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?"
Fiber needs to move faster... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Most won't notice (Score:5, Informative)
I was getting worried about our usage at home, since the kids now watch a few hours of Neflix a day along with out other internet usage. I called Comcast because I was having trouble finding where on our account management page the data was about how much we actually used each month - and when they showed me where to find it I was amazed at how little it was. 30-70GB a month on average, occasionally peaking past 100GB. So even in what I would consider a moderate to heavy internet usage household we were way under the existing cap, and will still be with a 300GB limit.
The only problem I can see here is if they don't notify users when they approach that cap. If something happened and I went way over, but was never warned till the bill came, I would be upset.
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300 GB will eventually begin to seem small as video data transmission rates continue to increase, but for the time being, 300GB / mo. is very generous.
I'll bet that at least half of all Comcast users watch video online on a frequent basis, and they all probably feel like they are in the top 5% of users. This is why everyone is so worried about data caps. In reality, most people will be shocked to see how far they are away from th limit.
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...
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:5, Informative)
The future is now. My house lives on Netflix and Vonage. We went to my fathers house to watch TV, and the kids couldn't understand why they kept missing their show because of these "commercial" things. And when their pappy said "I need to change the channel real quick to see the weather", the look of confusion on their face can only mildy be explained as hysterical.
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Maybe they're using low-quality feeds? I watch Hulu and Youtube at 240p, which is only ~200 megabyte per hour streamed. So it doesn't add up to a lot even over a month of viewing.
BTW comcast has a disincentive to provide unlimited: They don't want you canceling their TV service. ...
Ditto Time-Warner, Cox, Cablevision, Verizon,
Now I just watch my TV free off the antenna.
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Maybe they're using low-quality feeds? I watch Hulu and Youtube at 240p, which is only ~200 megabyte per hour streamed. So it doesn't add up to a lot even over a month of viewing.
Even a high quality feed on Netflix doesn't eat up that much data. It doesn't even come close to saturating my 12mbit DSL connection when I watch it, and even though I watch maybe 10h of Netflix a week, my monthly usage has only gone up by about 30GB.
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Interestingly, I also tried to call up this month to cancel our cable TV service. We rarely use it any more, mostly depending on Netflix + Hulu (the free stuff) + Amazon Prime (wish there was a Media Center plugin!). I thought it would be a great way to save $10-20 a month... and boy was I wrong!
You see, as long as I pay for cable TV - even the most basic package which we have been using, at around $15 a month - we get a discounted rate on cable internet. Our total bill is ~$70 or so with taxes.
However,
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Interesting - Verizon FiOS is about $46/mo less if you drop cable from a phone/tv/internet bundle (note to pedants: I'm including the set top box "rental" fees).
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The channels like ESPN and HBO that you have to get individually or on higher tiers get paid on a per subscriber basis to provide content. But channels like HSN pay the cable company to provide them viewers. So if you cancel your service HSN pays your cable company less money. Since they already need to do hookups and maintain the infrastructure to your house if you have an internet connection, that HSN money is just gravy. So it makes perfect sense for them to charge you more.
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I called up my cable company and told them I was seriously thinking of canceling my service due to the costs being so high. I pointed out that new users get one rate and are quoted that they will save $X. I pointed out that the rate I pay is much more than $X more than the new user rate. They locked me into a much better rate for a year. Next year, I plan on calling back and threatening to leave (again) if they don't reduce my rates.
Meanwhile, I'll also be working out a system to not have to have cable
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This trick has worked for decades with all manner of subscription-oriented, consumer-related companies. Glad it worked for you, but don't stop with the cable company: There's a good chance you're paying too much for other things that you use around your house, too.
Typically, you don't even have to make a comparison to a competitor or another pricing scheme -- just mention that you want to cancel because it's "too expensive," and viola! It gets cheaper.
Some money is better than no money.
Hell, some compani
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yeah, I had a 250GB cap (with a different ISP) and I was surprised that I didn't come close to it.
I was trying to use it (although with absolutely no cap, I might have done more torrent seeding)
Re:Most won't notice (Score:4, Informative)
You are not the average user, by far.
Yes, he's not average, by far. He uses up to 35x the amount of the average comcast user
http://blog.comcast.com/2009/12/comcast-data-usage-meter-launches.html [comcast.com]
(Note: the median usage for Comcast’s customers is about 2 to 4 GB per month.)
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Consider your source.
A good point. But technically Comcast isn't lying.
Comcast considers someone who uses Hulu once a night and streams Pandora / Spotify all day while they're working to be the exact same as a Grandma who only turns on the PC once a week to check their "E Mailbox." That skews the numbers WILDLY downward -- and they know it.
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Could also be Comcast playing with Mean, Median, Mode and just calling it average . Or simply discounting the top 10% ("they're not your average user") and taking a mean/average of the remainder. Could simply be ComCast's own self-created definition of their "Average User" completely divorced of any numerical data.
Could be doing a lot of things, without technically lying, but I trust ComCast in this even less than I trust random ACs. AC might potentially be a troll/shill/etc, spreading FUD for the lolz, b
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While Comcast may not be an unbiased source, I'd consider it more reliable than an Anonymous Coward's backside, which is where the GGP's statistics have been sourced from.
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You didn't think this through much did you? Where would information about comcast's customers come from other than comcast?
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Really, you didn't see it? It's in the first paragraph, and the whole article is 4 paragraphs
Today, we announced the pilot market launch of the Comcast data usage meter in the Portland, Oregon area. After a short period, we’ll roll it out nationally. It’s designed to be simple and easy to use and will help customers better understand how much data they consume in a month. (Note: the median usage for Comcast’s customers is about 2 to 4 GB per month.)
The meter is accessible by logging in to Customer Central at http://customer.comcast.com/ [comcast.com] and clicking on the “Users and Settings” tab. From there, click on “View details” in the “My devices” section (located toward the upper right hand of the screen) and that will go to the meter page. As you can see from the accompanying screen shot the meter will show usage in the current calendar month when it’s first launched. Over time, it will show the most recent three months of use (including the current month). The data is refreshed approximately every three hours.
The meter measures all data usage over a cable modem. So, if a customer is using multiple computers and other devices, such as an online gaming console, “over the net” VoIP applications or devices, or additional wireless devices (such as an iPod Touch), the meter will report data usage for all of those computers and devices combined.
This is a tool we promised to provide, and we are pleased to deliver it today after rigorous employee testing and the completion of an independent analysis conducted by NetForecast, Inc. If you’d like to see NetForecast’s report on the system, click here.
To read some additional FAQs about the meter, please visit http://sitesearch.comcast.com/?q=data+usage+meter&cat=ccentral [comcast.com]
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see my other post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2857621&cid=40035465 [slashdot.org]
says it's now 26gb.. article is from yesterday
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.
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Netflix had online streaming prior to Oct 1, 2008.. since that is the date on this article where netflix announced a partnership with Starz, and says 10-20% of their visitors regularly use the online streaming feature:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2008/10/more-mainstream.html [latimes.com]
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Okay, he's a more up-to-date article: http://www.governing.com/blogs/by-the-numbers/us-ranks-high-on-internet-usage-despite-slow-speeds.html [governing.com]
The U.S. Telecom Association crunched a few sets of numbers (shown below) and found the country also ranks near the top in terms of data usage per user. The nation’s estimated 245 million Internet users consumed a monthly average of 25.7 gigabytes per user, according to the trade association. Only South Korea, which boasts the world's fastest speeds in many studies, transfers more data, with a monthly average of 49.1 gigabytes.
So he's still 2-3x above average.
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That seems much more reasonable. But also consider that half of all users are above average. I'd be more interested to know what the standard deviation is (if it even follows a Gaussian, which seems at least possible).
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and they each average one movie every other day, that's 248gb.
Geez, who has time for that? Usually the "family of four" here all watch the same movie at the same time. Add in the fact that most of our time is running between which kid has a game tonight and who's cooking dinner and who's clean which part of the house. We're lucky to get one or two movies via Netflix per every other week.
That's before doing anything via a VPN to work, backing up your data remotely with any of a number of services, streaming radio, streaming music (mog.com, etc), watching youtube, playing videogames
My company pays for a seperate connection to the Internet for VPN access. Maybe we should all push for that. I backup my data to an external hard drive. I'm paranoid so sue me.
Watch your units (Score:2)
Gb is gigabit, which is eight times smaller than the gigabyte (GB) you are presumably referring to. It's a common loophole used by most ISPs to oversell their services, for example 1Mb/s only equals 125kB/s.
Technically the prefix should always be G as well, though since g isn't a valid prefix it's still clear what you mean. I'm still waiting though for some marketing droid to realize that 1MB(megabyte) = 8,000,000,000mb (millibit) and start offering apparently massive speeds/capactiy/etc. Shoot, that old
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>>>When have you ever known a publicly held company to prioritize development and long term results, over short term profits.
When they are facing competition from another company that could steal-away their customers. I know a lot of people who jumped to FiOS because it was faster than Comcast.
Anyway: I think the pricing being based on "use" is good. It's just like a phone plan..... you pay for X number of minutes per month, and then get charged for each additional minute.
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Really now? When have you ever known a publicly held company to prioritize development and long term results, over short term profits.
Well, Comcast is doing that very thing right now [comcast6.net]. The company is an enigma. They're moving the state of the IPv6 art forward in a tangible way. Their business class service is great. Every salesperson and tech I've dealt with has been sharp, helpful and friendly. At the same time they throttle traffic, then deny that they're doing it. They maintain low (even at 300GB) caps. Their CPE quality (from DVRs to routers) is astoundingly awful (even business class).
Re:Most won't notice (Score:4, Insightful)
This actually seems like a pretty sane plan for most people who aren't diehard pirates or Netflix users. Most users don't use 300GB.
I just hope they give the option to shut off buying extra bandwidth automatically. I'll buy the 300gb a month, but I don't want anymore. If I hit the cap, cut me off to just a Comcast website where I can buy more. None of this, "For an extra $10 a month we'll give you parental controls to limit the automatic purchase of more bandwidth" crap that cell phone companies pull with text messaging.
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It's sane until you look at the charge for going over the cap. I can lease a dedicated server where bandwidth beyond the 5TB monthly cap is $1.15/TB. Comcast's marginal bandwidth rate is $200/TB. Admittedly, Comcast may be paying a bit more for bandwidth than the dedicated server hosting company, but 173 times more? They're just sticking it to people who use more while trying to make it sound like they're being fair.
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This actually seems like a pretty sane plan for most people who aren't diehard pirates or Netflix users.
It's only sane if you are Comcast trying to maximize profits. They are trying to have it both ways: a minimum price that they collect from everyone regardless of usage and a per-GB price as well.
In cell-phone land this is acceptable because very low-usage customers can switch to a pay-by-the-minute plan that saves them a lot of money every month - I think T-Mobile has a $100 prepay charge that lasts a whole year and gives you $0.10/minute, so you could conceivably only spend $100 for the entire year if you
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They are trying to have it both ways: a minimum price that they collect from everyone regardless of usage and a per-GB price as well.
That's not completely unreasonable. They have fixed costs that don't change whether you use one bit or 10TB. They also have variable costs that change based on data usage.
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I would be hard-pressed to hit 300Gb watching streaming services. They don't stream at blu-ray resolutions. I don't watch broadcast television, but I watch (too much) video using crunchroll and Amazon prime through my Roku. On a heavy month, when I got hooked on something with lots of episodes, or I was home sick with the flu for a week and didn't do anything else, I hit maybe 100GB. And that includes downloading games from Steam and watching the odd youtube video.
They trot out the pirate excuse becaus
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A huge pipe + hefty fees for going over the limit = nasty, nasty overages
What's wrong with tiered? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd much prefer a flat-rate unlimited plan, but I also recognize that a small percentage of users consume a disproportionate amount of bandwidth and that has to be managed somehow. I don't want a data cap. I'd much rather have the option of an affordable tier if I go over that cap, provided I'm given easy-to-use tools to see what my current utilization is. What I don't want is for that next tier to be ridiculously expensive as a disincentive to use it. I don't think $10 for an additional 50GB is unreasonable, although cheaper would be better.
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Shaw theoretically offers unlimited plans, though apparently in very select areas. I don't know anyone who can get one.
Re:What's wrong with tiered? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't generally have a problem with tiered, but $10 for 50GB is completely unreasonable. It's the equivalent of $64 per megabit, which is nuts for a home connection.
It's enough to make third-party IPTV unsustainable; if a household watches, between all TVs/people, 6 hours of TV per day at 4Mbps, you'll end up paying more than $60 a month just in bandwidth overage, above and beyond your TV bill! And 4 meg is a pretty damned conservative bitrate for IPTV.
$10 should be getting you 100-200 gigabytes per month. It's a reasonable cost, and it's roughly what existing large ISPs like Shaw are charging.
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" but I also recognize that a small percentage of users consume a disproportionate amount of bandwidth and that has to be managed somehow"
And managed why exactly?
Leave your [cable] TV on for all 720ish hours in a month. You don't get penalized (outside of electricity bill) with overage charges for going over some arbitrary viewing cap. Hell, leave it running for an entire year and it doesn't cost any more (or less) than it would if you left the TV off entirely.
What's wrong with tiered is that it is an eco
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I can only speak for me... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can only speak for me...but the scummy thing I see is they really want it both ways.
1) You can pay more for higher speeds
2) You can pay more for more bandwidth.
And we'll be really slow about moving the boundaries so as to capture as much money as possible.
Higher speed should just be included, and fine, charge a reasonable amount for bandwidth.
OR
You charge by the speed tier and however much bandwidth I consume you live with it.
[The pricing seems high too, IMO.]
But no, they want to make you pay both ways. [And pay again when you can't stream data (without meter) from other vendors - you have to pay extra to CC.]
Wireless carriers do it like this too.
Them: "No, you can't tether, that costs extra."
Me: "Why? You're capping my data consumption anyway. If it's not unlimited, then I should get to choose where I use my data - the phone, a tablet, or my laptop."
Either it's unlimited to a single device, in which case, I can stream netflicks 24x7 - or I pay for X amount of data and I can use it in any way, with any device I like.
But no. We'll pick the terms we like when it benefits us, and then mix and match to make even more.
Screw you customer! Just keep forking over the cash.
-Greg
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Yeah I agree. In countries where they generally have always had caps, plans are often delivered at "whatever speed the infrastructure can support", and you pay for the download limit you want. The situation with Comcast differs in that you are being charged for speed tier, as well as volume downloaded. Furthermore, there isn't a range of different caps to choose from as there are in some other countries.
For instance, I'm on an ADSL2+ connection in Australia and have a cap. However, plans don't have any part
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: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.
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Sorry, it's really the opposite. They have little economic incentive to expand capacity now. If they charge for overages, they
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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.
"If available" is the catch here. Comcast has a near-monopoly on broadband service in many parts of the country. Some places have the luxury of a second cable provider like RSN, but mostly, the other choice is more expensive and much slower DSL. Some places have Verizon FiOS, but apparently they're pulling back on that as well.
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$100/month (Score:2)
Verizon's phone/DSL/DirectTV bundle is less than that, so I'm being pretty generous.
Well, that does it. (Score:5, Insightful)
"First, we fucked them with television. We fucked them too much and they don't watch television on cable anymore.
Then, we fucked them with advertising online and through what TV remained, but we advertised too much, and now everyone ignores our ads or pirates our shit.
We tried to fuck them with BitTorrent, but even the government wouldn't let that slide. We had to unfuck BitTorrent. Apparently it isn't just for pirating shit.
Now they want internet, so we're going to fuck with internet a bit and see if we can't squeeze a few more cents out of them."
What the fuck, Comcast? Get a clue.
FTC and unlimited (Score:3, Insightful)
"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"...
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Everyone is arguing about data usage but seems to have skipped over the whole "Well, of course our service that competes with NetFlix is going to get preferential treatment" which is essentially the opposite of network neutrality.
I guess the solution was just to do it, and give everyone the finger in the process.
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I can't comment on Comcast (I live in Australia), but we frequently have these caps, and frequently have exemptions for internal traffic. In our case, it's because traffic transmitted out of Australia is far more expensive than local traffic, which is frequently peered. People here did exactly what you suggest, and modded P2P clients that only shared with others on the PIPE peering network sprung up. The ISPs were perfectly fine with that (The anti-piracy goonsquad not so much, and took down the modded P2P
Re:"internal traffic"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Internal traffic" counts only towards Comcast's own content services like Xfinity. All other traffic (including to your neighbor) will whittle away at the cap.
Remember, data caps are not about network or quality management. They're about keeping the provider from becoming a "dump pipe" for premium content elsewhere. (In Comcast's case, high-def streaming TV.)
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OnDemand users can already stream that content on their cable box without touching their internet connection
Actually, if you have a CableCard-based box (like Tivo) you can't use OnDemand on your cable box. You can use it on the XBox in that case, for example, but it's just the same IP data as any other XBox app (except for the fact it doesn't go towards your cap).
And the very problem is that, yes, under the hood it *is* going over the same pipes, so either it is causing extra load on their network or it is
Boggles (Score:2, Insightful)
As a Canadian, where 100GB data caps are insanely high and most run between 30 and 60-ish, the thought of having 250 or 300 GB to play with _PER MONTH_ boggles my mind. I literally don't know how I'd come close to tapping that out without making a concerted effort to do so. As it is, I typically run under 30-ish per month and I use the internet quite extensively. Ah, it amuses me how some people see a problem when others see glorious unlimited freedom...
(Not trying to be a smartass, though I often am one -
Re:Boggles (Score:4, Insightful)
Boggle on. You're not very imaginative. There probably should be a cheapo option for customers like you whose demands are so minuscule. For my part, I can easily get up dangerously close to 250 GB within HALF a month without half trying, and I then have to curtail my usage for the rest of the month.
I'm not even going to say what kind of stuff I do to pile up the GB. It's not particularly daring or esoteric. There are so many ways. Look, I've got a pipe that flows a sustained 2 MB/s - that's 120 MB/min, 7.2 GB/h, 172.8 GB/d, 5184 GB/mo. And you seriously think using an average of 4.8% of that capacity "boggles the mind"?
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.
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"Up to" 3mbit. Their range is 1.1-3mbps for $30/month with a 1 year contract. $35/month without contract. And that's way too slow to be streaming HD and other regular burst use at the same time I'm moving chunks of data so I'd still have to...want to...keep my cable service for interactive use. I wasn't expecting to be around more than a few months so I decided to just deal with Comcast's cap.
Internal my ISP (Score:2)
I'm running smokeping on my home computer in order to show Comcast that their service actually does drop out at regular daily intervals and that it is not internal. The interesting trend that I see is in pinging the DNS servers. A ping to the comcast DNS server, presumably internal to their network, has a rtt of ~50ms. A ping to a Google server, presumably external to their network has a rtt of ~20ms. This has been consistent for about four months now. So how can they claim internal is easier?
I like that change (Score:2)
I usually have to make extra effort to stay under 250, i think i would be very comfortable with around 275-300 so them changing the base cap to 300 and allowing me to pay for more I have no problem with. I use data a lot more than the average user i'm willing to pay extra now and then for more but the current policy is an outright service termination if you frequently go over I would rather pay an extra $10 every few months than worry about them turning me off.
I don't consider myself a heavy downloader (Score:2)
Of course, my town just got permission to lease out its dark fiber and otherwise use it for commercial purposes in the last election, so I'm just waiting for them to come up with a plan to offer fiber to all the houses in town. It's not like I have any particular brand loyalty to Comcast.
perceived bilking? (Score:3)
No, they will balk at getting fucked like they have been getting fucked by Comcast and the rest of them as usual. There's no "perceiving" involved. It's just a dag blasted fact.
Tier *trials*, cap removed elsewhere (Score:3)
The article doesn't say they're definitely implementing tiered pricing for everyone, they're trying it in a few markets.. In markets where tiered pricing is not being trialed, the caps are completely removed.
http://blog.comcast.com/2012/05/comcast-to-replace-usage-cap-with-improved-data-usage-management-approaches.html
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60GB cap? I'd blow through that in a week.
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This is why we can't have nice things.
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Here in rural Manitoba we get 7Mbps down / 768Kbps up for $46 + tax for a 60GB cap. Fucking sense of entitlement.
I'm in rural Wisconsin. We don't get nearly that speed, but the 60GB cap seems awefully low.
As an example, I watch maybe three to four hours of streamed TV a night and use up maybe 3GB a day doing it. Everything else I do (email, web, whatever, is nothing compared to the streaming), and the streaming is always at its lowest bit rate due to speed limitations, but I'd consistently go over the 60GB cap if it were placed on me.
If I were in a city or heavily popluated area that offered higher speed, you can
Re:How can they complain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in rural Manitoba we get 7Mbps down / 768Kbps up for $46 + tax for a 60GB cap. Fucking sense of entitlement.
I realize it's fun to play songs on the hate parade when talking about Americans, but entitlement is not the word. At the next town over they can get unlimited service with a different provider. That's an issue of value, not entitlement.
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Actually, that speed/cap is pretty normal for Canada, regardless of whether you're rural or urban. A handful of resellers offer more reasonable caps, but most people either don't know they exist, or aren't in their coverage area.
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It is their right to petition service providers to give them better service. It is most assuredly their right, and perhaps even their duty, to use their money to speak for them in this matter. Welcome to capitalism, please learn how it works or shut up and die.
Except that doesn't work when there are only 1-2 providers in an area due to a Government supported monopoly on service. When your "using your money to speak for yourself" involves accepting their terms or going without, welp, that's not really a choice now, is it?
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Unmetered internet is the way to go.
Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Because gas, power, and water can be saved for another day. Any bandwidth we don't use right now is lost forever. It's actually more economical on a dollars per byte basis to keep your network near saturation. If you discourage people from using the network, you're increasing everyone's per byte costs.
The right way to deal with contention for network resources is to build out infrastructure. If ISPs are allowed to profit from network congestion, there is no incentive to build out infrastructure.
Metered internet access provides exactly the wrong incentives for *everyone* involved.
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>>> It's actually more economical on a dollars per byte basis to keep your network near saturation
That makes zero sense. The more the datalines are used, the more electricity is being burned-up. It would be advantageous for an ISP to want to reduce their electric use by reducing how much data customers transfer. (And also eliminate the need to replace slow lines with faster lines.)
Disclaimer: I hate Comcast. I get my TV free over-the-air, and my internet over DSL.
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.
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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?
Because gas, power, and water can be saved for another day. Any bandwidth we don't use right now is lost forever. It's actually more economical on a dollars per byte basis to keep your network near saturation.
The GP was talking about infrastructure, not product. Infrastructure in the gas, power, and water sectors follow the same rule as network infrastructure. They exist and have to be maintained no matter how much product they deliver.
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I think you look at these energy storage methods. All three of them require a huge initial outlay, ongoing maintenance and don't actually store very much energy at all, certainly not enough to even remotely entertain smoothing the peaks in demand.
They make more sense for small installations and emergency power, not for powering cities.
But all of this is elementary. The fact is that electricity is CURRENTLY not stored, and yet doesn't have the same kind of issues network bandwidth does.
they also have certified meters (Score:4, Insightful)
they also have certified meters and most of the ISP meters are off and bill you for overhead and ARP data.
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Yes, but they do not charge you a monthly fee for the privilege of getting further charged based on usage. Charge for the bandwidth used or charge an access fee. Not both.
The phone company used to do that. Now they're pretty much dumb pipes with flat long-distance fees in reaction to everybody leaving their service for flat-fee Internet-based services. This will eventually happen with ISPs, too, as soon as t
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You get charged based on how much electricity you use..
A homeowner does, but businesses can get charged based on usage and time-of-day. Also, there is a direct correlation between burnt fuel and electrons. There is no such correlation between bits transferred and a consumable cost on Comcast's side.
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Or you could be elsewhere in Canada, where that $70 gets you 25/2Mb and a "cap" of about 8.6TB.
200/40Mb is supposed to be available Soon(TM), though at a not-yet-specified price.
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And of course their own movie on demand product is exempt from the bandwidth limits which is what makes the whole thing smell like bullshit. Why does it matter where the traffic is coming from? Its not like Comcast is getting charged more for anyone's NetFlix usage unless they make the choice to invest in bigger Tier 1 pipes.
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I'd rather they cut me off (or throttle me) a la T-Mobile.
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?
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only if you are backing up your dvr with xfinity content...
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Last I checked, Comcast's rate for a la carte internet service started at $60/month at the lowest speed tier. The only way to get it lower is to catch a promotional or package price. Yes, you can get it cheaper but it'll either be a temporary price or require bundling of services, sometimes with a minimum commitment and often the price goes up after 6-12 months. So they're charging "full retail" for additional blocks of data.