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Comcast Targets Internet "Abusers"
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a great Associated Press story on Comcast's invisible caps. The company has been threatening and then cutting off customers who 'abuse' their so-called 'unlimited' service by downloading too much. But Comcast won't reveal what the limits are. DSL Reports has been tracking this for a while, and it's good to see the mainstream press catch on."
if( $provider_caps_unlimited_service )
{
while( $providers_without_caps.length > 1 )
{
switch_providers($providers_without_caps[0]);
}
}
I run a small ISP, and I can put an end to all this speculation regarding the use of the word "unlimited" -- assuming anybody actually cares.
The reason ISP's use the word "unlimited" in their advertisements is because it sells more accounts than if they don't.
The fact that they are lying is really not a relevant point. Consumers will flock to the guy that says "unlimited" in his advertisements regardless if it's the truth or not. Consumers don't think that hard about the issue.
It should be obvious that you can't provide a dedicated "unlimited" 56K connection profitably at the $10-$15/mo market rate, but you will sell a lot more accounts if you say "unlimited".
This is also true in the web hosting business. I see advertisements for "Unlimited Bandwitdh" web hosting all the time. But we all know that this is neither physically possible nor economically possible. Still people sign up for these lies.
Guys like me that run businesses that want to be honest about things are punished for our truthfullness. Consumers demand to be lied to. So ISP's are forced to choose between significantly lower sales and being dishonest.
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't ISPs that try to be honest in their offerings. I could give you a list of honest ones that don't use the word unlimited unless they mean it. All I'm saying is that dialup consumers do not typicaly choose these honest guys when they see an "unlimited" offer for the same price.
100 gigabytes a month? I get that from just reloading the /. homepage regularly, dammit!
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
When they come to you and say "you have been abusing your 'unlimited' download quota"? Do you ask them to define what 'unlimited' means? Or do you simply pack up and get another ISP?
I have that issue with my (dialup) isp, that the isp itself has an unlimited policy, but they forwarded me a nastygram that *they* recieved from their upstream provider during a month where I was downloading iso's heavily.
So, having other things higher on my to-do list, I let it go; but I'd like slashdots' opinion on how you handle it when "unlimited" means "unlimited up to a certain point"?
They should do something about all those spammers using their service. Seems like about 20% of the spams I run through SpamCop resolve back to Comcast as the email source.
We accept there is no service-level agreement, we accept that we're lower on the food-chain than companies who pay a lot more for their bandwidth, but when a company makes a secret, arbitrary decision to cap you, it gets a bit hard to accept.
If it were advertised that you get 512/128, xx GB/month, with a charge of $Y for every 10GB over that, everyone would know where they were. This unfortunately will not happen while there is no regulation of how companies advertise their service. If company A says the above, and company B *does* the same, but doesn't say they do, then B will get more customers - all of whom will be pissed off when B caps them...
Regulation is the way to go.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
We have talked about this numerous times on Slashdot before (at least twice). I have posted that what really sucks about it is:
a) they took over from AT&T, raised prices, forced you to get CATV or pay even higher rates (42.95/45.95 with CATV or 60.95 or 63.95 without)
b) have little to no competition in the broadband market, especially at the speeds they offer (now 3mbs in most, if not all, areas)
c) now are able to control their userbase with "invisible" DOWNLOAD caps (not speed caps as some people are confused with) based on a "local average" whatever that is...
So, they get a bunch of customers becomming one of the largest ISPs and probably *the* largest broadband ISP. They don't like the fact that some users are actually USING their bandwith so they decide to make up near-random numbers so that they can cut you off when they want... Best of all, they can cut you off at any time because you don't have a "contract" with them that you can retaliate against. They can disconnect your service at any time for any reason leaving you with little options for broadband (nevermind reasonably priced connections).
I already ditched cable... late last year. With all the viruses Adelphia began dropping ping packets. That was the last straw. They also had a policy against VPNs and hosting services of any kind, and enforced the service block by not allowing inbound port 80 packets.
I pay more for DSL but I can do whatever I want with it. Speakeasy just rocks.
Not sure how widely known this is, but Comcast is a Microsoft company.
Um, no.
Microsoft also invested $150 million in Apple a few years ago... does that mean when you buy a G5 or iPod you're buying a Microsoft product?
The article says that some of the abusers who are getting these warnings/disconnections are moving upwards of 1 terrabyte of data/month. Thats more than "downloading a lot" and it seems to me that if someone is moving that much data they should probably look into something other than basic broadband service. 1 terrabyte/mo is about 414 kilobyte/sec which is a pretty insane rate to be downloading stuff. Clearly these guys are running servers and whatnot which is not what the residential accounts are for - I have zero sympathy for someone who uses more than 400k/sec of data and then gets disconected from a residential account.
they are based on a local average... So if you live in a college-kid infested town you are likely to be in an area w/a higher average. If you live in an area of middle-aged to older-aged individuals who use the service for fast checks to yahoo and comcast.net then the average will be much lower.
The fact that they can't a) tell you how much you have downloaded, b) refuse to tell you what their # is, and c) don't think that they need to tell you is what makes it unfair.
If you are going to shut people off you need to give them a tool that tracks it, allow them to call up and ask a CSR for the current bandwith usage, and also know what the cap is.
I did manage to get the info about what constitutes a breakage of the caps policy when I called their tech support line...
After a quick call to their tech support line, the guy said that the following would flag you as excessive for a residential downloader. 8 gbytes downloads over 20 hours and/or downloading enough to cause problems for other people in the service area. He also said that it shouldn't raise a flag if it's something like 3 gbytes/day for a month. Also, they mostly instituted these policies as a way to make sure that no one person was hogging enough of the pipe to make other cable users connections slow.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Snip! Emphasis mine. Sounds like Comcasts legal team broke into the nitrous oxide again.
Quack, quack.
A lot of dialup providers have always sold 'unlimited' dialup with the footnote that unlimited equates to a maximum of 12 hours a day and maximum connection time of 2-4 hours in a session.
I suggest charging a minimum fee for the connection itself and start charging more for the service used.
The phone companies (as much as we love/hate them) have a pretty good system worked out for $20/mo you get a local phone line that includes emergency access and whatnot.
ISP's could probably swing a connection for $20/mo with (oh I don't know) 50-75 gb of transfer. Best to make it symetrical traffic too. Then, when someones goes over it, charge them per gb of traffic.
This addresses a few problems:
* People complaining highspeed is too expensive
* ISP's taking a hit because not many people sign up
* People/ISP's happy with a balance of traffic vs billing
- Dan
from NYC to LA for $.37.
People who send first class mail from NYC to LA are not "abusing the system."
The system takes such matters into account when it sets the postage price.
The phone company acts in similar ways when it sets its price for unlimited local calling. Some people talk more, some never seem to stop talking.
One can send certain kinds of mail at lower than first class rates if one wishes. Just as one can obtain limited calling at additional fees per call. You may assess your own usage and determine which might be the better deal for you, thus those whose usage is expected to be high naturally pay a premium for the premium service and such service can be expected to attract such users.
The populace understands this system and when they see "unlimited" assume this is the sort of averaged pricing structure they are dealing with, and they have every right to do so.
The ISPs know full well what the public thinks they are getting when they advertise their service as "unlimited," thus, if that is not actually what they intend to deliver they are, in the technical language that applies to such legal matters, "Lying Bastards" and should be treated as such.
KFG
Keep in mind what you're seeing is most likely hijacked PCs or open proxies.
Computer hijackers have learned that 24/8, 12/8, and other cable-modem IP ranges are primed for abuse, so they forward spam through them like there's no tomorrow.
Whem a spam is send through an open proxy, the proxy, not the originator's IP is shown. This is different than using an open relay to send spam, which does leave a trail.
This is why providers to the unwashed masses of consumers who just want their pr0n and cheese should enforce some kind of interception of outgoing traffic destined for 25/tcp, at least to track stats, since there are very easy thresholds to set to raise flags (messages per minute for example) and have staffers check them out.
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
Comcast has a HUGE problem right now with hundreds (if not more) of virus-compromised systems, run by the clue-deprived who have not the slightest inkling about the most basic Internet security.
These machines have long since been compromised, and turned into spammer 'zombies.' The problem has gotten bad enough that I've blocked access to our mail systems from ANY system with a domain name ending in 'client.comcast.net,' not to mention huge swaths of Comcast-controlled IP space.
If this 'crackdown' that Comcast is doing helps to get rid of a bunch of these spammer 'zombies,' great! It'll be that much less to worry about.
Granted, if Comcast's so-called "Abuse Desk" even gave a crap about the massive amounts of bit pollution their network is pouring out, they wouldn't have any problems with "abusers" to begin with.
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I would have modded you insightful if I didn't want to respond so badly.
The problem that ISPs are now dealing with is that their calculations which made the "unlimited" label economically feasible in the late 90's are now way off. P2P has exploded; so has the net's general usefulness and the net-savviness of the average user; so has Internet publishing of every kind. That "unlimited" word started appearing before google became a verb, before blogging became popular, before people needed the term "file sharing".
The middle of the bandwidth bellcurve has moved up dramatically in those few years, and the company has to take into account the new median bandwidth usage, but they haven't. Ethical ways to do this would be:
1) Put pressure on upstream bandwidth infrastructure to lower their prices
2) Raise prices to consumers taking into account the new usage rates
3) Stop advertising unlimited service and charge the same rates
They of course chose (4), continue to do business the way we always have, and bill unsuspecting customers.
They'll get their comeuppance for this.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
... if it's available in your area. I have two DSL providers, DCAnet and, of course, Speakeasy. I love them both - they're always great to work with and are very responsive to my needs. I have two lines, a Covad and a Verizon, through DCA and one Covad line through Speakeasy. I've never once had a problem with either, and I've had these lines for a combined total of 5 line-years.
I routinely exceed what comcast calls a "reasonable" limit (30GB/month down and 7.5GB/month up, wasn't it?). Not only do I exceed that, I blow it away - never heard a peep out of either of them...
I have a theory about why Comcast is trying to choke off their Internet users. They recently had to double the downrate to compete with DSL, thinking that offering twice the downstream would make the extra expense worth it... However, they're also trying to ramp up their On-Demand movie service, which is far more profitable to them. So, it makes sense to try to reserve as much of their shared bandwidth as possible for movies rather than for Internet users. I would not be surprised in the least if they lowered those caps at some point, as there is a finite amount of information a single shared cable can carry...
Just a thought..
They're not doing false advertising, they're just not correcting misconceptions about it.
Comcast is, however, full of shit. They claim that they only send people abuse letters when someone in their neighborhood complains. First of all, each DOCSIS cable modem gets its own set of frequencies to download on. Your downstream bandwidth is not shared. Let me say that again; downstream bandwidth is not shared. So downloading cannot degrade anyone's performance unless they are oversubscribing. Upstream bandwidth is shared, there is only a total of 11Mbps upstream for everyone on your segment. However, I know from experience (working in a DOCSIS Cable Modem QA/Dev lab for Cisco in Santa Cruz) that there are line cards which increase the number of upstream channels. For example, Cisco's MC16 line card has one downstream interface (which goes into an up converter to be converted into the proper frequencies) and six upstream; the frequencies for upstream can be split off in six groups and fed into those six interfaces.
I have never had a time when I could not pull down a solid 1.8Mbps (my current cap) over my link. If somehow my downloading was degrading service for others, then my performance would suffer as well. This is not happening, and has never happened. Therefore, I conclude that someone called in with a problem that Comcast either couldn't figure out how to resolve, or doesn't want to pay to resolve (bad coax between the user and the little green box on the corner, say) and Comcast just used it as more ammunition for their witch hunt against those who use the most bandwidth. The truth, I suspect, is that they simply don't want to pay for that bandwidth. I respect that, but I don't like being lied to, which is clearly what's going on here.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Guys like me that run businesses that want to be honest about things are punished for our truthfullness. Consumers demand to be lied to. So ISP's are forced to choose between significantly lower sales and being dishonest.
Actually, I think the problem here really is that you are not BRUTUALLY honest. If you are serious about wanting to run an honest business, why don't you go all out? In your advertisements you should point out the blatant lies of your competitors. Point out that there is no such thing as 'unlimited' internet access right in your ads! Then go further and suggest that if your competitors don't respect the intelligence of the average joe before they get the money, how could you possibly trust them to respect the customer AFTER they already have the money?
You're in an uncomfortable position right now: you're in the half-way point. In tennis it is called "no man's land" -- the area between the baseline and the net. You haven't committed to one course of action or another and end up getting stranded in a position worse than either option. You need to decide whether you are going to be brutally honest or a deceiver like everyone else. Don't try to play a happy medium. You're not going to be very happy if you do that for very long.
Just make damn sure that everything you say in your ads is the truth otherwise their lawyers are going to come down on you like a ton of bricks. Be truthful and what are they going to do: sue you for telling the truth? If they take you to court you can countersue and make some dough.
GMD
watch this
This article is describing a bandwidth hog pure and simple. My heart does not bleed for him. Excessive bandwidth is not a "right", it really does amount to "abuse".
I would agree, and I would also agree that it's the ISP's right to throttle bandwidth. However, it's absolutely imperative that the ISP be very upfront about this. They need to stop going around advertising "unlimited usage" when in fact that's not what they're offering. They need to advertise that there are caps, and what those caps are. They also should provide their users with a means to see what their usage for the month is.
ISPs have the right to regulate the use of their own equipment, but advertising unlimited usage when it's not is fraudulent.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Uhm okay, I don't know who the fuck thinks it's funny to plaigiarize my writing, but I am the original author of this essay. I wrote it on January 8th of this year, the original text can be found here.
;)
Hmm. I don't know whether or not to say "mod parent down!" After all, it got a freakin' +5. In a way, now I almost wish I thought of copy/pasting my rant to Slashdot first. A pity. Could have done wonders for my karma
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
"Comcast and several other cable firms are doubling their top download speeds to 3 megabits per second"
From google: (1 terabyte) / (3 (megabits per second)) = 1.0632985 months
Therefore, before they raised their caps, it would take you over two months to download one terabyte. Afterwards, it would *still* take you more than a month.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
That is simply not possible with a standard cable-connection, of the type Comcast sells as far as I can see from their website. They say they sell "25 times modem connection", and specify that with modem they mean 56K, so, they sell 1400Kbps, upload is capped at 256Kbps.
Thing is, with that speed, even at *full* download around the clock, the entire month, you would end up with around 420 GB in a month. This is very much, but it is not "over a terabyte"