Comcast Expanding Data Cap Locations, Training Reps To Avoid Subject (arstechnica.com) 264
An anonymous reader sends news that Comcast is about to expand its 300GB data cap to more cities in the Southeastern U.S. "Newly capped areas include Little Rock, Arkansas; Houma, LaPlace, and Shreveport, Louisiana; Chattanooga, Greeneville, Johnson City, and Gray, Tennessee; and Galax, Virginia." This happened at the same time organizations are calling on the FCC to investigate Comcast for this practice. A helpful Comcast employee decided to leak the internal training on how Comcast plans to message these data caps to consumers. For example, they direct their representatives to tell customers that areas without a data cap actually have a 250GB cap, but it just isn't being enforced. They even suggest avoiding the term "cap," instead preferring "usage plan." There's also this: "If a customer calls in with any questions associated with the usage policy and how it relates to Net Neutrality, Netflix or observations about how XFINITY services are or are not counted relative to third party services, do not address these items with the customer."
Downloading the intertubes, Daily (Score:5, Funny)
Soon as this hit my area, I signed up for the $30 extortion fee, bc 300 gigs is a joke and my household crosses that in a week easy. Now, I make it a point to use as much bandwidth as I can, downloading every goddamn cat video on the internet, twice, daily, while playing games online and streaming netflix on multiple devices most of the day, just because.
I'm getting every damn pennies worth out of it.
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Except they can still do something about it....
Page 5:
"... internet service must be consistent with our acceptable use policies for residential services and network management system"
Pretty much leaves the door open to whatever they want to do about it.
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10gb a day is nothing. If this was to fix congest it would be so much during congestion period but all you can eat at 4am. This is a grab for more money plain and simple.
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Heavy Internet users should consider getting a business account. This also makes it possible to access your home video library remotely using software like Plex, and to set up an FTP
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If you have the tech to do a monthly usage based you can do any arbitrary time base.
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12/1 att business plan $45/mo (with phone) sticky ip and no caps
10/10 city fiber business plan $55/mo static ip and no caps
8/1 suddenlink business plan $135/mo (static ip?) no caps
Not bad pricing imho with the exception of suddenlink.
city fiber residential no caps
10/? $35/mo
20/? $55/mo
suddenlink residential
15/1 $35/mo capped
att residential
12/1 $35/mo if bundled with phone service and capped.
Satellite does unmetered early mornings (Score:2)
They probably don't currently have the technology in place to meter during the day, and be unlimited at night.
If unmetered early mornings is easy for satellite ISPs to deploy, why can't a much bigger company such as Comcast put it in place quickly?
Heavy Internet users should consider getting a business account.
Provided your representative is willing to offer a business account to an individual without a business license and a commercially zoned service address.
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Well, it's their fucking system. You play by their rules, or you go play somewhere else.
I recommend everyone do precisely that. Comcast is building a monopoly, and quicker than everyone thinks they are. Prices will just go up and up, and value and quality will go down. They need competition, so go to someone else.
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Excellent idea! If only there was available competition in my city to go to. Comcast is the only game in town. AT&T is here, but doesnt offer any fiber or DSL. Their system provides speeds of 768K.
Go play somewhere else? (Score:2)
You play by their rules, or you go play somewhere else.
I recommend everyone do precisely that.
"Go play somewhere else"? Not everybody has the financial resources to just pack up and move out of a Comcast-serviced area. Other Slashdot users have pointed out that finding a new job and a new place to live for your family aren't exactly trivial,[1] [slashdot.org] [2] [slashdot.org] [3] [slashdot.org] [4] [slashdot.org] [5] [slashdot.org] [6] [slashdot.org] [7] [slashdot.org], especially if the ISP in your new area will likely just get bought [slashdot.org].
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Unlimited usageis a bad idea, but 300G prevents people from using quite a few of the online services that today are considered routine. I know because that's the limit on my 80MHz cable. Every news story today starts with an autoplaying video that I have to wait for and pause, and the number of streaming movies it takes to hit the cap is a lot fewer than advertised.
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The problem is there is rarely, if ever, somewhere else to go play. Monopolies are the problem and why these pricing schemes survive where in any other industries they would be laughed at and fail.
It's also not about the cap, which is fairly arbitrary. The real issue is that most of these ISPs were given government subsidies (taxpayer money) to build out the network in exchange for the monopoly. Then they pocket the subsidies and the network lags behind in technology and is not expanded to meet the expec
Re:Downloading the intertubes, Daily (Score:4, Insightful)
> Well, it's their fucking system. You play by their rules, or you go play somewhere else.
No. Not when said company has a local monopoly on broadband. This is exactly when you should have an issue with it.
Re:Downloading the intertubes, Daily (Score:4, Interesting)
Answer: No. Of course not. It's a business reason, so STFU and take what our corporate overlords deign to give us, on their terms. Right? Do you have any idea how idiotic your argument sounds?
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Well, it's their fucking system. You play by their rules, or you go play somewhere else.
That's fine, as long as they tell you upfront and don't sell it as "unlimited."
Also, it should be pointed out that it's not their fucking system......in many cases they were granted a monopoly by the municipality (which is the representative of the people), and they thus have certain obligations that must be fulfilled.
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Just curious. How do you burn through 300 GB in a week? I think an hour of Netflix programming ~= 1GB, so 24x7 use of Netflix would be about 100 GB in a week. What's a bigger bandwidth hog than that?
Re:Downloading the intertubes, Daily (Score:4, Insightful)
Just curious. How do you burn through 300 GB in a week? I think an hour of Netflix programming ~= 1GB, so 24x7 use of Netflix would be about 100 GB in a week. What's a bigger bandwidth hog than that?
He spends a LOT of time masturbating to UHD/4k porn.
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netflix on high? (Best video quality, up to 3 GB per hour for HD and 7 GB per hour for Ultra HD)
Not everyone lives alone (Score:3)
How do you burn through 300 GB in a week?
By having more than one person in the household, for one. If one copy of Netflix downloads 1 GB/hr, three will download 3 GB/hr.
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The poster did indicate it was a family using the connection. It is entirely possible that a family with teenagers might have several people using streaming media on a nearly constant basis while at home and not sleeping. 300 GB in a week still seems a bit excessive to me, but then again I don't even use a cellphone so who knows what the kids are doing these days.
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This, in spades. Daughter uses her PC for school (public virtual school, far superior to brick-and-mortar public schooling, i'm amazed at what they teach), both her and waifu use youtube and netflix heavily during the day. I use netflix at night. Direct TV downloads on-demand over the intertubes, my skype/google hangout DnD sessions I host, Battlefield, metal gear online, dynasty, counterstrike, waifu's MMOs,twitch streaming, crunchyroll anime, steam, faceyspace and twatter, Daughter voice chatting over Vit
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You are speaking my language. We've got two teenagers at home that basically live off streaming video and game downloads. The general rule is that when they're awake and home, video is streaming.
On a typical school day, we use about 10 GB of bandwidth. Some days, we use much more -- 20 GB in one day isn't unusual. Our high score is about 35GB in one day.
As for how we use that bandwidth, kids do the darndest things.
Sometimes they'll turn on Netflix for background noise, while they download a game from St
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Data cap scam (Score:5, Insightful)
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AT&T had a patent on that, at least as applied to mobile phone minutes ("rollover minutes"). Nobody else was allowed to do it.
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Business method patent, one of the worst kind.
But it may only apply to cellular telephone minutes and not generally to all data on every communications platform.
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I'd hope so. The concept is no different than the way sick days and PTO roll over to the next year, which predates cellular billing by a long time.
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Then how is Google Fi getting away with it? Also, why aren't we seeing more diversity in plans from various carriers?
Please pardon the cliche, but [CITATION NEEDED].
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Are you for real? How the hell do you patent that? That's like patenting giving back change if you hand a cashier too much money.
Exactly. But see, in this case it's like the store would just be keeping your change until you made your next purchase from them, as long as it was within 30 days of your last purchase. After that you don't get it back at all. So it's like totally fair, man!
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"Not ripping off your customer" - a novel enough idea to patent, how about that.
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Re:Data cap scam (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because data is a finite resource like water and electricity?
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bandwidth suffers from"The Tragedy of the Commons"
Demand for bandwidth also fluctuates over time. Would it be a good idea to reintroduce a distinction between peak time and off-peak time, so that subscribers can schedule their game downloads, purchased movie downloads, major operating system updates, and the like for early mornings? It might even encourage Netflix and its competitors to push their licensors harder for the right to offer a feature to buffer a movie now and watch it later using a lower-bandwidth stream of only decryption keys for each second
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Yeah I don't know why netflix is so adamant about refusing to offer something like that as with the current setup it is not feasible to use a satellite connection to watch netflix. When I left wildblue they had capacity for about 400,000 users and couldn't get the modems built fast to keep installers stocked.
Now unless you happen to be able to stay up all night to watch netflix you can't
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Blowing a mod point where I gave you a "Funny" on the "ripping off the customer patent" but ...
The problem I have with charging by the byte is a lot of bytes I get are not something I asked for. All the ads and most of the autoplay videos are superfluous to me and I would object to having to pay for something forced on me like that. If they started charging by the byte they'd need to charge the other end for the superfluous bytes they force on us.
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Then set up a local proxy that blocks video MIME types and/or a browser extension that blocks video elements.
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The problem I have with charging by the byte is a lot of bytes I get are not something I asked for. All the ads and most of the autoplay videos are superfluous to me and I would object to having to pay for something forced on me like that.
In the context of a webpage the ads are data you asked for, from a certain point of view. You requested a web page. Part of that web page's contents is ads (as ad revenue is how the page creator can afford to offer you a webpage in the first place). If you don't want the ads, don't request the webpage.
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Can you explain to me how I requested the hundreds of thousands of bytes of port scan and malware scanning that comes in on my modem unrequested?
There are a lot of things that use bytes that you didn't request. I'd wage up to 5% of your monthly use is stuff that you didn't in any way request.
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Then why limit speed also? I know some already do only charge for the data not the speed like cellular providers and some satellite providers.
For example;
I received an email a few days ago from yourkarma letting me know they now offered neverstop unlimited cellular data with the catch that its rate limited to 5Mbps.
Which is in contrast to their original prepaid data with no speed limits.
Or exede satellite which offers 12/3 speeds regardless of what plan you choose.
Capacity and attention are finite resources (Score:2)
Capacity to carry data at peak time is a finite resource. In addition, subscribers to services other than satellite have historically voted with their wallet against "complicated" plans that distinguish peak time from non-peak time because subscribers' attention is another finite resource. This is why satellite ISPs are more likely to offer unmetered early mornings than ISPs using any other last mile.
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With a meter on the side of the house with 3rd party certification.
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By the electric companies are getting a whole lot more complex now. Some charge different rates based on what time of day you are using the electricity. Some will charge different rates if you go over a certain amount. You might be able to use 600 KWh at 10 cents, but anything over that in a billing period costs 15 cents. using power in the middle of the night might cost less than using the same amount of power in the middle of the afternoon. I imagine that internet would be similar. During times of hi
Continuing behavior trend (Score:4, Interesting)
Comcast support is so horrible it's the go-to for making memes. Anecdotally, the people I know with Comcast have no other viable solution. If that's a more general case, it's monopolistic lock-in based on area. If it's not, why do people still use them?
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Anecdotally, the people I know with Comcast have no other viable solution. If that's a more general case, it's monopolistic lock-in based on area. If it's not, why do people still use them?
The only reason I am with them is because they are the only ones that serve high-speed internet to my house. The only other options were 56k dial-up or 5mbps satellite internet. Supposedly AT&T is slowly rolling out internet service to my area, so when my contract is up (sadly have about 22 months left to go) we will probably switch to them.
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I think your best available alternative is to continue using Comcast, and just ask them very nicely if they would please u
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A few things they don't tell you about satellite internet: 1) It is blocked by rain or snow. 2) It has a ridiculously low data cap, meaning if you watch a movie over the net, you are throttled back to dial-up modem speeds for the rest of the month. 3) Transmission to a satellite requires extremely precise alignment. You really think that dish bolted to your roof is never going to move? I think your best available alternative is to continue using Comcast, and just ask them very nicely if they would please use lube in the future...
Yeah, I have to play nice with Comcast until AT&T gets to my area. I already lessened the pain slightly by buying my own cable modem and just using my PC's wireless card as a router (saving the $10 per month rental fee). But like I said, as soon as another viable option pops up in my area and I can switch to them, I will.
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Blocked by rain or snow on either end of the connection my gateway was in syracuse ny it rains a lot there..Oh would you look at that its raining there right now isn't that nice?
I haven't had sat service in several years now yet the modem will still sync up with anik f2 (if I plug it in). So i've had pretty good luck with it staying put.
had a 17gb down 5 gb up rolling usage limit. always stayed right next to the cap it was 22/7GB limit when I signed up (not promotional standard) but they changed it after th
Re:Continuing behavior trend (Score:5, Funny)
Three guys walk into a bar together and sit down at a table. The hostess comes up asks them what they do for a living.
"I work in finance," says one
"I work at Comcast," says the second
"I am unemployed and my wife just left me," says the third--and pulls out a gun and shoots himself in the head.
So the bartender asks the hostess what happened.
"Did you know one of those poor bastards works for Comcast?" she replies.
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People need to understand that Comcast gets significant concessions from local governments such as monopoly protection (municipal franchise agreements) and special access (utility line right of way). Get your neighbors together, fill up a city council meeting, and demand action from the ground up.
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You realize that virtually no one in your local government will have the faintest clue where to even start on trying to offer municipal broadband?
Nice idea, in theory, but in practice, you'd better have both an action plan and a source of funding lined up first.
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Frontier FiOS (Score:2)
Do you live in an area whose ILEC is Frontier Communications? Frontier licenses the FiOS brand from Verizon, from which Frontier acquired operations in several markets in June 2010. Frontier might be allowed to extend FiOS-branded fiber to the premises into areas not covered by the agreement between Verizon and Comcast.
Lies, damned lies, and customer service ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically they have a formal policy to mislead, misdirect, or lie to their clients in order to implement a policy and pretend it's always been there?
Isn't shit like this illegal?
Re:Lies, damned lies, and customer service ... (Score:5, Informative)
Not if you buy enough congressmen...
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Actually, no. This kind of corporate policy isn't the kind of thing your front-line support *should* address. It's getting into regulatory issues, public relations, and on-going legal action. If your employees start talking about it, they represent the company position; if they're wrong, then your business is on record promising something it can't deliver, or stating something with legal implications.
I get market research and reporter calls all the time. People just dial random extensions or look up
It is about profiting from cord cutters (Score:2)
.
There's a good discussion here [dslreports.com].
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I wonder if Comcast has internal projections that show the cable TV business -- ie, delivering real-time TV broadcasts -- basically dying over time.
I have a hard time believing that would happen in the real near term but I would bet it's something that will happen.
Sports keep cable TV alive (Score:2)
I wonder if Comcast has internal projections that show the cable TV business -- ie, delivering real-time TV broadcasts -- basically dying over time.
That would depend on NHL, NFL, MLB, and NBA dying. These sport promotions have sold long-term exclusive live video rights to national and regional networks commonly included in multichannel pay TV packages.
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If the cord cutting continues, Comcast needs to make money somewhere, and that somewhere is increased data fees.
Personally, they're not offering enough to justify the added expense, especially since I discovered the Dirty Little Secret of cable and satellite: recompression of video to the point where it looks like total crap, even at supposed 1080i or 1080p. I paid once for an antenna I put on my roof, I get more than I have time to watch, and the video quality is as good as it's going to get. Getting OTA broadcasts has already paid for itself many times over. Never going back to cable.
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Battle of the exclusives (Score:2)
If you can get television and internet for the same price as you can just get internet and netflix then why wouldnt you just pay one bill for more?
Because someone wants the shows exclusive to Netflix more than the shows exclusive to Streampix.
Painting yourself into a corner (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Painting yourself into a corner (Score:5, Insightful)
Caps don't help with network congestion. They only make network usage more uneven: People use the internet less when they need it least and don't change their usage when they really need or want to use the internet, which is at the same time for almost all people. Consequently, caps reduce usage off-peak and don't help with on-peak congestion.
Caps serve two purposes: They are a method of market segmentation and they make certain network dependent services unattractive. Comcast is a cable operator, and the biggest consumer of bandwidth is video streaming. You figure it out.
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Imagine if they actually sold their capacity. Instead of everyone buying a 100Mbit/s plan on a median usage of, say, 10Mbit/s hour-to-hour average with occasional 25Mbit 5-minute peaks and 40GB usage, and the major users consuming 80Mbit/s hour-to-hour average with frequent 100Mbit/s peaks and 300GB usage, they could spec the network sized to assume everyone who buys the 30Mbit/s plan is using 30Mbit, and must cover the infrastructure and peering costs of 30Mbit, and so must pay in full.
You pay $70/mont
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Chattanooga (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty sure that any Chattanoogan in their right mind doesn't even have Comcast to begin with.
Chattanooga. (Score:2)
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Not municipal, but the local power company (EPB) rolled out fiber a few years back to all their service area. Coincidentally, EPB recently announced 10 Gb to the home over said fiber. Pricey, but cool.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think that the FCC reforms said that you can't throttle an "unlimited" data plan once they get over some usage threshold.
So naturally, Comcast no longer says that their plans are unlimited and give you a usage cap... er usage limit... er... "usage plan" to either follow or pay out the nose to exceed.
Hell, a "usage plan" almost sounds like a good thing to clueless consumers if you don't bother looking at the fine print. It kinda sounds like the various "data plans" that Verizon and AT&T have been using
Real Reason For Caps (Score:5, Interesting)
Comcast was saying at one point that caps/overage fees were needed to reign in bandwidth hogs who were clogging the network. Since then, they've admitted what we all knew from the beginning: This isn't about network management/congestion.
The reason reason for caps and overage fees is simple: Cable TV. Cable TV revenues are declining as people move from watching Cable TV to getting video entertainment from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and other online sources. The cable companies don't like this because it means money flows to other companies instead of to them.
Now, cable companies tend to have a monopoly for wired, high-speed Internet access in their areas. (If not a monopoly, then likely a duopoly with the phone company.) They are using their monopoly control over Internet access to prop up their Cable TV business. By establishing caps and overages, they can ensure that people: a) Are limited in what they can stream and b) wind up paying the cable company if they stream too much. The overages raise the price of streaming videos. Instead of paying under $20 for Netflix and Hulu, you might wind up paying $40 or more. Suddenly, streaming "costs more" than cable TV would and (Comcast hopes) people will abandon streaming and come back to the cable company.
The big problem (for Comcast) in all of this is that it's illegal for a company to use their monopoly position in one market to squash competition in another market. That's exactly what Comcast is doing here and the FTC/DOJ needs to investigate and stop them.
comcast needs to use there power to make ESPN an (Score:2)
comcast needs to use there power to make ESPN and Disney channel premium channels that alone can drop the cost of a cable plan by at least $10-$15 /mo.
First get Monday Night Football (Score:2)
If Comcast actually had the power you think it has, its NBCSN would be able to outbid ESPN for Monday Night Football effective 2021 when the rights come up for sale again.
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comcast needs to use there power to make ESPN and Disney channel premium channels that alone can drop the cost of a cable plan by at least $10-$15 /mo.
Unfortunately Comcast is in the weaker negotiation position relative to Disney and ESPN so threatening to drop them i they don't go premium is not a viable course of action.
Re:Real Reason For Caps (Score:5, Interesting)
The "C" word (Score:2)
They even suggest avoiding the term "cap,"
The "C word" used to refer to something different.
"We're not going to cap your data, we're just going to ummm, 'rate limit' it according to your 'usage plan'...and the rate limit will be zero bytes per day. Thank you for being a Comcast customer!"
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They even suggest avoiding the term "cap,"
The "C word" used to refer to something different.
"Congress" ?
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Push the rate limit too low and it no longer qualifies under the FCC definition of broadband service.
Greedy Bastards! (Score:2)
Conal O'Rourke was right comcast needs to be (Score:2)
Conal O'Rourke was right Comcast needs to be investigated for breaking the law.
I remember (Score:3)
when 640k got you a lot!
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when 640k got you a lot!
Post Of The Month!
First step to multiple tiers (Score:2)
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Just as Microsoft did with their online storage, Comcast will eventually say that the extra $35 for unlimited is no longer valid. Now $35 gets you only an extra 200GB. If you want more, well there's $50 for 500GB, or $75 for 700GB, etc.
deja vu (Score:2)
"If a customer calls in with any questions associated with the usage policy and how it relates to Net Neutrality, Netflix or observations about how XFINITY services are or are not counted relative to third party services, do not address these items with the customer."
This sorta reminds me of an experience I had with AT&T. I have one of the grandfathered unlimited plans. In 2011 AT&T started throttling unlimited users indiscriminately, some only using a gig in a month and then *BAM* modem speeds. I was never affected mainly because I never really used that much data (I do now... somewhat vengefully...) but I did want to know exactly what their minimum spec for throttled transfers was. That seems like a reasonable question, right? If they're offering an unlim
Satellite caps are worse than Comcast's (Score:2)
"You can always use wifi!" doesn't help if the Wi-Fi router is connected to a satellite modem on a plan with a 10 GB/mo cap because satellite is the only broadband offered in your area that isn't Comcast.
Taken out of context (Score:4, Informative)
I love to hate on Comcast as much as anyone, but the quote in the summary really was taken out of context.
The full quote from the document is:
Leaving off the last sentence escalating the call to someone who is more thoroughly trained in how to bullshit the customer changes the narrative. Without it, it sounds like the policy is to just ignore the customer.
Foot in the door (Score:2)
For example, they direct their representatives to tell customers that areas without a data cap actually have a 250GB cap, but it just isn't being enforced.
Well of course. It's called getting your foot in the door. They roll out a "cap" that isn't enforced, and simply start enforcing it little by little in different locations. Why are you complaining when it was there all along? /s
Data Usage (Score:3)
As a forced Comcast user, out of curiosity, I checked my usage. It's day 5 of the month and I've used 70GB so far...previous months I've downloaded anywhere between 260 - 290 GB of data.
I work from home and access all my work data over my internet connection (I move very few files around - it's mostly rdp/ssh sessions, git interactions), use voip phones (both work and home), my kids almost exclusively watch "tv" via Netflix and YouTube and I would say my wife and I maybe watch 4-5 hours of streaming tv a week. Apart from that our internet usage isn't anything out of the ordinary and we're still exceeding the cap.
Comcast is insane if they think classifying anyone over 250GB of consumption a bandwidth hog especially as streaming services continue to grow in popularity - and eat into cable revenues.
If I had any real choice of provider, I'd be switching away from Comcast in a heartbeat.
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So how are filling your broadband requirements now?
Isn't funny how in so many areas, the only viable solution for anything other than dialup is comcast?
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So how are filling your broadband requirements now?
Isn't funny how in so many areas, the only viable solution for anything other than dialup is comcast?
By choosing employers outside such "so many areas" whenever it comes time to relocate, I'm guessing.
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Then there is their broadband service (my area does not have DSL) but I don't want to pay those crooks more money. OK so I man up and cut the cord. crap someone sent me a
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Yeah you will need a good download manager for that assuming you dialup isp kicks you after 3 hours like the ones here do.
Set aside about 5 hours for the transfer.
I used to average about 100MB usage per day on dialup. 53.2kbps connection I had a really good quality line. left it connected 24/7. had to redial every 3 hours or so.