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Comcast May Raise Prices On "Internet Hogs"
lunartik writes: "According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Comcast may raise rates on users of their @home service who download a significant amount of audio or video files. Comcast claims that 1 percent of users use 30 percent of capacity. With the flat fee possibly flying out the window for users who utilize the service's speed, one wonders if US broadband is heading the same way as the Aussies." Time Warner has said much the same, and the spiral has probably just begun.
Pareto's Principle: The 80-20 Rule
"Pareto's rule states that a small number of causes is responsible for a large percentage of the effect, in a ratio of about 20:80. Expressed in a management context, 20% of a person's effort generates 80% of the person's results. The corollary to this is that 20% of one's results absorb 80% of one's resources or efforts."
How to Download YouTube Videos
I'd be all for it if it wasn't just an excuse to raise prices.
"Comcast, however, has no immediate plans to offer a lower-priced, slower service. David N. Watson, Comcast Cable Communications Inc.'s senior vice president of marketing, sales and customer service, said at a recent conference that it would be "pretty premature" for the company to offer a lower-priced broadband service, given that its current offering is selling well."
it costs money to provide data. ISPs that used to offer flat rate 128k up/down DSL in New Zealand have realised that it costs far too much to support P2P piracy and simply allow people an amount of international data. For example, I get 10GB a month.
The 1% that article quotes are subsidised by the other 99%. I, for one, don't want to subsidise them.
I know that I hate the fact that I am going to probably end up paying more for my highspeed connection, but I can see the reasons for charging extra for bandwidth users. A lot of current services we use charge base on usage, why shouldn't the internet? It might lead to a better underlying architecture and better speeds eventually for everyone.
The big question to ask is whether this extra money they earn is going to be put into improving the system that they currently have, and thus over time improve service for all of their customers.
(This is all IMHO, meaning no offense to anyone)
~ kjrose
If you don't like their prices, change providers. If no provider has prices you like, then what you're asking for probably isn't financially viable. (Yes, we all want BMWs for $17,000, but that isn't going to happen.)
Plus, if they wanted to be a total bastards, they could continue to jack up the rates until those 1% left. If those top 1% left, they could have 30% more capacity at a cost of only 1% of their revenue. Then, they could add 30% more customers with a usage profile like the other 99%. That seems like good business to me. It's also called increasing shareholder value.
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
Well, actually it might lead to just more costs for us. As spammers will take up our bandwidth as well as their own. Therefore, each message we receive will cost us more money.
Thus, I could easily see that a per bandwidth charge will lead to anti-spam legislation, or better blocking by ISPs.
(IMHO, as always)
~ kjrose
Flat pricing only works in some situations:
-If there is significant overhead to individually billing. For instance for water some municipalities flat charge because the cost of installing water meters at every house is prohibitive. Alternately there can be a significant overhead administratively for some systems (for instance for gas and electricity a guy has to come around reading meters). None of these apply to internet connections where it's trivial to meter usage, and electronic billing has made exceptional billing very cheap.
-When you convince people that they will use far more than they actually will, when in reality you know by experience that they won't. I got a "flat fee" membership for the year to Canada's Wonderland (only the cost of going twice!), yet in reality I know that I'll probably go maybe twice all year. Tonnes of memberships rely on this. Gym memberships force you into the "flat fee" because they know that most people will come for two weeks, and then never come again, yet they're tied in for a year.
-When you're a heavy user and you know that everyone else is subsidizing you. This is the case with (former) @Home's where the bandwidth requirements are overwhelmingly to support a few people, and everyone is ranting and raving about how slow the connection is because Jimmy has a 24/7 gnutella serving running.
The only ones who'll be frothing about how outrageous this is are the people who are abusing the system (the 1%).
Damn it! I'm sooo sick of people WHINING here on slashdot. Oh, wait. Slashdot. If you don't like their policies, DON'T USE THEIR SERVICE. If you live in a metro area, go find some high speed hookup, get 10, 20, or 50 guys together in a close area, and set up your own high-speed network. We did this when I was going through university and it worked great. I live in a rural area, and the only way I'll ever see broadband again is if I take it upon myself to fix the situtation. Let's see here - 30 guys paying in $50/mo gives you $1500/mo to buy a pipe from or maintain leases on equipment. Do you have twenty people in networking range? How much bandwidth would that get? Could you get more than 30? Who would pay more? How important is your suckage in the long term? Would getting a fat pipe to someone's house, remotely dling your pr0n^h^h^heducational videos via a slower connection, and doing SneakerNet runs suffice?
I thought that america was the land of the "can do" attitude, not the bend-over-and-take-it capital of the world. (and whine about it). Look at what the auzzies are doing to combat the horrible internet and communications rates over there - projects like Sydney Wireless and others in europe have gone so far as to start laying their own cable. Get out and talk to your neighbours, take the initiative.
It could very well be that the current model doesn't work, because that 1% of users is exceeding the cable companies cost. It could be that you don't even need that much internet connectivity if you establish a well-stocked neighbourhood peer-to-peer net. I know another solution some of the residence dwellers use here is their own 802.11 network that isn't routed onto the campus network, or campus-owned.
If you don't have time, then accept the services offered at the market rate.
Man, I'm in a bad mood this morning. No coffee. But if I see another one of these whining threads, I'm going to scream! Might as well post a anti-MPAA diatribe, follow it up with a spiderman-II article.
..don't panic
suppose I only download my text-email, and I only pull 2 megs. per month, I should pay a pro-rated amount for what I use. Equally so, if I only drive 100 miles per month, I should pay a pro-rated insurance fee. If you disagree, you must be a Nazi, or a share holder in an insurance company. If this means I have to have metered internet usage, or metered driving, just like I have metered electricity usage, then so be it.
Bandiwdth isn't free... I think many Slashdotters will find that REALLY surprising when they get out of college.
Those who use more should pay more. Bandwidth is finite and getting more to the ISP costs them more, which in turn costs everyone more. I'm not going to pay for other people's downloads and I don't expect others to do it for me.
IMHO, there is nothing wrong with charging people according to how much bandwidth they use.
The problem with cable pricing is that generally, companies have a monopoly on their areas and therefore users don't have any choice beyond paying whatever rate is decreed or accessing the internet by some other (and often inferior) method.
If the market for cable services were opened, I'd see no problem with companies imposing whatever pricing structure they see fit.
They'll charge the same rate per byte all the time. Information is like electricity. It's cheaper at night.
So if I'm given 10GB/month in downstream then why should I bother to do any large transfers at night? a byte is a byte and I'd rather just leave my computer off. If, on the other hand, they said that bandwidth was free off-peak(after 11pm before 9am) then I could agree with their plan. I would have an incentive to queue files and download them over night, rather than during the day.
You don't exist. Go away. --SysVinit Halt
It's important to note that you can't "save" bandwidth for later (unlike water or electricity), and the ISP pays for its pipe whether it's saturated or not, so wouldn't this kind of usage-based throttling of an instant resource simply make more sense? The more you use, the less you get (but only when it's scarce).
Is it really so expensive for an ISP to implement this at the headend versus the small difference it takes to account for the number of Gigs you transfer and charging obscene rates for overages, even during offpeak hours?
--
Power to the Peaceful
Don't they realise that these noble, honourable souls constantly downloading gigabytes upon gigabytes of MP3s and porn deserve a free ride?
No, but I'm already paying by the month for my MP3s. And Comcast is already gouging me for $55 each month for the cable modem.
The connection is shitty, with frequent lag spikes. Ever had a Google search page stall while loading? It's pretty sad, and I experience it multiple times every day. $55 is already outrageous for the crap quality of the connection they give me, and now I'll be expected to pay more for those laggy, stalling downloads of MP3s I've already paid for.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Mozilla's a nice operating system, but it needs a better browser.
Speaking of webcasters, I can't help thinking that RIAA would be very happy if metered billing by ISPs went through. A 30Kbytes/sec. feed would be 1.8 Mbyte/min., so a gigabyte in maybe seven hours of listening. You wouldn't even need the insane royalty and record-keeping requirements CARP wanted to impose to kill webcasting, if all the listeners suddenly decide they can't afford to stay tuned in for very long. Then everyone can go back to being force-fed the latest clone band and obediently buying CDs they way they're supposed to...
I don't mean to fall into ESR's hole of ending a conversation by calling some one a communist or a facist (he has a sniglet for either the person that does it, or that point in the conversation), but why shouldn't people pay for what they use.
Whatever you bought yesterday by no means indicates what you should be able to get tomorrow. Business models must alter themselves to stay alive. Unlimited may have seemed like a doable marketing scheme yesterday, but to the providers involved, they could either charge a more reasonable pricing structure, or go out of business like so many of their predecessors.
When will people learn that just because you are a paying customer doesn't matter if you aren't a profitable customer. This isn't bad business, or lack of customer service, this is smart business.
Try this, "How dare they advertise unlimited internet usage, and then tell you it's not."
I pay for unlimmited internet acess. What this means to me is that I will be allowed to use my connection for whatever purposes I want (baring the breaking of laws, but they have to prove it). Now, if they have 100 customers (keeping it small to make the numbers easier) and 100 units of bandwidth. Theoreticaly speaking, each user is alloticated 1 unit of bandwidth. But if 70 of the users are only using 20 bandwidth units collectively, why should the other 30 users not be allowed to take full advantage of their 30 units and the remaining 50.
There is a certain ammount of bandwidth, if other users are not using it, why can't I? And as another user pointed out, since my modem is capped anyway, how am I using any more than my alloted share anyways?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Several other "lopsided" situations.
I think we'll find that it is customary for the highest usage customers to recieve discounts, not rate increases.
Telephone: Residential lines run what? $15-$25/month? But purchase several hunded lines, and you can get them for $5/month.
air-travel: the most frequent customers get free upgrades, discounts and special incentives.
Roadways: Most toll roads allow frequent travellers to purchase a dicount pass, or other reduced rate access method. For example, I recall the NJ Parkway used to sell tokens where you got something like 45 tokens for $10, when the tolls were $.25 each.
The list could go on... so many other goods and services in this economy are discounted for the highest consumers. Why should a service like this that is based on fixed cost be any different?
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
There's a load of difference between monitoring bandwidth usage and monitoring content.
You're absolutely right, but they're singling out "audio or video files." That information is content.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
After all, the T1 lines we use at work are metered. UUNet sends us a bill based on how much bandwidth we use. But, along with that comes a SLA (Service Level Agreement). I would be happy to pay my ISP for bandwidth usage as long as they were willing to guarantee me a level of service. Of course, they won't do that (I've already asked) because there service sucks ass. They want the best of both possible worlds -- running a large, mediocre network with lots of downtime and differential billing based on bandwidth usage. If they had to adhere to a 99.995% uptime guarantee I would be getting broadband for free. Once they are willing to offer me a guaranteed level of quality I will pay for the bandwidth I use. Right now I'm just happy their network isn't down again.
My question is, when were limits initiated to where it was a BAD thing to actually use something you PAY for?
When did I become the "bad guy" for actually knowing HOW to fully tax my connection to the extent that it still takes me hours to download an ISO? Yes, I have 3 systems hooked up to a 768/128 connection. Because I CAN. Because I want to use that single connection for ALL my Internet usage, as I am told because I am a "home" user I cannot get more than one line in. I pay every month for my access. I don't use their Tech Support, nor the e-mail they say they provided me, nor the functions of any "ISP" system. I don't need it.
All I ever wanted was a way to connect to the Net. I have that. Not as fast as I would like, but I can only afford so much. Now they say I need to pay more for LESS? Not going to happen. EVER.
You keep going until you die..."Me".
"Yes, it's because of the bandwidth hogs, ho use ten times what they are paying for"
They can't use ten times more bandwidth than they are paying for; they are merely efficiently using all the bandwidth they have been allocated.
This is unless of course you are referring to people hacking their cable modems to increase their alloted bandwidth, in which case, these users can be singled out and cut off.
graspee
They DO advertise the service as being able to browse the ENTIRE internet in a single night, watch live tv, download HUGE movies, listen to all your music online, and download music videos. Wouldn't this be considered false advertisement? I think it would. not very smart. I'd like to see them bump someone off and then get a lawsuit slapped on them about this. Either learn to find more bandwidth to support your "hogs" of get out of the business that you advertised. Period.
But bandwidth isn't the same as other things at all.
For instance, it makes sense to pay more for power if you use more. The reason is that the power you use ultimately translates to fuel expended. Fuel costs money, so the more fuel you use, the more you have to pay to offset the costs.
But bandwidth? It's not the same at all. Let's look at the costs:
I don't think I missed anything important, but if I did, please let me know.
So what's the point? Simple: bandwidth itself isn't what costs money. What costs money is the labor and equipment used to provide that bandwidth.
And that is why it doesn't, in general, make sense to charge more for people who use more bandwidth: those people aren't costing the provider any more money at all or, if they are, it's only because the provider was stupid enough to sign peering agreements in which they pay for the bandwidth they use instead of a flat fee. Instead, if the ISP is undercharging for their services (i.e., can't pay the bills based on the money they get from their subscribers), they should either cut their costs or raise their prices. But before doing either one, they'd better have a good handle on where they're spending their money first.
It's only if a few select subscribers are causing quality of service issues that are, in turn, substantially raising the amount of labor required to keep the operation going that charging those subscribers more may make sense. But I would argue that, in that case, those subscribers are either abusing the service (true only if they're using a substantial amount of bandwidth to initiate DOS attacks against others) and therefore should have their service terminated, or (more likely) that the service itself is oversubscribed. The latter isn't the customers' problem, it's the provider's problem, and charging based on bandwidth used is an entirely inappropriate response, in my opinion.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
People act like broadband is such a gift from the heavens, like we already have it too good and we shouldn't complain. But isn't this stuff supposed to get faster and cheaper as time goes by? Cable Internet has been around for about 5 years now, and the price has gone up while speed has gone down. Is this the miraculous gift you are talking about?
Cable has extraordinary bandwidth.. so this isn't a last mile problem. This is a problem occurring at the backbone level - bandwidth is expensive. It shouldn't be! I don't know the answer, but why is it that long distance and wireless have fallen through the floor while data seems to be getting more expensive? Why are there networks like Internet2, which is AMAZINGLY fast, connecting our universities while we're stuck on capped, metered connections?
You seem to think it would be extremely cheap to meter broadband internet usage. It is not. All the routers would have to be replaced, or at least some very powerful snooping loggers attached. These would have to be fairly detailed records in case someone disputed their bill. This is certainly 'way more cost than the amount the large peered broadband ISPs pay to their GSP.
The irony is that the market driven capitalistic system has driven true marginal costs down so low that the cost of capital and other fixed costs predominate. As a result, there is cutthroat competition or conversely collusion and monopoly building. The system is it's own undoing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When you sign up for their service, you pay for a certain speed for a certain ammount of $/month. Whether or not you use that is your business - you paid for it, its yours to use. If comcast is running out of bandwidth, its their fault - they oversold without proper planning.
That's not how it works, sorry. If Comcast--or any ISP--assumed the worst, that each user would be transferring some massive amount of data per month--then they just couldn't handle it. And no ISP in existence could either. There isn't enough bandwidth for that.
Phone companies have done the same thing for years. You *assume* that when you pick up the phone you will have a free line, but if everyone picked up the phone at the same time then many--even the majority--would not get lines. Phone companies plan for phone calls of certain lengths, and they have to worry about exceptions like radio call-in contests and Mother's Day (the day with the most phone traffic).