Comcast is the dominant provider of Internet service to households in many markets across America. When I first moved to Chicago, it was the provider we went with as well. Back in Minnesota, we were working to move away from it due to a little glitch they had where households in the Twin Cities were, at times, unable to access the Web sites for the college I worked for.

It took months of conversations and a good number of angry students and parents to get the situation resolved.

There was also talk of Comcast placing preferences on some sites and applications while restricting others on their network. In response, many groups around the country have focused on the concept of net neutrality, a measure that would prevent Internet service providers from giving preferential treatment to certain content on their network.

Today, I read an article, “Comcast Vows to Throttle Customers“. (Thanks, Bryan Alexander of NITLE, for pointing me to it.)

In a nutshell, Comcast is now trying to limit the amount of bandwidth that certain subscribers receive. If they are heavy Internet users, their service will be slowed down in random intervals of ten to twenty minutes. It is still not certain that this plan will become a reality, but let’s follow this train of thought and see what the impact for education could be.

If your students like to watch movies through Netflix, download television series from iTunes, and/or plays online video games, they may end up falling into Comcast’s ‘targeted’ demographic. So when it comes time to watch the online video you posted for class, they may encounter problems watching it. If they are taking a timed multiple-choice quiz, they may not be able to complete it in time due to technical difficulties.

As an instructor, it is imperative to be sensitive to any technical issues that may arise that are out of the student’s control. You also want to be sure to have a wide range of activities and assignments. This is ideal in that it provides high and low bandwidth assignments for the student (and even offline readings) as well as allowing multiple learning styles to be represented in the course activities.

Comcast is still in hearings with the FCC on all of this. Only time will tell what will come of it. However, it’s something to be cognizant about in the meantime.