posted by
LaminatorX
on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:05PM
from the Unlimited*-(*Subject-to-Limits) dept.
from the Unlimited*-(*Subject-to-Limits) dept.
Comcast executive VP David Cohen in an investor call predicts capacity caps within the next 5 years. The cap would start at 300 GB and and extra 50 GB would cost 10 USD, but Cohen says that the vast majority of our customers would not be affected as the company will set the basic level of usage at a sufficient high level. Do you trust them?
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Comcast Plans Data Caps Within Five Years
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Blackmoore on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:12PM
*ahem*
No.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Refugee from beyond on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:17PM
That's not how you write thrust :}
Instantly better soylentnews: replace background on article and comment titles with #973131.
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:23PM
This is fantastic news. Not the caps - that's not news, anyone watching the industry knows that data caps are comcast's personal version of crack cocaine. No, the great news is that comcast is jonesing for caps so bad that they are running around shamelessly telling people about it. They want it so bad that they just can't shut up about it.
With the Timecast merger fight and the net neutrality fight all in the news, comcast is soooper stupid to bring this sort of attention on themselves. But what's bad for comcast is great for everyone else - they've just told everyone what the future looks like if comcast isn't forced into rehab.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:25PM
Uhh...I guessed you missed the memo, huh? We have our congresswhores telling the big ad companies just ignore the peasants and pretend SOPA passed by forming a trust, not like we'll bust you for it or anything [boingboing.net] so you HONESTLY think this will hurt Comcrap in ANY way? They could email every customer a low res Goatse with the caption "You are our personal bitch" and not only would they not be busted you'd hear congresswhores bleat about how Comcrap "is extending a personal relationship with its customers".
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:30PM
I agree, this is announced the same day that the FCC approves a two tier internet.
I don't see Comcast having anything to worry about. Their man is in charge.
Next announcement will be that the caps won't apply to those streaming from Comcast's Xfinity offering.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by Pussers on Friday May 16 2014, @03:48PM
Comcast *already* has caps in Georgia and certain other 'test markets'.
Beyond 300GB/month, there's an extra charge of $10 per extra 50GB or part thereof.
(Score: 2) by pbnjoe on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:25PM
I feel like asking that question here is like asking if we can fly by flapping our arms: no. Does anyone* trust any big ISP these days?
With multi-MB webpages being the norm and streaming being quite prevalent, everyday users will pretty easily hit any cap they set, I feel, let alone "power" users.
I know there's a ton to be said about the morality/reasoning of caps (as in there is none, I hate them), the fact that it's just money grubbing as there's no infrastructure-wise need for it, etc, but I'm not going to touch on that more than I just did, heh.
*anyone who doesn't just click their way through everything and throw their credit card when they get stuck
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:38PM
caps are a means of punishing (and monetizing that punishment) their customers for their refusal to maintain or upgrade the infrastructure. they get to keep the same shitty, third-world infrastructure thats already stressed and cant support the speeds they're selling, and they get to charge us even more to use less bandwidth. its disgusting.
(Score: 5, Funny) by pbnjoe on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:56PM
Yeah, I meant it's not like the user need is outweighing the technology that exists. Also, agreed on it being disgusting; I get more cynical by the day.
And did you know th-
(Score: 1) by gidds on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:43PM
No?
I'm no expert (nor do I play one on Netflix), but AIUI most ISPs will have to pay more to carry more traffic — maybe not a direct linear relationship, but they clearly can't carry unlimited traffic without incurring some additional expenses. So isn't it entirely fair — and in fact a Good Thing™ from an economics point of view — for them to reflect that extra cost in their pricing?
Here in the UK, I believe all ISPs have usage caps. The only difference is that the good ISPs tell you up front what their caps are, what happens if you go over (e.g. throttling downloads), what warning you get, and what you can do about it (e.g. paying a fee for a one-time increase, changing account type, etc.); while the bad ones pretend to be unlimited, hide the existence of caps in the small print, don't let you know what they are until you hit them, etc.
Of course, I'd love a completely uncapped, unmetered service; but I don't mind a cap if it's set reasonably, explained clearly, administered fairly, reflects the real cost of the connection, and gives other users the right incentives to use the bandwidth wisely.
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by pbnjoe on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:13PM
I want to quote AngryJesus from this thread, but I want to quote his entire post, so here [soylentnews.org].
I'll use that as a rough estimate and not as absolute truth. Please excuse the following slapdash example, it's obviously not quite as simple and the numbers aren't perfect.
Anyway: say the ISP is charging $100/month (to make a clean number). Until every user, every month is downloading over 6TB, that company will be making profit. Now, breaking even obviously isn't viable etc, but I hope my meaning gets across.
Charging $100/month with a 300GB/month (50c cost) cap is just absurd. Throttling during peak hours if the bandwidth is being maxed, sure, but not a data cap, until the majority of users use terabytes a month.
(If companies were forthright and told the public the real cost of data transfer there'd be an ISP revolution, I think, or at least I'd hope])
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:06PM
> Anyway: say the ISP is charging $100/month (to make a clean number). Until every user,
> every month is downloading over 6TB, that company will be making profit.
I think you are off by an order of magnitude. The marginal cast is roughly $1.50/TB, so 6TB is about $10, not $100.
Of course marginal cost does not include fixed infrastructure costs, both hardware and people, and there is an occasional bump where they have to buy more equipment when aggregate usage maxes out the current infrastructure.
Still the pricing is just completely disconnected from the costs. Companies can only get away with that when they don't have any competition.
(Score: 2) by pbnjoe on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:27PM
Indeed, thank you for that; I was rushing.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday May 16 2014, @10:49AM
Does this remind you of:
640K of RAM ought to be enough for anybody [snopes.com]?
How long will it be before it will require gigabytes just do do a tax form? Last I looked, it "cost" me several hundred megabytes to download last year's barrage of PDF's.
Its getting worse too as corporate webmasters are implementing technologies to make sure you are not using avoidance technology to skip acceptance of stuff they want to send you. Even my banking site will no longer work if I have popups disabled, and for this reason I am not E-banking with them.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by physicsmajor on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:26PM
Ten years ago the average web page was a few KB. Today it's over 1 MB.
Any caps are a constraint on our future. This affects the whole of society. The average users have spoken; mean and median data usage is up across the board. Way up. Even if Comcast is right and 300GB won't affect most customers today, I know people with just Hulu Plus and Netflix who routinely consume 400+ GB per month with zero copyright infringement. That is today. What about tomorrow?
The rise of video streaming services, massive online courses, etc. would flat out not be possible if this bullshit justification had been trotted out a decade ago, with the cry "30GB should be enough for anyone!" Echoes of Bill Gates' infamous quote, anyone? We cannot stand for this.
Data is good for society. The free flow of information should not be impeded in any way, including putting a de facto upper bound on the arbitrary capacity of the pipe. All these companies want is an excuse to discontinue infrastructure investment and laugh all the way to the bank when, in the future, the average user is streaming 1TB per month of 4K 3D video. Or whatever other technology gets dreamed up.
Mobile caps are more than bad enough for this reason. Throttling, especially in peak periods, I'm fine with. Caps, caps are absolutely terrible.
Also note that I would also accept as valid a move to fully metered pricing from zero, BUT the prices would have to match the actual costs (of the raw data and network upkeep/upgrades) in a fully transparent way. Comcast et al. don't want this either, because their current and future prices would be exposed as the horrible frauds on the public they are.
The real solution here is to treat broadband internet service as the utility it now is, under Title II at minimum or - even better - nationalize or force all last-mile providers to be nonprofits. Accept no caps!
(Score: 2) by pbnjoe on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:31PM
+1
I knew someone would say what you just did a lot better than I could.
(Score: 1) by paulej72 on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:42PM
Comcast wants you to use their services, which they do not count towards your cap. So you can use their online OnDemand service as much as you want and it your cap will be safe. They may strike a similar deal with Netflix now that they are being friends again (although Netfilx will be picking up the tab for the additional data transfers in all probability).
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 3, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:47PM
> Also note that I would also accept as valid a move to fully metered pricing from zero, BUT the
> prices would have to match the actual costs (of the raw data and network upkeep/upgrades) in a fully
> transparent way. Comcast et al. don't want this either, because their current and future prices
> would be exposed as the horrible frauds on the public they are.
Fraud indeed. IP transit pricing has plummeted over the last decade. A quick google brings up this most recent pricing estimate [streamingmedia.com] of $0.50/mbps. 1mbps running 24x7 is 324GB of data per month. It isn't quite apples and apples to compare data caps in gigabytes to transit capacity in bitrates because nobody runs flat out, you have to worry about variations like peaks that can cause congestion. But for the purposes of this discussion, its close enough.
So, 300GB/month has a marginal cost of 50 cents. Just look at how out of proportion that is when they talk about charging customers $10 for 50GB. And now you know why these monopolies lurve themselves the sweet, sweet data caps.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:26PM
And that is exactly the market segment Comcast wants to either SHED or SOAK, because it competes with their TV offerings. Cable cutters scare the shit out of cable companies.
Now that the cable giants have their man at the FCC today approving a two tier internet, and they get the green light for charging Hulu and Netflix more money.
Now they want to turn around and charge the home user more for the other end of the connection.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by fadrian on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:23PM
They probably don't want to shed the Hulu subscribers. You see, Hulu is a joint venture between Fox, Disney, and NBC/Universal. The last one is owned by (ta da!) Comcast. So don't worry about the Hulu - I'm sure it will go through with only a slightly lower rate than XOD.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:27PM
Bandwidth is priced in two ways:
1) Business pricing. Highly competitive, and you get reasonable metered pricing with features.
2) Residential pricing. No competition, unreasonable caps designed to fail for increased revenue, shit infrastructure, traffic shaping, throttling, and basically just abused.
I have a huge love/hate relationship with Google, but I can't wait for them to really start disrupting the markets with fiber. The assclowns at the ISPs started the whole thing with the unlimited bullshit. This was started by the morons/AOL who thought per minute pricing was reasonable, and most people hated it. Unlimited was like a dream to the consumer.
There are no unlimited pipes, so unlimited is impossible. It's the most damaging thing that could happen to consumers since they don't understand why it's impossible, and why metered pricing should be *everywhere*.
I've had fully metered pricing for years at various data centers. It's super simple.
Floor - This is what you are guaranteed to have regardless of congestion and traffic. For most people this could be 300-500 kb/s, or lower. Really just needs to be sufficient for basic browsing and email. If you're rich and absolutely demand the ability to watch 4K Netflix regardless of what your neighbors are doing, you can pay a couple thousand a month for a 50mb/s floor. Stupid, but you're rich anyways, and there are an awful lot of people with more money than sense.
Ceiling - You can't ever exceed this. If you don't own a 4K monitor, and you're not running a frat house with 20 guys, your ceiling could be 10mb/s. For most single people it could even be lower than that. That frat house with 20 guys should pony up the cash and get a ceiling closer to 100mb/s or higher as they are the problem in the neighborhood.
Both Floors and Ceilings allow ISPs to *appropriately* throttle all the connections and know exactly what bandwidth they CAN deliver, and what bandwidth they SHOULD deliver.
Taking all the Floors and adding them up should never (by FEDERAL LAW) exceed the capacity of the pipe. Let's put an end to the abusive bandwidth overselling behavior for good. It's not a fucking theater or airplane, and there is no justification whatsoever about "overbooking" your bandwidth. If they want to sell additional contracts, either add capacity or reduce the existing Floors to create capacity. A responsible ISP that isn't a moron won't allocate the entire capacity of the pipe for Floors either, as they need that to create a room between the Floor and the Ceiling. Otherwise you have a flat 2D plane of Stupid.
The difference between the Floor and the Ceiling is shared bandwidth you have access to, and it's transparent. Everyone knows that from the start, so nobody can get upset. If you absolutely need Netflix and want higher quality TV, raise your Floor to support at least 720p. The difference between all of the Floors combined and the capacity of the pipe is the pool of shared bandwidth.
The last part is just an automatic scale where you measure the total usage at the end of the month and pay according to the scale. Typically where I have received service they will ask you to raise your Floor if your average bandwidth consumption is more than 40% of the Ceiling. I find that reasonable.
That's how business does it. Transparent, competitive, and fair..... because it has to be since the market is fucking competitive. I can take my business to Kansas, or Texas. It doesn't matter where I go for business services as long as they have good bandwidth.
Hell, I can even get a blend of up to 9 different ISPs, over half of them multi-homed, 2 of them with four redundant connections, and it's all done with a single range of IP addresses given to me. That's a hell of a product.
Bandwidth is easy to sell in metered packages. Those residential ISPs are not selling bandwidth, but an expensive service designed to treat you like dirt and bend you over for a good deep fucking.
In the end this will be good for consumers, and even good for anti-piracy. People should be able to consider whether or not they want that 25GB BluRay piracy release when the cost is available from a federally mandated ISP bandwidth counter and known pricing schedule. If they look at it and realize it costs them $3 to pirate something that could cost them over $100 in service fees to remove malware, they just might say "fuck it. I'm going to get it from Redbox".
As it stands there is just a huge cluster fuck going on under a murky cloud of confusion. No one really knows how much bandwidth is actually costing, and nobody has the information to evaluate anything. In other words, the ISPs wet dreams.
(Score: 2) by TK on Friday May 16 2014, @01:52PM
So what's stopping me from getting together with nine neighbors, buying a commercial plan, installing a switch in my house, and splitting the cost ten ways? Maybe routing cables to other houses or running open WiFi violates the contract, but I may be able to "employ" my neighbors as contractors and give them the WiFi password?
How can we take advantage of this in a cost-effective way?
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday May 16 2014, @04:58PM
You can easily do it as part of an HOA.
In TX, I was part of a collective bargaining agreement with Optel. HOA managed it, and there were no set top boxes at all. I was getting HBO straight from the wall outlet. So I do know that it is possible to do something like this, and HOA's have the teeth to enforce payments and actually run it.
I'm not aware of any contractual clauses preventing you from sharing your Internet connection at all. Most cable companies gave up a long time ago on per computer charges since they were near impossible to bill once routers hit the market. I wouldn't worry about that, and instead worry about getting enough bandwidth to serve everybody. As long as you are paying the ISP a reasonable rate all bundled up in a long term service contract (2-3 years), you will be treated well (at least as well as business). You might not even need to call them in the event of an outage and they will just be there fixing it like T1/T3 and MPLS.
Your biggest issue is going to be one of speed. Anybody that would be close enough to the backhaul could get superior wired service, and wireless will go down to 150-300mb/s. Unavoidable unless you run wiring everywhere.
Wireless penetration is your 2nd issue, and leads towards increased costs with AP deployment inside the houses. It would probably be optimal to install a few large industrial APs and use WiMAX type clients attached to the outside of the houses. Let the people figure out how to distribute it inside, and you just deliver it to the telco box on their property. If they elect to purchase a WiMAX client they could use it on their equipment directly. With the proper equipment in the street this means they may actually get service 20 miles away at work.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:47PM
I can dream, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:55PM
My ISP meets three of your four requirements!
Only $110/month for 50-90 kilobyte/sec. UNCAPPED! What a bargain!
http://totalhighspeed.net/ [totalhighspeed.net] - this is what happens when they know you've got ZERO alternatives.
(Score: 1) by orik on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:46PM
location?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:04PM
Greater Boston. The only options in my current town are Comcast and Verizon DSL. I'm considering moving to a different town, and fiber availability is a significant factor.
(Score: 1) by stp on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:00PM
Time to reattach the cord!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tork on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:08PM
What a coincidence, I plan to not be a Comcast customer in the next five years! Let me explain something to any ISPs that might be listening to this: If you put a cap on my data I will make sure to use that data, even if it is wasted, just because I have paid for it. I had a two gig data plan on my iPad and at the billing cycle I'd just turn it on to Netflix to use up what was left. When I have an unlimited plan, I only use what I need.
I'm not one of your leeches, but you risk turning me into one.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:36PM
How do you plan to do that? I'd love to join you.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:05PM
Thinking about this more since my original post, I was considering finding larger files on Microsoft's site to download and setting up a script to re-download them every so often. I bet that wouldn't be too hard. Maybe I could just leave Youtube running, etc. I'm saavy with Python and am open to better suggestions.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:30PM
I think he means "how to not be a comcast customer," not "how to watch data usage." In my area, my options are comcast, dialup, and cell phone data plan (with weak signal strength).
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday May 15 2014, @10:43PM
I have Time Warner right now with a 30 megabit download. My one alternative (despite the fact that I live in a tightly packed city....) is 3 megabit DSL that Verizon sarcastically calls 'hi-speed'. It's second nature for me to expect that when these caps hit I will certainly have to fight back some how. That's probably why I answered an imaginary question.
I do apologize.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Thursday May 15 2014, @09:54PM
> If you put a cap on my data I will make sure to use that data, even if it is wasted, just because I have paid for it.
They don't care because this isn't about limited resources, it is about gouging. 300GB/month costs them roughly 50 cents. They won't even notice if you use it or not.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:00PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Angry Jesus on Thursday May 15 2014, @11:09PM
Probably the best you could do to hurt them would be to max out your downloads during primetime, that's generally when usage peaks, so you have a chance of causing them congestion. But they probably still wouldn't care because they don't have to, it's just all the other customers who will have to suffer with the congestion because it's not like they can go to another ISP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 15 2014, @08:29PM
Smells like someone is pushing an idea out there to see if competitors pick up the message and start talking about it too. It has echoes of the long ago airline discussions about baggage fees on earnings calls.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16 2014, @09:14PM
Wait, what? Comcrap put caps on the market I'm in years and ago it at 250Gb/mo.
I've yet to go over 15gb in one month since, but that's because I'm a more 'typical' user, not the bandwith hogs they are targeting.