> > If Netflix were a good citizen, it would (a) let ISPs cache content; (b) > pay them > equitably for direct connections (smaller and more remote ISPs have higher > costs > per customer and should get MORE per account than Comcast, rather than > receiving > nothing); and (c) work with ISPs to develop updated technology that makes > streaming > more efficient. Bandwidth is expensive, and unicast streaming without > caching is by > far the most inefficient conceivable way of delivering "fat" content to > the consumer. >
I noted most of the discussion seems to point to Internet bandwidth as a cost factor to ISPs, but I wonder what's the impact of Netflix on access network costs ? They might be harder to measure or directly correlate to streaming usage, but for non-wired networks (which is usually the case in rural networks), this impact sounds more harmful to me than uplink costs. Rubens