8 ms·

Comcast's 1TB data caps start to roll out nationwide

100 points by marmshallow 10y ago

rb808 10y ago
Aside from torrenting, how could you possibly use more than 30GB a day every day? If you do use that much surely its fair you pay extra as you're probably using more data than the rest of the block.
- llama052 10y ago
  I eat up more than 30GB a day from video streaming alone. Think of how connected households are today, you've got everything connected to the internet now. Smartphones, Tablets, Laptops, Streaming devices in every room, learning devices/gadgets for kids. You've got Netflix/HBO/Prime video, Spotify, apple music, Cloud backup services will eat into that bandwidth as well. Just checked my last months usage and I've used 1.3TB of data, and it's not that I'm doing anything crazy, it just adds up.
  - sytelus 10y ago
    HD streaming costs 5Mbps. Even if you want 24X7, your total bandwidth consumption would be 1.6TB/mo. It seems unlikely that you can eat up 1TB just by streaming videos.
    - msh 10y ago
      4K Netflix is about 25 mbit
- softawre 10y ago
  Most won't hit it. But you're missing the point. You'll hit 1TB in 5 years, with 4k streaming. You expect Comcast to raise their 1TB limit? Doubt it.
SallySwanSmith 10y ago
And I just switched to a local provider and am cancelling my xfinity tv and internet. I'm done with them.
godzillabrennus 10y ago
Many folks don't have an option to switch away. If we want change we need to vote it in. That reminds me to get back to work fixing the problem.
- throwaway98237 10y ago
  Agreed. Much like public utilities. The Internet is already a public utility in my mind, but we still regulate it like cable television. That must change. But, looking to utilities, one sees the democratization and decentralization, due to battery and solar technologies, taking place in that sector. It would be wise to leapfrog some of the solutions and get straight to a decentralized, private-mesh/public-utility solution as soon as possible.
  - throwaway98237 10y ago
    Thanks for the feedback (down-vote). Would appreciate an accompanying comment. Then I could reconsider my position and perhaps alter it.
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      Paying attention to the downvotes on your comments isn't terribly helpful on HN. Mostly it just leads to more downvotes.
      - throwaway98237 10y ago
        Thanks for telling me how HN works. I've never been here before. Oh wait. I've been here for years. So, my experience has let me to a different point of view than you have. But, you know, thanks for making those assumptions and giving your your advice.
        oldmanjay 10y ago
        I assumed that a person who broke a well-known community convention may be ignorant of the convention. Feel free to continue breaking them with your throwaway.
tjohns 10y ago
If you've got no other choice besides Comcast, it's worth noting that their business plans don't have data caps. (Though they are slightly more expensive.)
- x2f10 10y ago
  It's over double the cost for my 100-down line.
throwaway98237 10y ago
As more and more of "our lives" are live online, this is going to be an issue we must confront. On one hand, we need to admit the hard realities that the internet is a physical network that requires real world resources, and every time we pretend that limited resources are unlimited we end up in trouble. On the other hand we can't say, you've reached your cap, so we are in the right to charge you to utilize public resources or attend "online protests" (I realize this immediately runs into net neutrality issues).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ar0 10y ago
To be honest, I am often wondering: wouldn't it maybe be better to have a provider that has clear data limits in place (and reasonable charges for exceeding them) but otherwise provides full, unrestricted, unmonitored high-speed connectivity including IPv6 for server usage instead of having an apparently "unlimited" connection with lots of throttling, filtering, "best effort" and peering games of chicken? After all, "unlimited" is not really unlimited (moving bits does require physical materials which are limited) and primarily means that low data users subsidize high data users. Now, don't get me wrong: from what I have read, Comcast seems to be a prime example of the second kind of ISP and they are implementing data caps, so yes this would make me try to switch as well. But dismissing data caps in general seems not to be the right approach for me.
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  There's a long tradition in business that once the price of something drops below a certain point it makes no sense to offer it metered, as the cost of managing that exceeds the income you get from micromanaging it. It literally makes no sense at all to offer metered data. It doesn't help the consumer, it doesn't help the business, and it doesn't help us as a society. Even if it's not a total dumpster fire that doesn't mean it makes any sense at all. This is a short term money grab by the worst company in America. That's all.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    It's a fairly limited money grab if the cap is beyond the majority of actual usage
    - lawnchair_larry 10y ago
      Nope, that's how they get you. They have projected precisely the point at which they can enter the market with a cap high enough that nobody will care today, and over time things like 4K netflix and larger and larger games, with frequent large patches and OS updates will eat that buffer to become pure profit. They will be sticking hard at 1TB, not at 99th percentile. Remember that 4K is 4x the pixels that 1080p is, and HDR adds even more data.
chaostheory 10y ago
You can pay $50/month more to Comcast if you don't want to be capped. I'm not happy about it but at least there's an option. I don't pirate and I use about 5 TB of data a month.
readams 10y ago
We need to move to a system where a tightly-regulated utility owns the wired infrastructure only, and leases access to a wide variety of ISPs, video services, etc. This solves the problem that the infrastructure costs involved create a natural monopoly while avoiding Comcast misbehavior. Otherwise I think it's safe to assume that once the caps are entrenched, they won't ever be increased and they'll try to move everyone into a regime like cell phone data is currently: high prices, tightly metered, innovation dead.
- bigdubs 10y ago
  T-Mobile is an example of cellular companies responding to tight competition and differentiating by removing caps / usage fees. The key is competition though, as you've pointed out.
  - LeoPanthera 10y ago
    The new T-Mobile "One" plans are T-Mobile rapidly trying to "re-carrier" itself after the briefly exciting Uncarrier days. There are indeed no caps, but only at the expense of streaming video, which is throttled and restricted to SD resolutions, unless you pay extra to get HD, which seems to me to be a blatant disregard of net neutrality.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    You do realize T-Mobile is on a full EEE trip there? Look at Germany, where they existed for a while already, and have pushed against net neutrality, refuse to peer with companies unless they get paid, replace ads in websites with their own with MitM proxies and so on. T-Online/T-Mobile are the worst of the worst.
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      What is EEE? Unfortunately paid peering is pretty much the norm these days unless you are part of the exclusive club of Tier 1 ISPs, not that I'm defending it. I don't have much great to say about any of the wireless carriers but I feel like T-Mobile is at least trying new things. The T Mobile One plan for instance is really great if you travel internationally. I don't know of any other carrier that is doing that.
ralusek 10y ago
I have had an extremely hard time getting an answer to this question. It is my understanding that it is either very negligible, or an entirely non-existent cost that is incurred by an ISP to transfer more vs less data. They basically just facilitate the infrastructure, is that correct? I understand with mobile data you're actually competing for frequency space, among other issues, but this is not analogous to how data over cable works.
- bajsejohannes 10y ago
  The cost of transferring more data on current infrastructure is negligible. However, ISPs have a maximum capacity that's well below their number of users multiplied by the user's maximum bandwidth. They're just making a bet that not everyone will use all their bandwidth most of the time. At some point, average utilization goes up, and they have to buy more infrastructure to handle it, which is what costs money.
  - wmf 10y ago
    Only peak time (e.g. 8 PM) utilization matters and caps generally don't reduce it. It's definitely true that increased peak usage requires ISPs to upgrade their networks, but their pricing is almost totally disconnected from costs.
- shwash 10y ago
  It's not negligible. Wired and wireless are both "pipes" of a certain capacity. When you install the initial investment you build out a certain sized pipe. Wired has a much larger pipe for obvious technical reasons. In both cases, there is no real cost delta between a low to medium utilization. In both cases, if the pre-built pipe experiences a high level of utilization, it results in irregularity of service (more latency, dropped packets). With wireless, the impact of high usage is significantly more severe and is more visible at a much lower percent of utilization. The solution to this is to either reduce capacity or improve infrastructure. The latter involves capital expenditure for both pipes, albeit it is exponentially cheaper to increase wired capacity compared to wireless capacity. Cheaper, but it's not cheap. It's not just hardware - technician training, deployment costs, for larger inefficient businesses it's not easy to upgrade an edge node of 1Gbps to 10Gbps because a feeder for 100 families has a handful of hungry users. From just a straight business perspective, usage caps make so much sense. The vast majority of customers get nowhere near them and will never notice. The small subset of "power" users that are eating your capacity you're losing money on anyway, so it's easy to sacrifice this market segment. The sad truth is that the internet video push has turned "power user" expectations fully out of whack with what an executive room was predicting. A business that has had a built network has a hard time justifying large capital pipe expenditures for what it's internally viewing as troublesome "power" users who should switch to business accounts. So they're fighting it with these policies. The simple truth is that the bandwidth demands are going to continue to increase across the board and this will need to be accepted and the capital spent to expand the pipe. However, a lack of competition will make this process long and painful.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
The text of the emails they're sending out is: Information about a New Terabyte Internet Data Usage Plan We’re writing to let you know that we will be activating a new XFINITY Internet Data Usage Plan in your area. Effective November 1, 2016, your XFINITY Internet service will include one terabyte (that’s 1,024 GB) of data usage per month. With a terabyte of data you can stream between 600 and 700 hours of HD video, play more than 12,000 hours of online games, or download 60,000 high-res photos in a month. [Note about your personalized usage vs 1tb] One terabyte is a massive amount of data – less than 1% of our customers use that amount in a month. However, we still want to make sure you understand your options and choose the Data Usage Plan that works best for you. If you believe you will need more data, an Unlimited Data option is available. Our data plans are based on a principle of fairness. Those who use more Internet data, pay more. And those who use less Internet data, pay less. One Terabyte Plan and Unlimited Data option: One Terabyte (TB) included/month If one TB is exceeded, $10 is charged for each additional data block of up to 50 GB/month $200 overage charge limit - no matter how much data is used Unlimited Data Additional $50/month No overage charges — no matter how much data is used each month You can also track and manage your usage so there are never any surprises about how much data you use. Here are a few tools you can use: Data Usage meter – Monitor how much data your household has used with our Data Usage Meter. Data Usage Estimator - Estimate your data usage with our estimator Tool. Simply enter how your household typically uses the Internet and the tool will estimate your monthly data usage. Notifications - If you approach, reach or exceed one terabyte of data usage, we will send you a courtesy "in-browser" notice as well as an email. You can also elect to receive notifications at specific usage thresholds and set up mobile text notifications. Learn more about notifications here. Usage notifications will not be sent to customers who enroll in the Unlimited Data option. For the less than 1% of customers who do exceed one terabyte of data usage, we’re offering two courtesy months, so customers will not be charged the first two times they exceed one terabyte while they are getting comfortable with the new plan. If you have any questions about the new Data Usage Plan, please visit http://dataplan.xfinity.com/ http://dataplan.xfinity.com/. Thank you for being an XFINITY Internet customer. Sincerely, Tim Collins Regional Senior Vice President of Comcast's Heartland Region
- beamatronic 10y ago
  >> we will send you a courtesy "in-browser" notice Another good reason to use SSL everywhere
wesleyd 10y ago
I've just signed up for sonic.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Just realized they are available for my address - but only as Fiber to the Node (operated through ATT's Fiber + copper to house). Has anyone actually used this? I imagine it wouldn't be as cool as FTTH, but maybe better than Comcast (which shows as 25M down for me even though I have 50M signed up).
LeoPanthera 10y ago
I wish I could migrate to a local provider, but in my area there is literally no other option. We don't even have a phone line, and even if we paid AT&T the surprisingly huge fee to have them install one, we still wouldn't be able to get DSL because we live too far from civilization. (About 10 minutes up a hill just outside Redwood City in the CA Bay Area.) So whatever Comcast want to do, we're literally stuck with it.
sidlls 10y ago
Now if only I didn't constantly see "insufficient bandwidth" on Amazon or apparently-throttled downloads and streaming of other data with my "Performance Pro" package I could start being more upset about the bandwidth cap and less about being charged ridiculous rates for paltry bandwidth.
existencebox 10y ago
Let me tell a tale. Recently I was cancelling my comcast for wave. I was charged an early cancellation fee of multiple months service (The cancellation was due to moving out of my apt at end of lease to a house for which comcast did not offer service). The early fee was not on my original contract; and was apparently added without my consent in the interim, and the lower level managers intended to enforce despite their inability to even provide me service. I refused this and continued to escalate until I got a surprisingly high tier manager who talked like a techie and seemed to understand a thing or two and had a degree of self awareness (when told "Thanks for your help, I'm sorry you work for such a shit company since your good effort could be better used in better actors" he responded with "yeah I know; at least it pays the bills"). He made ALL my problems disappear and listened to my complaints of a decade with Comcast, and why I'd never go back, seeming legitimately remorseful and sad that the company has been generally anti-consumer, promising that they were pushing to improve things and acknowledging the pain I felt to the degree of comping multiple months+fees. So my question. Is that an act? Or is this another poor middle manager trying to do his best? Are they really so tuned out as to how much ill will they're generating such that I had "not comcast" as a prerequisite to the massive act of _buying a house_? And to the other half of that question; how can we make them feel the pain more as consumers? (legal action of course but in addition.) As a tech influencer I do all I can to try and tell people about the great local ISP alternatives in my area if they aren't aware, but it seems like comcast lives in its own little bubble where the realities of good consumer practices just don't apply. (or maybe I'm being pessimistic and the hammer will drop in a few decades, I don't have many good prior historical examples with similar enough context to extrapolate, if anyone else does I'd be curious)
- wernercd 10y ago
  I've found that they just like to make it harder to get stuff fixed or changed in favor of the customer. Let me tell a tale: I've been with my fiance for ~10 years now. We've had Comcast for ~8 of the ten years. We had a "full" internet/cable package for ~6 of those 8 years. Every year - like clockwork - she would get a bill after the "year" intro period and the price would go up. I'm not sure of the numbers but from ~100 to ~150 or somewhere in there. Why like clockwork? Because every year she would call and say "cancel the package... oh? you'll extend it? AND add another pay channel bundle? Okay... talk to you next year". With each year it got harder and she had to fight longer - sometimes through multiple calls. When it got escalated to cancellation managers they would inevitably change their minds. It finally got to the point last year that we actually canceled everything except for the ABSOLUTE basic cable. No HD. Only half of the channels (no MTV, HGTV, etc). The reality is simple: It's them or... dialup? Satellite? couple other crappy options. The joy of "monopolies". They know that people who want channels MUST go through them. Thankfully Netflix, Amazon Prime,... plex :) have picked up the slack so we actually aren't bother much by the loss of HBO and the like...
mindslight 10y ago
I would really like to see the FTC go after them if they continue to advertise speeds above 3Mbit/sec. I've said it before and I'll say it again - patronize your local DSL provider before it's too late.
- dpark 10y ago
  I don't understand any of this comment. What is the 3Mbit/sec in reference to? I get significantly faster speed than that all the time. Edit: Oh, you're trying to assert that bandwidth==cap subdivided to the second level. No, that's absurd. I don't understand how switching to a local DSL provider would benefit me. I don't like Comcast at all, but cutting my typical bandwidth by more than 75% doesn't seem like a net gain. I like Netflix more than I hate Comcast.
  - mindslight 10y ago
    First, the bulk of consumer use does not require high instantaneous bandwidth. And from what I recall, cable companies generally throttle those uses anyway! But the real value of the comparison is seeing exactly what game cable companies are playing. Their last-mile links happen to have higher bandwidth, but really they do not want to actually carry the corresponding traffic. So they advertise the irrelevant speeds in big print, and then do everything they can to restrict the actual service provided. Meanwhile I'm consistently doing >2TB/mo on DSL. Don't let CableCos' misleading advertising fool you, the US's last-mile communications infrastructure basically stagnated two generations back. Competition between cable and DSL is the official national policy, and moves like this one make it quite clear that they are providing similar service. If you're in an area that still has a CLEC, you might even find a provider that actually has technical people answering the phone!
    - dpark 10y ago
      > First, the bulk of consumer use does not require high instantaneous bandwidth. The bulk of consumer use also doesn't require high usage caps so this is an extremely noncompelling argument. My house also does a ton of streaming and I do a lot of remote desktop. I do care about decent peak throughput. > And from what I recall, cable companies generally throttle those uses anyway! Maybe? I'm super in favor of net neutrality but I also recognize that throttled cable internet is still faster than unthrottled DSL. > Meanwhile I'm consistently doing >2TB/mo on DSL. So by your math, a whopping 6Mbps.
meesterdude 10y ago
And i live in philadelphia, where Comcast has an agreement with the city that prevents other ISPs from operating. Verizon can (because $$) but there are other ISP's outside the city like RCN that aren't allowed in.
nodesocket 10y ago
I loathe Comcast/Xfinity with a passion. My bill went from $129 a month (internet/tv) to $240 a month starting in Sept. This 1TB internet cap is complete nonsense. I don't understand why they just can't run their business responsibly and not try to screw and scam their customers.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  > I don't understand why they just can't run their business responsibly and not try to screw and scam their customers. When corporations are more powerful than the law or the political process, then of course they can do whatever they want. The law of this land is "whoever has more $$$ wins".
  - nodesocket 10y ago
    Not on board, and don't agree that law and political processes should be enforcing pricing and business constraints on Comcast. We need more companies and competition, and the market will force them to change.
    - xj9 10y ago
      That doesn't work for utilities or infrastructure.
    - jschwartzi 10y ago
      What market exists? How can it address these concerns?
bgentry 10y ago
It took a 30 minute phone call just for them to flip the switch that starts charging me an extra $50/mo. Followed by another 20 minute call to get my plan price reduced with a promotional rate. At least the 2nd rep was nice and told me to call back in the 2nd week of Nov for even more discounted special offers.
zenobit256 10y ago
As someone affected by this in the Washington area, is there any other ISP somebody would recommend? Comcast was my last resort, but this just floors me. A terabyte is easy to blow through in a household!
unabridged 10y ago
>If one TB is exceeded, $10 is charged for each additional data block of up to 50 GB/month $200 overage charge limit - no matter how much data is used >Unlimited Data Additional $50/month No overage charges — no matter how much data is used each month Can't they just cap the overage at $50? Why the nickel and dime-ing just to get an extra $150 from a handful of customers who forgot to monitor their usage and make a phone call?
- techsupporter 10y ago
  > Why the nickel and dime-ing just to get an extra $150 from a handful of customers who forgot to monitor their usage They want that ARPU to go up by $50 for the people who think they're heavy users but aren't always heavy users. Best of both worlds from their perspective: someone who only hits 1TB a couple of months out of the year could wind up giving them $500/year of "free" money (10 months of not going over but still paying the unlimited charge). And someone else who doesn't go over except once but does it really big kicks in another $100 or so. It's all about the ARPU.
- jbkly7 10y ago
  Nickel-and-diming is Comcast's way of life
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
The big, ugly company that should just die and be replaced by a utility doesn't want to die.
mankash666 10y ago
Pre emptive strike against fledgling IPTV services. Imagine a world where all your TV channels are delivered online. Except it'll be a reality in under 10 years, and Comcast wants a cut of it's made irrelevant
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
>If one TB is exceeded, $10 is charged for each additional data block of up to 50 GB/month $200 overage charge limit - no matter how much data is used I can't parse that. There appears to be some punctuation and words missing.
- nothrabannosir 10y ago
  <=1tb=no penalty 1.05tb=$10 penalty 1.1tb=$20 penalty ... 1.5tb=$100 penalty ... 2tb=$200 penalty 2.05tb=$200 penalty ... 938376171819393tb=$200 penalty
- detaro 10y ago
  From the article: The third time it's exceeded within a 12 month period, however, the "courtesy months" go away and users will be charged $10 for an additional 50GB of data, which will continue happening to a limit of $200 per month.
bogomipz 10y ago
And yet every time one of these near monopolies pleads their case in front of the FCC and DOJ they always state that said merger will be good for consumers.
tzs 10y ago
Whenever bandwidth caps are discussed, many people say that there is no technical reason providers like Comcast need to have a limit. It's all just to make money on artificial overage charges and/or to discourage people from canceling their cable TV in favor of internet streaming, and that these ISPs can only do this because they are often the only high speed provider in their area. Question: if that is true, then how come on the server side of things, where we do have competition and so can switch to a different hosting provider if one charges too much for bandwidth, we don't have major hosting providers giving us unlimited bandwidth?
- paulmd 10y ago
  Do you mean data transfer caps? That's what we are discussing here. You can buy unmetered shared hosting (famously, Dreamhost) or even unmetered servers/rackspace. The problem is that at the end of the day everyone involved knows it's an illusion. You can't sell an infinite quantity of data and so any service is oversold to some degree. And since transfer is just the integration of bandwidth consumption, so there are hard limits to what you could ever push through a given server (though the service will ask you to fuck off long before this point). Furthermore, servers are largely business-driven. Pretend "unlimited" hosting is fine for toy projects but in business long load times or outages are lost money, so reliability is a must and SLAs are the order of the day. Nobody will sign a SLA on "unlimited", bandwidth (to handle peaks) is more important than transfer anyway, and the larger your needs the more you will pay. Every dollar you spend on wasted capacity is a dollar that comes out of your profit. Anyway, what it largely comes down to is that consumer internet access is a "best-effort" service and that's not acceptable in a datacenter. Data still costs money to deliver even in a "best-effort" service but it's super minimal. The marginal cost of a gigabyte of data is around a tenth of a cent per gigabyte. All of the cost is in the last-mile infrastructure, so overage charges are just a cash grab. I would be perfectly fine with being billed at say $15/mo for hookup plus actual data charges but that's not what's being offered here.
jdpedrie 10y ago
I got this email yesterday, and called today to cancel my service. The guy spent several minutes getting more and more belligerent, telling me that I was mistaken, that there had always been a data cap, in fact the data cap was being raised from 300gb to 1tb! The only real difference was now the cap was going to be enforced. I laughed at him and told him I wasn't going to argue, just cancel the service.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  There was a 300gb cap but it wasn't enforced. Kind of a joke.
Tempest1981 10y ago
Anyone else notice that they picked 1024 GB, vs 1000 GB? Extra generosity. :-)
pasbesoin 10y ago
Is their business product still uncapped? Going to remain so (to the best of anyone's knowledge)? Been thinking of switching to that. Unfortunately, Crapcast is the only option for me, here.

100 points by marmshallow 10y ago

rb808 10y ago

Aside from torrenting, how could you possibly use more than 30GB a day every day? If you do use that much surely its fair you pay extra as you're probably using more data than the rest of the block.

llama052 10y ago
I eat up more than 30GB a day from video streaming alone. Think of how connected households are today, you've got everything connected to the internet now. Smartphones, Tablets, Laptops, Streaming devices in every room, learning devices/gadgets for kids. You've got Netflix/HBO/Prime video, Spotify, apple music, Cloud backup services will eat into that bandwidth as well. Just checked my last months usage and I've used 1.3TB of data, and it's not that I'm doing anything crazy, it just adds up.
- sytelus 10y ago
  HD streaming costs 5Mbps. Even if you want 24X7, your total bandwidth consumption would be 1.6TB/mo. It seems unlikely that you can eat up 1TB just by streaming videos.
  - msh 10y ago
    4K Netflix is about 25 mbit
softawre 10y ago
Most won't hit it. But you're missing the point. You'll hit 1TB in 5 years, with 4k streaming. You expect Comcast to raise their 1TB limit? Doubt it.

SallySwanSmith 10y ago

And I just switched to a local provider and am cancelling my xfinity tv and internet. I'm done with them.

godzillabrennus 10y ago

Many folks don't have an option to switch away. If we want change we need to vote it in. That reminds me to get back to work fixing the problem.

throwaway98237 10y ago
Agreed. Much like public utilities. The Internet is already a public utility in my mind, but we still regulate it like cable television. That must change. But, looking to utilities, one sees the democratization and decentralization, due to battery and solar technologies, taking place in that sector. It would be wise to leapfrog some of the solutions and get straight to a decentralized, private-mesh/public-utility solution as soon as possible.
- throwaway98237 10y ago
  Thanks for the feedback (down-vote). Would appreciate an accompanying comment. Then I could reconsider my position and perhaps alter it.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    Paying attention to the downvotes on your comments isn't terribly helpful on HN. Mostly it just leads to more downvotes.
    - throwaway98237 10y ago
      Thanks for telling me how HN works. I've never been here before. Oh wait. I've been here for years. So, my experience has let me to a different point of view than you have. But, you know, thanks for making those assumptions and giving your your advice.
      - oldmanjay 10y ago
        I assumed that a person who broke a well-known community convention may be ignorant of the convention. Feel free to continue breaking them with your throwaway.

tjohns 10y ago

If you've got no other choice besides Comcast, it's worth noting that their business plans don't have data caps. (Though they are slightly more expensive.)

x2f10 10y ago
It's over double the cost for my 100-down line.

throwaway98237 10y ago

As more and more of "our lives" are live online, this is going to be an issue we must confront. On one hand, we need to admit the hard realities that the internet is a physical network that requires real world resources, and every time we pretend that limited resources are unlimited we end up in trouble. On the other hand we can't say, you've reached your cap, so we are in the right to charge you to utilize public resources or attend "online protests" (I realize this immediately runs into net neutrality issues).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ar0 10y ago

To be honest, I am often wondering: wouldn't it maybe be better to have a provider that has clear data limits in place (and reasonable charges for exceeding them) but otherwise provides full, unrestricted, unmonitored high-speed connectivity including IPv6 for server usage instead of having an apparently "unlimited" connection with lots of throttling, filtering, "best effort" and peering games of chicken? After all, "unlimited" is not really unlimited (moving bits does require physical materials which are limited) and primarily means that low data users subsidize high data users. Now, don't get me wrong: from what I have read, Comcast seems to be a prime example of the second kind of ISP and they are implementing data caps, so yes this would make me try to switch as well. But dismissing data caps in general seems not to be the right approach for me.

1_2__3 10y ago
There's a long tradition in business that once the price of something drops below a certain point it makes no sense to offer it metered, as the cost of managing that exceeds the income you get from micromanaging it. It literally makes no sense at all to offer metered data. It doesn't help the consumer, it doesn't help the business, and it doesn't help us as a society. Even if it's not a total dumpster fire that doesn't mean it makes any sense at all. This is a short term money grab by the worst company in America. That's all.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  It's a fairly limited money grab if the cap is beyond the majority of actual usage
  - lawnchair_larry 10y ago
    Nope, that's how they get you. They have projected precisely the point at which they can enter the market with a cap high enough that nobody will care today, and over time things like 4K netflix and larger and larger games, with frequent large patches and OS updates will eat that buffer to become pure profit. They will be sticking hard at 1TB, not at 99th percentile. Remember that 4K is 4x the pixels that 1080p is, and HDR adds even more data.

chaostheory 10y ago

You can pay $50/month more to Comcast if you don't want to be capped. I'm not happy about it but at least there's an option. I don't pirate and I use about 5 TB of data a month.

readams 10y ago

We need to move to a system where a tightly-regulated utility owns the wired infrastructure only, and leases access to a wide variety of ISPs, video services, etc. This solves the problem that the infrastructure costs involved create a natural monopoly while avoiding Comcast misbehavior. Otherwise I think it's safe to assume that once the caps are entrenched, they won't ever be increased and they'll try to move everyone into a regime like cell phone data is currently: high prices, tightly metered, innovation dead.

bigdubs 10y ago
T-Mobile is an example of cellular companies responding to tight competition and differentiating by removing caps / usage fees. The key is competition though, as you've pointed out.
- LeoPanthera 10y ago
  The new T-Mobile "One" plans are T-Mobile rapidly trying to "re-carrier" itself after the briefly exciting Uncarrier days. There are indeed no caps, but only at the expense of streaming video, which is throttled and restricted to SD resolutions, unless you pay extra to get HD, which seems to me to be a blatant disregard of net neutrality.
- kuschku 10y ago
  You do realize T-Mobile is on a full EEE trip there? Look at Germany, where they existed for a while already, and have pushed against net neutrality, refuse to peer with companies unless they get paid, replace ads in websites with their own with MitM proxies and so on. T-Online/T-Mobile are the worst of the worst.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    What is EEE? Unfortunately paid peering is pretty much the norm these days unless you are part of the exclusive club of Tier 1 ISPs, not that I'm defending it. I don't have much great to say about any of the wireless carriers but I feel like T-Mobile is at least trying new things. The T Mobile One plan for instance is really great if you travel internationally. I don't know of any other carrier that is doing that.

ralusek 10y ago

I have had an extremely hard time getting an answer to this question. It is my understanding that it is either very negligible, or an entirely non-existent cost that is incurred by an ISP to transfer more vs less data. They basically just facilitate the infrastructure, is that correct? I understand with mobile data you're actually competing for frequency space, among other issues, but this is not analogous to how data over cable works.

bajsejohannes 10y ago
The cost of transferring more data on current infrastructure is negligible. However, ISPs have a maximum capacity that's well below their number of users multiplied by the user's maximum bandwidth. They're just making a bet that not everyone will use all their bandwidth most of the time. At some point, average utilization goes up, and they have to buy more infrastructure to handle it, which is what costs money.
- wmf 10y ago
  Only peak time (e.g. 8 PM) utilization matters and caps generally don't reduce it. It's definitely true that increased peak usage requires ISPs to upgrade their networks, but their pricing is almost totally disconnected from costs.
shwash 10y ago
It's not negligible. Wired and wireless are both "pipes" of a certain capacity. When you install the initial investment you build out a certain sized pipe. Wired has a much larger pipe for obvious technical reasons. In both cases, there is no real cost delta between a low to medium utilization. In both cases, if the pre-built pipe experiences a high level of utilization, it results in irregularity of service (more latency, dropped packets). With wireless, the impact of high usage is significantly more severe and is more visible at a much lower percent of utilization. The solution to this is to either reduce capacity or improve infrastructure. The latter involves capital expenditure for both pipes, albeit it is exponentially cheaper to increase wired capacity compared to wireless capacity. Cheaper, but it's not cheap. It's not just hardware - technician training, deployment costs, for larger inefficient businesses it's not easy to upgrade an edge node of 1Gbps to 10Gbps because a feeder for 100 families has a handful of hungry users. From just a straight business perspective, usage caps make so much sense. The vast majority of customers get nowhere near them and will never notice. The small subset of "power" users that are eating your capacity you're losing money on anyway, so it's easy to sacrifice this market segment. The sad truth is that the internet video push has turned "power user" expectations fully out of whack with what an executive room was predicting. A business that has had a built network has a hard time justifying large capital pipe expenditures for what it's internally viewing as troublesome "power" users who should switch to business accounts. So they're fighting it with these policies. The simple truth is that the bandwidth demands are going to continue to increase across the board and this will need to be accepted and the capital spent to expand the pipe. However, a lack of competition will make this process long and painful.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

The text of the emails they're sending out is: Information about a New Terabyte Internet Data Usage Plan We’re writing to let you know that we will be activating a new XFINITY Internet Data Usage Plan in your area. Effective November 1, 2016, your XFINITY Internet service will include one terabyte (that’s 1,024 GB) of data usage per month. With a terabyte of data you can stream between 600 and 700 hours of HD video, play more than 12,000 hours of online games, or download 60,000 high-res photos in a month. [Note about your personalized usage vs 1tb] One terabyte is a massive amount of data – less than 1% of our customers use that amount in a month. However, we still want to make sure you understand your options and choose the Data Usage Plan that works best for you. If you believe you will need more data, an Unlimited Data option is available. Our data plans are based on a principle of fairness. Those who use more Internet data, pay more. And those who use less Internet data, pay less. One Terabyte Plan and Unlimited Data option: One Terabyte (TB) included/month If one TB is exceeded, $10 is charged for each additional data block of up to 50 GB/month $200 overage charge limit - no matter how much data is used Unlimited Data Additional $50/month No overage charges — no matter how much data is used each month You can also track and manage your usage so there are never any surprises about how much data you use. Here are a few tools you can use: Data Usage meter – Monitor how much data your household has used with our Data Usage Meter. Data Usage Estimator - Estimate your data usage with our estimator Tool. Simply enter how your household typically uses the Internet and the tool will estimate your monthly data usage. Notifications - If you approach, reach or exceed one terabyte of data usage, we will send you a courtesy "in-browser" notice as well as an email. You can also elect to receive notifications at specific usage thresholds and set up mobile text notifications. Learn more about notifications here. Usage notifications will not be sent to customers who enroll in the Unlimited Data option. For the less than 1% of customers who do exceed one terabyte of data usage, we’re offering two courtesy months, so customers will not be charged the first two times they exceed one terabyte while they are getting comfortable with the new plan. If you have any questions about the new Data Usage Plan, please visit http://dataplan.xfinity.com/ http://dataplan.xfinity.com/. Thank you for being an XFINITY Internet customer. Sincerely, Tim Collins Regional Senior Vice President of Comcast's Heartland Region

beamatronic 10y ago
>> we will send you a courtesy "in-browser" notice Another good reason to use SSL everywhere

wesleyd 10y ago

I've just signed up for sonic.

r00fus 10y ago
Just realized they are available for my address - but only as Fiber to the Node (operated through ATT's Fiber + copper to house). Has anyone actually used this? I imagine it wouldn't be as cool as FTTH, but maybe better than Comcast (which shows as 25M down for me even though I have 50M signed up).

LeoPanthera 10y ago

I wish I could migrate to a local provider, but in my area there is literally no other option. We don't even have a phone line, and even if we paid AT&T the surprisingly huge fee to have them install one, we still wouldn't be able to get DSL because we live too far from civilization. (About 10 minutes up a hill just outside Redwood City in the CA Bay Area.) So whatever Comcast want to do, we're literally stuck with it.

sidlls 10y ago

Now if only I didn't constantly see "insufficient bandwidth" on Amazon or apparently-throttled downloads and streaming of other data with my "Performance Pro" package I could start being more upset about the bandwidth cap and less about being charged ridiculous rates for paltry bandwidth.

existencebox 10y ago

Let me tell a tale. Recently I was cancelling my comcast for wave. I was charged an early cancellation fee of multiple months service (The cancellation was due to moving out of my apt at end of lease to a house for which comcast did not offer service). The early fee was not on my original contract; and was apparently added without my consent in the interim, and the lower level managers intended to enforce despite their inability to even provide me service. I refused this and continued to escalate until I got a surprisingly high tier manager who talked like a techie and seemed to understand a thing or two and had a degree of self awareness (when told "Thanks for your help, I'm sorry you work for such a shit company since your good effort could be better used in better actors" he responded with "yeah I know; at least it pays the bills"). He made ALL my problems disappear and listened to my complaints of a decade with Comcast, and why I'd never go back, seeming legitimately remorseful and sad that the company has been generally anti-consumer, promising that they were pushing to improve things and acknowledging the pain I felt to the degree of comping multiple months+fees. So my question. Is that an act? Or is this another poor middle manager trying to do his best? Are they really so tuned out as to how much ill will they're generating such that I had "not comcast" as a prerequisite to the massive act of _buying a house_? And to the other half of that question; how can we make them feel the pain more as consumers? (legal action of course but in addition.) As a tech influencer I do all I can to try and tell people about the great local ISP alternatives in my area if they aren't aware, but it seems like comcast lives in its own little bubble where the realities of good consumer practices just don't apply. (or maybe I'm being pessimistic and the hammer will drop in a few decades, I don't have many good prior historical examples with similar enough context to extrapolate, if anyone else does I'd be curious)

wernercd 10y ago
I've found that they just like to make it harder to get stuff fixed or changed in favor of the customer. Let me tell a tale: I've been with my fiance for ~10 years now. We've had Comcast for ~8 of the ten years. We had a "full" internet/cable package for ~6 of those 8 years. Every year - like clockwork - she would get a bill after the "year" intro period and the price would go up. I'm not sure of the numbers but from ~100 to ~150 or somewhere in there. Why like clockwork? Because every year she would call and say "cancel the package... oh? you'll extend it? AND add another pay channel bundle? Okay... talk to you next year". With each year it got harder and she had to fight longer - sometimes through multiple calls. When it got escalated to cancellation managers they would inevitably change their minds. It finally got to the point last year that we actually canceled everything except for the ABSOLUTE basic cable. No HD. Only half of the channels (no MTV, HGTV, etc). The reality is simple: It's them or... dialup? Satellite? couple other crappy options. The joy of "monopolies". They know that people who want channels MUST go through them. Thankfully Netflix, Amazon Prime,... plex :) have picked up the slack so we actually aren't bother much by the loss of HBO and the like...

mindslight 10y ago

I would really like to see the FTC go after them if they continue to advertise speeds above 3Mbit/sec. I've said it before and I'll say it again - patronize your local DSL provider before it's too late.

dpark 10y ago
I don't understand any of this comment. What is the 3Mbit/sec in reference to? I get significantly faster speed than that all the time. Edit: Oh, you're trying to assert that bandwidth==cap subdivided to the second level. No, that's absurd. I don't understand how switching to a local DSL provider would benefit me. I don't like Comcast at all, but cutting my typical bandwidth by more than 75% doesn't seem like a net gain. I like Netflix more than I hate Comcast.
- mindslight 10y ago
  First, the bulk of consumer use does not require high instantaneous bandwidth. And from what I recall, cable companies generally throttle those uses anyway! But the real value of the comparison is seeing exactly what game cable companies are playing. Their last-mile links happen to have higher bandwidth, but really they do not want to actually carry the corresponding traffic. So they advertise the irrelevant speeds in big print, and then do everything they can to restrict the actual service provided. Meanwhile I'm consistently doing >2TB/mo on DSL. Don't let CableCos' misleading advertising fool you, the US's last-mile communications infrastructure basically stagnated two generations back. Competition between cable and DSL is the official national policy, and moves like this one make it quite clear that they are providing similar service. If you're in an area that still has a CLEC, you might even find a provider that actually has technical people answering the phone!
  - dpark 10y ago
    > First, the bulk of consumer use does not require high instantaneous bandwidth. The bulk of consumer use also doesn't require high usage caps so this is an extremely noncompelling argument. My house also does a ton of streaming and I do a lot of remote desktop. I do care about decent peak throughput. > And from what I recall, cable companies generally throttle those uses anyway! Maybe? I'm super in favor of net neutrality but I also recognize that throttled cable internet is still faster than unthrottled DSL. > Meanwhile I'm consistently doing >2TB/mo on DSL. So by your math, a whopping 6Mbps.

meesterdude 10y ago

And i live in philadelphia, where Comcast has an agreement with the city that prevents other ISPs from operating. Verizon can (because $$) but there are other ISP's outside the city like RCN that aren't allowed in.

nodesocket 10y ago

I loathe Comcast/Xfinity with a passion. My bill went from $129 a month (internet/tv) to $240 a month starting in Sept. This 1TB internet cap is complete nonsense. I don't understand why they just can't run their business responsibly and not try to screw and scam their customers.

Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> I don't understand why they just can't run their business responsibly and not try to screw and scam their customers. When corporations are more powerful than the law or the political process, then of course they can do whatever they want. The law of this land is "whoever has more $$$ wins".
- nodesocket 10y ago
  Not on board, and don't agree that law and political processes should be enforcing pricing and business constraints on Comcast. We need more companies and competition, and the market will force them to change.
  - xj9 10y ago
    That doesn't work for utilities or infrastructure.
  - jschwartzi 10y ago
    What market exists? How can it address these concerns?

bgentry 10y ago

It took a 30 minute phone call just for them to flip the switch that starts charging me an extra $50/mo. Followed by another 20 minute call to get my plan price reduced with a promotional rate. At least the 2nd rep was nice and told me to call back in the 2nd week of Nov for even more discounted special offers.

zenobit256 10y ago

As someone affected by this in the Washington area, is there any other ISP somebody would recommend? Comcast was my last resort, but this just floors me. A terabyte is easy to blow through in a household!

unabridged 10y ago

>If one TB is exceeded, $10 is charged for each additional data block of up to 50 GB/month $200 overage charge limit - no matter how much data is used >Unlimited Data Additional $50/month No overage charges — no matter how much data is used each month Can't they just cap the overage at $50? Why the nickel and dime-ing just to get an extra $150 from a handful of customers who forgot to monitor their usage and make a phone call?

techsupporter 10y ago
> Why the nickel and dime-ing just to get an extra $150 from a handful of customers who forgot to monitor their usage They want that ARPU to go up by $50 for the people who think they're heavy users but aren't always heavy users. Best of both worlds from their perspective: someone who only hits 1TB a couple of months out of the year could wind up giving them $500/year of "free" money (10 months of not going over but still paying the unlimited charge). And someone else who doesn't go over except once but does it really big kicks in another $100 or so. It's all about the ARPU.
jbkly7 10y ago
Nickel-and-diming is Comcast's way of life

Florin_Andrei 10y ago

The big, ugly company that should just die and be replaced by a utility doesn't want to die.

mankash666 10y ago

Pre emptive strike against fledgling IPTV services. Imagine a world where all your TV channels are delivered online. Except it'll be a reality in under 10 years, and Comcast wants a cut of it's made irrelevant

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

>If one TB is exceeded, $10 is charged for each additional data block of up to 50 GB/month $200 overage charge limit - no matter how much data is used I can't parse that. There appears to be some punctuation and words missing.

nothrabannosir 10y ago
<=1tb=no penalty 1.05tb=$10 penalty 1.1tb=$20 penalty ... 1.5tb=$100 penalty ... 2tb=$200 penalty 2.05tb=$200 penalty ... 938376171819393tb=$200 penalty
detaro 10y ago
From the article: The third time it's exceeded within a 12 month period, however, the "courtesy months" go away and users will be charged $10 for an additional 50GB of data, which will continue happening to a limit of $200 per month.

bogomipz 10y ago

And yet every time one of these near monopolies pleads their case in front of the FCC and DOJ they always state that said merger will be good for consumers.

tzs 10y ago

Whenever bandwidth caps are discussed, many people say that there is no technical reason providers like Comcast need to have a limit. It's all just to make money on artificial overage charges and/or to discourage people from canceling their cable TV in favor of internet streaming, and that these ISPs can only do this because they are often the only high speed provider in their area. Question: if that is true, then how come on the server side of things, where we do have competition and so can switch to a different hosting provider if one charges too much for bandwidth, we don't have major hosting providers giving us unlimited bandwidth?

paulmd 10y ago
Do you mean data transfer caps? That's what we are discussing here. You can buy unmetered shared hosting (famously, Dreamhost) or even unmetered servers/rackspace. The problem is that at the end of the day everyone involved knows it's an illusion. You can't sell an infinite quantity of data and so any service is oversold to some degree. And since transfer is just the integration of bandwidth consumption, so there are hard limits to what you could ever push through a given server (though the service will ask you to fuck off long before this point). Furthermore, servers are largely business-driven. Pretend "unlimited" hosting is fine for toy projects but in business long load times or outages are lost money, so reliability is a must and SLAs are the order of the day. Nobody will sign a SLA on "unlimited", bandwidth (to handle peaks) is more important than transfer anyway, and the larger your needs the more you will pay. Every dollar you spend on wasted capacity is a dollar that comes out of your profit. Anyway, what it largely comes down to is that consumer internet access is a "best-effort" service and that's not acceptable in a datacenter. Data still costs money to deliver even in a "best-effort" service but it's super minimal. The marginal cost of a gigabyte of data is around a tenth of a cent per gigabyte. All of the cost is in the last-mile infrastructure, so overage charges are just a cash grab. I would be perfectly fine with being billed at say $15/mo for hookup plus actual data charges but that's not what's being offered here.

jdpedrie 10y ago

I got this email yesterday, and called today to cancel my service. The guy spent several minutes getting more and more belligerent, telling me that I was mistaken, that there had always been a data cap, in fact the data cap was being raised from 300gb to 1tb! The only real difference was now the cap was going to be enforced. I laughed at him and told him I wasn't going to argue, just cancel the service.

brianwawok 10y ago
There was a 300gb cap but it wasn't enforced. Kind of a joke.

Tempest1981 10y ago

Anyone else notice that they picked 1024 GB, vs 1000 GB? Extra generosity. :-)

pasbesoin 10y ago

Is their business product still uncapped? Going to remain so (to the best of anyone's knowledge)? Been thinking of switching to that. Unfortunately, Crapcast is the only option for me, here.