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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
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.
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
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
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?
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.
Ah, but the trick here isn't that the said customers aren't profitable; it's that the companies involved see ways to make them *more* profitable. I imagine that the logic is something like "those who use the service most will probably be easier to squeeze for extra money."
The biggest complaint I have with systems like this is that they only look to charge more to the people using the "majority" of their bandwidth. How about "low usage credit" for people who underutilize their bandwidth? Or, for that matter, just bypass all the in-between rigamarole and decide what bandwidth per month is "normal," divvy it into units (kilobytes or megabytes), and charge per unit so that the rate matches the current fee for "normal" use. But this simply reduces their profit, since 99% of their users are checking email and ordering tchotchkes on the web, and would undoubtedly clock in well under a $40 per month flat fee. No, they aren't losing their shorts on these customers, but they sure can see how to drain 'em for a few more bucks.
Equally so, if I only drive 100 miles per month, I should pay a pro-rated insurance fee
Our insurance company asks how far we live from work for exactly that reason. Our rates would be slightly higher if we lived 20 miles from work instead of 2.
As far as the internet usage goes, the same thing. The isp that I use for my email account has a 5 dollar a month e-mail only account, which I've used for years. You get something like 5 hours of dialup service a month with that. Or I could pay 10 for 40 hours and some web space or 20 for unlimited. I believe AOL has a similar 5 hour a month plan as well as a bring-your-own-connnection plan for people with cable modems. Most ISP's have low end, low hour accounts.
Ting!! Your wish has been granted.
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
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
Crappy analogy. First make sure you oversell your service, then make sure you advertise the crap out of the the beauty of always on, fast internet with applications in video and faster gameplay. Now keep overselling until the accountants send a very mean memo.
This is when you do a 180 and screw your customers because you never had a viable business plan to begin with. Sorry, but the warez kiddie bought your service because of how you offered it to him. May your customers leave for a company with a working business plan and you can have the T1 all to yourself.
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?