6 ms·

Please ban data caps, Internet users tell FCC

85 points by thimabi 2y ago

OptionOfT 2y ago
I cannot control how much data I consume. Especially now with more and more websites being so big. And no, not every device supports uBlock Origin. Pi-Hole / Adguard only does so much these days. iOS / Mac updates are humongous. 100+MB per webview-wrapper app. And they aren't sharable. iOS 18.1 today was 8GB. How many Apple devices do you have? Every website these days starts to automatically play videos, with no way of disabling that (looking at you Fandom, and until recently, Ars Technica). All video is consumed in a streaming manner. At least when you watched a movie over cable it didn't consume bandwidth. But when you watch the same movie on YouTube TV it is counting towards your 'limits'. And you cannot set proper limits, as they calculate your usage once per day. Go over, $10 per 50GB on Cox. And your limit is 1280GB, even on their 2Gbit connection. So unlike with your car where you have a pretty decent view on when it's empty, and you can fill up at almost the same price as the previous tank, here you're screwed twice, once because you can't measure, and second, because the price is outrageous. For a 2Gbit connection, you can actually go through your limit in ... 2Gbit = 250MB / sec. 1280GB = 1310720MB. 1310720 / 250 = 5242.88 seconds, or 1 hour, 27 minutes and 22.88 seconds. Insane. We need more competition.
- pascalxus 2y ago
  this means we need more visibility on what's sucking up so much data. and then we need to start boycotting and deleting any and all apps that insist on wasting so much data. i bet, those services and sites that are so huge will quickly clean up their act once we all stop using them. Or they'll just go out of business and we can choose some better ones.
  - washadjeffmad 2y ago
    But why? Packets aren't finite. We only care about how much data because they're charging for it, not because it's relevant. If someone charged based on how long packets were in transit on their network or the time under load, wouldn't those provide similar but better outcomes?
- sounds 2y ago
  Can you move? I know many can't. Since the ISPs collude to gain a local monopoly over entire apartments, sometimes cities, sometimes states [1], ideally your response would be to de-occupy them, the same as if state police decided to disproportionately shoot at you because of your race. [1] https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-2023 https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
  - hedora 2y ago
    Yep, having all the minority and cosmopolitan voters move out of the state will certainly teach racist politicians a lesson on election day!
    - sounds 2y ago
      Have you tried intentionally griefing their gerrymandering?
      - NikkiA 2y ago
        This has 'just be rich' vibes.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- gruez 2y ago
  >I cannot control how much data I consume. Especially now with more and more websites being so big. And no, not every device supports uBlock Origin. Pi-Hole / Adguard only does so much these days. This might be technically true but for all practical purposes it's irrelevant. When your data cap is 1TB, random websites' ads or autoplay videos don't make a dent. Most of the actual usage is stuff that you can control: youtube/netflix, games, even os updates are pretty consistently sized that you can't plausibly plead "I couldn't control how much data I was using!" as you blow past your 1TB quota.
  - everforward 2y ago
    You are forgetting multi-user and multi-device homes. My grandma has 3 Apple devices by herself; that would be 24GB of updates, or ~2.4% of a 1TB cap just for her Apple updates. Stick 4 of her in a house and it’s nearly 10% of the cap just for that. A single Steam game can easily be 50GB, so there’s another 5%. It’s also an unreasonable burden for multi-user homes. Does anyone actually want to coordinate who gets to watch Netflix this month and who won’t be playing multiplayer games on Steam because they’re not allowed to download patches? Does that actually seem reasonable?
    - gruez 2y ago
      >You are forgetting multi-user and multi-device homes. My grandma has 3 Apple devices by herself; that would be 24GB of updates, or ~2.4% of a 1TB cap just for her Apple updates. Stick 4 of her in a house and it’s nearly 10% of the cap just for that. 3 computing devices per person in a family of four seems... questionable. Besides a phone and maybe a laptop/tablet, any other device are typically shared, so that extrapolation wouldn't hold. Moreover ios devices is probably the worst case scenario. Pixel device updates are around 3GB, and windows updates are around 1GB. >A single Steam game can easily be 50GB, so there’s another 5%. Great, there still 85% for netflix and tiktok. >It’s also an unreasonable burden for multi-user homes. Does anyone actually want to coordinate who gets to watch Netflix this month and who won’t be playing multiplayer games on Steam because they’re not allowed to download patches? Does that actually seem reasonable? I mean if you blow your share of the quota on 800GB worth of steam games, leaving little for everyone else, that seems entirely on you? Give everyone a budget and get them to stick to it. If they can do it for cellular data I don't see why they can't do it for wifi.
- hedora 2y ago
  uBlock origin runs everywhere a web browser will. I’m sending this from the Orion Browser on iOS, with the Firefox versions of ublock origin and privacy badger turned on. Every other platform that runs a modern browser (safari or chromium derivatives) runs firefox natively. That doesn’t invalidate your other points, of course!
- matt_heimer 2y ago
  > iOS / Mac updates are humongous. 100+MB per webview-wrapper app. And they aren't sharable. iOS 18.1 today was 8GB. How many Apple devices do you have? Are you sure they can't be shared? See https://support.apple.com/en-us/102860 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102860 and https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/intro-to-content-caching-depde72e125f/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/intro-to-content-... Disclaimer: I haven't tested this.
  - mikestew 2y ago
    Disclaimer: I haven't tested this. I have. Seems to work as advertised. You do need to have a Mac around.
- eviks 2y ago
  > cannot control how much data I consume... > iOS / Mac updates are humongous That's definitely something you can control
- tcfhgj 2y ago
  Firefox has a setting to disable autoplay (on mobile data)
- winternett 2y ago
  The ads and background data alone takes extreme advantage of users that have low data caps. There is no way that users should be arbitrarilly metered in an age where content is forced down our throats with no choice over it all. They either need to ban auto play ads, or get rid of caps. Actually I'd even go a step further and say that no-login wifi should be a public right... It's already insecure to use wifi at all of these private company stores like Starbucks anyway, and the companies are literally using connections to spy on what everyone does... If we continue down the path of extreme ad proliferation, the least companies could do is distribute free wifi networks as a country-wide mesh of free internet ad spam connections. We're paying more now than ever for Internet Services, the least they could do is make sure it's unlimited fully.
tetris11 2y ago
I'm happy to pay for caps, but they should at least roll over more than just a month. If I pay for 100GB internet a month, that should equal a quota of 1.2TB a year. That, or you reduce the amount I pay if I don't use my quota, and you reduce it further if your download speed is not what was advertised. Fuck these guys!
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  PSA: ISPs never, ever advertise download speeds. ISPs advertise signaling rates. The signaling rate is, e.g. 100Mbps for Ethernet. You won't get 100Mbps download rates on that Ethernet, because that's the Layer 2 signaling rate!!! If your ISP advertises "Gigabit Internet" they are advertising a gigabit signaling rate for their fiber optic service. Your download speed will always be less than your signaling rate, and it's up to you to figure that out. Also recall that consumer agreements for Internet service never include a "CBR" or "committed bit rate". If you want your ISP to live up to a service contract, for availability and guaranteed download speeds, then you'll go to their Business-class unit and sign a contract for commercial service. And you can prove that this is true: your ISP doesn't care if you can connect to anything except their head end. They will troubleshoot your modem, restart it, and work on the wiring between you and them, but they couldn't give a rat's ass if you can reach example.com or not.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
    I don't know what AT&T is doing, but they advertise 1Gbps and... https://i.imgur.com/B41zMRh.png https://i.imgur.com/B41zMRh.png usually they're pretty good. They should be more transparent about what to expect, but realistically it's out of their control. They don't control Netflix's outbound traffic, for example.
    - qeternity 2y ago
      Uhh this is exactly what GP is saying? If you went to the butcher, asked for 1lb of meat, they weighed it at 0.97lbs and still charged you for 1lb, you'd be upset. The difference between 1,000mbps and 970mbps can (partially) be explained by protocol overheads.
unsignedint 2y ago
It would feel less hostile if I had the option to choose my service provider. With no competition, data caps are essentially a form of extortion. Not to mention, these companies are often the ones lobbying municipalities to block other providers from entering the market.
- tomcam 2y ago
  I live a couple of miles away from Microsoft headquarters and I have multiple ISPs available to me. And they all provide atrocious service. I assume it’s because they are oversubscribed, because they all provide high download rates yet streaming videos are frequently paused.
  - unsignedint 2y ago
    Consider yourself lucky to have multiple service options. I'm in Issaquah, and the only provider I have with decent speeds is Xfinity...
    - tomcam 2y ago
      Apparently there is no justice in this world.
pascalxus 2y ago
"usage-based pricing provides more options for consumers than flat-rate pricing and can generate additional revenue to fund network improvements and expansion." i don't mind usage based pricing if they show you how much you've used and ideally where you've used it. then i can simply cut out all the services that suck up all that data. For example, I refuse to install Facebook because it's hundreds of MB.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  > and ideally where you've used it The ISP doesn't need to know that. Maybe if it's a toggleable option on your modem-router and you want to enable it, sure. I wonder if pi-hole or something like that could track usage... we need a client-side middleman.
  - pascalxus 2y ago
    or maybe the chrome webstore allows an extension to do this. there are a few that do this but it looks like they're being black-balled by the chrome webstore.
PebblesHD 2y ago
If the FCC cannot regulate the caps out of existence, they could at least enforce consistency in how they are advertised. For example, a theoretical offering of 1gpbs internet with a 120GB cap might need to include prominent language that at 100% utilisation, you might only have 4 seconds of internet per day. Suddenly there (in a functional market) be a reason for caps to be lifted as consumers can readily compare worst case usage. All that said, the caps are a terrible mechanism and should be entirely removed as thankfully Australia mostly did a decade ago.
dghlsakjg 2y ago
As much as Canada isn’t a model of reasonable telecom, I really like the cable access agreements that are required. The company that owns the cable that goes into my house is required to provide access to any other ISP at a set rate. As a result, I can choose between quite a few different providers. I’m able to buy gigabit internet from a small local provider for $75CAD with no contract, no cap, and really good customer support.
elashri 2y ago
I know that this is in the context of the US. But for once lets do the other way around. At tue beginning of 2024 i went to stay a couple of months with my family in Egypt. The internet plans there is caped by default, you can't get unlimited bandwidth (forget speed) no matter what plan do you have. It is cheaper if you compare with US dollars (forget PPP) but this assume that you usage is limited. I had to renew the plan one month 6 times (making it more expensive that what I pay in the US with less speed). I did not explore the idea of getting business plan (probably could not anyway because I had to be a registered business). And I am not talking about wireless plans or mobile data. I am talking about the home internet (VDHL mainly but with some fibre in some areas). And as another commentator said, people consume a lot of data to ads (media or text) with the average page reload of some websites of ~10 MB. I introduced ublock origin, alternative YouTube frontend to many people and they were happy with their overall experience. * I have a friend who usually renew a plan each time a couple of steam games needs an update
Detrytus 2y ago
While you’re at it, can you please ban “hotspot speed limits”? The annoying thing in US is that if I have a cell phone plan with “unlimited” internet I can use it on my phone, but if I occasionally need to share that connection with my laptop it is limited to some totally unusable speed, like 500 kb/s

85 points by thimabi 2y ago

I cannot control how much data I consume. Especially now with more and more websites being so big. And no, not every device supports uBlock Origin. Pi-Hole / Adguard only does so much these days. iOS / Mac updates are humongous. 100+MB per webview-wrapper app. And they aren't sharable. iOS 18.1 today was 8GB. How many Apple devices do you have? Every website these days starts to automatically play videos, with no way of disabling that (looking at you Fandom, and until recently, Ars Technica). All video is consumed in a streaming manner. At least when you watched a movie over cable it didn't consume bandwidth. But when you watch the same movie on YouTube TV it is counting towards your 'limits'. And you cannot set proper limits, as they calculate your usage once per day. Go over, $10 per 50GB on Cox. And your limit is 1280GB, even on their 2Gbit connection. So unlike with your car where you have a pretty decent view on when it's empty, and you can fill up at almost the same price as the previous tank, here you're screwed twice, once because you can't measure, and second, because the price is outrageous. For a 2Gbit connection, you can actually go through your limit in ... 2Gbit = 250MB / sec. 1280GB = 1310720MB. 1310720 / 250 = 5242.88 seconds, or 1 hour, 27 minutes and 22.88 seconds. Insane. We need more competition.

pascalxus 2y ago
this means we need more visibility on what's sucking up so much data. and then we need to start boycotting and deleting any and all apps that insist on wasting so much data. i bet, those services and sites that are so huge will quickly clean up their act once we all stop using them. Or they'll just go out of business and we can choose some better ones.
- washadjeffmad 2y ago
  But why? Packets aren't finite. We only care about how much data because they're charging for it, not because it's relevant. If someone charged based on how long packets were in transit on their network or the time under load, wouldn't those provide similar but better outcomes?
sounds 2y ago
Can you move? I know many can't. Since the ISPs collude to gain a local monopoly over entire apartments, sometimes cities, sometimes states [1], ideally your response would be to de-occupy them, the same as if state police decided to disproportionately shoot at you because of your race. [1] https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-2023 https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
- hedora 2y ago
  Yep, having all the minority and cosmopolitan voters move out of the state will certainly teach racist politicians a lesson on election day!
  - sounds 2y ago
    Have you tried intentionally griefing their gerrymandering?
    - NikkiA 2y ago
      This has 'just be rich' vibes.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
gruez 2y ago
>I cannot control how much data I consume. Especially now with more and more websites being so big. And no, not every device supports uBlock Origin. Pi-Hole / Adguard only does so much these days. This might be technically true but for all practical purposes it's irrelevant. When your data cap is 1TB, random websites' ads or autoplay videos don't make a dent. Most of the actual usage is stuff that you can control: youtube/netflix, games, even os updates are pretty consistently sized that you can't plausibly plead "I couldn't control how much data I was using!" as you blow past your 1TB quota.
- everforward 2y ago
  You are forgetting multi-user and multi-device homes. My grandma has 3 Apple devices by herself; that would be 24GB of updates, or ~2.4% of a 1TB cap just for her Apple updates. Stick 4 of her in a house and it’s nearly 10% of the cap just for that. A single Steam game can easily be 50GB, so there’s another 5%. It’s also an unreasonable burden for multi-user homes. Does anyone actually want to coordinate who gets to watch Netflix this month and who won’t be playing multiplayer games on Steam because they’re not allowed to download patches? Does that actually seem reasonable?
  - gruez 2y ago
    >You are forgetting multi-user and multi-device homes. My grandma has 3 Apple devices by herself; that would be 24GB of updates, or ~2.4% of a 1TB cap just for her Apple updates. Stick 4 of her in a house and it’s nearly 10% of the cap just for that. 3 computing devices per person in a family of four seems... questionable. Besides a phone and maybe a laptop/tablet, any other device are typically shared, so that extrapolation wouldn't hold. Moreover ios devices is probably the worst case scenario. Pixel device updates are around 3GB, and windows updates are around 1GB. >A single Steam game can easily be 50GB, so there’s another 5%. Great, there still 85% for netflix and tiktok. >It’s also an unreasonable burden for multi-user homes. Does anyone actually want to coordinate who gets to watch Netflix this month and who won’t be playing multiplayer games on Steam because they’re not allowed to download patches? Does that actually seem reasonable? I mean if you blow your share of the quota on 800GB worth of steam games, leaving little for everyone else, that seems entirely on you? Give everyone a budget and get them to stick to it. If they can do it for cellular data I don't see why they can't do it for wifi.
hedora 2y ago
uBlock origin runs everywhere a web browser will. I’m sending this from the Orion Browser on iOS, with the Firefox versions of ublock origin and privacy badger turned on. Every other platform that runs a modern browser (safari or chromium derivatives) runs firefox natively. That doesn’t invalidate your other points, of course!
matt_heimer 2y ago
> iOS / Mac updates are humongous. 100+MB per webview-wrapper app. And they aren't sharable. iOS 18.1 today was 8GB. How many Apple devices do you have? Are you sure they can't be shared? See https://support.apple.com/en-us/102860 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102860 and https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/intro-to-content-caching-depde72e125f/web https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/intro-to-content-... Disclaimer: I haven't tested this.
- mikestew 2y ago
  Disclaimer: I haven't tested this. I have. Seems to work as advertised. You do need to have a Mac around.
eviks 2y ago
> cannot control how much data I consume... > iOS / Mac updates are humongous That's definitely something you can control
tcfhgj 2y ago
Firefox has a setting to disable autoplay (on mobile data)
winternett 2y ago
The ads and background data alone takes extreme advantage of users that have low data caps. There is no way that users should be arbitrarilly metered in an age where content is forced down our throats with no choice over it all. They either need to ban auto play ads, or get rid of caps. Actually I'd even go a step further and say that no-login wifi should be a public right... It's already insecure to use wifi at all of these private company stores like Starbucks anyway, and the companies are literally using connections to spy on what everyone does... If we continue down the path of extreme ad proliferation, the least companies could do is distribute free wifi networks as a country-wide mesh of free internet ad spam connections. We're paying more now than ever for Internet Services, the least they could do is make sure it's unlimited fully.

tetris11 2y ago

I'm happy to pay for caps, but they should at least roll over more than just a month. If I pay for 100GB internet a month, that should equal a quota of 1.2TB a year. That, or you reduce the amount I pay if I don't use my quota, and you reduce it further if your download speed is not what was advertised. Fuck these guys!

AStonesThrow 2y ago
PSA: ISPs never, ever advertise download speeds. ISPs advertise signaling rates. The signaling rate is, e.g. 100Mbps for Ethernet. You won't get 100Mbps download rates on that Ethernet, because that's the Layer 2 signaling rate!!! If your ISP advertises "Gigabit Internet" they are advertising a gigabit signaling rate for their fiber optic service. Your download speed will always be less than your signaling rate, and it's up to you to figure that out. Also recall that consumer agreements for Internet service never include a "CBR" or "committed bit rate". If you want your ISP to live up to a service contract, for availability and guaranteed download speeds, then you'll go to their Business-class unit and sign a contract for commercial service. And you can prove that this is true: your ISP doesn't care if you can connect to anything except their head end. They will troubleshoot your modem, restart it, and work on the wiring between you and them, but they couldn't give a rat's ass if you can reach example.com or not.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  I don't know what AT&T is doing, but they advertise 1Gbps and... https://i.imgur.com/B41zMRh.png https://i.imgur.com/B41zMRh.png usually they're pretty good. They should be more transparent about what to expect, but realistically it's out of their control. They don't control Netflix's outbound traffic, for example.
  - qeternity 2y ago
    Uhh this is exactly what GP is saying? If you went to the butcher, asked for 1lb of meat, they weighed it at 0.97lbs and still charged you for 1lb, you'd be upset. The difference between 1,000mbps and 970mbps can (partially) be explained by protocol overheads.

unsignedint 2y ago

It would feel less hostile if I had the option to choose my service provider. With no competition, data caps are essentially a form of extortion. Not to mention, these companies are often the ones lobbying municipalities to block other providers from entering the market.

tomcam 2y ago
I live a couple of miles away from Microsoft headquarters and I have multiple ISPs available to me. And they all provide atrocious service. I assume it’s because they are oversubscribed, because they all provide high download rates yet streaming videos are frequently paused.
- unsignedint 2y ago
  Consider yourself lucky to have multiple service options. I'm in Issaquah, and the only provider I have with decent speeds is Xfinity...
  - tomcam 2y ago
    Apparently there is no justice in this world.

pascalxus 2y ago

"usage-based pricing provides more options for consumers than flat-rate pricing and can generate additional revenue to fund network improvements and expansion." i don't mind usage based pricing if they show you how much you've used and ideally where you've used it. then i can simply cut out all the services that suck up all that data. For example, I refuse to install Facebook because it's hundreds of MB.

8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
> and ideally where you've used it The ISP doesn't need to know that. Maybe if it's a toggleable option on your modem-router and you want to enable it, sure. I wonder if pi-hole or something like that could track usage... we need a client-side middleman.
- pascalxus 2y ago
  or maybe the chrome webstore allows an extension to do this. there are a few that do this but it looks like they're being black-balled by the chrome webstore.

PebblesHD 2y ago

If the FCC cannot regulate the caps out of existence, they could at least enforce consistency in how they are advertised. For example, a theoretical offering of 1gpbs internet with a 120GB cap might need to include prominent language that at 100% utilisation, you might only have 4 seconds of internet per day. Suddenly there (in a functional market) be a reason for caps to be lifted as consumers can readily compare worst case usage. All that said, the caps are a terrible mechanism and should be entirely removed as thankfully Australia mostly did a decade ago.

dghlsakjg 2y ago

As much as Canada isn’t a model of reasonable telecom, I really like the cable access agreements that are required. The company that owns the cable that goes into my house is required to provide access to any other ISP at a set rate. As a result, I can choose between quite a few different providers. I’m able to buy gigabit internet from a small local provider for $75CAD with no contract, no cap, and really good customer support.

elashri 2y ago

I know that this is in the context of the US. But for once lets do the other way around. At tue beginning of 2024 i went to stay a couple of months with my family in Egypt. The internet plans there is caped by default, you can't get unlimited bandwidth (forget speed) no matter what plan do you have. It is cheaper if you compare with US dollars (forget PPP) but this assume that you usage is limited. I had to renew the plan one month 6 times (making it more expensive that what I pay in the US with less speed). I did not explore the idea of getting business plan (probably could not anyway because I had to be a registered business). And I am not talking about wireless plans or mobile data. I am talking about the home internet (VDHL mainly but with some fibre in some areas). And as another commentator said, people consume a lot of data to ads (media or text) with the average page reload of some websites of ~10 MB. I introduced ublock origin, alternative YouTube frontend to many people and they were happy with their overall experience. * I have a friend who usually renew a plan each time a couple of steam games needs an update

Detrytus 2y ago

While you’re at it, can you please ban “hotspot speed limits”? The annoying thing in US is that if I have a cell phone plan with “unlimited” internet I can use it on my phone, but if I occasionally need to share that connection with my laptop it is limited to some totally unusable speed, like 500 kb/s