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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!
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.
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.
Regulation already exists. It's called "Truth in Advertising." It simply needs to be effectively applied.
KFG
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
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.'"
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!