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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 awa

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.
    - kstrauser 12y ago
      I call BS. I live in a suburb of San Francisco and have a choice between Comcast and 5Mbps DSL. In other words, I have no choice whatsoever because my telecommuting (and Netflix and Hulu and...) need higher speed bursts than that. And these are still better options than my family in the Midwest and New York have available to them. You just can't claim with a straight face that there's competition in this market.
      - gojomo 12y ago
        You have two wired options, which is exactly what I said. (You can't call 'BS' if your facts are consistent with my claims!) I have 5Mbps DSL in San Francisco. It's plenty for HD Netflix and Hulu, VOIP, and video-calling. I suspect you also have 3+ wireless options, some of which likely offer 20Mbps+ in bursts. Yes, it costs more. Yes, you'd like to pay less. Everyone would! But your desire for more modern luxury goods (massive HD bandwidth), cheaper, is not a public policy crisis. Someone has to invest more to give you more, and market-floating prices for the existing paths are exactly what draws in more investment – or sends you a signal that you should 'self-help' to the nearest source of plentiful bandwidth.
      - callahad 12y ago
        > better options than my family in the Midwest Minneapolis is a beacon of hope, here. $40 for 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps in much of the city, from a local fiber provider. That's what kills me. Comcast's audacity is just so much more galling when you've actually experienced what happens with competition. And not that competition is a panacea, necessarily. I don't have a say in my water, gas, or electricity providers, but in exchange for that monopoly, they're subject to pretty serious regulation.
        gojomo 12y ago
        Indeed, let's make everyplace like Minneapolis, or Google Fiber cities, by fixing each local market with new options. That's much better than nationally locking-in a pipes-and-sewers-like regulatory structure that freezes incumbents into a safe but slow-moving regulated approach, for decades. The decades of Title-II-regulated AT&T telecom monopoly were not good for consumers or innovation. They were safe and slow.
- Retric 12y ago
  You understand they launched in 2006 and subsides their hardware costs with extremely high bandwidth costs and that was the highest possible price they charged right? PS: And a little idea that might blow your mind, Comcast effectively pays nothing for bandwidth to the internet. Like SMS it's so cheap they would have trouble actually finding out how much it costs them and would need to add up the cost of patch cables in the data-center as a significant 'cost'.
  - gojomo 12y ago
    Of course. But also, such data-center hosting is essentially "wholesale", for customers who are indifferent about location and buying enough to care about slight changes in rates. Retail, to a particular fixed location, and for households where bandwidth is a tiny part of their overall budget, is naturally going to be 2-10X more expensive. AWS wholesale transfer out (not subsidized/forgiven to make their service 'sticky') is still $0.12/GB. Comcast's retail price is less than 2X that. No biggie.
    - Retric 12y ago
      Your using AWS's highest prices. AWS also lists is $0.05 per GB to the internet and it get's cheaper if your a large scale customer. Comcast on on the other hand charges an "additional $1.00 for each gigabyte of data used over the 5 GB included in the Flexible-Data Option."
      - gojomo 12y ago
        I don't see AWS's $0.05/GB. I see $0.12/GB outbound, for the first 10TB. Google has the same per-GB pricing. But again, that's bulk wholesale which is often 2-10X cheaper in any industry. Compare like to like.
        Retric 12y ago
        It's standard tiered pricing. They have a free tier which is subsidized by their next tier @12c per GB but most mid sized clients get into 5c or less scale. First 1 GB / month $0.000 per GB Up to 10 TB / month $0.120 per GB Next 40 TB / month $0.090 per GB Next 100 TB / month $0.070 per GB Next 350 TB / month $0.050 per GB Above that call them it you can work out even lower prices.
sliverstorm 12y ago
especially because I don't really see the connection between my consumption and "waste" like I do with my energy bill. It's murky and the cost per bit is indeed very small, but every bit you requests costs electricity. Have you ever read the bits about "The Environmental Cost of Spam"?
baddox 12y ago
I can have 50GB of (heavily copyrighted and protected) data physically shipped to me for $10 on a Blu-ray. Sure, the latency is worse, but it's ludicrous to think that downloading a digital film (that the distributor isn't charging for!) could cost more than buying the physical media.
MichaelGG 12y ago
My Rogers/Fido contract specifies $6.47 per KB for data while roaming in the US. Canada is worse than third world countries for telecom. The corrupt CRTC doesn't do anything. My uncle was paying $400 a month for his residential internet (occasional browsing, Netflix, plus a gamer kid). The worst is he thought it was reasonable. Canada actively fights competition too and won't allow other telcos to invest because they "aren't Canadian". It's this lame thinking from little countries in the stupid idea of pride. Kinda thing you expect from some Bananaland place.
yaeger 12y ago
>I wonder how my day-to-day activities would change if I knew I was constantly eating away at my monthly limit. That takes me back to my days with dial up with the best plan available being "100 hours of surfing for 100 bucks" That was before a flat rate was ever available and it beat the other plans where you paid literally by the minute and it came out to much more than 100 bucks for 100 hours of online time. Oh, how I remember setting an egg timer during the week so I don't surf longer than the time I allowed myself just so I had like 8 hours on Saturdays and Sundays to surf uninterrupted.
kalleboo 12y ago
> I wonder how my day-to-day activities would change if I knew I was constantly eating away at my monthly limit I've been spending the past 2 weeks at my parent's house in Australia, they live an hour from the nearest village and 2 hours from the nearest city. The only internet options are dialup, satellite or 3G. The 3G is surprisingly fast (6 MBps), but it's $60 for 4 GB. I've been watching my usage, installed Little Snitch to disable all kinds of background activity like auto-updating. Most of my online time has been browsing HN, Reddit, IMing,, Facebook, Twitter, email, a couple Skype calls. Have watched a grand total of 2 YouTube videos. I've still burned through 5 GB in 2.5 weeks. I don't even know how, aside from things when OS X spent 100 MB attempting to download the certificate revocation list, and Mail.app continually redownloading all my spam from Gmail.
- al_bundling 12y ago
  > The 3G is surprisingly fast (6 MBps), but it's $60 for 4 GB Switch to Optus prepaid. It's $2 per day for 0.5 GB per day. $2 more for 0.5 GB if you run out of you daily 0.5 GB.
  - kalleboo 12y ago
    Only Telstra has any coverage within 20 km
    - al_bundling 12y ago
      That's too bad. You could check out the Google spreadsheet at Whirlpool with all Australian mobile plans to see if you can find a better Telstra plan or one from another provider that uses Telstra's network. http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1572741 http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1572741

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.
  - kstrauser 12y ago
    I call BS. I live in a suburb of San Francisco and have a choice between Comcast and 5Mbps DSL. In other words, I have no choice whatsoever because my telecommuting (and Netflix and Hulu and...) need higher speed bursts than that. And these are still better options than my family in the Midwest and New York have available to them. You just can't claim with a straight face that there's competition in this market.
    - gojomo 12y ago
      You have two wired options, which is exactly what I said. (You can't call 'BS' if your facts are consistent with my claims!) I have 5Mbps DSL in San Francisco. It's plenty for HD Netflix and Hulu, VOIP, and video-calling. I suspect you also have 3+ wireless options, some of which likely offer 20Mbps+ in bursts. Yes, it costs more. Yes, you'd like to pay less. Everyone would! But your desire for more modern luxury goods (massive HD bandwidth), cheaper, is not a public policy crisis. Someone has to invest more to give you more, and market-floating prices for the existing paths are exactly what draws in more investment – or sends you a signal that you should 'self-help' to the nearest source of plentiful bandwidth.
    - callahad 12y ago
      > better options than my family in the Midwest Minneapolis is a beacon of hope, here. $40 for 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps in much of the city, from a local fiber provider. That's what kills me. Comcast's audacity is just so much more galling when you've actually experienced what happens with competition. And not that competition is a panacea, necessarily. I don't have a say in my water, gas, or electricity providers, but in exchange for that monopoly, they're subject to pretty serious regulation.
      - gojomo 12y ago
        Indeed, let's make everyplace like Minneapolis, or Google Fiber cities, by fixing each local market with new options. That's much better than nationally locking-in a pipes-and-sewers-like regulatory structure that freezes incumbents into a safe but slow-moving regulated approach, for decades. The decades of Title-II-regulated AT&T telecom monopoly were not good for consumers or innovation. They were safe and slow.
Retric 12y ago
You understand they launched in 2006 and subsides their hardware costs with extremely high bandwidth costs and that was the highest possible price they charged right? PS: And a little idea that might blow your mind, Comcast effectively pays nothing for bandwidth to the internet. Like SMS it's so cheap they would have trouble actually finding out how much it costs them and would need to add up the cost of patch cables in the data-center as a significant 'cost'.
- gojomo 12y ago
  Of course. But also, such data-center hosting is essentially "wholesale", for customers who are indifferent about location and buying enough to care about slight changes in rates. Retail, to a particular fixed location, and for households where bandwidth is a tiny part of their overall budget, is naturally going to be 2-10X more expensive. AWS wholesale transfer out (not subsidized/forgiven to make their service 'sticky') is still $0.12/GB. Comcast's retail price is less than 2X that. No biggie.
  - Retric 12y ago
    Your using AWS's highest prices. AWS also lists is $0.05 per GB to the internet and it get's cheaper if your a large scale customer. Comcast on on the other hand charges an "additional $1.00 for each gigabyte of data used over the 5 GB included in the Flexible-Data Option."
    - gojomo 12y ago
      I don't see AWS's $0.05/GB. I see $0.12/GB outbound, for the first 10TB. Google has the same per-GB pricing. But again, that's bulk wholesale which is often 2-10X cheaper in any industry. Compare like to like.
      - Retric 12y ago
        It's standard tiered pricing. They have a free tier which is subsidized by their next tier @12c per GB but most mid sized clients get into 5c or less scale. First 1 GB / month $0.000 per GB Up to 10 TB / month $0.120 per GB Next 40 TB / month $0.090 per GB Next 100 TB / month $0.070 per GB Next 350 TB / month $0.050 per GB Above that call them it you can work out even lower prices.

sliverstorm 12y ago

especially because I don't really see the connection between my consumption and "waste" like I do with my energy bill. It's murky and the cost per bit is indeed very small, but every bit you requests costs electricity. Have you ever read the bits about "The Environmental Cost of Spam"?

baddox 12y ago

I can have 50GB of (heavily copyrighted and protected) data physically shipped to me for $10 on a Blu-ray. Sure, the latency is worse, but it's ludicrous to think that downloading a digital film (that the distributor isn't charging for!) could cost more than buying the physical media.

MichaelGG 12y ago

My Rogers/Fido contract specifies $6.47 per KB for data while roaming in the US. Canada is worse than third world countries for telecom. The corrupt CRTC doesn't do anything. My uncle was paying $400 a month for his residential internet (occasional browsing, Netflix, plus a gamer kid). The worst is he thought it was reasonable. Canada actively fights competition too and won't allow other telcos to invest because they "aren't Canadian". It's this lame thinking from little countries in the stupid idea of pride. Kinda thing you expect from some Bananaland place.

yaeger 12y ago

>I wonder how my day-to-day activities would change if I knew I was constantly eating away at my monthly limit. That takes me back to my days with dial up with the best plan available being "100 hours of surfing for 100 bucks" That was before a flat rate was ever available and it beat the other plans where you paid literally by the minute and it came out to much more than 100 bucks for 100 hours of online time. Oh, how I remember setting an egg timer during the week so I don't surf longer than the time I allowed myself just so I had like 8 hours on Saturdays and Sundays to surf uninterrupted.

kalleboo 12y ago

> I wonder how my day-to-day activities would change if I knew I was constantly eating away at my monthly limit I've been spending the past 2 weeks at my parent's house in Australia, they live an hour from the nearest village and 2 hours from the nearest city. The only internet options are dialup, satellite or 3G. The 3G is surprisingly fast (6 MBps), but it's $60 for 4 GB. I've been watching my usage, installed Little Snitch to disable all kinds of background activity like auto-updating. Most of my online time has been browsing HN, Reddit, IMing,, Facebook, Twitter, email, a couple Skype calls. Have watched a grand total of 2 YouTube videos. I've still burned through 5 GB in 2.5 weeks. I don't even know how, aside from things when OS X spent 100 MB attempting to download the certificate revocation list, and Mail.app continually redownloading all my spam from Gmail.

al_bundling 12y ago
> The 3G is surprisingly fast (6 MBps), but it's $60 for 4 GB Switch to Optus prepaid. It's $2 per day for 0.5 GB per day. $2 more for 0.5 GB if you run out of you daily 0.5 GB.
- kalleboo 12y ago
  Only Telstra has any coverage within 20 km
  - al_bundling 12y ago
    That's too bad. You could check out the Google spreadsheet at Whirlpool with all Australian mobile plans to see if you can find a better Telstra plan or one from another provider that uses Telstra's network. http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1572741 http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1572741