmcsa), I asked Comcast CEO Brian Roberts if the content being streamed as part of this new effort would be free from the 250GB-a-month bandwidth quota his company has started imposing on this customers.
His answer: No. The streaming bandwidth consumed when watching videos using the TV everywhere system. would be counted towards the total monthly bandwidth usage quota. He said (and I paraphrase) that since You’re not going to get close enough to hitting the monthly quota anyway, he said, so why worry? We (and many of our readers) disagree. We feel that while 250GB might look very generous today, it isn’t much when you start streaming or downloading HD-quality video.
I think it’s also disingenuous for the company to promote the usage of web-based video (and thus the consumption of more bandwidth) while imposing a meter on the bandwidth and at the same time charging for the same video (as cable subscription.) Now that’s some double-dipping, baby!
