Comcast To Remove Data Cap, Implement Tiered Pricing
StikyPad writes "Comcast is reportedly removing its oft-maligned 250GB data cap, but don't get too excited. In what appears to be an effort to capitalize on Nielsen's Law, the Internet's version of Moore's Law, Comcast is introducing tiered data pricing. The plan is to include 300GB with the existing price of service, and charge $10 for every 50GB over that limit. As with current policy, Xfinity On Demand traffic will not count against data usage, which Comcast asserts is because the traffic is internal, not from the larger Internet. There has, however, been no indication that the same exemption would apply to any other internal traffic. AT&T and Time Warner have tried unsuccessfully to implement tiered pricing in the past, meeting with strong push back from customers and lawmakers alike. With people now accustomed to, if not comfortable with, tiered data plans on their smartphones, will the public be more receptive to tiered pricing on their wired Internet connections as well, or will they once again balk at a perceived bilking?"
All internal traffic is excluded from limits or else!
It's easy to setup some localized CDN servers which are co-located with the CMTS, meaning all they're utilizing is a few extra ports on their datacenter switches. This means that traffic doesn't even touch the existing network infrastructure, other than the hardware and rackspack it costs almost nothing.
But your on-net transfers are almost certainly still making use of backhaul and possibly core bandwidth. They just aren't using the peering connections, so while it might not be quite as costly it's still a fairly large chunk of the overall cost.
But that's too wordy for most people, you have to keep it at or under 5 words. So "It's because it's internal" is about as detailed as you want to get in a press release.
Ok, but you've clearly not following the conversation. Read the parent and try again.
/., so reading a conversation and commenting intelligently as opposed to writing down your first thought and trying to cram it down the gullets of everyone else is a rarity.
Parent argued that the person in question should "Stop whining" and that they chose to have crappy service.
Yes, we understand the person in question may not have many choices, but they should at least complain to the choices they do have and make their displeasure known. They shouldn't just "live with it" as the parent suggests.
Of course, this is