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What Xfinity Internet Data Usage Plans will Comcast be Launching?

• dclusin 12y ago
  Is there any adjective that carries more weight than the word brazen? I'm at a loss for words.
  • kstrauser 12y ago
    I can think of many, but you can't print them on a family website.
  • x0x0 12y ago
    Complain less, call your congressional representatives more. Email doesn't mean shit. Pick up the phone. Then complain here =P
    • ars 12y ago
      This doesn't seem like a congress thing. What could they even do except give comcast bad PR? Unless you are proposing that we return to the days of telecom regulation.
      • pconner 12y ago
        That is a popular idea right now. More specifically, the president and others have tossed around the idea of regulating broadband internet under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934
        • ams6110 12y ago
          Without defending Comcast et. al. I have ZERO confidence that this president and congress would come up with anything remotely beneficial to the retail/residential internet consumer.
          • snsr 12y ago
            Well then you're in luck - the FCC determines the classification of telecommunications services in the US.
    • toolz 12y ago
      Is there any evidence that my call will do anything? I suspect not, but I really don't know. I've called in to my rep probably 5/6 times in my life and never once heard back or talked to anyone other than some intern.
  • mikeyouse 12y ago
    I like the historical usage of Chutzpah, but it's become less of an insult of late: Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish defines chutzpah as "gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts', presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to". In this sense, chutzpah expresses both strong disapproval and condemnation. He Goes on: In the same work, Rosten also defined the term as "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan". Chutzpah amounts to a total denial of personal responsibility, that renders others speechless and incredulous... one cannot quite believe that another person totally lacks common human traits like remorse, regret, guilt, sympathy and insight. The implication is at least some degree of psychopathy in the subject, as well as the awestruck amazement of the observer at the display. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chutzpah#Etymology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chutzpah#Etymology
• revelation 12y ago
  $1/GB, or that 1080p YouTube video costs you more than showers for a week or the electricity to run AC for a day on the insanely hot scale. Meanwhile, traffic has basically no variable costs. Let's hope they don't regulate ISPs, we don't want to slow the pace of innovation and incredible value generation here.
  • baddox 12y ago
    I agree that the pricing is high, but your comparison to showers or electricity isn't really apt, unless you're going so far as to invoke the paradox of value.
    • barsonme 12y ago
      Is the internet diamonds and the other utilities water...? If you compare the standard usage of water for bathing and electricity for whatever to the standard usage of the internet, the internet will (according to revelation) be more expensive. I'd say that, to some degree, you couldn't even claim the paradox of value because the internet is becoming such an integral part of our lives. We use it to pay taxes, work our 9-5 jobs, medical advice, etc. Kind of like how technically we don't need natural gas or electricity -- we could just use wood-burning fireplaces. But at what point does that become so excessive that we view it like water as opposed to diamonds? Anyway, I'm getting off track here, but I think revelation's example is pretty decent depending on which angle you take.
• HelloMcFly 12y ago
  An extra 50GB for only $10? What a steal! That is sarcasm, by the way. I wonder how my day-to-day activities would change if I knew I was constantly eating away at my monthly limit. I'd hate to have to do it, especially because I don't really see the connection between my consumption and "waste" like I do with my energy bill. It would feel like going backwards in time, in a way.
  • gojomo 12y ago
    That's about the same price per GB as Amazon AWS originally launched with, and they had the choice, scale, and concentration of data centers. So this doesn't seem totally-out-of-whack for consumer retail, to me. And if there are other paths to get the bits there cheaper – wireless (including mesh, free space optical, or new bandwidths) or new wires – these prices motivate the new entrants who can do it. Comcast maximizing their profits is not the last step, but one move in an iterated, endless game. Comcast's move – if people choose to pay and Comcast makes money – incents the next round of competition.
    • revelation 12y ago
      Traffic is to AWS as ink is to customer-level printers or blades are to razors. Suffice it to say that these prices are extremely out-of-of-whack for both AWS and Comcast, particularly because you don't get guaranteed bandwidth for it.
    • MrUnknown 12y ago
      "Choose to" is a very interesting choice of words seeing how the vast majority of their market is that they are they only option and people have no choice.
      • gojomo 12y ago
        Most places in the US have at least two wired options, and two or more wireless options. And, if Comcast charges too much, and cities allow it (as with Google Fiber), other options will arrive.
• sehrope 12y ago
  > In this trial, XFINITY Internet Economy Plus customers can choose to enroll in the Flexible-Data Option to receive a $5.00 credit on their monthly bill and reduce their data usage plan from 300 GB to 5 GB. If customers choose this option and use more than 5 GB of data in any given month, they will not receive the $5.00 credit and will be charged an additional $1.00 for each gigabyte of data used over the 5 GB included in the Flexible-Data Option. What informed consumer would agree to this?! Streaming Netflix uses about 1GB/hour for "good" quality streams and 2+GB/hour for HD streams. That would make watching an hour a night come out to $30-60/month of bandwidth charges. Multiply accordingly if you watch more or have multiple people streaming simultaneously. Oh and the way it's worded it sounds like you lose the $5 discount if you go over 5GB. I can see this leading to some serious bill shock for anybody that signs up.
  • tzs 12y ago
    Economy Plus is the cheapest, slowest package. It is only 3 mbps. Comcast describes it as "Ideal for low usage on 1 device" and the list of example uses is "Surf the Web, email, social networking". I expect that there are plenty of people who actually that that profile and who are using under 5 GB a month, and will find the Flexible-Data Option to be a good deal.
    • revelation 12y ago
      5GB of traffic takes you all of <4 hours on a 3mbps line. So you clicked on that YouTube video your Facebook friend posted but never closed the tab, and it's still buffering, or Google releases that new Android version and your smartphone preloads 400MiB for the update. Left that Spotify playlist running.. there are plenty of not obvious ways to run through that bandwidth in record time, and often at no fault of your own. I wouldn't even mind billing by traffic, but then they have to play by the rules that other utilities do. There needs to be a clearly established standard for what is counted, when it is counted, where it is counted, and they better make sure to provide an itemized bill for the usage accrued. Otherwise, it's fraud.
      • guroot 12y ago
• kstrauser 12y ago
  Go to hell, Comcast. I have a 100Mbps cable Internet connection from them, so I can download about 10MB per second. At that advertised speed, I could burn through a 300GB cap in about 8 hours. I used to work for an ISP and I totally get the concept of oversubscription. But they're saying I can only use my paid account for about one-seventieth of the month without paying extra, all while advertising all the great streaming services I can use through my account. I could not possibly be more wholeheartedly supportive of reclassifying Comcast as a common carrier. Using fines to maintain a 70:1 minimum oversubscription model is all the proof I need that this is sorely needed.
  • gojomo 12y ago
    If you're in the top 1% of non-stop bandwidth users, shouldn't you pay more? Why is it OK for AWS & Google Cloud to meter by the GB, but not Comcast?
    • Afforess 12y ago
      If Comcast charged the same rates as AWS, I probably wouldn't mind. But Comcast charges ~1000x more per GB. In addition, with AWS I can always switch to a cheaper provider. I can not switch to a cheaper cable company.
      • gojomo 12y ago
        1000X more? Not by the source article: 50GB/$10 is $0.20/GB which is less than 2X AWS/Google's wholesale $0.12/GB. And that only kicks in after the first 300GB.
        • No1 12y ago
          Well, AWS doesn't charge at all for inbound traffic, so you're looking at even worse than 1000x in one direction.
        • al_bundling 12y ago
          > 1000X more? Not by the source article: 50GB/$10 is $0.20/GB which is less than 2X AWS/Google's wholesale $0.12/GB. AWS/Google retail bandwidth prices are a bad comparison, as they are ridiculously expensive compared to wholesale bandwidth prices. Wholesale bandwidth costs about 0.1 cents per GB. Not quite 1000X what Comcast charges, it's "only" 100X the wholesale rate. To give you some perspective, Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic.net said they spend about 3% of their costs on bandwidth. Please consider that Sonic is a small actor and at scale costs will be less.
• eurleif 12y ago
  >Each of these options requires that those who choose to use more of the service pay more than others. The Flexible-Data Option adds an alternative, permitting those who choose to use less to pay less. It's so nice to have alternatives! I'm glad we live in a world where consumers have so much choice.
• thaumaturgy 12y ago
  Most of the comments here have already been posted to the Reddit thread that's been at the top of the front page all day: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2mw2sw/comcast_to_begin_charging_for_data_usage_on_home/ http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2mw2sw/comcast_t...
  • markcerqueira 12y ago
    I always saw HackerNews as a subset of Reddit, without all the silly puns and jokes for the most part.
    • josefresco 12y ago
      True, but there are still many smart and informative comments on Reddit that (if you wade through the noise) can add to the conversation. Reddit's reach is extensive and attracts people who may not frequent HN.
• sillysaurus3 12y ago
  I hope the mods allow this story to stay on the frontpage, because even though it's not intellectually interesting, it's important to respond to threats like this. Future hackers might be impacted by this nonsense if, say, their parents burn through their internet quota using Netflix and then tell their children not to use the internet the rest of the month.
  • dang 12y ago
    It set off the flamewar detector for a while but we overrode that.
• callahad 12y ago
  Can anyone explain to me what the marginal costs are for additional traffic, within Comcast's network? I presume that once you're powering the routers, they consume pretty equivalent power at peak and off-peak times, but maybe that's a faulty assumption?
  • sliverstorm 12y ago
    As I understand it the marginal cost of the first N gigabytes is approximately zilch, but N+1 gigabytes is $$$$- because they now have to upgrade the infrastructure. The price tags they put on more data are almost certainly an attempt at "market allocation" rather than the actual cost of the data. In other words, the increased price on bandwidth lowers demand, hopefully to the level Comcast is targeting. Think of electricity companies, and off-peak rates. They charge more during peak load to drive the market to shift more load to off-peak times.
    • al_bundling 12y ago
      > As I understand it the marginal cost of the first N gigabytes is approximately zilch, but N+1 gigabytes is $$$$- because they now have to upgrade the infrastructure. Missed out a step there. It's not zero then suddenly $$$$. It's more a question of gradual, usually low cost, equipment upgrades. All backhaul is via fiber optics, so by switching optics you go from 1G/10G/100G to multiple 1G/10G/100G waves. You might need a new router blade or a bigger chassis at some point. Only if you really messed up do you need infrastructure upgrades. This might mean splitting nodes, i.e. pulling a bit more fiber to hotspots, but that is why you have spare empty conduits and excess fiber strands in your cables. If you don't then you truly deserve all the misery you brought upon yourself.
  • ams6110 12y ago
    I would make the same assumption. The issue is they oversubscribe their capacity. And rather than upgrade their network to actually support what they sold, they want to introduce usage caps.
    • kstrauser 12y ago
• ddispaltro 12y ago
  Thank god for alternative internet providers like Monkeybrainz in SF. This is like payday loans for internet service, taking advantage of the low income population.
• c0ur7n3y 12y ago
  Rent seeking at it's most obvious.
• crymer11 12y ago
  Meanwhile in Chattanooga (~2 hours from Nashville, TN, Knoxville, TN, and Atlanta GA - all test markets mentioned in the post), I downloaded 300.8GB and uploaded 28.5GB (which is on the low end for me) on a symmetrical 1Gbps connection last month for $69.99 and no contract. Thanks, EPB!
• al_bundling 12y ago
  For reference: wholesale bandwidth cost is about 0.1 cents per GB.
• pXMzR2A 12y ago
  Interesting pattern. All the top first responses are critical of Comcast while responses to them are Comcast apologists. I suspect there is a strong Comcast-paid presence in HN?
  • Aloha 12y ago
    I'd disagree with you - I'd bet there are a ton of general telecom folks floating around - I've done work for the yellow carrier, as well as magenta, red and orange, plus a regional RBOC. I get the technology, and strongly think internet service should be a common carrier.
• jaytaylor 12y ago
  Pure unrestricted, unregulated capitalism. Pure monopoly. Pure evil. Is the next question "how long will googlers in the Bay Area put up with such a thing before [finally] rolling out FiOS here or nation-wide?"
  • Aloha 12y ago
    Nothing wrong in my book with charging, so long as the pipe is open, free and clear. - meaning net neutrality, and no filtering, or dns funniness - like a common carrier. We're the only country in the world (mostly) with largely unlimited broadband, many countries seem to have quota - and its not as if an unlimited option doesn't remain, I have Business Class from them, which is and will remain unlimited, but it costs, 120, including 5 statics.
  • toast0 12y ago
    Given that most of the Bay Are is AT&T territory, and Verizon has pretty much stopped FIOS rollouts, I don't think it's very likely that Verizon will be overbuilding the Bay Area any time soon.
  • guroot 12y ago
    It's not even close to unregulated capitalism. in many areas Comcast has a legislated monopoly. Google is not some magic unicorn that's going to save us from old bloated mega corps like comcast. the only reason google rolls fiber to the places it does is cause the local governments are willing to play ball. and the bay area isn't known for it's streamlined government. in fact, you folks are at the bottom of a very long list. (http://pando.com/2014/02/25/having-being-burned-once-before-google-wont-bring-fiber-to-san-francisco/ http://pando.com/2014/02/25/having-being-burned-once-before-...) The only thing that will save the US internet market is competition, google's efforts are great, I'm not convinced it will be enough. I think innovations in Wireless tech, that will allow more reliable and widespread WISP's will help. The old guard of the wireline providers have built the walls quite high and it will take time for even big players like google to wear them down.
  • NoPiece 12y ago
    Don't you mean over-regulated, crony capitalism, government granted monopoly? Pure evil?
• batiudrami 12y ago
  Why in the US is ADSL not more prevalent? The Australian broadband sector is very competitive and generally (unless you are very rural), there are hundreds of companies competing for your business. As a result, prices have consistently come down over time (when I first got ADSL in 2004 I got 1GB of data at 256kbps for $50 (1)), now the same buys unlimited data at the fastest my phone line will allow (14MBit)*. There are also no slowdowns during peak periods - providers ensure sufficiant bandwidth is available. It seems strange to me that the US is apparently locked into cable internet where only one or two providers service entire cities. (1) This is still fairly expensive but it is primarily because the majority of traffic is international and must come through fairly limited bandwidth undersea pipes. I would imagine the majority of traffic in the US is local and therefore cheaper.
  • Aloha 12y ago
    ADSL is quite common, but its a 1.5-20 meg pipe versus a 10-1000 meg pipe.
  • sliverstorm 12y ago
    There are all sorts of market reasons but I think a very important reason is the death of the landline (POTS). That is, many people have cut the POTS service, which means ADSL costs extra (have to reactivate unneeded landline service)
    • Aloha 12y ago
      Most of the carriers now sell unbundled ADSL now (AT&T, CenturyLink and I believe Verizon in non-fios markets.) it has more to do with distance limitations having too much of a downward effect on speeds. More than less subscribers are around the 5.5kf+ (kilotfoot) range, which usually means sub 15 megabit speeds - and a limited upload (inherent to all ADSL types).
  • al_bundling 12y ago
    > Why in the US is ADSL not more prevalent? Long line lenghts (average loop lenght 3.3km, resulting in sub-10Mbps speeds), no competition due to line sharing regulation being struck down.
• Aloha 12y ago
  This is old news. Comcast, TWC, and AT&T are all doing bit bucket tiered service now. 10 bucks for 50 gigs seems quite reasonable to me, honestly.
  • simoncion 12y ago
    In San Francisco, Comcast residential service has no data transfer caps.
• Omniusaspirer 12y ago
  As someone who used over 4 terabytes of bandwidth last month...just lol. How sad is it that in the modern world I can be forced to physically move to another city/state just to avoid monopolistic ISP's?
• deanclatworthy 12y ago
  Sitting here in Finland on my open, unmetered, 350mbit home internet connection, not worrying about how many HD YouTube videos I can stream, vagrant images I can clone or RAW images I can sync to the cloud - I wonder how a country which has so many smart, gifted people hasn't yet realised that the Internet should be a human right, without caps, slow lanes or censorship.
  • existencebox 12y ago
    The same country that did not have all states ratify its anti-slavery amendment until the last year or two. The same country with a history of maintaining overseas secret prisons, abuse of surveillance powers, and a barely functional justice system. (I say all this as an american.) If we haven't even realized that human rights are human rights, why would anyone expect us to realize that internet is; especially when there is profit to be made from it?
  • malchow 12y ago
    You're wrong. The Internet isn't a human right, and even if it is, government shouldn't provide it. You wouldn't like government internet if you lived under, say, the Cuban government. Nor can you trust your government forever. U.S. internet is bad because government got involved in franchising the running of copper decades ago. It's in a bad state because of the government. We Americans are debating whether we should use more policy to try to resolve the problem or hew to the right principle (minimal regulation) and not enact more policy, suffering the short and medium term consequences (i.e. more power to Comcast).
• hw 12y ago
  Not complaining too much as long as there's fair warning when hitting certain thresholds of the cap. Worst thing I want is not unknowingly exceeding the threshold and getting billed an extra 100$
  • al_bundling 12y ago
    I'm sure there's going to be a fair bit of complaining as time goes by and normal usage grows but caps stay the same.
• Vanayad 12y ago
  Hahaha... Americans.
• bigfunlx 12y ago
  How do you people in US even allow that to happen? In Poland we pay less than $10 for 10Mbit/s. We pay $30 for 250 Mbit/s DL 20 Mbit/s UL , and last time we had limited data plans was like 8 years. If we were to pay what you pay, for the quality you have, we would basically go for nationwide strike.
  • belandrew 12y ago
    Comparing prices in different countries isn't that simple. You have to take into account what that price means compared to wages. Someone in Poland on average (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...) has about 28% the disposable income as someone in the US. So you paying $10 a month feels about the same as someone in the US paying $35.
    • al_bundling 12y ago
      Equipment, cables and materials still cost the same, so the comparison is relevant. Even adjusting for PPP, the difference is striking. And to explain the differences, you have to look at external factors, such as competition and regulation.
      • markkanof 12y ago
        But deploying and managing that equipment does not cost the same. There is another comment in this thread that says only about 3% of operating costs for Sonic.net come from bandwidth. U.S. based ISPs employ U.S. based workers which on average are paid more than employees in say Poland, so it's hard to do a direct comparison. Not saying that we in the U.S. don't pay too much for internet, just that a direct comparison to other countries is tricky.
    • vinbreau 12y ago
      I would gladly pay $35 a month. No, I pay almost $90 for 30 down / .3 up. I'm in the US.
  • vibrolax 12y ago
• krob 12y ago
  I have Time Warner Cable which is pretty decent service. 300mbit/20mbit. I could burn though 300gb in probably 2.26 to 2.5 hours. 125kb/1mbit300mbit/1sec = 125300 = 37,500kb/sec 300gb = 300gb1024mb/1gb = 307,200mb 307.2gb / 37.5mb/sec = 307,200mb 1sec/37.5mb = 8192sec 8921sec / 1min/60sec / 1hr/60min = 2.27hrs So my whole months worth of bandwidth gone on 10 large video games.
  • EStudley 12y ago
    If I purchase one steam humble bundle, I'd blow through a quarter of my data cap just downloading the games.
• Osiris 12y ago
  I have Comcast in Colorado. I signed up for Backblaze last month and it uploaded 1.3 TB of data in about 2 weeks. My "normal" bandwidth usage is around 600-800 GB per month, plus the extra terabyte on top of that. The problem with bandwidth caps is that they effective take away the ability for people to use online services like online backup and streaming sites. My kids that stay at home probably watch a few hours of streaming media every day, which would use up most if not all of the 300GB just with that, let alone everything else.
  • josefresco 12y ago
    Also a Backblaze customer and after my first "sync" I for the first time was concerned about hitting my Comcast residential cap. I uploaded about 750GB over a two month period and never got a letter or notice. Thankfully the sync now uses significantly less data per day, however these business models are threatened by data caps. Does anyone here on HN have a startup that relies heavily on data and is worried about these new "plans" and caps? Also, don't believe that Comcast line that only 2% of customer use more than 300GB. Medium to large families (with teenagers) and many connected devices can easily reach this cap.
• steverb 12y ago
  I am currently in one of the test markets for this (Knoxville, TN) and am actively looking for another provider since we hit the bandwidth cap for the third time this month (2 adults, 4 teenagers). Fortunately, I have three providers in my neighborhood. Of course, it will take me an hour on hold to cancel Comcast, but at least I won't have to deal with them any more.
  • calinet6 12y ago
    You're lucky. In many places, there are no alternatives to Comcast. I've asked this out in the open before and always got blank stares and crazy looks, but how hard/expensive would it be to start your own neighborhood ISP and peer directly with a backbone? What's the up-front investment required and how many users at what price point would be needed to make it reasonable or profitable? I guess the main problem is still transport to the premises...
    • al_bundling 12y ago
      >I've asked this out in the open before and always got blank stares and crazy looks, but how hard/expensive would it be to start your own neighborhood ISP and peer directly with a backbone? The technical parts are fairly straightforward, what gets hard/expensive is the legal, permiting, construction part. > What's the up-front investment required and how many users at what price point would be needed to make it reasonable or profitable? As the old adage goes, if you have to ask then you can't afford it... > I guess the main problem is still transport to the premises... Exactly. Rule of thumb is that 90% of network costs are in the last mile and most of those costs are in the last few yards.
  • disposition2 12y ago
    You must be out west or close to the University, I can't see anywhere in Knoxville having 3 provider choices...other than DSL, 1 cable option and cellular hot-spot.
    • steverb 12y ago
      Norwood. We have Comcast, AT+T fiber and Wow.
• josefresco 12y ago
  I live for 2 months out of the year on a completely metered Verizon data plan (mifi). Managing it with our home business (small biz web design) and 2 connected kids is ... a royal pain to say the least. When we arrive the routine goes like this: Airplane mode for all phones/tablets unless in use Turn off Dropbox syncing (all devices) Turn off Backblaze (cost us about $100 in data last time we forgot to completely disable) iOS updates for our 4 smartphones? Wait until we return home Disable app updates (some are several hundred MB) No Pandora/Sirius streaming or audio streaming of any kind Limited Netflix/Video streaming (only for must watch shows) No large FTP transfers (common for our industry) No Facetime (our kids use) Schedule Dropcam power to turn off at night Block podcast downloads within iTunes The list goes on.... So basically every day you check, and recheck your data use to "catch" any device or service that may be using too much data. When family visits and the number inside the house reaches 6-10 the monthly data cap is blown in just a few days. And our data cap is not a measly 5GB or even 10GB a month, it can easily reach 40-50GB which costs a relative fortune. If you look at the list of accommodations above, you'll see a nice collection of US businesses (Apple, Dropbox, Pandora etc.) for whom I can't do business with in a "metered" world. I can deal with this for 2 months out of my year, but if my home residential Internet was also metered like this our involvement online would be dramatically changed.
  • taf2 12y ago
    I just recently experienced something like this on a work trip I turned on my mifi and forgot I had my nexus tablet in my backpack. When I woke up in the morning and the tablet had upgraded itself eating through a whole month of usage and then some... Granted we didn't have a big plan for the mifi but still we had to upgrade to a higher fixed per month rate.. I would be OK with variable usage based billing but having to have a fixed fee use it or lose it really is what kills these plans... and makes for such a bad customer experience IMO.
    • josefresco 12y ago
      Thankfully "upgrading" your data plan with Verizon is easy, but the pricing is still exorbitant. The "overnight" data usage by services is actually very interesting. Often I would go to sleep well under my daily goal, and wake up to a "mysterious" 2GB transfer around midnight-2 AM. the usage wasn't nefarious in nature, however the timing (middle of the night) made it difficult to manage.
• coldcode 12y ago
  I'd be for more leeway on pricing if in most places in the US the ISP wasn't a monopoly. Competition is supposed to exist in a market economy. Comcast and its ilk like to act as if competition exists but only on a national scale. On my local city scale there is virtually no competition. That's the only scale that matters.
• johnward 12y ago
  I work from home a lot, stream spotify, but don't really stream video. I average less than 100GB per month. However i could easily see how streaming netflix or other services could cause someone to go over the 300GB data usage. My largest month of usage was 4TB due to some search engine work I was doing. I don't like the precedent this is setting and I just hope Google keeps putting pressure on with their Fiber offering to make these other companies compete. In some cases I wish municipalities would step in and stop allowing companies like comcast to be the sole provider in their area. I foresee comcast marketing their "increasing speeds" in the future. In which you could never actually take full advantage of because of these limits.
• hawleyal 12y ago
  This is going to get major pushback from all content providers like Netflix, Pandora, et al.
  • al_bundling 12y ago
    It's not like there's much they can do as they aren't Comcast's customers.
    • hawleyal 12y ago
      They can directly point to Comcast as the problem. They can lobby lawmakers just as Comcast can. In my opinion, this is going to be a problem for them, and any of these content providers have way stronger voices than a single customer.
• chrisBob 12y ago
  Everyone complains about Comcast, but how many people here have an option in their area and still use Comcast? I have RCN service at my house, but most people I know here and in DC still use Comcast. Some of that may be because the smaller providers don't advertise as well, but there must be some people actively choosing Comcast service.
  • ncallaway 12y ago
    I despise Comcast. I hate themm. I currently have Comcast as my ISP. They provide 50Mbps service to my residence. The next closest provider maxes out at 7Mbps. 20Mbps is, realistically, my floor for bandwidth. If any other provider offered service at >= 20Mbps I would leave Comcast in a heartbeat.
• micah_chatt 12y ago
  Very interestingly, they did NOT add the Chattanooga market. Chattanooga has its own public utility that provides power and Gigabit fiber. See http://www.salon.com/2014/07/18/comcasts_worst_nightmare_how_tennessee_could_save_americas_internet_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2014/07/18/comcasts_worst_nightmare_how...
• mrbill 12y ago
  Switched to Comcast Business Class service four years ago. 50/10, 5 static IPs, clueful LOCAL techs who don't rely on a script and speak English as a first language. No caps whatsoever. I run my own web/mail servers. I never thought I would say "I'm happy with my Comcast service", but then I do pay $150/month for just Internet.
• mcmatterson 12y ago
  We went through this usage based billing (UBB, aka capacity based billing (CBB)) thing here in Canada a couple of years back, where the incumbent carriers (DSL and cable) somewhat successfully lobbied the CRTC to set wholesale tariffs based on a mix of generally lower access fees (paid per subscriber, specifying a certain connection speed but no actual traffic), and interconnect fees (covering a certain interconnect speed between the incumbent's network and the third party ISP's backhaul). The net effect of the model is that a third party ISP's variable costs are essentially the cost of their interconnect with the incumbent, and are dominated by their burst needs during peak usage times. As a consequence, there are a number of business models which this lends itself to (in terms of incentivizing users to shift usage to off-peak times) in addition to straight download cap vs. unlimited offerings. For example, some ISPs (like Teksavvy, for example) offer unlimited plans with a reduction in speed during peak hours. There was a LOT of debate on the subject on places like dslreports when this was in front of the CRTC. The general consensus seemed to be that UBB in principle is a good thing (it allows for more flexibility in third party ISP business models, and roughly aligns costs with income for the incumbent) although the particular tariff prices put forth by the incumbents were inflated and suspect. As a real-world benchmark, my third party provider (start.ca) offers a 30/5 cable plan with 200GB of usage for $45 CAD (roughly $40 USD) per month. Going to an unlimited plan adds an extra $15 CAD to that, with the risk for overages being borne by the ISP. Of course, the incumbents' retail offerings are universally terrible (their caps are laughably small, and their prices higher than any third party provider). Because of the lack of separation between their retail and wholesale operations, they're able to offer (presumably loss leader) promotions that third party providers simply can't, and have the benefit of being able to structure their tariff offerings to screw third party providers wherever possible. So that part of the regulatory environment sucks. Overall though it feels like a decent model (although the actual tariff prices are quite out of line, particularly for interconnect fees). $60 CAD a month for unlimited 30/5 is a fair price in my mind, and if my needs ever change there are enough third party provider with enough diverse business models that I'd likely find something that works for me.
• been_fired 12y ago
  I live in one of the areas with the caps and this is how it plays out: 1. I tell my wife to stop playing so many movies on netflix. 2. I stopped watching youtube or other video services unless I really, really want to see something. 3. I watch my internet usage and choose when to use it. 4. I cancelled Hulu. 5. I grow suspicious of my neighbors when my usage seems high as there is no breakdown of where usage comes from. 6. I suspect comcast's own services are not counted towards the meter, but can't prove anything. 7. I stopped playing so many games. 8. I now strategize my downloads. There is no real other choice in my area -- the closest competitor to Comcast offers less than half the speed and only advertises for 1/4 the speed. In my opinion, as someone affected by this, it's just a way to squeeze the customer more and maintain a monopoly on content.
• malchow 12y ago
  I just want to point out how genius this is. Comcast, I suspect, spends 99% of its time thinking about psychology and pricing. They know that they want to continue to get about $150/mo from every American family. All they are doing is back-plotting how to get there. First, they start squeezing corporate network participants. But that won't get them all the way there, and there's a regulatory risk there too. They've already signed ad hoc net-neut agreements that limit this approach. So they will definitely have to squeeze consumers. But they've been selling "Internet at y Mbps" for decades now. They can't just flip to "10 GB / 50 GB / 100 GB / 500 GB Internet." Consumers (i.e. voters) would be outraged, and they would lose the TWC deal, which is key to their 'Don't Be a Dumb Pipe Company' strategy. But they need to sew the seeds. So what do they do first? A discount for less usage, rather than a surcharge for more usage. Same thing, different words. If it's well tolerated, they'll steepen the gradient. CMCSA is at a delicate liminal point. They are threading the needle brilliantly. Who would have thought that the American consumer would shift his media consumption habits with whiplash rapidity away from cable and broadcast TV, but that Comcast would survive in basically the exact same position?