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Stats The Internet AT&T Network The Almighty Buck

Terabyte-Using Cable Customers Double, Increasing Risk of Data Cap Fees (arstechnica.com) 117

Posted by BeauHD from the watch-out dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: U.S. cable Internet customers are using an average of 268.7GB per month, and 4.1 percent of households use at least 1TB, according to new research by the vendor OpenVault. Households that use at least 1TB a month are at risk of paying overage fees because of the 1TB data caps imposed by Comcast and other ISPs. Terabyte users nearly doubled year over year, as just 2.1 percent of households hit the 1TB mark last year, according to OpenVault. OpenVault found that households that face data caps use 8.5-percent less data than un-capped users, suggesting that cable customers limit their Internet usage when they face the prospect of overage fees. According to OpenVault, the caps can help cable companies avoid major network upgrades.

Specifically, "OpenVault's 2018 data also shows that average usage for households with flat-rate pricing was 282.1GB/HH, more than 9 percent higher than the 258.2GB/HH average usage for households on usage-based billing (UBB) plans," OpenVault wrote. Stated another way, customers facing caps and overage fees use 8.5-percent less data than un-capped customers. Un-capped customers are, naturally, more likely to exceed a terabyte. "The percentage of flat-rate (non-UBB) households exceeding 1TB of usage was 4.82 percent, a full percentage point higher than the 3.81 percent of UBB households who exceeded the 1TB threshold," OpenVault said. The 268.7GB average household data used in December 2018 was "up from 226.4GB/HH [household] at the end of June 2018 and a 33.3 percent increase over the YE 2017 average of 201.6GB/HH," OpenVault said. Median usage was 145.2GB in December 2018, "up from 116.4GB/HH in June 2018 and a 40 percent increase over the YE 2017 median of 103.6GB/HH," the company also said.
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Terabyte-Using Cable Customers Double, Increasing Risk of Data Cap Fees More

Terabyte-Using Cable Customers Double, Increasing Risk of Data Cap Fees

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  • They're just going to have to pay now for letting everyone in their neighborhood use their WiFi.

    • Re:The wages of WiFi (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jonsmirl ( 114798 ) on Sunday January 27, 2019 @10:23AM (#58029544) Homepage

      Data caps are simply made up fiction to charge you more. They are similar to the made up fees like "HD access" and "multiroom DVR". They are charging a lot of money for things that cost nothing to implement. Only oligopoly suppliers can get away with fictional charges like these. If you don't pay those fees then they purposely break their service to make things worse for you.

      The only true number that matters is aggregate peak demand. If aggregate peak demand exceeds network capacity then packets are going to drop. So if the ISPs were being truthful and selling real services instead of fictional ones, they would sell plans with bandwidth caps that kick in only during times of congestion.

      I am 100% in favor of last mile ISP regulation back to POPs which allow free interconnect to any ISP provider. It is silly to run multiple sets of wires to each house. Instead there should be regulated wiring back to a POP supporting 25K homes. This model would allow you to subscribe to any ISP with a presence at the POP.

      • This is exactly correct. They get away with it because people were already used to paying for "data" with their cell phones, as if 1's and 0's were some finite resource we're going to run out of.

      • Sure it is done to make money. As people leave cable the cable companies need to replace the lost revenue so data caps are a way to get money from cable cutters. The idea that cutting the cord will save most users money not going to be the case; they’ll pay the same or more just to different companies, at least until cable companies go to all streaming and sell bundles.

      • "The only true number that matters is aggregate peak demand. If aggregate peak demand exceeds network capacity then packets are going to drop. So if the ISPs were being truthful and selling real services instead of fictional ones, they would sell plans with bandwidth caps that kick in only during times of congestion"

        You 100% got it. Cost to ISP's is about gigabit/sec peak not gigabytes per month. Only addition is some types of traffic are cheaper due to POP caching e.g Netflix caching servers.

        A competitive

      • I am 100% in favor of last mile ISP regulation back to POPs which allow free interconnect to any ISP provider. It is silly to run multiple sets of wires to each house. Instead there should be regulated wiring back to a POP supporting 25K homes. This model would allow you to subscribe to any ISP with a presence at the POP.

        We have that in aus now with the NBN. Kicked out the monopoly incumbent and the government owns the line and sells it wholesale to other ISPs to retail on top of it. But you mention the government to americans and they seem to prefer corporate monopolies fucking them over.

      • I would much rather pay by the GB than pay by the mbps.

        I would much rather have 10gbe to my home and be able to upload 1TB a month as fast as the network allows than meter my usage via speed caps. Just put a QoS baseline on everyone that "guarantees" at least 50mbps and then let it run free. At 2am I can then upload my cloud backups for the night and have it done by the morning.

        After all home\business internet naturally has different peaks throughout the day.

  • Fuck Comcast (Score:3)

    by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Sunday January 27, 2019 @09:23AM (#58029310)
    Fuck Comcast and their shitty network. They should have to pay for upgrades to their crappy-ass network. Thankfully Verizon doesn't need to add caps to their network because it's all fiber and can handle the extra traffic.

    • I mean, there are still upgrades that Verizon needs for Fios. I love my gigabit fios service and that it's uncapped. But they definitely have peering issues and saturated interconnects at their internet exchanges. This is now the bottleneck for me almost 90% of the time. Verizon is notorious for avoid upgrading their exchanges https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]. Cogent is still congested, along with Hurricane Electric. Comcast sucks, but at least their peering is solid.

    • AT&T is no better. I have NEVER used more than a terabyte in a month, and my family streams Netflix and Youtube almost non-stop, on 4 simultaneous devices, from sun-up to after sun-down. Our average monthly usage, according to AT&T UVerse portal, is about 390GB per month. This has been consistent for years.

      Then one month, our usage was mysteriously 2TB. AT&T sent me an email saying that they wouldn't charge me an overage "this time." Then next month, another 2TB and another notice of non-ch

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PJ6 ( 1151747 )

      Fuck Comcast and their shitty network. They should have to pay for upgrades to their crappy-ass network. Thankfully Verizon doesn't need to add caps to their network because it's all fiber and can handle the extra traffic.

      Verizon is definitely not all fiber.

      Take my state for example. We're not even a flyover state. They took millions in subsidies to put everyone on fiber, said it would be done within 2 years.

      Out of hundreds of municipalities, they rolled out to seven. Said the others would take longer.

      That was 20 years ago. We're all still waiting.

  • or is it Gb per month by using ad blockers.

    You could also do some local proxying to eliminate a ton of "fluff" that seems to be embedded in every web page nowadays.

    Fortunately my ISP currently doesn't have caps (it never has) but I still block ads until the capability is pulled from my cold dead browser.

    • I save a few GB by going to the gym, reading books and doing other stuff instead of watching TV 24x7

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        True! You could go to a gym and use their wifi to download Netflix shows, then take home the cached content! Oh whoops, I stopped reading what you wrote half way through. :-)

  • I have a couple friends who mentioned that they have issues with the 1 TB cap. Both said they tend to stream video all the time when home, sometimes just as a sort of background noise. I'm wondering if this is common behavior among others who have issue with the 1 TB caps?
    • Netflix recommends 5 Mbps for 1080p video streams. That's a max (low-action scenes will require less), but if you assume worst-case and 8 hours/day of continuous streaming, that works out to (5 Mbps) * (8 hours/day) * (30 days/mo) = 540 GB.

      The households having problems with the 1 TB cap are typically larger - 5 or more people. Mom, dad, 3+ kids all streaming different shows. It's actually fairer for them to be paying more. If each household pays the same per month, then the homes which use only 100-2

    • I have a couple friends who mentioned that they have issues with the 1 TB cap. Both said they tend to stream video all the time when home, sometimes just as a sort of background noise. I'm wondering if this is common behavior among others who have issue with the 1 TB caps?

      I regularly use more than 1TB per month since I use streaming services for TV as well as Netflix. I actually have no cap since a TV/internet bundle comes with no cap and is cheaper than an uncapped service. I can see where someone who replaces cable with Hulu/DTVN/etc. would easily exceeed 1TB.

  • It might be a popular feature for them to stop using data when there's on one in the room. Maybe a smartwatch could also tell them when you've fallen asleep.

  • In my area, Comcast measures your data usage by how much data they send to you from their datacenter. This would include DOS attacks, monitoring traffic from Comcast.. My monthly logs often differ from Comcasts, sometimes by as much as 10x, as much of this traffic is rejected by my gateway. None of my other utilities get away with this sort of monitoring. It is based on what I consume, not what they send. If the water pipe breaks on their side of my meter, that is their problem. Comcast makes it mine. I ha

  • When the 6Mbps DSL became too slow for my son and I to use simultaneously around 4 years ago, I looked into Comcast. Their residential plans had the 1TB monthly cap. Since I watch lots of streaming video, and the son (who has since moved out) was big into gaming and regularly downloaded huge game files, I knew that wouldn't work out well, so I'm paying a bit extra for Comcast Business Class. No caps on it so far, and the service is surprisingly stable.

  • Transit is what ISPs buy when they have no cheaper way to get data to and from "the internet" for their customers. It's the most expensive way of providing a path to "the internet". A small-scale transit connection which can be used without limits around the clock costs less than $0.20 per Megabit/s. Carrying a 50Mbps connection without any kind of overcommitment costs an ISP less than $10 a month. That covers 100% use, which for a 50Mbps connection means 16TB/month. ISPs overcommit their bandwidth because

  • 1 TB / month isn't a lot really (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bagofbeans ( 567926 ) on Sunday January 27, 2019 @11:09AM (#58029756)

    I have 3Mb/s DSL, which doesn't quite allow 1TB/month (0.003 Tb / 8) * 365 days / 12 months * 24 hours * 3600 seconds.

    So, a high speed customer should expect to able to pull a lot more than that.

    This is is being framed as 1TB being excessive, when really it isn't.

    • The infrastructure and prices aren't set up for every customer to use 100% of their bandwidth all the time. If everyone did that,
      • The entire network would have to be redesigned, since cable bandwidth is shared between you and your neighbors. It relies on customers not using 100% of their bandwidth all the time in order to function properly.
      • Prices would be a lot higher. OC3 fiber optic lines have a data rate of 148 Mbps, and cost upwards of about $10,000/mo. That's a dedicated line so you can saturate

    • Just as long as you don't try to stream 4K video, you can get by with a 1 TB cap. My stepdad streams "standard" HD video and so far, it appears I will use about 250 GB per month.

    • It is "possible" to pull a lot more than that, the reality is even on 100mb or gigabit most will not even do 1TB.
  • It's funny how the Vaterland of the Internet falls back comparing to the rest of developed countries. In The Netherlands I pay around 40â per month for 1Gbit symmetrical optical line without any caps whatsoever, with net neutrality laws in place.

  • There are a few theories above about high data usage, but does anyone really know, any surveys/studies done ?

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