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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.
Spammers must use loads of bandwidth - this should cut them down.
Go buy your own T-1. The ones I have at work cost $1K/month for a full CIR frame T-1 to BellSouth for Internet. Good SLA and great speed. Then, sell it to your neighbors. When your neighbor's teenage son is downloading pr0n like crazy and using 95% of the shared bandwidth be sure and DO NOT complain! Do not raise their rates! Remember, that's why you left your ISP.
This is just comcast covering up bad planning, or making an excuse to rape the customer and cut back their costs.
.txt and change it to .mp3 (at least for those in the Windows world).
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. This will "solve" that problem. If they want to cut back on bandwidth in order to save money, this will help. Their greediness is an excuse to fuck the consumer in the ass.
Why is comcast doing this for JUST video and music? Did the RI/MPAA threaten them?
Who cares if i download alot of music and videos? What if i have alot of friends who do their own electronic music? What if every relative i know posts three hour long iMovies of them and their kids to the web, and i want to download that? How is that different from a Linux geek downloading 10 distribution isos? Comcast is acting like they know the answer. What, 200 three-meg MP3s somehow costs them more bandwidth than a 600 meg RedHat iso? Bits are bits. If someone wanted to get around this, just download everything as a
Of course, later on in the article, they talk about people hosting their own webservers, and that they are the people putting strain on the network. If that's even true, what does that have to do with my movie and music downloads?
This is one of the most asinine ideas i've ever heard of.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
I don't mind paying for what I use - I think that it IS deceitful that they (and other ISPs) advertise "unlimited internet". Everytime I hear a comcast commercial on the radio, they're advertising on how much stuff you can get with "low cost, unlimited internet!" They're full of shit.
* Unlimited Use for a Flat Monthly Fee
(plus applicable franchise fees and taxes)
* Up to 7 Email Addresses
* 25 MB of Personal Webspace
* Exciting, new homepage - all of your favorites: news, weather, stocks, etc. Plus, exclusive broadband content featuring streaming video and high-quality sound
* "My File Locker" Web storage space for files like MP3s, digital photos and more (NEW feature!)
* Ability to publish personal web pages
* Round-the-clock Customer Service - dedicated Internet specialists available online or by phone
* Member Services - account management, FAQs, and trouble-shooting information are just a click away
* Additional fees may apply
If they're trying to be profitable, why do they offer all of this junk?
I would be that it costs more to maintain this My File Locker, comcast.net "portal", and other garbage than it costs them from 'heavy users'. Why do they feel they need to have streaming video in their portal page? And they're worried about bandwidth costs?
RX: 20GB
TX: 1.5GB
Now, that sounds like quite a lot, and sure, it's probably a fair bit above average. Except, I doubt more than a couple of those GB's ever made it outside my provider's network, because most if it is from usenet.
Should I be charged more for using a local news service and my providers internal bandwidth? More importantly, should I be charged the same as some guy who spends those 20G's on Gnutella, 90% of which is jumping off to random nodes around the world and eating the bandwidth they actually pay for?
What's going to happen when residential customers are hit by a DDoS attack? If I were to launch an attack (a la grc.com) on my "friend" and saturate his 1.5MBps downstream, I could easily put him over any sort of monthly cap. Could you then imagine a worm whose single purpose in life is to charge huge bandwidth bills to those infected with it?
Such a worm would be a godsend in the sense that after someone is hit with a $100+ cable modem bill, they're going to make sure they're up to date on bugfixes for their OS/mail client. This could lead to less use of Outlook and other vulnerable platforms which could reduce the worm's effectiveness. However, the immediate result would be a public outcry for being charged for bandwidth that they claim they didn't use.
I saw it suggested earlier in the thread, but in my opinion the most effective way to deal with bandwidth hogs would be to throttle them and the commonly used P2P ports. The content is still available and you still have the speed and "unlimited transfer rate" that makes broadband such a wonderful service.
They can try to pull this crap but in the end they will lose their customers and go bankrupt. No one is going to put up with their bullshit and they can expect lawsuits from FTC and State Attorney General Office as the complaints come in on their illegal greedy behavior. A cable company has signed onto laws that are regulated by the State and Federal Government. If they abuse their power they can be fined and a criminal investigation started on their illegal activity. Comcast is losing money just like AOL and they are now trying to gouge the consumer why should the consumer have to pay for their corruption and greed. Let them go out of business the consumer would be better of without them. No one needs Microsoft or AOL/Timewarner there are plenty of alternatives to step in and provide the service. If you hold shares in Comcast I would be very concerned about their financial health as this is a warning sign and perhaps the beginings of another Enron bankruptcy.
When I had @Home, I had to agree to a one year contract if I wanted the installation fee to be waived. If I were still with them (which I'm not because they suck), I would remind them of the contract to provide unlimited access and that they can't raise the rate or implement limits until such contact was concluded. The downside is IANAL so I'm sure there wouldn't be much I could do about it if they disconnected me for refusing to pay extra.
BTW, I'm now with Pacbell/SBC DSL, wouldn't this same principle apply? I have an 18 month obligation (free installation and DSL modem). Is it legal for them to increase the montly rate on something I'm locked into for a year an a half?
-- Will program for bandwidth
Except you're forgetting, BMW doesn't advertise
" Drive away with your brand new BMW for only $17,000"
Oh that offer is for the first 10 kilometers. After that you owe us $25,000 more. You wanted wheels? Another low fee of $5000.00. Can I interest you in state mandatory airbags?
-Yo Grark
"Canadian Bred with American buttering"
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
With bandwidth restrictions like these, ReplayTV's networking feature is pretty much shot for anyone hoping to transfer programs outside the home LAN.
If restrictions are truly unavoidable (and I doubt they are) I agree with those promoting the idea of AVERAGE bandwidth used, not total volume transfered. As long as I have the ability to transfer large files at off-peak hours without restrictions, I won't be *too* unhappy.
On the other hand, could this be considered anti-competitive? Though most of us don't currently watch television via IP (well, not legitimately anway), it's likely that studios will eventually find DRM they're happy with and will sell programs online.
In the case of AOL/TW, assume that they will eventually allow downloading of video content, and that they will likely exclude their own packets from the user's quota. How will anyone else compete with that, when downloading a few decent sized programs will easily cost a few dollars each in excess bandwidth charges alone? How does this compare with "must carry" rules cable companies are currently forced to honor?
Probably still not very cheap, but paying for the T1 connection and then paying the ISP to have access to it would just be dumb. _You_ should be charging the ISP for access to _your_ T1 line.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Of course, is for _everyone_ (from the major telcos on down) to stop the ridiculous practice of charging by data _volume_ and start charging a single, flat rate for data _bandwidth_.
There is no reason I can think of that anyone should be charging you based on _how much_ you download. Data is not a limited resource. The wear and tear on the infrastructure is not (appreciably) different if you use them to download 5MB or 5GB. The QoS for other users is not directly influenced by the amount you download. All these things are affected by the amount of bandwidth consumed and charging models should reflect this - you should pay a flat rate for a given amount of bandwidth, not a given amount of data.
My understanding (misinformed as it may be) is that a very large portion of the costs of bandwidth are related to the construction of the links themselves. That those costs are so high that most players can't even get into the game because of them, which is why large, monopolistic companies who already own a great deal of telecommunications infrastructure are really the only guys left. If that's the case, then there's plenty of bandwidth left to be taken advantage of, because there's a lot of dark fiber that remains to be lit up.
In the meantime, like I said, if a network provider is having bandwidth problems, it probably means that the provider is oversubscribed, and that's his problem. He can take advantage of that situation by raising his prices to all his customers, and I think this is exactly what we're seeing.
Making customers pay for some amount of bandwidth usage over some fixed amount is certainly one way to raise the price, but don't make the mistake of believing that the cost of bandwidth really is proportional to the amount of bandwidth used: it isn't, and any such proportional price structure is strictly artificial.
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