FCC Launches Formal Inquiry Into Why Broadband Data Caps Are Terrible (engadget.com) 45
The Federal Communications Commission announced that it will open a renewed investigation into broadband data caps and how they impact both consumer experience and company competition. From a report: The FCC is soliciting stories from consumers about their experiences with capped broadband service. The agency also opened a formal Notice of Inquiry to collect public comment that will further inform its actions around broadband data caps. "Restricting consumers' data can cut off small businesses from their customers, slap fees on low-income families and prevent people with disabilities from using the tools they rely on to communicate," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said. "As the nation's leading agency on communications, it's our duty to dig deeper into these practices and make sure that consumers are put first."
Comcast is the worst (Score:2, Informative)
Sure as shit, the previous caps are never reached, once I pay the extra. No major usage changes in the household either.
Re:Comcast is the worst (Score:5, Informative)
I had gone over the cap a few times ($30-70 in overages), so I switched to unlimited for an additional $50/month.
Sure as shit, the previous caps are never reached, once I pay the extra. No major usage changes in the household either.
Also, they make it hard to check how much bandwidth you've used by making that data hard to reach and half the time be simply unreachable.
Comcast has a website where you can check your internet data usage. They are now saying it is going to be disabled and only can use their app.
Last year in the app, it would dump you in a chat when you looked for your data usage. Most of the time, it just said something went wrong and check back later. They have changed it but still a lot of time its unreachable and simply have an empty boxes that never gets filled.
I have my own router and its measurement of bandwidth used does not match what Comcast says. Not by much but 20--30gb per month.
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One of the encapsulation types could be they are now "encrypting" all data, which adds overhead to everything. So your encrypted data is now encrypted again by their network, and decrypted when it exits their network.
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I think their app being a disaster for checking bandwidth is by design, it certainly helped motivate me to shell out the extra $$ for unlimited.
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I'm sure I'll get downvoted for saying this, but I'm a happy Comcast customer.
I pay $29/month for 200 Mbps. The service is reliable, and I am never charged extra.
Finally (Score:2)
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Utterly embarrassing that Comcast's highest cable plan is 1.2gb/s down with a 1.2TB/mo cap. If you actually max out that download bandwidth, you blow through the cap in less than two and a half hours. You could download 388.8TB/mo with that speed, and the cap is less than 0.3% of that.
Data caps exist for one reason and one reason only -- to make more money. Just to show how ridiculously low these caps are, back in 2017 I was downloading everything I could find from various Usenet binaries groups. For 3 months in a row I used over 4TB a month, and this was on a 25mb/s DSL line. (fortunately, no data cap).
Re:Finally (Score:4, Informative)
I had to look up what happens when you go over the cap on Comcast, since I have Spectrum. I assumed you'd just be throttled until your next billing cycle, but nope, it's a nasty cash grab. According to their FAQ:
Will I be alerted when I approach, reach, or exceed my data usage plan?
Yes. You'll get email, text message, and Xfinity X1 on-screen notifications if you reach 75% (email only), 90%, and 100% of 1.2 TB of data usage. If you use more than 1.2 TB you will also receive an email and X1 on-screen notification for each 50 gigabyte (GB) block incurring an additional charge of $10+ tax up to the maximum data overage charge of $100.
You'll receive an SMS text message for each 50 GB you use over 1.2 TB up to the maximum overage charge of $100 and if you've opted in, you'll also get push notifications on your phone through the Xfinity My Account app.
$10 per 50GB is more expensive per GB than a damn USB flash drive. [bestbuy.com] This isn't just something the FCC should be investigating, it should be straight up illegal.
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I have unlimited on Xfinity, pay for it, because I don't want to end up in those situations. And good thing too. Awhile back my family's cell phone provider messed up their WiFi calling configuration, which caused our various phones to burn through a TB+ each *in a day*. Only stopping when I figured out what devices were making things slow and turned all the default wifi calling stuff off.
All that to say that it should straight up be criminal for these companies like Comcast to charge overages like that,
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I just checked my area. For 3 years the cost is $85/month for 1200 Mbps and it says unlimited data and Peacock included.
Apparently your area is different.
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Here, in western Washington state, I'm paying Comcast $96 per month for 800 down / 100 up* with a 1.2TB monthly cap. I can get unlimited bandwidth for an extra $30 per month.
Once every ~18 months they'll give you a "courtesy" month where you can go over the cap without having to pay extra, but otherwise it's (IiRC) $10 for every 50 gigabytes you go over.
* The higher upload speeds require you own a particular cable modem (I think only three or four models qualify) - or rent Xfinity's own modem for an absurd
Why? (Score:3)
Because telcos are cheap bastards that want to charge the most for the minimum possible service, nor do they want to build out their infrastructure to support the data rates that they advertise.
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Because telcos are cheap bastards that want to charge the most for the minimum possible service, nor do they want to build out their infrastructure to support the data rates that they advertise.
Min Max.
That is the goal of every company and every human.
Can't blame companies for that.
Competition is the antidote to that. Unfortunately, I only have a single option where I live. Comcast or nothing.
Consumers first? lol (Score:3)
If all your options are "for profit" companies, then consumers will *NEVER* come first, no matter what the FCC wishes.
Profits come first, and the only way to help consumers is to make screwing them unprofitable. Get on it.
Competition is the real answer (Score:2, Interesting)
Anywhere where you have increased competition in broadband and new players have entered the market, outcomes have almost always been better for consumers in terms of lower prices/better value as the legacy ISPs are forced to compete.
Get rid of all the laws, rules, regulations and agreements that artificially constrain competition and things will get better.
There aren't any laws, rules or regulations (Score:1)
There's no magic regulations you can get rid of for cheaper prices. Regulations are written in blood. The problem here i
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The catch is that you need competitors that can actually offer service which truly competes on both price and performance. In my area, Spectrum (which thankfully, does not have data caps) is the only realistic choice. The other options are:
Starlink, which offers significantly worse performance for a much higher price ($120/mo).
T-Mobile, a 5G wireless service which is somewhat cost competitive but the service has some caveats due to being behind CGNAT and the provided combo router being absolute garbage.
Libertarian Masturbatory Fantasy consistently fail (Score:2)
Get rid of all the laws, rules, regulations and agreements that artificially constrain competition and things will get better.
So you're a fan of the social media landscape? Comcast? How about the job Google is doing? You must be a huge fan of MS and Outlook. What about Oracle's RDBMS product? You like Apple's iPad prices? How about those lightning cables? The tech sector has virtually no regulation. Why is it not your business nirvana? Why isn't Meta the most loved company in history? They've operated with largely no regulation during their entire existence.
It's frustrating listening to libertarian tech bros oversimpl
Re:Competition is the real answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Anywhere where you have increased competition in broadband and new players have entered the market, outcomes have almost always been better for consumers in terms of lower prices/better value as the legacy ISPs are forced to compete.
Get rid of all the laws, rules, regulations and agreements that artificially constrain competition and things will get better.
Actually, experience has shown the opposite. When my home town decided to change the law and allow a second cable company to compete, things were way better for about two years. The incumbent provider cut their rates massively. But they undercut the newcomer, and priced them out of business. Two years later, the incumbent bought the wiring from the newcomer, and upgraded the infrastructure for pennies on the dollar, then raised their rates again.
You can't fix ISP monopolies through deregulation, because the infrastructure costs are too high for new competitors to ever enter the market except in very dense, highly affluent areas. You have one or two entrenched companies (cable and maybe the phone company), and there's very little chance of anybody else entering the market without getting squeezed out by the incumbent companies, which can easily take a loss for a little while to drive the newcomer into the ground. As a result, it is exceedingly difficult to keep more than one or maybe two viable providers even in residential parts of Silicon Valley, much less anywhere else.
The only way, and I mean the *only* way to fix the problem is by tearing down the barrier to entry by making the wire infrastructure owned by a separate company. That can either be a government entity that builds the infrastructure and maintains it or it can be an existing company's infrastructure spun off into a separate company as part of an antitrust action.
A separate infrastructure provider allows multiple ISPs to put their equipment in a shared data center and provide service to consumers without having to rebuild the last mile (which is the expensive part of providing service). The ISPs can then more easily compete on service and price, because the fiber infrastructure is shared and is a fixed cost, but the transceivers on both ends, the central office equipment, etc. is changeable. As a result, whenever a newcomer wants to come into the market, the cost of doing so is low enough that the existing ISPs can't bankrupt them easily, which drives prices down and service quality up.
In other words, the only way to drive prices down when you have a natural monopoly is through *more* regulation, not less.
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Anywhere where you have increased competition in broadband and new players have entered the market, outcomes have almost always been better for consumers in terms of lower prices/better value as the legacy ISPs are forced to compete.
Get rid of all the laws, rules, regulations and agreements that artificially constrain competition and things will get better.
Actually, experience has shown the opposite. When my home town decided to change the law and allow a second cable company to compete, things were way better for about two years. The incumbent provider cut their rates massively. But they undercut the newcomer, and priced them out of business. Two years later, the incumbent bought the wiring from the newcomer, and upgraded the infrastructure for pennies on the dollar, then raised their rates again.
You can't fix ISP monopolies through deregulation, because the infrastructure costs are too high for new competitors to ever enter the market except in very dense, highly affluent areas. You have one or two entrenched companies (cable and maybe the phone company), and there's very little chance of anybody else entering the market without getting squeezed out by the incumbent companies, which can easily take a loss for a little while to drive the newcomer into the ground. As a result, it is exceedingly difficult to keep more than one or maybe two viable providers even in residential parts of Silicon Valley, much less anywhere else.
The only way, and I mean the *only* way to fix the problem is by tearing down the barrier to entry by making the wire infrastructure owned by a separate company. That can either be a government entity that builds the infrastructure and maintains it or it can be an existing company's infrastructure spun off into a separate company as part of an antitrust action.
A separate infrastructure provider allows multiple ISPs to put their equipment in a shared data center and provide service to consumers without having to rebuild the last mile (which is the expensive part of providing service). The ISPs can then more easily compete on service and price, because the fiber infrastructure is shared and is a fixed cost, but the transceivers on both ends, the central office equipment, etc. is changeable. As a result, whenever a newcomer wants to come into the market, the cost of doing so is low enough that the existing ISPs can't bankrupt them easily, which drives prices down and service quality up.
In other words, the only way to drive prices down when you have a natural monopoly is through *more* regulation, not less.
Predatory pricing is illegal. The whole thing you described is illegal and requires regulatory action.
But this does not mean that we have a natural monopoly and only regulation to contain it. It means we foster competition and not let monopolies happen.
Right now, competition is not even allowed since the big cable companies have divvied up the country by region and are staying out of each others way. Small companies cannot even come up from legal challenges.
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Predatory pricing is illegal. The whole thing you described is illegal and requires regulatory action.
I didn't say they were predatory. Predatory pricing would be pricing the service unrealistically low. The competitor underpriced them pretty substantially, but to survive at that price point, they needed to get a certain percentage of customers to switch. All the cable company had to do was match their price to keep people from switching, and the new entrant into the market was screwed.
That's why wire providers are fundamentally a natural monopoly. It costs way too much to string up dark fiber/cable, so
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Get rid of all the laws, rules, regulations and agreements that artificially constrain competition and things will get better.
The problem is you can't start a broadband company unless you're already a billion dollar company.
That and bullshit like this. https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
Data caps, the good, the bad, the ugly (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone else noted here that if you ran your Comcast link at 100% for a month you could use 388 TB in a month.
The problem is Comcast would lose money charging you $110 (or whatever) if you and everyone else downloaded anywhere near that much.
Going back to the 1200mbaud modem days, the typical ISP had about an 8:1 user to modem bank ratio. They can't do 1:1, charge you something you're willing to pay and stay in business at 1:1. The same applies today for tcp based ISPs. The network is a shared resource that doesn't have enough capacity for everyone to use 100% of what they are paying for and the users wouldn't pay the true going rate for 1:1. The network must be shared which requires everyone use less than they paid for.
The easiest way to make that happen is implement a cap of some sort. The problem is that the ISP tries to cash in and charge an overage fee instead of doing something more reasonable and less usurious. For example, on my phone I pay AT&T a few bucks for a 16 GB/month subscription but they don't cut me off or charge me extra if I hit the cap. I can still use data but I get slowed down dramatically. The service is still useful for everything except HD movies. 99% of high bandwidth users would be happy if the cap itself was upped a bit and going over it didn't cost an arm n a leg but instead just slowed your top speed to something usable but not great. It's not perfect but it's reasonable, avoids billing surprises, doesn't cut customers hard off the net (which would cause a bloody revolution) and still won't impact 99% of users.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Cheap, fast, abundant, pick 2.
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It is neither cheap, nor fast nor abundant. Well compared to dial up it might be but not by any modern standards.
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I'm going to call bull.
* Actual broadband is fast by definition. If it doesn't met standards, then that's the problem to attack.
* Most peoples' access to broadband is cheap relative to the cost of installing, managing, maintaining the system. All of those expenses are far beyond what most people can even comprehend. (Billions of dollars.) It could be CHEAPER without the profit motive in the short term but given our litigious society, the profit savings would be eaten up by targeted lawsuits looking to dig i
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For example, on my phone I pay AT&T a few bucks for a 16 GB/month subscription but they don't cut me off or charge me extra if I hit the cap. I can still use data but I get slowed down dramatically.
That's still mostly a punitive action to motivate you to upgrade to a higher plan. Most wireless carriers have actually implemented network management policies where the heaviest users will be deprioritized only when a tower is heavily loaded, provided you're on a plan which allows that. During times when there's bandwidth to spare, you're still able to fully utilize it. It's simply more profitable to make people believe they've "used up" their data bucket and they'll have to cough up more money for a la
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The problem is Comcast would lose money charging you $110 (or whatever) if you and everyone else downloaded anywhere near that much.
They wouldn't have the capacity on the shared nodes for that, sure. But if your neighborhood maxed out what bandwidth is there, it's not costing them much. This is artificial scarcity to drive higher profits when it's based on just 1TB. They already saturated the market. It's the only way they're going to increase profits.
Re: Data caps, the good, the bad, the ugly (Score:2)
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Cheap, fast, abundant, pick 2.
Or, if you're limited to Comcast, you get to pick one. Maybe.
file sharing? (Score:1)
It always seemed to me the real reason was to prevent/discourage peer to peer file sharing. The government especially now is obsessed with centralization and control over content, I can't see how this will pan out in any way beneficial to the consumer, or decentralized protocols and content distribution. A free and open internet is in direct contradiction to controlling speech/disinformation and preventing those evil foreigners, didn't you know?
Re:file sharing? (Score:4, Informative)
You're a little out of date. Doesn't take much re-downloading of games on the latest generation consoles to blow through at 1.2TB cap. No piracy needed at all to hit that limit.
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It always seemed to me the real reason was to prevent/discourage peer to peer file sharing. The government especially now is obsessed with centralization and control over content, I can't see how this will pan out in any way beneficial to the consumer, or decentralized protocols and content distribution. A free and open internet is in direct contradiction to controlling speech/disinformation and preventing those evil foreigners, didn't you know?
Just as with water services, internet should be something that is controlled locally and possibly by the city or a small local company. Not by national companies like Comcast.
No matter what, peer to peer at least in the same city, same state should be always there. But, we're so fractured now and dependent on central servers and data center for everything.
GloFiber (Score:2)
They're unnecessary (Score:2)
There is no point in letting private companies manage services that are universally desirable. The phrase is natural monopoly. It's the same reason why letting private companies run your water plant is pointless. It's somethin
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I pay $120 a month for broadband internet
Screw that. I'd just point a cantenna at the local Walmart and mooch their WiFi if Spectrum ever got that greedy. Lucky for me, they're still letting customers churn in order to get back on a discounted plan. So, I cancelled, did my two months on a rather mediocre 5G provider (Straight Talk) and then signed back up at the promotional rate of $30/mo.
If it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid.
How the tables have turned (Score:2)
In the early days of the broadband industry here in Australia, data caps were a very standard part of every ISP contract, and they were not generous by any stretch of the imagination. Speeds were pretty much capped at the max throughput of an ADSL2 line, so to differentiate products, and make more money, ISPs offered different plans with different data caps.
At that time in the USA, most (all?) broadband plans were unlimited, and we used to have to struggle with running all kinds of things on a capped connec
Relic of the past (Score:2)
Data caps are a relic of the past from the early broadband era. The service was expensive to run and back then it made sense to charge users for what they use. These days, with modern backbone throughput, there is absolutely no reasonable excuse to impose any data caps on end users. Bandwidth-heavy SERVICES (Netflix, Disney, Youtube, etc.) should still be charged for their usage and impact on backbone networks, but from the user perspective data caps are nothing else but a relic of the past turned money mak
Allow Caps, Disallow Fines for Hitting Cap (Score:2)
This isn't a difficult discussion.
1. Justify cap levels with regionally-specific data and infrastructural limitations.
2. If someone hits cap, cut their bandwidth to X Mbps.
3. No fines for hitting cap.
4. Advertise cap level and frequency with which people hit cap (% of subs in that ZIP code) wherever subscription price is advertised
Restricting consumers' data can cut off small businesses from their customers
That's a business ownership/management problem. There's no GOOD reason for the average small business to hit cap in the first place. Every ISP has a business customer communicatio