My brother-in-law and his family, who live in Belvidere, Ill., this week dropped their TV service with Comcast and signed up with DIRECTV. This is a story of a man and a company not only trying to settle their differences, but to make their bond stronger. But, in the end, it’s a tale of loss.

The trouble began when Kevin and Carol decided they wanted to upgrade their TV service with Comcast. Kevin got on the horn and requested that Comcast upgrade his service -- basic cable with two movie packages and a resulting $10 monthly discount on his broadband service – to an HD premium package with multiple movie stations.

But Comcast refused to give him the $10 monthly discount as part of this new package. Kevin told his new cable TV provider (originally Insight before the Comcast acquisition) this made him unhappy and instead opted for a lower-level HD package to keep the $10 discount. The former Insight folks agreed that it all made no sense, but told him there was nothing they could do; it was Comcast policy. So Kevin and Carol, being the strong people they are, soldiered on with their less-than-optimal service package.

Because Kevin and Carol are glass-have-full sorts, they later excitedly attempted to tune in to their new high-definition channels to try to enjoy an enhanced viewing experience. But, again, their efforts were thwarted. Alas, the HD channels didn’t work.

Having recently run into a roadblock with Comcast, Kevin this time decided to avoid trying to find a solution at this company and instead joined up with DIRECTV. He and his lovely family are now enjoying the premium package with DIRECTV. They still use Comcast’s cable modem service, but intend to explore other options for broadband after their charming houseguests return to Arizona.

Dear reader, I tell you this tell because we all hear a lot about studies and data on larger trends related to sales and customer retention at the telcos and cablecos, and I know that for those companies it’s really those numbers that count. But sometimes it can be instructional to look at these things at the micro level.

News came out this week that Google Inc. filed a complaint with Canadian regulators saying Bell Canada should be prohibited from slowing P2P applications. Of course, this is just the latest in a long line of battles in the war over bandwidth metering/net neutrality.

Comcast and BitTorrent began a similar exercise earlier this year. Time Warner Cable’s test of bandwidth metering also has created a stir.

Of course, the whole problem centers around the fact that new bandwidth-loving applications like video, particularly in peer-to-peer applications, is sucking up a lot of bandwidth. And the network operators say the investment required to support heavy users of such applications often is more than the revenue they receive from those customers via their current Internet access pricing.

Deep packet inspection (DPI) vendor Sandvine recently released research that shows many of its service provider customers still are finding both sides of their residential Internet connection to be dominated by peer-to-peer file sharing traffic.

So, the question remains: What is a network operator to do so it can continue to justify investment in its network? It seems like a tough question.

However, one account I read mentioned that all the fuss over bandwidth metering is overblown given that if the Time Warner Cable test results in heavy Internet users fleeing to find other ISPs, then the cableco’s trial will have been a success, with both Time Warner Cable and those customers getting what they want.

Nonetheless, a lot of people in the communications industry believe finding the right balance between an open Internet that allows customers to pick and choose their applications and service providers while at the same time providing a model that enables network owners to justify the ongoing expenses of investing in and operating the underlying infrastructure is a huge deal.

Some folks have suggested that perhaps the solution is bringing together the network operators and over-the-top providers like Google and Vonage to work out a solution, preferably without involving regulators any further. But when this discussion arose as I was moderating an ATIS TechThink panel at NXTcomm earlier this summer, an audience member indicated that companies like Apple, Google, et al, have no incentive to come to the table for such a deal.

What do you think is the most workable solution?

Those in the telecom industry like to spend a lot of time talking about applications, but typically dedicate very little of that discussion to specifics. So, given many of us already are in a holiday mood, let me share with you my ideas for a fun leisure-time application that service providers and/or third-party application developers might create that ties into one of my new interests – geocaching.

For those of you not familiar with geocaching, it’s basically a treasure hunt for which you use coordinates, available at geocaching sites on the Internet, and your GPS device to find messages and other little doodads (such as the plastic figurines you’d get in a McDonald’s Happy Meal) that are hidden in public areas like your neighborhood park. Basically, it’s a good excuse to get out and hike, and it adds a little adventure to the experience, particularly for pint-size explorers like my 8-year-old daughter, Hannah. It’s pretty popular with families in my neighborhood, which is nestled into the mountains, in Scottsdale, Arizona, and is a worldwide phenomenon.

Geocaching is great just as it is, but it also seems ripe as a jumping-off point for a wide variety of communications tie-ins beyond just the GPS aspect.

 For example, advertisers could do commercial geocache events at the local mall with the cache being a gift or coupon from their store; this might work especially well during seasons in which it is either too hot or too cold to be outside geocaching.

This would create an opportunity for mobile or online advertising of such events. And coupons for gifts or discounts could even be sent automatically to users’ cell phones if they came within range of the cache. This same idea of sending coupons or other things of value to the user’s mobile device could apply for outdoor geocaching as well.

And there is also an opportunity to create online geocaching games that would be nice during those times that your child wants to geocache, but you can’t or don’t want to go out. Again, this could be just another application to drive traffic on the network, could be a site against which to sell advertising or could be a venue through which vendors could offer other promotions.

While most folks today use their GPS-specific devices for geocaching, but also tend to carry mobile phones, I noticed that there is now available something called the Trimble Geocache Navigator. It is being marketed as the first fully featured geocaching application for the mobile phone. It is linked directly to Geocaching.com's cache listings, so users with GPS-enabled mobile phones on Sprint, Nextel, Boost or Southern Linc networks, or BlackBerry smartphones with built-in GPS, can get started without a standalone GPS unit, cables or cache data printouts.

Neat.

I’m not saying we’d necessarily need a new, integrated device to expand the popularity and commercialization of geocaching. But I do think that with the right products and marketing (and given all the press on how folks need to exercise more while also embracing the environment), it seems to me that some of these ideas around geocaching might really have legs.