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Comcast Enters Wireless Business With $45-a-Month Service
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chaser7016 10y agoThis is not competitive and they are unproven. This should be either free for three months and then no more then $10 to $20 a month.
- seibelj 10y agoIt's so ridiculously easy to start an MVNO now-a-days, someone here should start a Hacker News cell company that guarantees to be open and not do a bunch of bullshit with your data. You only need ~100k subs to be profitable, with all this privacy news lately I bet you can hit it with the privacy conscience consumer
- imglorp 10y agoHow would an MVNO prevent its upstream provider from doing bullshit on the data? It seems like each provider in the path to the backbone has the opportunity, means, and motivation.
- seibelj 10y agoVPN? Sign a contract with one of the providers to not track the data? Start thinking like an entrepreneur! There is an unmet need, go meet the need and work through the problems.
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago...or point-to-point IP connection, so the device count not reach the general internet, just your white-listed endpoint? I just want a pipe.
- joecool1029 10y ago> I just want a pipe. Mobile providers don't work like that though. Even when roaming international, there is a tunnel back to your home provider. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPRS_Tunnelling_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPRS_Tunnelling_Protocol
- dylz 10y agoThis is amusing because you can get unfiltered internet roaming in China if you bring a foreign sim, apparently
- joecool1029 10y agoDepends on the type of MVNO. Branded resellers really can't do shit to stop their parent provider from doing bullshit, but Comcast is likely going to fall into the Full MVNO category and tunnel all the traffic into their network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operator#Types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operato...
- seanmccann 10y agoAs a MVNO, it'd still be on a network operated by one of the big 4.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rickdale 10y agoMVNO = mobile virtual network operator. My biggest pet peeve when talking about technology is not referencing the full name of something you are going to abbreviate as if everyone knows it. The article makes no mention of MVNO so reading your comment I had to google search what exactly you were talking about. A lot of coding books and developers tend to do this and its always bothered the heck out of me. edit: Can someone explain the dv? So people are in favor of random abbreviations?
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoMost of us are intelligent enough to google words we don't know. No reason to bring your personal pet peeves into an unrelated discussion.
- rickdale 10y agoI did google it, thats not the point. It wasn't a "word" I didn't know, it was an abbreviation of a topic that was the main source of the top comment (at the time).
- seibelj 10y agoYou googled it and learned what it was, now you know what it means and probably a lot more. If you want to learn stuff yourself you should be prepared to research. You are on a technology website reading an article about telecom, if you want to participate in the comments a baseline level of understanding isn't a big ask.
- rickdale 10y agoif you want to participate in the comments a baseline level of understanding isn't a big ask. Thats not fair. I came to the comments after reading the article to learn more about the article. I think its considered poor quality to make a comment like ADF is the worst. Without referecing what ADF is first, or without being referenced in the article.
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- stanleydrew 10y agoI started an MVNO called Charge (https://charge.co https://charge.co). It's not as easy as you think to hit 100K subs.
- estro 10y agoThis is awesome! I had no idea services like this existed. Thank you for sharing.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rb808 10y agoThat looks great, I haven't seen a data only plan that works with phones - I thought Google and Apple banned that. Its kinda hard to compete with the tmobile $30 plan, I might use this though.
- compsciphd 10y agot-mobile's $30 walmart plan no longer exists (i.e. if you have it you have it, but no one new can get it)
- OrwellianChild 10y agoThis is fascinating! Are you willing to share some of the cost structure for buying Sprint bandwidth? Are there large fixed costs to cover, or is it more pay-as-you-go?
- Dylan16807 10y ago> You only need ~100k subs to be profitable While providing unlimited data? MVNOs seem to generally charge $10/GB, and I assume there's a reason for that.
- mikeash 10y agoNobody provides actual unlimited data. Lots of providers have stopped charging overages, but they still throttle you terribly once you pass their soft cap.
- Dylan16807 10y agoWhile that's true, the throttle mark is usually between 20GB and 30GB. That's a lot better than getting 4GB for the money.
- mikeash 10y agoGood point, even fake "unlimited" at this price seems like it wouldn't be feasible. Elsewhere it's mentioned that they'll take advantage of their xfinitywifi hotspots. Maybe that's enough to bring their cellular traffic down to a level that this would pay for.
- joecool1029 10y ago>It's so ridiculously easy to start an MVNO now-a-days Reseller you mean. Example: I have spoken to the Harbor Mobile founders and they figured out a loophole in signing up regular T-Mobile customers to the business plans. It allowed them to offer plans ~20% off typical postpaid rates, and all they had to handle was billing. They started things with a simple Wix site. T-Mobile has since blocked them from signing up anyone new to this type of plan, likely because the plans got quite popular on deal forums.
- sunwooz 10y agoI can't ever imagine using Comcast again after being forced to wait through their customer service.
- qntty 10y agoWhat's the advantage of getting an AT&T unlimited plan at $90/mo when you can use an MVNO like cricket that uses AT&T's towers and pay $60/mo? Are people just locked into existing contracts?
- seanmccann 10y agoCricket has speeds throttled to 8Mb/s. VoLTE, Wifi calling, and some other features are only available to AT&T postpaid accounts (may be available now/soon?). Also postpaid account are allowed some domestic roaming, which can be important if you travel to rural areas that don't have native coverage.
- emptythought 10y agoEvery MVNO has QOS working against them and caveats, like throttled speeds, no roaming, and basically always soft-caps. Most of the postpaid official carrier plans have soft caps too, but these are often MUCH lower(like 5gb instead of 25)
- mikeash 10y agoCricket's unlimited plan doesn't offer mobile hotspot, which would make it a non-starter for me. A non-unlimited Cricket plan for my two phones would cost me more money than I currently pay AT&T for similar service.
- peter303 10y agoWont last. Comcast tends to offer half first year, then the full price later. And it raises most prices 10% every year.
- Brendinooo 10y ago>The Philadelphia-based company is using the new service, called Xfinity Mobile, to entice its 29 million subscribers to stick around as more options become available to watch shows and movies online. This is interesting to me - Verizon's Fios service is the main competitor to Comcast in my area. If Comcast's goal is to keep people from switching away from cable and Internet, I wonder what Verizon has to gain by letting Comcast use their cell network.
- dangrossman 10y ago> I wonder what Verizon has to gain Wireless spectrum to run their LTE network. The MVNO agreement was part of a 2011 deal with a consortium of cable companies including Comcast to sell their wireless spectrum licenses. http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/02/technology/verizon_spectrum/ http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/02/technology/verizon_spectrum/
- creeble 10y agoNice uncover!
- dylz 10y agoVerizon Wireless and Verizon (hardwire) are separate companies, afaik. Verizon (fios, phone, ..) does not exist in the west coast anymore.
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoThis kind of pricing is mediocre. The market research clearly shows them pricing support that is just below "gouged by incumbents". Nothing to see here. Still waiting for a truly disruptive company to turn this oligopoly on its head.
- timmaah 10y agoWhat is the catch on their "unlimited" marketing speak? Also.. how are the towers going to handle this new "price war"? I've found them already overloaded in a number of places around the U.S.
- cbhl 10y agoThey're hoping to offload most of the data to xfinitywifi access points that run off of the Comcast modem-router combos in people's homes and businesses. Not unlike Google Fi, which also shifts between Wi-Fi and LTE for the "best" signal.
- sailfast 10y agoThe chart says it all. TV fees per subscriber are still so lucrative that they will pay you to stay to the tune of $20/month. Not sure how sustainable that model is since you will not be able to charge more for that down the road, but maybe this works for shareholders in the short term. As a general trend I only see this leading to greater consolidation in the market. Less providers means less churn which seems to be their target. Fingers crossed we get to the point where buried wires are no longer a limiting factor and more entrants can begin competing.
- gm-conspiracy 10y agoComcast is late to the party as a "mobile content provider". To "compete" in the US now, these companies must provide both content and mobile connectivity. Reminds me of Douglas Rushkoff's "Exit Strategy" (vertical brand alliances), or some weird v2 of Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL. Telecom offerings in the US is a sad state of affairs.
- nashashmi 10y agoIs this a result of net neutrality rules being over? Or net privacy rules being over? Also what are the implications of Comcast subscribers already using Xfinity hotspots for free?
- joecool1029 10y ago>Is this a result of net neutrality rules being over? Or net privacy rules being over? No, people have been speculating about cable providers jumping into the MVNO game long before the current administration. It was logical once there was a lot of hotspots deployed. You need to look at more recent developments, like LTE-U getting approved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum > Also what are the implications of Comcast subscribers already using Xfinity hotspots for free? Maybe/likely the voice traffic is QoS'd, maybe hotspot service gets a little slower when lots of subscribers are on the access point.
- devnill 10y agoYou can cut the irony with a knife. I left Comcast after they imposed data caps in my area which I struggled to stay under. I have several roommates and we generally consume media via streaming services; primarily twitch and netflix. It seems to me that Comcast is using data caps as a 'streaming tax' for cord cutters.
- mikeash 10y agoNone of the "unlimited" plans are actually unlimited. They just use soft caps where you're throttled to 2G speeds after you exceed your allotment, rather than charging you overages. Some carriers are starting to do this for all their plans, so "unlimited" is now just becoming a weird and misleading term for one particular data cap. At least on AT&T, the "unlimited" plan isn't even the one with the largest cap, so it's particularly bizarre. No doubt Comcast's "unlimited" offering will be similar. You may not get charged overages, but good luck watching more than a few movies per month with it.
- steeef 10y agoBe thankful you have that option. Comcast is the only real broadband provider in my area. My only option to avoid caps would be to switch to a Comcast Business account.
- mikeash 10y agoGood fucking luck with that. Comcast has lots of customers for its wired services only because it exists as a monopoly or duopoly in the markets it serves. Wireless is way more competitive.
- creeble 10y ago"Now you can get our legendary Comcast customer service for your mobile phone too!" I should offer to help them write ad copy.
- EduardoBautista 10y agoWell, it is legendary I'll give them that.
- avifreedman 10y agoI used to be a Comcast wireless customer, but it cost much more than $45/mo, and was called Comcast Metrophone :)
- rabboRubble 10y agoHa. No.