Comcast To Remove Data Cap, Implement Tiered Pricing 329
StikyPad writes "Comcast is reportedly removing its oft-maligned 250GB data cap, but don't get too excited. In what appears to be an effort to capitalize on Nielsen's Law, the Internet's version of Moore's Law, Comcast is introducing tiered data pricing. The plan is to include 300GB with the existing price of service, and charge $10 for every 50GB over that limit. As with current policy, Xfinity On Demand traffic will not count against data usage, which Comcast asserts is because the traffic is internal, not from the larger Internet. There has, however, been no indication that the same exemption would apply to any other internal traffic. AT&T and Time Warner have tried unsuccessfully to implement tiered pricing in the past, meeting with strong push back from customers and lawmakers alike. With people now accustomed to, if not comfortable with, tiered data plans on their smartphones, will the public be more receptive to tiered pricing on their wired Internet connections as well, or will they once again balk at a perceived bilking?"
Even better - just meter the whole damn thing (Score:1, Interesting)
Charge a market rate per GB and charge me for what I use. Gas, power, and water utilities manage to deliver and upkeep what's arguably a more complicated infrastructure with the same model, why should data be any different? Data at this point should just be a public utility. Let the upstream providers sell you what they offer on their terms, but keep the last mile locally controlled and regulated.
I Hope Not (Score:5, Interesting)
I really hope that people won't give in without at least expressing their anger to Comcast by finding another ISP if available, when they implement tiered pricing. I hope Comcast users push back like us TW users did.
One of the MAIN reasons these ISP's are introducing tiered pricing is simply to avoid the costs of upgrading their infrastructure. Instead of modernizing their networks and equipment to handle today's higher demand for more and more bandwidth, they simply implement overage fees and/or tiered pricing to keep people's usage within the confines of what their infrastructure can handle. It really is a scam on so many different levels. This is why the US is so far behind in broadband when looking at other country's broadband statistics.
Money hungry as ever, the largest ISP's over here just don't see the need to provide a higher level of service to home users when it means investing hundreds of $Millions, possibly more, to do it.
In addition to that, you have places like Rochester, NY where no competition can EVER break into the market because 1 or 2 ISP's have monopolized the space for new fiber and/or copper runs, effectively creating a stagnant market where users have no choices for service (ISP's such as EarthLink give the ILLUSION of choice, but really only lease space on another larger ISP's lines, such as Time Warner).
Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing (Score:5, Interesting)
That makes zero sense. The more the datalines are used, the more electricity is being burned-up.
The electricity it takes to send a 0 or 1 down the line is negligable. The only power savings you're getting from running under capacity is if you're so under utilized that you can put your servers to sleep. That's equivalent to reducing network capacity, which we would very much like to discourage.
"internal traffic"? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd love to see someone implement a bittorrent client with an option to limit peers to other Comcast customers, and then see how they start redefining "internal traffic"...
Re:I Hope Not (Score:4, Interesting)
>>>This is why the US is so far behind in broadband when looking at other country's broadband statistics.
False. According to speedtest.net, the average U.S. speed is 1 Mbit/s faster than the average speed for the E.U. And yes there are some EU states that have very fast internet, but there are some U.S. states that also have very fast internet: Like New Jersey. New York. Washington.
Vice-versa there are EU states like Greece and Spain and Portugal that have internet slower than the U.S. average. Thank your lucky stars you don't like there. (Or in the UK where they have decent speeds, but are censoring the net.) The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence, but rarely is.
Re:Most won't notice (Score:5, Interesting)
Around 2008, my local ISP was formed. Sometime around 2009 they implemented data caps of 600 MB/day, as most users didn't exceed that amount. Today, the cap is exactly the same as was first implemented.
300 GB might seem like a lot right now. Give it a few years...
How bout this (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a cable modem at home
I have one at work
1 mile apart and they are 4 hops apart..
before I got a commercial account at home, I was warned about the bandwidth
95% of which was backups from work to home
(I keep two NAS's synchronized)
would that be internal enough for you?
This is relevant to my interests (Score:5, Interesting)
Comcast put me on probation last year. I move a lot of data. All non-commercial. I asked if there was a service plan that would allow me to move more data. The conversation went something like this:
"No."
"I'm willing to pay more money to be able to move more data."
"That isn't an option."
"What about business service? I know you also provide service to businesses and charge more for the SLA and heavy traffic."
"I don't have any information about the caps on business service plans but you can't change your plan or open a new account when you're on probation. In six months, you can inquire about business service."
"That's ridiculous. I didn't know there was any problem with my usage until 15 minutes ago. That's the first I heard that there was an issue. I'm offering to give you more money for a higher level of service. You're in business to sell the service I'm that I'm trying to buy. Why would you not want to take my money?"
"I'm sorry, sir, you cannot change your service while on probation. If you go over the 250 gig limit at any time while you're on probation, your account will be closed and you won't be able to open another account for 12 months."
It baffles me. If they'd offered me 50 gig chunks of data at $10, I would have taken it. It's not cheap but it's not outrageous and it's better than being banned from purchasing their services for a year. My only other options here are "up to" 3 meg DSL and satellite. Oh, and 3G cellular. Hell, they would have made a lot of money from me because I would have said, "Screw it, it's only another $10." Probably would have been paying an extra $20-40 every month.
Re:Most won't notice (Score:5, Interesting)
Around 2008, my local ISP was formed. Sometime around 2009 they implemented data caps of 600 MB/day, as most users didn't exceed that amount. Today, the cap is exactly the same as was first implemented.
300 GB might seem like a lot right now. Give it a few years...
Comcast, Verizon, etc -- they're all banking their entire futures on this very idea. They're hoping to get in a reasonable -- for now -- cap, and then in 5 years when our bandwidth usage is way more commonplace, welp, their hope is to get us right around the $50 a month mark... and $50ish in over usage fees a month, every month, until some external market force economically forces them to stop.
Think about it. In 5-10 years, we won't have Cable, we'll have HD Video on Demand Networks, something like Hulu or Netflix instead.
Imagine when Hulu (or rather, a Hulu competitor, since Hulu has been compromised [gizmodo.com]) gets the bright idea to make "channels" where you get X number of shows at differing points of the day, all streaming via a Roku box or something similar, with the option to switch back and forth in the channel's timeline if you want. All the benefits of a standard Cable Channel for Mom and Pop ("The news is on at 7, then it's Cops, and Letterman"), with all the benefits of Video on Demand ("We missed Cops, we'll watch it right now and Letterman later tonight").
Sounds great, right? Well, it won't be once you get the $50 a month ISP bill + $50 a month Overusage bill, every month, for the rest of your life. Which the Bandwidth Middlemen are literally banking their futures on.
Re:Most won't notice (Score:4, Interesting)
That was from three years ago, which I believe to be before Netflix even offered streaming service. A lot has changed since that now-obsolete report came out.