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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?"
That makes zero sense. The more the datalines are used, the more electricity is being burned-up.
The electricity it takes to send a 0 or 1 down the line is negligable. The only power savings you're getting from running under capacity is if you're so under utilized that you can put your servers to sleep. That's equivalent to reducing network capacity, which we would very much like to discourage.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'd love to see someone implement a bittorrent client with an option to limit peers to other Comcast customers, and then see how they start redefining "internal traffic"...
Around 2008, my local ISP was formed. Sometime around 2009 they implemented data caps of 600 MB/day, as most users didn't exceed that amount. Today, the cap is exactly the same as was first implemented.
300 GB might seem like a lot right now. Give it a few years...