Internet and TV provider, Comcast, have a huge hold on a lot of territory. Not just digital territory, but physical space. Many addresses only have access to high power internet through Comcast. They’ve recognized this and have used it to their advantage in having a legitimate monopoly. When you wait on the phone or in a line at a service center for 30 minutes to return a box, it’s because you have nowhere else to go. So why are people on Yelp, giving 206 out of the 236 reviews, giving a 1 star rating and telling people to stay away and beware when they immediately disregard their own advice?
It seems like there is a misplaced blame. Do we blame other internet provider services for not branching out as far as the Walmart of Internet has while doing nothing? A lot of people need high-power internet. It’s not just for what people might think; downloading a lot of entertainment suited for adults. Streaming video games, the practice where anyone, be them a popular pop culture figure or a random nobody, can put a webcam on their face and use computer-intensive software to, at the same time, record the game they’re playing while constantly having a sustainable and powerful upload rate in order to present their users with the same viewing experience they themselves are receiving. If the upload rate is poor, or the computer is not as powerful, the stream that the viewers watch will be sluggish, low definition and not entertaining.
High powered internet is required for this kind of activity, and a lot of people stream for their livelihoods. Note that I don’t say High-speed because a lot of people buy internet for the cheapest they can and wonder why something downloads slowly. An example is anything under 1 MB/s (~1000KB/s) is terrible, but people might tell you it’s “high-speed” because you’ll check your internet and it’ll be fine. The fact is, companies are deceitful. There are a lot of factors like ping (how far you are away from the server your computer is communicating with) which immediately cuts into the download speed, making 20MB/s to 500 KB/s. That’s a bit extreme, but possible. Comcast understands all of this very well and has managed to place themselves in all the right areas where no one else will give the internet speeds they advertise.
Unfortunately, until there’s a problem, the service is usually from on par to pretty good, but good luck dealing with the inevitability. Comcast will laugh at you behind bullet proof glass when you are in 30 minute queue lines or on two hour phone calls sitting hundreds of miles away. They inhibit your capacity to have a job, an entertaining experience and a fan base when a problem arises.
What comes next?
Streaming as a form of entertainment has blown up over the last 3 years, starting with Justin TV. A man put a video camera on a hat and hit play and gave you a pseudo Truman Show-esque viewing experience. His life became yours.
Now, it’s a sport. An electronic sport, or e-sport, that has filled stadiums with thousands of people to watch video games played in team matches that take equally as much brain power and strategic skill as football would require agility and strength. While for many this phenomena is difficult to grasp, “How could video games ever be sports? Weren’t those the guys we always called nerds for not playing sports?” the sport has gained a lot of attention and a lot of money, where some prize pools and audiences are larger than golf tournaments and other hugely known events that have been around for decades.
Twenty year-olds are taking home more prize money playing video games than you did playing years of golf. Don’t mistake the training process. After a certain period of time, playing video games for 9 hours a day, which is exactly what players of games such as League of Legends do to prepare for tournaments, will melt your brain and mentally exhaust you, but this is training and there is real money, teams, people and reputations on the line. Just like in sports, you have fans and spectators, betting and lots of emotion.
Who’s to blame?
Do other companies have an obligation to spread out as much as Comcast has and compete for internet superiority? Google Fiber has been making its way around using inlaid infrastructure underground transferring data via light, instead of electricity, to give speeds of 1GB/s (~1000MB/s). It’s weird and difficult to understand and often sounds a little sci-fi. Cities need to make their own new ISP’s (internet service providers) in order to give their citizens more power to their options, while still being competitive in providing legitimately useful speeds that do more than just check your email.