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?"

Comments

Fiber needs to move faster...

[CSFFlame]

Come on Google (and Sonic.net too). I don't trust Verizon, they're too shifty.

Re:Fiber needs to move faster...

[crypticedge]

My fiber goes to cat 6 in the house itself, as can anyone on fios if they just wire it for it then call Verizon to tell them so.

The fiber to the nearest cable box creates a bandwidth crunch that both Comcast and AT&T are starting to run into and have problems from, so yes it is far more than just a "marketing gimmick" because it removes that point of congestion that the brown fields (industry term for old build/retrofit) have a massive problem with right now and that will only get worse.

Re:Fiber needs to move faster...

[Sosarian Avatar]

Because in the case of Sonic.net, the founder/CEO, Dane Jasper, actively disagrees with the existence of usage caps, and has stated in interviews that he feels the government should be doing more to protect broadband customers from that kind of crap. There's a good article covering his (and by extension Sonic.net's) stance here.

Put our collective foot down!

[MatthiasF]

All internal traffic is excluded from limits or else!

Re:Put our collective foot down!

[rtb61]

The more logical is to exclude uploads so no double billing on the same content and people that produce content are not prevented from self publishing.

Re:Put our collective foot down!

[J. T. MacLeod]

Outside traffic is usually more expensive, but it's not the only expense. Local network traffic can cost a pretty penny, too, when we're talking about areas bigger than your home LAN.

Most won't notice

[MikeRT]

This actually seems like a pretty sane plan for most people who aren't diehard pirates or Netflix users. Most users don't use 300GB. If Comcast is smart they'll use this as a basis to actually fund the development of a more powerful and competitive network instead of just milking it for short term gains.

Re:Most won't notice

[WilliamGeorge]

I was getting worried about our usage at home, since the kids now watch a few hours of Neflix a day along with out other internet usage. I called Comcast because I was having trouble finding where on our account management page the data was about how much we actually used each month - and when they showed me where to find it I was amazed at how little it was. 30-70GB a month on average, occasionally peaking past 100GB. So even in what I would consider a moderate to heavy internet usage household we were way under the existing cap, and will still be with a 300GB limit.

The only problem I can see here is if they don't notify users when they approach that cap. If something happened and I went way over, but was never warned till the bill came, I would be upset.

Re:Most won't notice

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'd be surprised how much data the average person uses. A single daily HD video podcast on itunes (Tech News Today, for example) can run you a couple gb/week. Streaming radio. Backup services. Netflix. Gaming. It ads up. Multiply it by the number of people in your household.

What really concerns me is what this will do to business accounts. I got tired of getting threats from them for hitting their 250gb limit (but not telling me how big the limit was and not having an alternative so I could use more bandwidth if I wanted to, like buying a second account). Eventually, I found out I could get a business account and did that. For $115/mo, I get pretty much unlimited. Well, I'm sure there's a limit, but I get 50mbps up and down and average about 1-2tb/month usage and have never heard a peep from anyone. Hopefully they don't plan to jack up the prices on business accounts as a result or forbid home users from having business accounts (well, they already jacked the prices up $10 this year, but you know what I mean).

Re:Most won't notice

[uigrad_2000]

300 GB will eventually begin to seem small as video data transmission rates continue to increase, but for the time being, 300GB / mo. is very generous.

I'll bet that at least half of all Comcast users watch video online on a frequent basis, and they all probably feel like they are in the top 5% of users. This is why everyone is so worried about data caps. In reality, most people will be shocked to see how far they are away from th limit.

Re:Most won't notice

[autocannon]

If you live in the reality that data caps are not going away, then this is a win for consumers. The base cap goes up, the price stays the same, and anybody who needs more can either pay for the higher tier if offered or pay the flat rate for more bandwidth. What this really does is give Comcast a way to get more money out of the people who are using it heavily instead of throttling them.

Now, having said that. Data caps just flat out suck and should not exist. Whether I use 20GB a day or 1, if the service can handle it then it should just deliver it. There's really nothing lost if I continue to use more, unlike say the gas company. Damn corporations have realized they can force more money from people for this type of stuff and there's nothing short of dramatic government regulation that will change it.

Re:Most won't notice

[Linsaran]

Really now? When have you ever known a publicly held company to prioritize development and long term results, over short term profits. Shareholders are far too concerned with making that profit number bigger for the next quarter to worry about what's coming down the pike in a couple years. Take solar panels as a prime example. A company that put commercial grade heating/energy panels on their office building could save huge amounts of money in energy/heating costs. Solar energy is essentially free, the maintenance requirements of solar panels minimal, and the life time of a solar array 20-40 years. However there is a not insignificant upfront cost to install a solar array. In most cases it would take a company 5 years to 'break even' compared to traditional energy sources. Thus, since the cost to put something like that in place on an office building is expensive, and would eat into a companies profits NOW, while only providing savings much later, most companies choose to use traditional heating/energy sources, because they're much cheaper NOW, even though the costs of them will only continue to add up.

Re:Most won't notice

[cpu6502]

>>>When have you ever known a publicly held company to prioritize development and long term results, over short term profits.

When they are facing competition from another company that could steal-away their customers. I know a lot of people who jumped to FiOS because it was faster than Comcast.

Anyway: I think the pricing being based on "use" is good. It's just like a phone plan..... you pay for X number of minutes per month, and then get charged for each additional minute.

Re:Most won't notice

[oddjob1244]

This actually seems like a pretty sane plan for most people who aren't diehard pirates or Netflix users. Most users don't use 300GB.

I just hope they give the option to shut off buying extra bandwidth automatically. I'll buy the 300gb a month, but I don't want anymore. If I hit the cap, cut me off to just a Comcast website where I can buy more. None of this, "For an extra $10 a month we'll give you parental controls to limit the automatic purchase of more bandwidth" crap that cell phone companies pull with text messaging.

Re:Most won't notice

[cpu6502]

Maybe they're using low-quality feeds? I watch Hulu and Youtube at 240p, which is only ~200 megabyte per hour streamed. So it doesn't add up to a lot even over a month of viewing.

BTW comcast has a disincentive to provide unlimited: They don't want you canceling their TV service.
Ditto Time-Warner, Cox, Cablevision, Verizon, ...
Now I just watch my TV free off the antenna.

Re:Most won't notice

[rgbrenner]

You are not the average user, by far.

Yes, he's not average, by far. He uses up to 35x the amount of the average comcast user

http://blog.comcast.com/2009/12/comcast-data-usage-meter-launches.html

(Note: the median usage for Comcast’s customers is about 2 to 4 GB per month.)

Re:Most won't notice

[slack_justyb]

and they each average one movie every other day, that's 248gb.

Geez, who has time for that? Usually the "family of four" here all watch the same movie at the same time. Add in the fact that most of our time is running between which kid has a game tonight and who's cooking dinner and who's clean which part of the house. We're lucky to get one or two movies via Netflix per every other week.

That's before doing anything via a VPN to work, backing up your data remotely with any of a number of services, streaming radio, streaming music (mog.com, etc), watching youtube, playing videogames

My company pays for a seperate connection to the Internet for VPN access. Maybe we should all push for that. I backup my data to an external hard drive. I'm paranoid so sue me. Whatever happen to just listening to the radio? My kid pulled that crap once at home. They were listening to a local station via the Internet, I asked why the hell he just didn't turn on the radio? Also, why don't cell phones come with FM tuners? They shove BT, wifi, GPS, and cellphone receivers in there, what's one more?! Add in an HDTV tuner to that request too. (No I don't think they should shove a CB tuner in there, but I bet FRS would be really cool!) Videogame usage in the house is pretty minimal, one kid is grounded until December, the other has no interest in videogames, I play Wii but I'm totally asocial, so I steer away from Internet based games. Wife likes "Just Dance" I don't think that the game has an online componet to it.

You are not the average user, by far.

By all accounts, I would be more inclined to believe that your example is not average by far. As most of the families that I have to pretend to like, live roughly the same lifestyle as myself as far as Internet usage goes, and I'm the dweeb they call up to fix their computer when they forget how to bold text in Word. "Hi, yeah I know you're [my son's name]'s father, this is [friend of my son's name]'s mother, and I heard that you are really good with computers... [you get the idea]" So I would dare say I've gotten a little more insight on these people's Internet usage than I'd care to have.

Re:Most won't notice

[realityimpaired]

Maybe they're using low-quality feeds? I watch Hulu and Youtube at 240p, which is only ~200 megabyte per hour streamed. So it doesn't add up to a lot even over a month of viewing.

Even a high quality feed on Netflix doesn't eat up that much data. It doesn't even come close to saturating my 12mbit DSL connection when I watch it, and even though I watch maybe 10h of Netflix a week, my monthly usage has only gone up by about 30GB.

Re:Most won't notice

[__aaqvdr516]

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...

Re:Most won't notice

[patchmaster]

It's sane until you look at the charge for going over the cap. I can lease a dedicated server where bandwidth beyond the 5TB monthly cap is $1.15/TB. Comcast's marginal bandwidth rate is $200/TB. Admittedly, Comcast may be paying a bit more for bandwidth than the dedicated server hosting company, but 173 times more? They're just sticking it to people who use more while trying to make it sound like they're being fair.

Re:Most won't notice

[MightyYar]

This actually seems like a pretty sane plan for most people who aren't diehard pirates or Netflix users.

It's only sane if you are Comcast trying to maximize profits. They are trying to have it both ways: a minimum price that they collect from everyone regardless of usage and a per-GB price as well.

In cell-phone land this is acceptable because very low-usage customers can switch to a pay-by-the-minute plan that saves them a lot of money every month - I think T-Mobile has a $100 prepay charge that lasts a whole year and gives you $0.10/minute, so you could conceivably only spend $100 for the entire year if you kept your usage to about 80 minutes/month. That's great for people who don't need their monthly service, the cheapest plan of which offers 500 minutes and no texting for $35/month.

Anyway, there's no "prepay" version of broadband that I'm aware of, unless you just switch over to using the cell network for internet access.

Re:Most won't notice

[jythie]

It is the Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime users they are going after. The 'pirate' excuse gets trotted out a lot, but they loose a lot more money to people choosing to use other services then they do to the (decreasingly significant) bandwidth usage of bittorrent. That is what gets the net neutrality people (well, the level headed ones at least) fired up since it represents local ISP monopolies abusing their position to force customers over to their other (media) services and stifle competition... which this is a clear example of since they are only applying caps and tiered pricing to effect traffic from OTHER companies, but not ones they own or are partnered with.

Re:Most won't notice

[WilliamGeorge]

Interestingly, I also tried to call up this month to cancel our cable TV service. We rarely use it any more, mostly depending on Netflix + Hulu (the free stuff) + Amazon Prime (wish there was a Media Center plugin!). I thought it would be a great way to save $10-20 a month... and boy was I wrong!

You see, as long as I pay for cable TV - even the most basic package which we have been using, at around $15 a month - we get a discounted rate on cable internet. Our total bill is ~$70 or so with taxes.

However, if we drop cable TV we no longer get the discounted internet rate... and our total monthly bill would actually go *up* by $0.27 (yes, twenty-seven cents).

THAT is how they keep you from cancelling cable TV entirely, by threatening to charge you more for less :/

Re:Most won't notice

[HapSlappy_2222]

Someday everybody who consumes video will be a diehard Netflix (more accurately: streaming) user. The simple success of Netflix, Hulu, and the like are pretty powerful heralds of the streaming age. Plus, as a former CenturyLink shill, I can tell you that about 75%* of the bandwidth speed increases I'd sell were *exclusively* to improve streaming services. It's possible I was just good at selling it for that, but it was uncanny.

A huge pipe + hefty fees for going over the limit = nasty, nasty overages on the bill. Seems like we're going backwards in time; like when we were all overusing minutes or racking up long distance charges. I'm not a fan. On top of all that, it's not easy for the average user to track exactly how much bandwidth Netflix uses. I'm fairly savvy, and really have no reason to track my usage at the moment, so I haven't really thought that much about it. As of this moment, I'm sure my HD PS3 uses significantly more bandwidth than my non-HD WII, but who knows exactly what I used last month, total? I guess I could monitor my router logs, if it's smart enough to track data like that, or maybe I can run a network tracking application from a central server... but can Grandma do that? Should she have to? Should I? I'm absolutely SURE that Comcast'd be happy to inform me when I go over my 300 GB limit for a fee, but... oh, wait.

I'm all for letting Comcast shape their internal traffic however they want, so long a the savings or some other benefit get to their customers, but this seems far worse than a simple cap on non-Comcast services; people are gonna get nailed for overage charges and not even really know why, for sure, but have to pay it anyway. When they complain, the Comcast reps will happily add Comcast's streaming service to their bill, informing them that it'll save them money over Netflix or Hulu in the long run (and they'll be right, though it'll be due to Comcast being assholes in the first place). Pretty sneaky, all laid out.

*The other 25% was split among those who did heavy downloads and needed the speed, those trying out a faster speed to see if it would improve gaming or browsing speeds, and other "classical" reasons for a bigger pipe.

Re:Most won't notice

[jxander]

Consider your source.

Re:Most won't notice

[HapSlappy_2222]

What device are they using to watch? Mine use their PC or our Wii, but I can just about guarantee my PS3 uses significantly more bandwidth than either. Plus, you look at a household where it's not just a few hours a day, but rather 4 rooms all streaming different programs to 4 different devices? These are the houses that require a fast enough pipe to keep up with all that traffic, and they're also the houses that'll gobble that 300 GB cap like a Saltine cracker (the teenage years are a bitch, man).

Re:Most won't notice

[Gerald]

Really now? When have you ever known a publicly held company to prioritize development and long term results, over short term profits.

Well, Comcast is doing that very thing right now. The company is an enigma. They're moving the state of the IPv6 art forward in a tangible way. Their business class service is great. Every salesperson and tech I've dealt with has been sharp, helpful and friendly. At the same time they throttle traffic, then deny that they're doing it. They maintain low (even at 300GB) caps. Their CPE quality (from DVRs to routers) is astoundingly awful (even business class).

Re:Most won't notice

[_KiTA_]

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...

Comcast, Verizon, etc -- they're all banking their entire futures on this very idea. They're hoping to get in a reasonable -- for now -- cap, and then in 5 years when our bandwidth usage is way more commonplace, welp, their hope is to get us right around the $50 a month mark... and $50ish in over usage fees a month, every month, until some external market force economically forces them to stop.

Think about it. In 5-10 years, we won't have Cable, we'll have HD Video on Demand Networks, something like Hulu or Netflix instead.

Imagine when Hulu (or rather, a Hulu competitor, since Hulu has been compromised) gets the bright idea to make "channels" where you get X number of shows at differing points of the day, all streaming via a Roku box or something similar, with the option to switch back and forth in the channel's timeline if you want. All the benefits of a standard Cable Channel for Mom and Pop ("The news is on at 7, then it's Cops, and Letterman"), with all the benefits of Video on Demand ("We missed Cops, we'll watch it right now and Letterman later tonight").

Sounds great, right? Well, it won't be once you get the $50 a month ISP bill + $50 a month Overusage bill, every month, for the rest of your life. Which the Bandwidth Middlemen are literally banking their futures on.

Re:Most won't notice

[KingAlanI]

yeah, I had a 250GB cap (with a different ISP) and I was surprised that I didn't come close to it.
I was trying to use it (although with absolutely no cap, I might have done more torrent seeding)

Re:Most won't notice

[_KiTA_]

Consider your source.

A good point. But technically Comcast isn't lying.

Comcast considers someone who uses Hulu once a night and streams Pandora / Spotify all day while they're working to be the exact same as a Grandma who only turns on the PC once a week to check their "E Mailbox." That skews the numbers WILDLY downward -- and they know it.

Re:Most won't notice

[HapSlappy_2222]

I didn't see the information you cited at the other end of that link, which seems to just announce that a meter has been in place since the end of 2009, starting with Portland. It might be in there somewhere, but I could only spare 5 minutes to poke around. I'm not saying I don't believe you that the median usage is 2-4 GB/mo, but I don't have any data to parse. On top of that, we can probably filter out Comcast internet service users that also subscribe to Comcast's cable or streaming services, as a vast amount of their data usage doesn't count toward a total anyway.

This was a pretty good read, and it's a year old: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/dsl-service-cable-service-internet-service,news-10514.html. Data usage has only gone up from there.

I don't know how close my family is to 300 GB a month, but I'm positive we've got at least one stream (and very often 2 or even 3, if either of my kids have friends over and don't want to watch what I am) rolling for ~12 hours of the day (I work days, my spouse nights, and then there's my kids when I have them in the summers. We don't have cable or satellite; Netflix and various streaming services are how we consume media, period. That's not counting torrents, hi-resolution image downloads, software pushes, my office VPN (in my line of work it's not uncommon for me to transfer a 4+ GB .psd from my home design station overnight so it's RIP'd and ready to print the next morning) etc. Basing my calculations of the leg-work the author in the above link has done, I'd say I'm probably near or past even his family's usage.

Sure, I may be an outlier now, especially when considering how often I bandy hi-res images about, but everyone's bandwidth usage has been steadily increasing... I'm betting it will continue to do so. Very shortly, 300 GB will be a pretty weak cap, and I'm sure Comcast is banking on people creeping past it, so they can spring their trap on us all (hehe, I love over-vilifying Comcast...).

Re:Most won't notice

[LordLucless]

While Comcast may not be an unbiased source, I'd consider it more reliable than an Anonymous Coward's backside, which is where the GGP's statistics have been sourced from.

Re:Most won't notice

[Anonymous Coward]

Add the occasional digital video game purchase to that and you start to run into issues. Several games, even old games if you buy their "Ultimate" versions with all the DLC included, clock in around 30GB these days. Add video downloads (not Netflix, but youtube and other), pod casts, streaming radio, etc. to that "mostly Netflix" thing you have and you can start getting north of 200GB, within spitting distance of the current 250 GB cap.

Re:Most won't notice

[Just Some Guy]

That was from three years ago, which I believe to be before Netflix even offered streaming service. A lot has changed since that now-obsolete report came out.

Re:Most won't notice

[rgbrenner]

You didn't think this through much did you? Where would information about comcast's customers come from other than comcast?

Re:Most won't notice

[rgbrenner]

Really, you didn't see it? It's in the first paragraph, and the whole article is 4 paragraphs

Today, we announced the pilot market launch of the Comcast data usage meter in the Portland, Oregon area. After a short period, we’ll roll it out nationally. It’s designed to be simple and easy to use and will help customers better understand how much data they consume in a month. (Note: the median usage for Comcast’s customers is about 2 to 4 GB per month.)

The meter is accessible by logging in to Customer Central at http://customer.comcast.com/ and clicking on the “Users and Settings” tab. From there, click on “View details” in the “My devices” section (located toward the upper right hand of the screen) and that will go to the meter page. As you can see from the accompanying screen shot the meter will show usage in the current calendar month when it’s first launched. Over time, it will show the most recent three months of use (including the current month). The data is refreshed approximately every three hours.

The meter measures all data usage over a cable modem. So, if a customer is using multiple computers and other devices, such as an online gaming console, “over the net” VoIP applications or devices, or additional wireless devices (such as an iPod Touch), the meter will report data usage for all of those computers and devices combined.

This is a tool we promised to provide, and we are pleased to deliver it today after rigorous employee testing and the completion of an independent analysis conducted by NetForecast, Inc. If you’d like to see NetForecast’s report on the system, click here.

To read some additional FAQs about the meter, please visit http://sitesearch.comcast.com/?q=data+usage+meter&cat=ccentral

Re:Most won't notice

[jxander]

Could also be Comcast playing with Mean, Median, Mode and just calling it average . Or simply discounting the top 10% ("they're not your average user") and taking a mean/average of the remainder. Could simply be ComCast's own self-created definition of their "Average User" completely divorced of any numerical data.

Could be doing a lot of things, without technically lying, but I trust ComCast in this even less than I trust random ACs. AC might potentially be a troll/shill/etc, spreading FUD for the lolz, but ComCast is positioned to directly profit from a false definition of "Average User."

Think: new user. If a new family joins comcast without any knowledge of their actual usage numbers... they might read this (or call ComCast and be told this info) and sign up for the lower tier... boom overages. It also gives ComCast a base number with which to demonize anyone going over their self-appointed average.

Re:Most won't notice

[rgbrenner]

Netflix had online streaming prior to Oct 1, 2008.. since that is the date on this article where netflix announced a partnership with Starz, and says 10-20% of their visitors regularly use the online streaming feature:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2008/10/more-mainstream.html

Re:Most won't notice

[swalve]

My understanding is that their phone service runs completely separately from their data service. Different channels, or something like that.

Re:Most won't notice

[rgbrenner]

Okay, he's a more up-to-date article: http://www.governing.com/blogs/by-the-numbers/us-ranks-high-on-internet-usage-despite-slow-speeds.html

The U.S. Telecom Association crunched a few sets of numbers (shown below) and found the country also ranks near the top in terms of data usage per user. The nation’s estimated 245 million Internet users consumed a monthly average of 25.7 gigabytes per user, according to the trade association. Only South Korea, which boasts the world's fastest speeds in many studies, transfers more data, with a monthly average of 49.1 gigabytes.

So he's still 2-3x above average.

Re:Most won't notice

[jackbird]

Interesting - Verizon FiOS is about $46/mo less if you drop cable from a phone/tv/internet bundle (note to pedants: I'm including the set top box "rental" fees).

Re:Most won't notice

[HapSlappy_2222]

My bad; I am chagrined and not-a-little dumb. Too used to expecting the first paragraph of any story to be about Kim Kardashian or some crap. Still the article's from the end of 2009, and even the usage of the median without a corresponding mean is a *little* bit suspect (I blame my sociology days for distrusting the way statistics are presented by those that have something gain from the presentation). I wonder what the usage is in our future world of 2012, considering all the expanding streaming and social services we have.

Re:Most won't notice

[jxander]

I thought it through plenty. My point is that there was no data of any kind to back up their claim. I could tell you my shit smells of roses, and you'd probably not believe me, despite having no other readily available source of information regarding the scent of my bowel movements.

Simply put, 2-4 GB per month is nowhere NEAR average. A single streamed movie can easily approach that number, especially if it's HD. 20-40GB I might actually believe.

You're welcome to believe them if you'd like... but personally, I think their 2-4GB claim smells of shit.

Re:Most won't notice

[tsotha]

The channels like ESPN and HBO that you have to get individually or on higher tiers get paid on a per subscriber basis to provide content. But channels like HSN pay the cable company to provide them viewers. So if you cancel your service HSN pays your cable company less money. Since they already need to do hookups and maintain the infrastructure to your house if you have an internet connection, that HSN money is just gravy. So it makes perfect sense for them to charge you more.

Re:Most won't notice

[rgbrenner]

see my other post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2857621&cid=40035465

says it's now 26gb.. article is from yesterday

Re:Most won't notice

[tsotha]

They are trying to have it both ways: a minimum price that they collect from everyone regardless of usage and a per-GB price as well.

That's not completely unreasonable. They have fixed costs that don't change whether you use one bit or 10TB. They also have variable costs that change based on data usage.

Re:Most won't notice

[TheRealMindChild]

Think about it. In 5-10 years, we won't have Cable, we'll have HD Video on Demand Networks, something like Hulu or Netflix instead.

The future is now. My house lives on Netflix and Vonage. We went to my fathers house to watch TV, and the kids couldn't understand why they kept missing their show because of these "commercial" things. And when their pappy said "I need to change the channel real quick to see the weather", the look of confusion on their face can only mildy be explained as hysterical.

Re:Most won't notice

[TheRealMindChild]

He may be above the average now, but that doesn't mean he should get dinged. Forgoing cable/phone/XM service for pureky internet alternatives quickly smash the cap, which was the GP point. Just because that isn't common place doesn;t mean it is unreasonable.

Re:Most won't notice

[tsotha]

I would be hard-pressed to hit 300Gb watching streaming services. They don't stream at blu-ray resolutions. I don't watch broadcast television, but I watch (too much) video using crunchroll and Amazon prime through my Roku. On a heavy month, when I got hooked on something with lots of episodes, or I was home sick with the flu for a week and didn't do anything else, I hit maybe 100GB. And that includes downloading games from Steam and watching the odd youtube video.

They trot out the pirate excuse because it's a cost driver for their business. I know people who fire up bittorrent and download dozens of full resolution movies that they subsequently never get around to watching, and I don't feel particularly inclined to pay extra to support that kind of stupidity.

Re:Most won't notice

[Just Some Guy]

That seems much more reasonable. But also consider that half of all users are above average. I'd be more interested to know what the standard deviation is (if it even follows a Gaussian, which seems at least possible).

Re:Most won't notice

[mea_culpa]

The camel's nose was allowed in the tent with the initial 250GB cap. Now comes the head with the 'reasonable' tiered plan. I guarantee that if the camel isn't pushed out now the tired caps will be continuously lowered to whatever level is required to make up for lost cable TV revenues and then some.

Re:Most won't notice

[Jason Levine]

I called up my cable company and told them I was seriously thinking of canceling my service due to the costs being so high. I pointed out that new users get one rate and are quoted that they will save $X. I pointed out that the rate I pay is much more than $X more than the new user rate. They locked me into a much better rate for a year. Next year, I plan on calling back and threatening to leave (again) if they don't reduce my rates.

Meanwhile, I'll also be working out a system to not have to have cable TV. (Some combination of purchased & ripped DVDs on a media center, Netflix, our local library, and possibly Amazon Prime.)

Re:Most won't notice

[HapSlappy_2222]

Very good and interesting data. I wonder if "per user" is per node, or per literal user. I knew Korea used more than us, but not by that much. Maybe 300gb is adequate, for now. That said, it means that the 300gb limit is specifically in place for the outlying data points (mega-consumers). I don't know if I like ever having a limit, but I suppose it's not as unfair as it seems at face value.

I do wonder though - if 2 hours of streaming is ~4gb, that's 150 hours of video per month. According to this: http://www.marketingcharts.com/television/tv-still-primary-video-medium-but-mobile-exhibits-fastest-growth-21067/nielsen-monthly-time-spent-feb-2012jpg/ we spend 150 (almost) hours per month watching TV. It seems reasonable that as streaming takes the place of plain old TV (and as to-the-node pipes get bigger), our consumption will increase pretty dramatically.

Re:Most won't notice

[rgbrenner]

According to this: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-much-monthly-bandwidth-doe-136401
Netflix is 3.6gb for an hd movie, and 500-700mb for a SD movie.

Also, I do think it is "per user". The article says there are 245 million internet users, using 25.7gb ea. There are only 115million households in the US.. so there must be more than one user @ 25.7gb in the average household.

If you take 311m people, subtract those under 5 and over 65, you get around 245million.. so again, I would say it's 25.7gb per person.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

Re:Most won't notice

[MightyYar]

Sure, but if I extrapolate from their cable bill practices that should be about $10... they give you $10 off on your internet if you already have cable :)

Re:Most won't notice

[micheas]

But people that work from home and use skype for collaboration easily hit just under that. (~200GB to ~250GB is typical in my household, with skype, youtube, dropbox, and sendspace being about ~90% of the traffic.)

Bittorrent traffic at my house tends to be under 10Gig per month, with some months being 0 (for comparison, ssh tends to average about 30GB per month)

I guess if I was out more and used a cell phone for a large percentage of my internet usage my usage would be a lot less.

It makes that burst rates sort of meaningless though, as they all have the same data cap.

Re:Most won't notice

[jythie]

It is actually pretty easy to hit the cap if you use TV as background, or have multiple people in the house, or have someone who stays at home during the day.

Re:Most won't notice

[Craig Ringer]

I thought you were serious until the third and final sentence. Heh. A carrier thinking about long term network investment. Right. (OK, so the US has seen some of that actually happening, what with the Verizon fibre stuff, but it's pretty unusual).

For what it's worth, here in Australia a 100GB cap was considered very big until a year or so ago. Most people never knew or cared. Most plans were capped at 20GB or so, and people didn't know or care about that either. Of course, Australia doesn't have any useful streaming services; the existing ones are all geo-locked and nobody here seems to have the power to break through all the stupid media licensing to set up a local one. Unless you're a mad torrent freak, heavy gamer, or use a VPN to work heavily, even 20GB is usually overkill.

I want to laugh at people complaining about their constricting and horrible 300GB caps, but I'm aware the US market has tons of bandwidth-hungry services available that we just don't have equivalents of in AU, so it's not that comparable. Alas.

Re:Most won't notice

[timeOday]

The 300 GB isn't really a "limit," it'll just cost you $10 extra for each 50 GB beyond that, which is right in line with what they charge for the first 300 GB (which would be $60 at that rate). That's not so bad - for now, anyways. Hopefully they increase it occasionally as technology improves and their investment is recouped.

Re:Most won't notice

[adolf]

This trick has worked for decades with all manner of subscription-oriented, consumer-related companies. Glad it worked for you, but don't stop with the cable company: There's a good chance you're paying too much for other things that you use around your house, too.

Typically, you don't even have to make a comparison to a competitor or another pricing scheme -- just mention that you want to cancel because it's "too expensive," and viola! It gets cheaper.

Some money is better than no money.

Hell, some companies will even -give away- service for free, just for asking. I got a freebie AOL account once because I needed dialup while traveling (before the ubiquity of WiFi and 3G and no, I'm not proud), and got 3 months of free service when I called to cancel. Rinse, repeat -- I had a working account for over a year without ever giving them a red cent.

Re:Most won't notice

[FLaSh SWT]

I did this with Comcast just this week actually. They dropped my bill (for "triple play" cable/phone/internet) by $60 per month. It is still too expensive, but more reasonable now and I'm not quite ready to drop TV completely. (Haven't convinced the wife yet and don't have time to setup a media server/sick beard/etc.)

I used the online chat and I wish I would have done it sooner, was pretty simple.

Re:Most won't notice

[X.25]

This actually seems like a pretty sane plan for most people who aren't diehard pirates or Netflix users. Most users don't use 300GB. If Comcast is smart they'll use this as a basis to actually fund the development of a more powerful and competitive network instead of just milking it for short term gains.

How do you know that "most users don't use 300GB"?

Do you know "most users" personally?

Re:Most won't notice

[bryan1945]

I tried to hit the cap on purpose once, too. I didn't think of the idea until the 2nd week of the month, so I only got to about 220. I was leaving torrents running day and night on top of streaming video. At that rate, a full month of that would just about be hitting 300. Weird how my max possible usage lines up with their current and proposed caps.

Re:Most won't notice

[chrismcb]

What comcast used to do, was give you one warning if you went over the limit. The second time you went over the limit, they cancelled your service.

Re:Most won't notice

[bsane]

Until I turned down netflix quality to its lowest setting we were bumping into 250Gb every month. Comcast has waged a war on its internet only customers in the last year as well- without a change in service my bill has jumped from $42/month to $75/month since last August.

Its all part of their strategy to keep the cash cow cable tv side alive- cap (or tier) usage, so I can't watch high quality, and keep turning the screws on standalone internet until I decide to bundle with tv.

They can rot in hell...

Re:Most won't notice

[Targon]

This is where going to a business account instead of residential account then makes more sense. What most people complaining don't realize is that for those using their service for BUSINESS purposes, they may get some things that residential users don't. The key is that for a business account, where you set a certain amount of bandwidth, network management is treated differently, possibly with a higher priority given since it is a BUSINESS.

You also have to look at the network topology. When you have a data center, you get a fixed amount of bandwidth into that data center, and it is up to the management of the data center for who gets what bandwidth. In the residential market, you have all that equipment on the pole(or the lines down the street), and you have to get the bandwidth to and from your house with all the maintenance involved. It is far cheaper for Comcast to host your computer at their location than provide the bandwidth to your house. Maintenance is a huge part of this.

Re:Most won't notice

[digitalsushi]

Should you get a notification from the phone company that the long distance call you're currently making is starting to cost a lot?

Re:Most won't notice

[cpu6502]

>>> we get a discounted rate on cable internet. Our total bill is ~$70 or so with taxes.

If that makes sense for you, then good.
For me CATV costs $70 with taxes.
It made more sense to just put an antenna next to the TV to pull-in the free channels, and get my internet through Verizon ($15).

Re:Most won't notice

[leonardluen]

Hopefully they increase it occasionally as technology improves and their investment is recouped.

i really need some mod points to mark you +1 funny...

Re:Most won't notice

[Golddess]

note to pedants: I'm including the set top box "rental" fees

Ahh, that explains it. I've been looking at FIOS recently, and depending on which level of internet service I select, tacking on TV was only an additional $5-$10, also dependent on which tier of TV service I selected. But I hadn't been counting the STBs, which yeah, depending how many TVs you're going to hook up, would drive that up.

Re:Most won't notice

[hob42]

My household has 7 in all, and there is rarely a time when any of us are home that we aren't playing Minecraft, WoW, LoL, SW:TOR, streaming Netflix or YouTube in HD, listening to Pandora, etc. My daughter, with a multi-monitor setup, will play on LoL while watching Netflix and videochatting on Skype at the same time, for hours on end. I've topped the 250GB cap every month since December, and have gone as high as 300GB. I am the type of user that the current cap* and this new tiered plan is targetted at, and frankly, I think it is fair.

My mother-in-law also has Comcast, and she turns on her computer and checks her email maybe a couple times a week. She helps give Comcast the statistic that the "average" user consumes less than 5GB per month. She also pays almost the same as I do per month for her internet.

*: Oddly, I haven't heard a peep out of Comcast about exceeding their cap, probably because I'm paying them over $200 a month for a bundled plan with things like a landline that I don't ever use, but had "just in case," and cable service that isn't even hooked up to any TVs, but that I keep so we can watch HBO shows on-demand online. I'm already planning to ditch the phone and TV service completely, and just pick up seasons of a handful of shows on blu-ray. Once I can find that last set top box I have to return...

Re:Most won't notice

[timeOday]

They're increasing the limit from 250GB to 300GB with this announcement.

Re:Most won't notice

[mcgrew]

I'm paying $30 per month for 6 gb/sec for AT&T DSL. It's plenty fast, unless you have a big family (I live alone) or run a web server (unallowed by the TOS) and get slashdotted. You might want to check into it.

Re:Most won't notice

[cdrguru]

Think about it. In 5-10 years, we won't have Cable, we'll have HD Video on Demand Networks, something like Hulu or Netflix instead.

No, not everyone. A small minority will no doubt, but the infrastructure simply isn't there to support this.

For cable the way it works today is there is the "head end" where all the signals originate. This is connected to a number of neighborhood nodes with somewhere between 500 and 1000 homes connected to each node. The connection from the head end to the node is a fiber link with a capacity somewhere between 1 and 3 GB today. The homes are connected on coax from the node.

The problem is, you take 1GB and divide it by 1000 and you get 1MB - but not all of the 1GB is available because a bunch of it is used for television programming. As the analog channels are eliminated and replaced with digital and on-demand stuff the dedicated bandwidth changes, but even at the best case you are going to have maybe 800MB available for non-TV uses. That means even on a 500-home node you have 1.6MB available per home, if they are using it. Today, most are not and you can get 20MB down to a home pretty easily.

In the Phoenix area Cox believes themselves to be pretty advanced and are moving to 3GB fiber to every node and adding nodes to bring each of them down to around 500 homes. Even at that you have at best 3MB/sec deliverable to each home. That just about covers ONE Netflix stream.

DSL is operating today with about the same constraints, although there tend to be a lot more homes per node and often the connection from the DSLAM to the ISP is much less than 1GB.

To bring the reality of IP TV to the masses the entire network is going to have to be replaced with a lot more nodes. And much faster links to the head end. It is going to take at least 10 years to get there and nobody has started yet because the demand simply isn't there today. To get to where we are today it took about 15 years from start to end - from around 1996 or so until 2010. It isn't going to be any simpler to do what is going to be required.

IPTV is something for early adopters and when it maxes out the network it will be interesting to watch what happens. Clearly Netflix as a DVD distribution business will survive but the "watch instantly" is going to have to have devices that buffer or it will die.

Re:Most won't notice

[jxander]

That report is 2 years old, but closer to reality.

Re:Most won't notice

[cojsl]

I was getting worried about our usage at home, since the kids now watch a few hours of Neflix a day along with out other internet usage

Our home likely has above average streaming and Internet use- 3 TVs with actively used Netflix and Hulu streaming devices, 4 active PCs, multiple gaming consoles, etc. The ddwrt wan bandwidth monitor in our router reports our monthly downloads over the last 6 months are in the 110-220GB range, with the average below 200GB.

Re:Most won't notice

[patchmaster]

The $1.15/TB was a mistake. I read it as Euro and it was actually GBP. So it's more like $1.40/TB. And Comcast is only charging 142 times this rate. My bad.

kimsufi.co.uk has these rates on their cheap dedicated server boxes. They are an arm of OVH.

Re:Most won't notice

[patchmaster]

It is far cheaper for Comcast to host your computer at their location than provide the bandwidth to your house. Maintenance is a huge part of this.

By excepting their in-house streaming service from the cap, they're saying the overage charges are for external access, not for the last mile to the house. $200/TB for external transport charges is beyond outrageous.

Re:Most won't notice

[gottabeme]

That's very interesting. Have your kids never watched cable or satellite or even OTA TV at a friend's house?

Re:Most won't notice

[gottabeme]

I just don't understand that. Why don't they either charge you an overage fee or throttle the connection? Or even disable the connection until the next billing period? They have the ability to stop you from using more than they want you to use, automatically. Why force the user to monitor himself and then punish him?

Re:Most won't notice

[mcgrew]

That analogy would only make sense if you had free long distance before a certain cap, or if you paid 100% of your internet bill by the byte. Unfortunately, it's apples and oranges you're comparing.

Re:Most won't notice

[mcgrew]

By "average" they usually mean "mean" but in this case they may mean "median". When you count all the people who use their computers for nothing but email or maybe facebook, 2-4 is probably about the median. The actuall mean is probably closer to what you guess..

Re:Most won't notice

[tsotha]

If they give you $10 off your internet it's because some of the broadcasters on the basic cable tier pay your cable company to deliver eyeballs to their network. Channels like HSN pay a fixed amount per subscriber.

Re:Most won't notice

[Targon]

When that bandwidth has to be planned for a neighborhood, and you demand as much as 10 average users, then what do you expect? You should check what the rates are for business users, and switch to a business account if it makes more sense to you.

Re:Most won't notice

[Targon]

Many people forget that there ARE field techs who have to go out to respond to complaints, and fix problems. These employees do NOT work for free, and since they are skilled workers(with exceptions for the incompetent ones), they also are not cheap minimum wage type employees. So, how many techs does it take to maintain the lines in your town? If more fiber needs to be added due to capacity issues, new fiber has to be added, and there is a cost for that as well. All told, there is a lot of support that you end up paying for as a part of your bill. Increased bandwidth use means that fiber will need to be added more often, so that needs to be accounted for.

Re:Most won't notice

[jackbird]

I've had the service long enough that any of those promotional rates have expired, so TV alone is about $40 for basic with 2 STBs (1 regular SD, one super bare-bones SD) for $8/month IIRC. HD or DVRs are way more.

Re:Most won't notice

[MightyYar]

Phone company manages to do that for $14/month.

Last time Comcast paid a contractor to come out and plug in my cable box, he ripped out my brand-new cable line to the TV - presumably because he could then charge Comcast for the "repair".

Re:Most won't notice

[Sosarian Avatar]

That might only work over the phone... My father attempted it in-person at the local Comcast office this past year, and they refused to fix his rate. When he walked across a breezeway and ordered service from one of the big DSL providers, their employees told him that they get a *lot* of new account subscriptions that way now.

My own household has gone cable-free for a few years despite my mother having a massive TV obsession. Most of our approach is a mixture of Netflix, Hulu (which has a surprising amount of really good older movies/shows), and network websites. Also, a close relative set up a Slingbox at his place on a spare cable box that mom uses when she has some reason to see something live (since he already has cable and an extra box isn't a big cost); he'll probably set up a proxy for her to watch Hulu once they ban non-cable subscribers, too.

We've been debating going with satellite service for a few years now, though, since it's significantly cheaper than cable and supposedly has better options.

Re:Most won't notice

[Sosarian Avatar]

and viola! It gets cheaper.

Ah, but do the fiddle and violin drop in price, too? What about other instruments? ;)

Re:Most won't notice

[adolf]

Yes. Bows also become discounted.

Time to switch!

[dehole]

Wish there were options to switch to, will see if there are any small ISP's left.

Re:Time to switch!

[jythie]

Yep. Because apparently viable competition is communist, they changed the rules to get rid of it.....

What's wrong with tiered?

[Scutter]

I'd much prefer a flat-rate unlimited plan, but I also recognize that a small percentage of users consume a disproportionate amount of bandwidth and that has to be managed somehow. I don't want a data cap. I'd much rather have the option of an affordable tier if I go over that cap, provided I'm given easy-to-use tools to see what my current utilization is. What I don't want is for that next tier to be ridiculously expensive as a disincentive to use it. I don't think $10 for an additional 50GB is unreasonable, although cheaper would be better.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[DarwinSurvivor]

We already have this in Canada. Shaw has a 200GB limit with $2/GB (that's 100X Comcast's overage) after that.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[Guspaz]

I don't generally have a problem with tiered, but $10 for 50GB is completely unreasonable. It's the equivalent of $64 per megabit, which is nuts for a home connection.

It's enough to make third-party IPTV unsustainable; if a household watches, between all TVs/people, 6 hours of TV per day at 4Mbps, you'll end up paying more than $60 a month just in bandwidth overage, above and beyond your TV bill! And 4 meg is a pretty damned conservative bitrate for IPTV.

$10 should be getting you 100-200 gigabytes per month. It's a reasonable cost, and it's roughly what existing large ISPs like Shaw are charging.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[log0n]

" but I also recognize that a small percentage of users consume a disproportionate amount of bandwidth and that has to be managed somehow"

And managed why exactly?

Leave your [cable] TV on for all 720ish hours in a month. You don't get penalized (outside of electricity bill) with overage charges for going over some arbitrary viewing cap. Hell, leave it running for an entire year and it doesn't cost any more (or less) than it would if you left the TV off entirely.

What's wrong with tiered is that it is an economic invention, not a practical or technical limitation.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[compro01]

Shaw theoretically offers unlimited plans, though apparently in very select areas. I don't know anyone who can get one.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently do not understand unicast vs. multicast.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[Anonymous Coward]

$10 for 50GB is completely unreasonable. It's the equivalent of $64 per megabit

Using decimal gigabytes (which is the standard for networks, storage, and everything else that is not directly addressable) 50GB is 400,000 Mb, which works out to $0.000025 per megabit.

It's enough to make third-party IPTV unsustainable; if a household watches, between all TVs/people, 6 hours of TV per day at 4Mbps, you'll end up paying more than $60 a month just in bandwidth overage, above and beyond your TV bill!

4Mb/s * 60s/m * 60m/h * 6h/d * 30d/mo = 2,592,000 Mb/mo
2,592,000/ 8Mb/MB / 1000MB/GB = 324GB/mo
Which would mean you'd be 24GB over your 300GB, so you'd pay $10 more than your monthly base rate. (You'd be left with another 26GB of monthly bandwidth to use for browsing and such.)

One of us is calculating wrong (but at least I'm showing my work!)

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[tsotha]

This makes no sense. Broadcast is a completely different beast.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[fnj]

Bad math. It's 10X, not 100X.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[L4t3r4lu5]

... I also recognize that a small percentage of users consume a disproportionate amount of bandwidth and that has to be managed somehow.

Why? I'll simplify it a little, but it's applicable: If there are 10 users in an area, 9 of them mom-and-pop who check email, MyBookFace, watch iPlayer sometimes and use up 50GB per month (average for Comcast, apparently), then that leaves 2250GB of the paid capacity (9 x 300GB - (9 x 50GB). That 2550GB of data is assigned to these 10 people, by virtue of the fact that these 10 people have paid for 10 x 300GB data. That is a fully-saturated 10Mb connection for 22 days. Unless the 1/10 is really downloading torrents 24/7, he's not saturating his pipe. Nowhere near.

Charging 10 people for 300GB of data means you have sold 3000GB of data allowance. Penalising the one user who makes use of the data the other nine don't is unjust. They don't lose out.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[Guspaz]

Normally, when discussing networking, a gigabyte is per month, and a megabit (or gigabit) is per second. You know that, you're just being pedantic, so I'll ignore that bit.

You do successfully calculate the gigabytes-per-month (my work was "plug it into google calculator or wolfram alpha and let it spit out a number", and my calculations result in basically the same as yours, since ceil(324/50)*10 > 60) , but your math assumes that the user has no existing usage.

In my case, my monthly usage without any IPTV tends to be about 200-500GB, which is good, since I have a 600GB cap.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[Guspaz]

In practice, the fact that these are all operating on shared networks which operate on assumptions of averages does in fact mean that higher usage becomes more expensive (nobody makes a VDSL2 DSLAM that has the uplink capacity for all ports to be simultaneously maxed out). Nonetheless, it becomes stupid expensive when you compare things logically.

For example, a 100Mbps enterprise-grade fibre line (as in a dedicated fibre strand running into your building) in downtown Montreal goes for the ballpark of $2000 per month. The point at which a cable internet line at $10/50GB becomes more expensive than dedicated enterprise-grade fibre is, assuming $50 for the base connection, (2000-50)/(321/50*10) =~ 30 Mbps average sustained usage. That's a bit crazy. Not as bad as those ISPs who would charge $8 per gigabyte overage (they're out there), at which point the result is a lot stupider: (2000-50)/(321*8) =~ 0.8 Mbps

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[rwv]

$10 for 50GB is completely unreasonable. It's the equivalent of $64 per megabit

50 GB = 50,000 MB (approximately)....
$10 per 50 GB
= $1 per 5 GB
= $0.01 per 50 MB
= $0.0002 per 1 MB

And 4 meg is a pretty damned conservative bitrate for IPTV.

4 mbps = 240 mbpm (Megabyte per Minute) = 14,400 mbph ~ 14 GB per hour.

Last I checked, uncompressed 1080p was about 4 GB per hour. Decent compression algorithms knock it down to about 800 MB per hour, but you can bet on HD not being served as 1080p so you're much more likely to be pulling your streaming video at 400-600 kbps (not 4 mbps). Making order of magnitude exaggerations make the rest of your look foolish. And saying $20 for 50-100 GB is reasonable while $10 is "completely unreasonable" doesn't help either.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[Guspaz]

50 GB = 50,000 MB (approximately)....
$10 per 50 GB
= $1 per 5 GB
= $0.01 per 50 MB
= $0.0002 per 1 MB

... Really? Do you really think "megabytes per month" is a useful measurement rather than "megabits per second"? When somebody talks about cost-per-megabit, they pretty much always mean "per second".

50 GB = 50,000 MB
50,000 MB = 400,000 Mb
400,000 / 60 (seconds per minute) / 60 (minutes per hour) / 24 (hours per day) / 30 (typical days per month) =~ 0.154 Mbps
$10 * (1 / 0.154) =~ $64

4 mbps = 240 mbpm (Megabyte per Minute) = 14,400 mbph ~ 14 GB per hour.

Last I checked, uncompressed 1080p was about 4 GB per hour. Decent compression algorithms knock it down to about 800 MB per hour, but you can bet on HD not being served as 1080p so you're much more likely to be pulling your streaming video at 400-600 kbps (not 4 mbps). Making order of magnitude exaggerations make the rest of your look foolish. And saying $20 for 50-100 GB is reasonable while $10 is "completely unreasonable" doesn't help either.

Sigh... Uncompressed 1080p is not 4 GB per hour. Let's do the math:

1920 (horizontal pixels) * 1080 (vertical pixels) * 24 (bits per pixel) * 30 (frames per second) * 60 (seconds per minute) * 60 (minutes per hour) = 5,374,771,200,000 bits per hour
5,374,771,200,000 / 8 (bytes per bit) / 1024 (bytes per kilobyte) / 1024 (kilobytes per megabyte) / 1024 (megabytes per gigabyte) =~ 625 gigabytes per hour

625... Where the heck did you get 4 from?

BluRay is 1080p. Typical BluRay bitrates with AVC are 15 to 30 megabits per second (depends on the movie). Trying to do 1080p with 4 Mbps is is a bit much. 720p at 4Mbps is possible at acceptable quality, but it's still conservative. In fact, it's roughly half the bitrate that Bell Canada uses for their IPTV service FibeTV.

I also never said that $20 for 50-100GB is reasonable. I said $10 for 100-200 GB is reasonable.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[Guspaz]

I'm not sure I understand your question. If you watch 6 hours of IPTV per day, why do you have a TV bill? Because then you wouldn't be watching 6 hours of IPTV per day...

My 6 hour a day figure is not for me personally, who lives alone. It's a reasonable sounding number for a family household. People watch TV at different times or on different screens. If you're talking two parents and three kids, that's just 1.2 hours per day per person.

My ISP, on their basic service level, has a 75GB cap for $30, a 300GB cap for $35, and unlimited for $46. That's reasonable. That is giving you the option to pay a bit extra to cover the costs of heavy use, or save a bit of money if you have light use. Either way you get an affordable option.

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[DarwinSurvivor]

Yep, you're right. I still call high-way robery when their plan is *literally* "200GB = $40, 400GB = $400"

Re:What's wrong with tiered?

[DarwinSurvivor]

gah, that would be $440 (not a good week for math).

Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[badboy_tw2002]

Charge a market rate per GB and charge me for what I use. Gas, power, and water utilities manage to deliver and upkeep what's arguably a more complicated infrastructure with the same model, why should data be any different? Data at this point should just be a public utility. Let the upstream providers sell you what they offer on their terms, but keep the last mile locally controlled and regulated.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[Crookdotter]

Because obviously when that model applies, I pay for every byte coming down the pipe. Internet adverts I don't mind so much. When I HAVE TO PAY to receive them, then that's a different story. Browsing with images switched off? Check. Flash, fancy HTML5 anims and stuff off? Check. Youtube use for random funny cat videos? Not while I have to pay for each of them.

Unmetered internet is the way to go.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[Hatta]

Gas, power, and water utilities manage to deliver and upkeep what's arguably a more complicated infrastructure with the same model, why should data be any different?

Because gas, power, and water can be saved for another day. Any bandwidth we don't use right now is lost forever. It's actually more economical on a dollars per byte basis to keep your network near saturation. If you discourage people from using the network, you're increasing everyone's per byte costs.

The right way to deal with contention for network resources is to build out infrastructure. If ISPs are allowed to profit from network congestion, there is no incentive to build out infrastructure.

Metered internet access provides exactly the wrong incentives for *everyone* involved.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[cpu6502]

>>> It's actually more economical on a dollars per byte basis to keep your network near saturation

That makes zero sense. The more the datalines are used, the more electricity is being burned-up. It would be advantageous for an ISP to want to reduce their electric use by reducing how much data customers transfer. (And also eliminate the need to replace slow lines with faster lines.)

Disclaimer: I hate Comcast. I get my TV free over-the-air, and my internet over DSL.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[Hatta]

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.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[Mr. McGibby]

Gas, power, and water utilities manage to deliver and upkeep what's arguably a more complicated infrastructure with the same model, why should data be any different?

Because gas, power, and water can be saved for another day. Any bandwidth we don't use right now is lost forever. It's actually more economical on a dollars per byte basis to keep your network near saturation.

The GP was talking about infrastructure, not product. Infrastructure in the gas, power, and water sectors follow the same rule as network infrastructure. They exist and have to be maintained no matter how much product they deliver.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[kiwimate]

Really? How do you store power economically? If you know a way to store power on a large scale, and do it in an economically feasible way, you will make a fortune, because no-one else in the industry can figure it out at the moment.

That's one of the magic bullets for Smart Grid. If you have that, intermittent resources such as wind suddenly become much, much, much more useful.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[jo_ham]

Power can not be saved.

Yes it can, although when you talk about electricity what we're really interested in is energy. You can store it chemically via batteries, or as potential energy by pumping water uphill and storing it, or kinetically by spinning up flywheels kept in vacuum chambers.

Any overcapacity in your power infrastructure can be put towards energy storage so that you can call on it when your network faces a sudden high demand.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[thegarbz]

I think you look at these energy storage methods. All three of them require a huge initial outlay, ongoing maintenance and don't actually store very much energy at all, certainly not enough to even remotely entertain smoothing the peaks in demand.

They make more sense for small installations and emergency power, not for powering cities.

But all of this is elementary. The fact is that electricity is CURRENTLY not stored, and yet doesn't have the same kind of issues network bandwidth does.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[Electricity Likes Me]

Really? How do you store power economically? If you know a way to store power on a large scale, and do it in an economically feasible way, you will make a fortune, because no-one else in the industry can figure it out at the moment.

That's one of the magic bullets for Smart Grid. If you have that, intermittent resources such as wind suddenly become much, much, much more useful.

You can shut down a power plant, and it will stop burning fuel. That's how you save power.

It makes no sense to do this with internet technology though, since again, if you have to keep a fiber lit or a router operating, then the difference between idle usage and near capacity usage is negligible

Also worth noting is that in the power plant example, there is the very real issue that you hit diminishing returns because you also have a power line infrastructure to maintain, which, if not moving electricity around, is just sitting there rusting away.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[kiwimate]

The analogy may be getting extended unreasonably here. Firstly, shutting down a power plant is not the same as storing power. Electricity has to be consumed when it's generated. Large scale economically feasible storage technologies simply don't exist. Pumped storage, sure, subject to topological constraints. Batteries? Improving, but expensive. It's not there yet. You get the picture.

Secondly, you can't just shut down a power plant. If it's something with a really slow ramp rate, that takes hours and hours, or even days. You also can't just start it up - it needs to be synchronized with the grid (black start an obvious exception).

And I'm not sure I follow your example of power line infrastructure maintenance. This doesn't make sense in the real world. Generators are not transmission owners, if that's what you're suggesting (or is it? I don't get it).

Like I say, I think the analogy is just a poor one here.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[Bardez]

However, this is true for satellite or cable television: you have to pay for those advertisements as well, and more people are obviously willing to let advertising subsidize their bill, or else HBO, Showtime, etc. would have a wider subscriber base.

I do agree, however, that I should not have to pay for advertising to be delivered to me. I'm just raising a valid point about advertising in paid service media.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[Electricity Likes Me]

Most analogies break down when pushed.

What I was driving at was originally where the analogy breaks - you can't really "store" power - except in the case of not burning fuel.

But you're right: it doesn't really work, since the diversity and variance of generator types makes any naive analysis impossible especially when you factor in human resources. But the underlying point is that if we consider internet router/communications technology carefully, it can be concluded that it's best utilized as close to full capacity as possible, rather then being left under-utilized (though obviously some things - like undersea cable - vary in that). Which I guess makes the wider point being "don't make simplistic arguments".

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[cpu6502]

>>>The electricity it takes to send a 0 or 1 down the line is negligable.

Then why are website data centers located in places with cheap electricity or cool climates (less A/C use). I think you're flat wrong. More use == more electricity & heat.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[Hatta]

Because they need a lot of energy just to keep the computers running. Whether the line is in use or not has no measurable effect on the power draw.

Try it. Get a kill-a-watt meter, hook it up to your computer. Then saturate your link. Maybe netcat /dev/zero, you want to do something that won't touch the disc. Try this and you'll see how little network activity actually affects the power you use.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[EmptyHead]

When more people consume bandwidth, more bandwidth has to be purchased by the ISP to increase capacity for the collective need. Otherwise, the existing connection becomes over-utilized and downloads slow down for everyone using that ISP.

Routers have processors that consume more energy when under higher demand. They also generate more heat when utilization is higher, which must be mitigated with cooling systems, also consuming more power. This factor might be small on your home network or even for a small or medium sized business, but it adds up when racks upon racks of networking equipment are being considered.

Power and real-time bandwidth (not what you download per month, what bandwidth is being used right now) cost money. That cost is passed to the consumer. Thinking of bandwidth as being like roll-over minutes that you need to use or you're wasting something is a flawed consumerist notion. If you conserve, perhaps you could move to a cheaper Internet package and save some money for a rainy day or know that you aren't being a wasteful consumer.

I use less than 10 GB per month and I still have room to play on-line games almost daily, view the news, e-mail, corporate remote access and keep my home network up-to-date.

Poor use of Bit-torrent chews up more than it should. Most clients include bandwidth throttling options that could easily be used to get what you need quickly and then control how fast you are going to seed what you've already downloaded.

Your tag line is bizarre, senseless and revolting. "Patriotism is bigotry" How cute. Did your Bohemian friends at Columbia teach you that one? Such ideas are why nations that still embrace patriotism or any level of national pride are going to destroy us economically, if not in other ways. When the U.S. looks like the 3rd world places I have to work in perhaps you'll understand why you should care about your nation, regardless of which nation you belong to.

Re:Even better - just meter the whole damn thing

[jo_ham]

Hydroelectric is used very effectively for exactly that - responding to sudden load increases. We have one in Wales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_power_station) that can supply about 1800 MW to the grid in about 2 minutes, with enough running capacity for 6 hours before they need to reverse the flow and pump the water back up.

It's obviously very dependent on local geography - Dinorwig is built inside a mountain on the site of a former slate quarry, but where it can be used, it is very effective. It saves the UK a large amount in CO2 emissions yearly since fewer gas power stations are needed for quick response on the grid.

Re:How can they complain?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only real complaining I hear of is when it's being sold/marketed as zero-cap-unlimited, when it's clearly not.

I can only speak for me...

[GSloop]

I can only speak for me...but the scummy thing I see is they really want it both ways.

1) You can pay more for higher speeds
2) You can pay more for more bandwidth.

And we'll be really slow about moving the boundaries so as to capture as much money as possible.

Higher speed should just be included, and fine, charge a reasonable amount for bandwidth.
OR
You charge by the speed tier and however much bandwidth I consume you live with it.
[The pricing seems high too, IMO.]

But no, they want to make you pay both ways. [And pay again when you can't stream data (without meter) from other vendors - you have to pay extra to CC.]

Wireless carriers do it like this too.

Them: "No, you can't tether, that costs extra."
Me: "Why? You're capping my data consumption anyway. If it's not unlimited, then I should get to choose where I use my data - the phone, a tablet, or my laptop."

Either it's unlimited to a single device, in which case, I can stream netflicks 24x7 - or I pay for X amount of data and I can use it in any way, with any device I like.

But no. We'll pick the terms we like when it benefits us, and then mix and match to make even more.
Screw you customer! Just keep forking over the cash.

-Greg

Re:I can only speak for me...

[Cimexus]

Yeah I agree. In countries where they generally have always had caps, plans are often delivered at "whatever speed the infrastructure can support", and you pay for the download limit you want. The situation with Comcast differs in that you are being charged for speed tier, as well as volume downloaded. Furthermore, there isn't a range of different caps to choose from as there are in some other countries.

For instance, I'm on an ADSL2+ connection in Australia and have a cap. However, plans don't have any particular advertised speed (on DSL at least, cable or fibre is a different story) - they are simply "ADSL2+", which supports up to 24 Mbps down, and up to 2.5 Mbps up. The speed you actually get will be as fast as your modem can manage to sync, given your line length and condition. Some people with short phone lines will get the full 24 Mbps. Some with very long lines will only get a couple of Mbps. And most get somewhere in between ... but the point is you get as fast as your line will support.

The only choice you need to make with regards to your plan is how much download quota you want (and you can change this month to month to suit your needs). My ISP (Internode) currently offers 30 GB, 60 GB, 200 GB, 300 GB, 600 GB and 1.2 TB caps. I don't see caps as a bad thing IF you have a range of them to choose from, as it means low volume users who impact the network less can pay less, those that do use a lot pay more, and it helps the ISP predict and manage their network capacity to ensure a congestion-free experience (and for me, quality of connection is more important than the sheer amount I can download). Also note that once you go over your cap, you aren't charged more here ... they just throttle your speed down.

Re:I can only speak for me...

[Craig Ringer]

While this is currently true, in Australia we had both data caps and speed caps for a LONG time. It's only once Telstra's monopoly was broken by the advent of 3rd party DSLAMs in exchanges that this changed.

We're likely to see charges for both speed and data return with the NBN, at least according to the current pricing plans.

I Hope Not

[MoldySpore]

I really hope that people won't give in without at least expressing their anger to Comcast by finding another ISP if available, when they implement tiered pricing. I hope Comcast users push back like us TW users did.

One of the MAIN reasons these ISP's are introducing tiered pricing is simply to avoid the costs of upgrading their infrastructure. Instead of modernizing their networks and equipment to handle today's higher demand for more and more bandwidth, they simply implement overage fees and/or tiered pricing to keep people's usage within the confines of what their infrastructure can handle. It really is a scam on so many different levels. This is why the US is so far behind in broadband when looking at other country's broadband statistics.

Money hungry as ever, the largest ISP's over here just don't see the need to provide a higher level of service to home users when it means investing hundreds of $Millions, possibly more, to do it.

In addition to that, you have places like Rochester, NY where no competition can EVER break into the market because 1 or 2 ISP's have monopolized the space for new fiber and/or copper runs, effectively creating a stagnant market where users have no choices for service (ISP's such as EarthLink give the ILLUSION of choice, but really only lease space on another larger ISP's lines, such as Time Warner).

Re:I Hope Not

[cpu6502]

>>>This is why the US is so far behind in broadband when looking at other country's broadband statistics.

False. According to speedtest.net, the average U.S. speed is 1 Mbit/s faster than the average speed for the E.U. And yes there are some EU states that have very fast internet, but there are some U.S. states that also have very fast internet: Like New Jersey. New York. Washington.

Vice-versa there are EU states like Greece and Spain and Portugal that have internet slower than the U.S. average. Thank your lucky stars you don't like there. (Or in the UK where they have decent speeds, but are censoring the net.) The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence, but rarely is.

Re:I Hope Not

[weave]

One of the MAIN reasons these ISP's are introducing tiered pricing is simply to avoid the costs of upgrading their infrastructure. Instead of modernizing their networks and equipment to handle today's higher demand for more and more bandwidth, they simply implement overage fees and/or tiered pricing to keep people's usage within the confines of what their infrastructure can handle.

Sorry, it's really the opposite. They have little economic incentive to expand capacity now. If they charge for overages, they'll have more incentive to entice you to use more bandwidth so they can increase revenue, and a great way to do that is making a faster pipe and encourage you to use services like Netflix to use it up.

Re:I Hope Not

[vawwyakr]

I think its more to eliminate competition. They don't want to provide you access to the competition they want you to pay them for their entertainment services.

Re:I Hope Not

[mattdm]

I really hope that people won't give in without at least expressing their anger to Comcast by finding another ISP if available, when they implement tiered pricing.

"If available" is the catch here. Comcast has a near-monopoly on broadband service in many parts of the country. Some places have the luxury of a second cable provider like RSN, but mostly, the other choice is more expensive and much slower DSL. Some places have Verizon FiOS, but apparently they're pulling back on that as well.

Re:I Hope Not

[ericnils]

One of the MAIN reasons these ISP's are introducing tiered pricing is simply to avoid the costs of upgrading their infrastructure.

That hasn't been my experience with Comcast in Boston. They upgraded all of their infrastructure in Eastern Massachusetts to DOCSIS3 two years ago and my connection speeds went overnight from about 6/1Mbps to 22/3.5Mbps with no price increases. I haven't noticed any drops in speed during peak periods so they seem to have enough back end bandwidth provisioned. If I was willing to pay more they offer up to 100/10Mbps connections. ADSL1, with much higher latency and 3.0/768 speeds or commercial oriented symmetrical circuits with $500+ price tags are my only other options so they weren't exactly driven to this by the competition. Verizon has unfortunately not followed suit. A few towns in the area offer FiOS, but not many, and Verizon has halted its expansion.

Re:I Hope Not

[TheRealMindChild]

I found your post most appropriate to reply to, so forgive me if it seems misdirected. I currently get cable access through Atlantic Broadband. If you shuffle though the 3rd party contracts and open your eyes, it is pretty obvious they are a partner/subsidary of Comcast... as in, thet is where they get their content. When I called up for internet access they asked me about my usage. I told them I had 40 internet connected devices and had no intentions of using a real landline or TV service. They offered me a package that was twice what they seem to be offering everyone else, and I can run at full capacity at all times, always.

I'm sure you are wondering the relevance. As far as I can see, it is still Comcast's network, but people like me aren't "killing" it. It is more than obviously a money grab

Re:I Hope Not

[kiwimate]

Something important that is missing from the summary, and which I can't see in any of the comments so far (169 as I'm writing this) is that this will be a trial in a small number of markets (yet to be selected). In other markets, Comcast will simply not be enforcing the data cap.

So it's not a done deal; it's a pilot. That means they want to see how it works out. From the figures being thrown around, this will only impact a tiny percentage of people. Yes, I realize those people are disproportionately represented on Slashdot.

From the angry comments, it seems like almost no-one read the article and got this salient point. I know, this is /. What can you expect?

Re:I Hope Not

[Jason Levine]

Exactly. Services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime scare the cable companies. If you take the concept of those to their logical conclusion, you get a cable TV network. One where all of the episodes are streamed via TCP/IP (instead of via coax) whenever you request them and all past episodes are available "on demand." One where the "cable TV company" doesn't need to lay any fiber or cabling of any kind and, from launch, covers the entire United States.

Cable companies are shaking in their boots over this possibility so they figure they can kill Internet TV with caps and overages. If you watch TV online, you might go over the cap. If you do this often enough, that inexpensive IP Cable TV service won't be so inexpensive and Comcast and their ilk won't seem so pricey. (Or, at the very least, the existing cable companies can make some money off of the IP Cable companies.)

Re:I Hope Not

[jo_ham]

Ah, indeed. I use Virgin and their fibre service has been outstanding - high speed, reliable, painless. I just wish they weren't blocking TPB, not because I use it (I've never even been to the URL) but for the terrible precedent it sets.

Re:I Hope Not

[gottabeme]

Does that package cost twice as much also? I find it hard to believe that being upfront with them about how much you use your Internet connection resulted in them making you a better offer, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to justify charging exorbitant rates to a "power user."

Re:How can they complain?

[GameboyRMH]

60GB cap? I'd blow through that in a week.

Another stat to track...

[CodeHxr]

I like the peace of mind I get from not having to worry about bandwidth caps. Granted, I use a lot of bandwidth with internet being the primary source of entertainment (Netflix, MMOs, browsing, all * multiple family members). Glad I'm not on Comcast anymore... I hope they get severe consumer backlash and none of the other ISPs attempt to do the same thing.

$100/month

[CubicleZombie]

Every time my promotion expires and I have to play the threaten-to-cancel game, I tell them, "I will not pay more than $100/month for TV and Internet". So I don't care how they cap or meter the service. If I don't get what I want for $100 or less, I'm gone. Period.

Verizon's phone/DSL/DirectTV bundle is less than that, so I'm being pretty generous.

No complaints from me...

[pacapaca]

I'm a Comcast (internet only) customer and honestly I've been pretty happy with the service. The online data usage monitor is always under my router's monthly WAN traffic statistics which is a plus (not sure why the discrepancy though), and I've only had a cumulative ~12 hours of downtime in the year I've had the service (issues related to modem signal strengths). What I got out of this story is that there is no longer a hard cap (though I've never exceeded ~245gb) and I get an extra 50gb (very much welcomed) for the same price? What are we complaining about here?

Granted, it would be better if it were unlimited and I didn't have to ration my Netflix usage at the end of a heavy usage month, but $10/50gb seems reasonable enough to me...

Well, that does it.

[MacGyver2210]

"First, we fucked them with television. We fucked them too much and they don't watch television on cable anymore.
Then, we fucked them with advertising online and through what TV remained, but we advertised too much, and now everyone ignores our ads or pirates our shit.
We tried to fuck them with BitTorrent, but even the government wouldn't let that slide. We had to unfuck BitTorrent. Apparently it isn't just for pirating shit.
Now they want internet, so we're going to fuck with internet a bit and see if we can't squeeze a few more cents out of them."

What the fuck, Comcast? Get a clue.

Re:Well, that does it.

[sethmeisterg]

Something tells me that Richard Dean Anderson would not approve of that message, sir.

Re:How can they complain?

[IANAAC]

Here in rural Manitoba we get 7Mbps down / 768Kbps up for $46 + tax for a 60GB cap. Fucking sense of entitlement.

I'm in rural Wisconsin. We don't get nearly that speed, but the 60GB cap seems awefully low.

As an example, I watch maybe three to four hours of streamed TV a night and use up maybe 3GB a day doing it. Everything else I do (email, web, whatever, is nothing compared to the streaming), and the streaming is always at its lowest bit rate due to speed limitations, but I'd consistently go over the 60GB cap if it were placed on me.

If I were in a city or heavily popluated area that offered higher speed, you can bet I'd easily hit 200GB a month, and probably find a way to hit 300GB, with file syncing, etc., which, again, I limit due to the slow speed here.

they also have certified meters

[Joe_Dragon]

they also have certified meters and most of the ISP meters are off and bill you for overhead and ARP data.

FTC and unlimited

[Anonymous Coward]

So the FTC will bust Sketchers for advertising shoes that don't give you a great butt (http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/cases/skechers/index.shtm), but they have no problem with carriers that advertise limited data plans as unlimited?

Good ol' Murph

[garyoa1]

"In what appears to be an effort to capitalize on Nielsen's Law, the Internet's version of Moore's Law"

Of course if you're a customer you chalk it up to Murphy's law.

But you could be in Canada where for a measly $70 a month (plus taxes) you can get a massive dl speed of 6mbs (Well advertised at that anyway. ) and a cap of 100G. Wheee!

Re:Good ol' Murph

[compro01]

Or you could be elsewhere in Canada, where that $70 gets you 25/2Mb and a "cap" of about 8.6TB.

200/40Mb is supposed to be available Soon(TM), though at a not-yet-specified price.

"internal traffic"?

[Dahamma]

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"...

Re:"internal traffic"?

[squidflakes]

Everyone is arguing about data usage but seems to have skipped over the whole "Well, of course our service that competes with NetFlix is going to get preferential treatment" which is essentially the opposite of network neutrality.

I guess the solution was just to do it, and give everyone the finger in the process.

Re:"internal traffic"?

[desdinova 216]

I think Comcast's definition of internal traffic as their VOD/Streaming services.

Re:"internal traffic"?

[LordLucless]

I can't comment on Comcast (I live in Australia), but we frequently have these caps, and frequently have exemptions for internal traffic. In our case, it's because traffic transmitted out of Australia is far more expensive than local traffic, which is frequently peered. People here did exactly what you suggest, and modded P2P clients that only shared with others on the PIPE peering network sprung up. The ISPs were perfectly fine with that (The anti-piracy goonsquad not so much, and took down the modded P2P clients)

Re:"internal traffic"?

[Eil]

"Internal traffic" counts only towards Comcast's own content services like Xfinity. All other traffic (including to your neighbor) will whittle away at the cap.

Remember, data caps are not about network or quality management. They're about keeping the provider from becoming a "dump pipe" for premium content elsewhere. (In Comcast's case, high-def streaming TV.)

Re:"internal traffic"?

[Dahamma]

OnDemand users can already stream that content on their cable box without touching their internet connection

Actually, if you have a CableCard-based box (like Tivo) you can't use OnDemand on your cable box. You can use it on the XBox in that case, for example, but it's just the same IP data as any other XBox app (except for the fact it doesn't go towards your cap).

And the very problem is that, yes, under the hood it *is* going over the same pipes, so either it is causing extra load on their network or it isn't. And in either case, that's what net neutrality is all about - NOT allowing the last mile provider (who is/was often granted a local monopoly by the government, so yes, it makes sense that the FCC can regulate them) to prefer their *content* over someone else's, whether that's in terms of pricing, QoS, or data caps.

Re:"internal traffic"?

[bill_mcgonigle]

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"...

You need to implement bittorrent 'choking' based on network closeness. See this thread I started on the bittorrent list in 2005 for some discussion.

Re:"internal traffic"?

[Dahamma]

How about just limiting to Comcast IPs? (or if you want to be really clever, traceroute and give up if you see it leave Comcast's network).

Re:"internal traffic"?

[Craig Ringer]

That was commonplace in Australia for some time, and worked really well.

WAIXMule was a modified eMule client that only used peers reachable via the Western Australian Internet Exchange (WAIX), which most WA ISPs didn't meter.

It worked too well; the ISPs started limiting traffic through peering points because of the congestion. Honestly, they weren't actually just whining, they had major trunk links being saturated. Upgrades would've been immensely more expensive because they were already the fastest economical links available, and had no benefit whatsoever for most users, so they started limiting peering point traffic. Fair enough, honestly.

Re:"internal traffic"?

[bill_mcgonigle]

How about just limiting to Comcast IPs? (or if you want to be really clever, traceroute and give up if you see it leave Comcast's network).

Sure, there has to be some threshold where you decide 'close' vs 'not close'. It may be that packet time is all you need. Do you really want to go from Comcast in Maine to Comcast in San Diego? Perhaps only if there are no other peers available...

I'd expect a client that implemented this to allow plugins to define 'close'. They'd really only need to export boolean peerIsClose(IPADDR) and that can be arbitrarily complex. I'd then anticipate Comcast would release their own plugin for the software to minimize their peering costs. At least, that was the thinking in 2005 - I'm not up on current peering cost arrangements.

Re:"internal traffic"?

[gl4ss]

Everyone is arguing about data usage but seems to have skipped over the whole "Well, of course our service that competes with NetFlix is going to get preferential treatment" which is essentially the opposite of network neutrality.

I guess the solution was just to do it, and give everyone the finger in the process.

well exactly that is the reason why comcast has been in the news with their caps.
if they didn't have caps, then their preferential treatment of their own VOD service would go unnoticed.

I'm not bored enough to dig up a post of mine from a while back about the reason why isp's, both mobile and wired, are rolling out customers to transfer capped connections. all of them who are moving backwards to offerings like that are also companies who have ambitions or are already selling some streaming services of their own.. those services are usually voip and video. in this they're moving back to early 2000's - a shit load of mobile operators ran walled gardens back then from where external access cost boatloads of money and that was their original plan for 3g, to serve extremely shitty video services they could dictate to be the only alternative on their network - as they saw only $$$ selling small bits of data for large amounts of money after getting spoiled by getting 1-2$ per a shitty 20 second ringtone clip(or "just" 95 cents per sms transaction by allowing someone else to sell a ringtone to their subs with sms payment).

nationwide isp's selling direct to consumers who are also media owners is just a recipe for disaster for consumers!

Perceived?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is bilking.

  There is no justification beyond greed - just because "unlimited" didn't mean what they thought they meant doesn't mean they get to redefine the word. As an earlier /. article pointed out, they can't even accurately measure their bandwidth capacity, so there's no study-level data that network issues are realated to the heaviest users, any more than it's a spike in the volume of simultaneous users, or any other conjecture based cause of the minute. Easily applicable to the other market players as well.

Excuse me sir but those are contradictory actions

[ourlovecanlastforeve]

> Remove Data Cap

> Implement Tiered Pricing

Well, which is it?

Re:Almost, just one step forward half a step back.

[aurashift]

OP here, forgot to login. Doh.

Re:How can they complain?

[hack slash]

If I leave my connection downloading at full whack I go through about 45gb/day, thankfully I have no caps on my connection.

Re:How can they complain?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Here in rural Manitoba we get 7Mbps down / 768Kbps up for $46 + tax for a 60GB cap. Fucking sense of entitlement.

I realize it's fun to play songs on the hate parade when talking about Americans, but entitlement is not the word. At the next town over they can get unlimited service with a different provider. That's an issue of value, not entitlement.

Re:How can they complain?

[realityimpaired]

Actually, that speed/cap is pretty normal for Canada, regardless of whether you're rural or urban. A handful of resellers offer more reasonable caps, but most people either don't know they exist, or aren't in their coverage area.

Re:It's a weird issue

[dgatwood]

I personally don't really see the problem. You get charged based on how much electricity you use.

Yes, but they do not charge you a monthly fee for the privilege of getting further charged based on usage. Charge for the bandwidth used or charge an access fee. Not both.

The phone company used to do that. Now they're pretty much dumb pipes with flat long-distance fees in reaction to everybody leaving their service for flat-fee Internet-based services. This will eventually happen with ISPs, too, as soon as there is a sufficient disruptive technology. Some new tech will start to compete with those ISPs, and they'll be forced back to flat-rate services.

Watch your units

[Immerman]

Gb is gigabit, which is eight times smaller than the gigabyte (GB) you are presumably referring to. It's a common loophole used by most ISPs to oversell their services, for example 1Mb/s only equals 125kB/s.

Technically the prefix should always be G as well, though since g isn't a valid prefix it's still clear what you mean. I'm still waiting though for some marketing droid to realize that 1MB(megabyte) = 8,000,000,000mb (millibit) and start offering apparently massive speeds/capactiy/etc. Shoot, that old 14.4 modem delivers a whopping 14,400,000 mb/s download speed!

Boggles

[whisper_jeff]

As a Canadian, where 100GB data caps are insanely high and most run between 30 and 60-ish, the thought of having 250 or 300 GB to play with _PER MONTH_ boggles my mind. I literally don't know how I'd come close to tapping that out without making a concerted effort to do so. As it is, I typically run under 30-ish per month and I use the internet quite extensively. Ah, it amuses me how some people see a problem when others see glorious unlimited freedom...

(Not trying to be a smartass, though I often am one - I literally mean it - I truly don't know how I'd burn 300 GB a month)

Re:Boggles

[misexistentialist]

Welcome to 2006: movies can now be 50GB.

Re:Boggles

[whoop]

Simple, expand the users in your household. When you have a 2-3 people watching Netflix, Youtube, etc. daily, several hours a day, more hours on weekends, it adds up. My Comcast usage is showing 530-600GB a month for February through April.

Grown up problems I suppose, with being married and then having kids. If it's $10 per 50GB over 300, so that's $50 minimum on top of $45/month it currently costs. Using that much, they haven't even sent a threatening letter to me. The stories I've read of people getting cut off were from those uploading those sort of numbers.

I wonder if the business rates are still unlimited? When the 250GB cap was coming out, people talked about switching to a business line to get around it. For similar bandwidth (Speedtest.net shows 14Mbps down, 4 up), it would be $60/month (12M/2M). Or, for the $100 or more it would cost on residential service, I could get 22/5 business service, a markedly faster download connection.

Re:Boggles

[fnj]

Boggle on. You're not very imaginative. There probably should be a cheapo option for customers like you whose demands are so minuscule. For my part, I can easily get up dangerously close to 250 GB within HALF a month without half trying, and I then have to curtail my usage for the rest of the month.

I'm not even going to say what kind of stuff I do to pile up the GB. It's not particularly daring or esoteric. There are so many ways. Look, I've got a pipe that flows a sustained 2 MB/s - that's 120 MB/min, 7.2 GB/h, 172.8 GB/d, 5184 GB/mo. And you seriously think using an average of 4.8% of that capacity "boggles the mind"?

Re:Boggles

[gl4ss]

if you didn't have a cap between 30-60 you'd find plenty of uses.

perhaps streaming a landscape webcam. perhaps streaming hd video. perhaps torrenting hd video, perhaps you'd just like to have the freedom to forget a torrent on for a day.

the thing is, if you have caps, it's easy to show how most people use internet less than the caps, so you can justify lowering them. next year you can again show that most people use under the caps.

perhaps you'd like to collaborate on some media project that has 40 gigs of raw material to work with. or 100.

or perhaps you'd like to play with onlive.

Re:Boggles

[Roujo]

Canadian here, and I'm curious. What are you running that takes up a sustained 2 MB/s? I can't think of much that would be legal - unless you're hosting a high-traffic website/service on your residential connection - so I would be interested to know. =)

Re:Boggles

[phorm]

100GB?

In the west with Shaw I have:

50Mbps down, 3Mbps up, 400GB limit. @ $70/mo
or
20Mbps down, 512Kbps up, 200GB limit (ok the up kinda sucks) @ $55/mo

And yes, the 50Mbps seems fairly accurate. I've had 4-5 connections pulling around 2MB/s (16Mbps) each without tapping out my connection on the 50 plan, and 2-3 pulling around 1-1.5MB/s on the 20 plan

I don't download blu-ray rips or stuff like that, but I have had some large downloads going whilst Steam was simultaneously grabbing a bunch of games+updates at several MBPS each.

Re:Boggles

[fnj]

Apologies, but the premise is silly. "Legal" downloads use the same bandwidth as "illegal" ones. For the record, none of it is "illegal" and none of it violates Comcast TOS (which hosting on a residential line would do). It's essentially all down traffic.

Here's a hint. ftp'ing a single 4GB linux ISO from a decent server sustains 2 MBps for over half an hour.

I'm not going to spell out what I am doing because it's immaterial, but lots of things use lots of bandwidth: I *MIGHT* be doing any of these:
    Have a look at the various sections in archive.org and similar sites
    Downloading lots of linux DVD ISO images and other freeware to try out
    Backing up and restoring multiple hosts to/from the cloud
    Supporting remote servers
    Upgrading packages on multiple linux hosts
    Receiving email with gigantic attachments ("here is my kid's birthday video")
    Streaming half decent HD video
    Running remote desktops
    and so on and so on

And - gasp - you don't have to limit yourself to doing just one of these things at a time.

Re:Boggles

[Roujo]

True, those take a lot of bandwidth and I though of the Linux DVDs, but I didn't think you'd use all that stuff to the point of having a full-time, 24/7 pipe at 2 MB/s, which your calculations seemed to imply. I guess I was wrong. =)

"Legal" downloads use the same bandwidth as "illegal" ones.

While this is true, I was speaking more of the fact that complaining that the cap is ridiculously low would be hard to justify if most of that cap is used up with illegal downloads. If you're torrenting all the movies you can find, of course your cap is going to seem low, and IMO your ISP doesn't have to cater to your needs for a higher allocation of resources in that case. However, you have shown me that there can be users that legitimately need a higher cap, so I can understand it if you think 250 GB is small. Still, my whole household uses about 100 GB/month, so I'm impressed that you actually use that much.

Re:Not ideal, but in the ballpark

[squidflakes]

And of course their own movie on demand product is exempt from the bandwidth limits which is what makes the whole thing smell like bullshit. Why does it matter where the traffic is coming from? Its not like Comcast is getting charged more for anyone's NetFlix usage unless they make the choice to invest in bigger Tier 1 pipes.

Re:It's a weird issue

[MightyYar]

You get charged based on how much electricity you use..

A homeowner does, but businesses can get charged based on usage and time-of-day. Also, there is a direct correlation between burnt fuel and electrons. There is no such correlation between bits transferred and a consumable cost on Comcast's side.

Re:Another misleading title

[MightyYar]

I'd rather they cut me off (or throttle me) a la T-Mobile.

How bout this

[way2trivial]

I have a cable modem at home
I have one at work
1 mile apart and they are 4 hops apart..
before I got a commercial account at home, I was warned about the bandwidth
95% of which was backups from work to home
(I keep two NAS's synchronized)

would that be internal enough for you?

Re:How bout this

[zlives]

only if you are backing up your dvr with xfinity content...

Re:How bout this

[VortexCortex]

Bittorrent traffic can seek out closer peers... If only they weren't so retarded, they could use everyone's DRVs to reduce their server loads -- But that would require removing limits and acknowledging there's really no such thing as client or server at the link layer, and that P2P actually has non infringing uses.

Re:How can they complain?

[_KiTA_]

It is their right to petition service providers to give them better service. It is most assuredly their right, and perhaps even their duty, to use their money to speak for them in this matter. Welcome to capitalism, please learn how it works or shut up and die.

Except that doesn't work when there are only 1-2 providers in an area due to a Government supported monopoly on service. When your "using your money to speak for yourself" involves accepting their terms or going without, welp, that's not really a choice now, is it?

This is relevant to my interests

[jtownatpunk.net]

Comcast put me on probation last year. I move a lot of data. All non-commercial. I asked if there was a service plan that would allow me to move more data. The conversation went something like this:

"No."
"I'm willing to pay more money to be able to move more data."
"That isn't an option."
"What about business service? I know you also provide service to businesses and charge more for the SLA and heavy traffic."
"I don't have any information about the caps on business service plans but you can't change your plan or open a new account when you're on probation. In six months, you can inquire about business service."
"That's ridiculous. I didn't know there was any problem with my usage until 15 minutes ago. That's the first I heard that there was an issue. I'm offering to give you more money for a higher level of service. You're in business to sell the service I'm that I'm trying to buy. Why would you not want to take my money?"
"I'm sorry, sir, you cannot change your service while on probation. If you go over the 250 gig limit at any time while you're on probation, your account will be closed and you won't be able to open another account for 12 months."

It baffles me. If they'd offered me 50 gig chunks of data at $10, I would have taken it. It's not cheap but it's not outrageous and it's better than being banned from purchasing their services for a year. My only other options here are "up to" 3 meg DSL and satellite. Oh, and 3G cellular. Hell, they would have made a lot of money from me because I would have said, "Screw it, it's only another $10." Probably would have been paying an extra $20-40 every month.

Re:This is relevant to my interests

[misexistentialist]

You can transfer 1TB/month over 3mbit DSL...

Unregulated monopolies are abusive since the company doesn't have to win customers, but the customers actually have to beg for crumbs of the product. Not worth the time to offer extra services even for a higher price since almost unlimited profits can already be extracted with no effort.

Re:This is relevant to my interests

[jtownatpunk.net]

"Up to" 3mbit. Their range is 1.1-3mbps for $30/month with a 1 year contract. $35/month without contract. And that's way too slow to be streaming HD and other regular burst use at the same time I'm moving chunks of data so I'd still have to...want to...keep my cable service for interactive use. I wasn't expecting to be around more than a few months so I decided to just deal with Comcast's cap.

Re:This is relevant to my interests

[ModernGeek]

The entire idea of being put "on probation" by some random company is deplorable at best.

Internal my ISP

[deapbluesea]

I'm running smokeping on my home computer in order to show Comcast that their service actually does drop out at regular daily intervals and that it is not internal. The interesting trend that I see is in pinging the DNS servers. A ping to the comcast DNS server, presumably internal to their network, has a rtt of ~50ms. A ping to a Google server, presumably external to their network has a rtt of ~20ms. This has been consistent for about four months now. So how can they claim internal is easier?

Re:Slippery slope

[misexistentialist]

Yeah, there is no fun slip-and-slide slope where ISPs compete for the cheapest per GB pricing. Instead each local monopoly looks at what the others get away with and tries to screw its customers a little bit more. The government must regulate utility monopolies pricing. 1000% profit margins are unacceptable: tear down the wires!

Re:How can they complain?

[Anonymous Coward]

45GB/day? What's up, copyright violator. Please don't try to front that you're somehow possibly watching 45GB of Netflix Instant per day. Unless you're running a post-production house and sending raw video back and forth to your clients, but based on how you phrased that comment, I'm going to go with no.

I like that change

[Zebai]

I usually have to make extra effort to stay under 250, i think i would be very comfortable with around 275-300 so them changing the base cap to 300 and allowing me to pay for more I have no problem with. I use data a lot more than the average user i'm willing to pay extra now and then for more but the current policy is an outright service termination if you frequently go over I would rather pay an extra $10 every few months than worry about them turning me off.

Re:I like that change

[aaronb1138]

That is a completely stupid way to look at it. It is the same thing a lot of people said with caps first came to cell phones. I don't use half of that cap today, so it will be just fine.

How ignorant do you have to be to see you may well be using 500-600 GB / month in 12-18 months. Look at the change in average usage from 3 years ago to today. Did you just completely skip past reading the post halfway further up the page about 600 MB caps in 2009 or the change from 1.5 GB / month average from around the same time to nearly 50 GB / month average now.

Shortsighted fools like you are why they are able to pull this shit. Stop being a dumb consumer.

Caps would only be reasonable if they incremented automatically on a set scale that matched usage. In other words, if ~50 GB / month is average, then the cap should stay a quarterly rolling average of 6x average usage, their 300 GB number (frankly 8-10x average seems more fair due to large scale disparities in use). If a year later, average usage was 150 GB, then the cap should be 900 GB. This would maintain competitive use by emerging technologies, i.e., Netflix, Prime, etc.

Re:I like that change

[cpghost]

Caps would only be reasonable if they incremented automatically on a set scale that matched usage.

This would only work if the telcos upgraded the total bandwidth of their backbones at least as fast as demand grows. However, this won't happen (new transmission tech grows discretely, not linearly; extending trunks can be pretty expensive; non-transit traffic to other tier-1 backbones is not fee...), so caps won't grow as fast.

Re:How can they complain?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why we can't have nice things.

I don't consider myself a heavy downloader

[Greyfox]

But lately most of my games have been digital downloads and some of those can get pretty hefty. I probably went up over 100gb a couple months ago just installing stuff and downloading patches on a new computer.

Of course, my town just got permission to lease out its dark fiber and otherwise use it for commercial purposes in the last election, so I'm just waiting for them to come up with a plan to offer fiber to all the houses in town. It's not like I have any particular brand loyalty to Comcast.

Re:Where's the economics?

[jtownatpunk.net]

Last I checked, Comcast's rate for a la carte internet service started at $60/month at the lowest speed tier. The only way to get it lower is to catch a promotional or package price. Yes, you can get it cheaper but it'll either be a temporary price or require bundling of services, sometimes with a minimum commitment and often the price goes up after 6-12 months. So they're charging "full retail" for additional blocks of data.

perceived bilking?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

"will they once again balk at a perceived bilking?""

No, they will balk at getting fucked like they have been getting fucked by Comcast and the rest of them as usual. There's no "perceiving" involved. It's just a dag blasted fact.

Re:Not ideal, but in the ballpark

[tsotha]

Is Comcast's connection to the rest of the internet insensitive to data volume? My impression was that it isn't.

Re:It's a weird issue

[tsotha]

Yes, but they do not charge you a monthly fee for the privilege of getting further charged based on usage.

Really? Every utility that comes to my house has a minimum fee. Most of them break it out as a separate "provide service" line on the bill, and the ones that don't charge a fixed amount for the fist 0-x kWh (or whatever they're selling), which amounts to exactly the same thing. In fact, if Comcast goes to this model they'll be matching exactly the pricing model in my area for water, gas, electricity, and land line phone. The only one that is purely fixed price is sewage.

Tier *trials*, cap removed elsewhere

[abrotman]

The article doesn't say they're definitely implementing tiered pricing for everyone, they're trying it in a few markets.. In markets where tiered pricing is not being trialed, the caps are completely removed.

http://blog.comcast.com/2012/05/comcast-to-replace-usage-cap-with-improved-data-usage-management-approaches.html

Re:Tier *trials*, cap removed elsewhere

[DanielRavenNest]

Not completely removed, they are just suspending enforcement, but still contacting a few very heavy users.

So

[rsilvergun]

is it time to start talking about them losing their monopoly? How about we pull those tax subsidies? You didn't actually think _they_ were paying for those network upgrades did you (as opposed to the tax payer)?

For the record, I'm a socialist in favor of heavily subsidized communications. I don't see any value Comcast adds to human discourse, or any reason why we shouldn't just treat communication as a basic need on par with water and electricity and just give it over to the municipalities.

Internal is cheaper

[Vrtigo1]

Your comment makes no sense, and I'll explain why in really simple terms.

Let's say you have a network in your house. You and two roommates each have a PC. On each PC there are various files such as music, videos, etc that are shared on the network. Each person can access the files on all of the computers across the network and it's all free because when you build the house you ran your own network lines and installed a switch. But one day one of the roommates gets bored with the music and videos because he's already heard/seen them all and decides he would like to connect to other computers, outside the house. Now you have to buy an Internet connection because the content he wants to access is not located on your network.

So now you've got cost associated with getting the content you want. As the type of content being accessed went from mp3 to avi to mkv files, the filesizes also rose and you needed to add more bandwidth, so your costs went up. So I think this clearly indicates how internal content is cheaper - you don't have to pay anyone for access to other networks to get it.

Everyone gives comcast and other ISPs a ration of shit for exempting their own services from bandwidth caps, but there really is a solid justification behind doing so - ASSUMING that all internal content would be treated the same way. Since there isn't an easy way for Comcast to measure your data usage at the edge of their network instead of at your CPE I kind of understand them not exempting all internal content but it's still kinda shitty that they don't.

$232.49/month for phone-tv-internet is not enough?

[kelk1]

xfinity bundled (digital premier) services 209.95 additional xfinity internet services (modem) 7.00 additional xfinity voice services (mandatory taxes) 1.60 service protection plan 2.99 taxes, surcharges and fees 10.95 It is my only possible internet provider, and the only shows I occasionally watch are on these premier channels satturated with crappy soft porn. Seriously, that is a lot of money to get internet and occasionally watch a football or a tennis game. $10 for 50GB really is a rip-off at this point.
Only because they have a monopoly can they charge this much for their services _and_ the upload speed is still capped at a 100KB when I am lucky, so forget hosting anything.
Only positive point: customer service has improved a lot in the last 5,6 years.
I tried AT&T, but their service is the worst I have ever experienced, from cell phones data to dsl.
Sometimes I really wish I could teleport to Seoul...

Re:$232.49/month for phone-tv-internet is not enou

[kelk1]

s/satturated/saturated/
s/at a/at/ Sorry.

I wish I wasn't so envious

[twistofsin]

Speaking as someone who's house uses a lot of Netflix and little pirating 300 GB is a reasonable cap for today's standards.

I have 50mb from our local cable provider but have paid as much as $100 in overages when I've broke our ridiculious 100 GB cap. I hit 300 GB that month. It's only getting worse as I'm getting my parents, in there 60's, comfortable with VOD services.

We have 2 Roku 2s and a Logitech Revue, 8 PCs, phones, game consoles, the toaster mom had to buy from QVC might have requested an IP I'm not sure. My DSL provider only does 1.5mb in this area so I am grateful just to have a connection that supports this load even for the price I pay. But damn I'd love to have a 300 GB cap and would glady pay just $10 for each extra 50 GB.

Streaming video

[Craig Ringer]

USians who whine about this appear to be heavy users of HD video streaming (!!) via Netflix and other mostly USA-only services. The US just has a whole bunch of bandwidth hungry services the rest of us poor peons aren't allowed to use.

Re:Streaming video

[adolf]

I don't want to be snide, but I'm going to be anyway: We USians lack a lot of things that many other countries take for granted.

I have fairly cheap bandwidth and a wide array of inexpensive streaming services to use it with (my peak usage in a month was something like 480GB), but at the same time I do very much wish that I could afford to see a dentist about the molar I broke a couple of weeks ago.

It's all tradeoffs.

I'd rather have decent, socialized healthcare and a tooth pulled (I won't miss it much, though fixing it would be preferred) and expensive bandwidth, than perform home dentistry (150 grit sandpaper takes the knife-edge off of a broken tooth nicely, FYI) and have Netflix.

YMMV.

Re:Streaming video

[Sosarian Avatar]

Look up where the dental schools are in your area/state -- they usually offer heavily discounted care in exchange for letting already-trained students to practice under supervision, and they might also pay you to be used in the final exam. I've been going to one near me, and while it varies, they seem to charge from 1/4 to 1/2 the normal rate in our area for their various services.

If there isn't a dental school that you can reach, look up where the public clinics & county health services are at in your area; they sometimes include dental care and charge at a sliding-scale based on what you can afford to pay.

Hope you manage to get care soon... I learned the hard way after breaking one of my molars that often the break actually happens because the tooth has become fragile due to a severe cavity being present, and if it's not treated/removed, you can end up with a very nasty or dangerous infection. (I luckily avoided infection, but got told off by the student that rebuilt the tooth for me -- which thankfully didn't cost more than a normal filling.)

Re:Streaming video

[Craig Ringer]

First, sandpaper: ogodogodogod. What a way to make your point.

Good luck. I'm quite happy with the healthcare over the bandwidth myself, for what it's worth. Australia is working hard to destroy our social health care at the moment, though :-(

I'm predicting that tiered pricing...

[unixisc]

...far from being accepted on the cable/DSL internet, will disappear even from cellular services

right thing to do

[khipu]

Having been at the end of an at-times overloaded cable Internet connection, I think this is the right thing to do: cost to the company is roughly proportional to how much data you actually use, and excessive peak use degrades the experience for other customers. Data caps or usage-based pricing are the right way to go. The price for extra volume is a bit high for the data itself, but seems OK if their goal is to discourage very high usages. They might want to introduce on-peak and off-peak pricing, encouraging people to move large amounts of data during off-peak hours.

Re:right thing to do

[aaronb1138]

I never understand this. They have all the usage data, day after day, week after week. From an enterprise or utility level standpoint, they have ALL of the necessary infrastructure to implement rate control at the consumer site (DOCSIS v. whatever) and give everyone on a saturated segment equal or proportional reduced bandwidth, such that at least basic service levels would be available at 100% functionality. Plus bandwidth rationing would help to identify more clearly how much more bandwidth is needed for infrastructure improvements as well as massively improve the operation of the whole network during such times.

I'm sure in California if they could avoid rolling blackouts and instead use the power meter to throttle your amperage such that you had to pick between running the A/C or the combination of refrigerator + TV + vacuum + lights, that not only would most consumers be much safer and happier, but more interested in conservative technologies. Nobody sees the point of LED light bulbs in their home if the power is going to get pulled anyway. On the other hand, if you were restricted for the same period of time, you might actually find it worthwhile to invest in a new A/C that was double the efficiency of the old unit and put in a few LED lights.

I know that people as a society are too stupid to figure these things out, but the experts should be able to see all of this pretty clearly and come up with smarter solutions.

The only issue that such bandwidth rationing causing would be a data source demonstrating the degree to which resources are distributed unequally. In many cases I suspect that the cable companies would abuse lower income neighborhoods by rationing bandwidth almost all day, etc, without oversight.

Lastly, your statement that their costs are roughly proportional to use is exceptionally wrong with respect to internet traffic. Their costs are exclusively proportional to number of customers per a given area of land and infrastructure and engineering requirements to serve that parcel. Costs for operating an ISP do not scale in a remotely linear or similar fashion with bandwidth provided. Also technological upgrades at the backhaul side yield massive costs shifts that the consumer does not see. Such upgrades are insignificant compared to the original infrastructure.

As a slight over simplification, consider the following. Imagine that the fiber optic backhaul for an area was only using 20 frequencies of light, each at a rate of 1 MB/s, so the site had 20 MB/s of bandwidth. Two years later, a new transceiver comes out that can use 40 frequencies at 5 MB/s each. Laying lines and building site infrastructure was 100x the cost of the new transceiver board. For essentially 1% additional cost, they have upgraded by 10x their bandwidth. The argument that improving the speed of the infrastructure costs oodles more is only a result of the fact that sometimes the technology bumps are not in serialization due to stagnation, but instead requires parallelization which does require "more" infrastructure, but not by the amount you think.

Re:right thing to do

[khipu]

They have all the usage data, day after day, week after week. From an enterprise or utility level standpoint, they have ALL of the necessary infrastructure to implement rate control at the consumer site (DOCSIS v. whatever) and give everyone on a saturated segment equal or proportional reduced bandwidth, such that at least basic service levels would be available at 100% functionality.

I really don't want them to implement that kind of fine-grained control over my usage, in particular when something as simple as volume pricing gets the job done. I think in order to smooth out peak usage, they should have peak and off-peak pricing.

Nobody sees the point of LED light bulbs in their home if the power is going to get pulled anyway. On the other hand, if you were restricted for the same period of time, you might actually find it worthwhile to invest in a new A/C that was double the efficiency of the old unit and put in a few LED lights. I know that people as a society are too stupid to figure these things out, but the experts should be able to see all of this pretty clearly and come up with smarter solutions.

Ah, yes, the marvels of central planning by experts. That has worked so well.

As a slight over simplification, consider the following. Imagine that the fiber optic backhaul for an area was only using 20 frequencies of light, each at a rate of 1 MB/s, so the site had 20 MB/s of bandwidth. Two years later, a new transceiver comes out that can use 40 frequencies at 5 MB/s each. Laying lines and building site infrastructure was 100x the cost of the new transceiver board. For essentially 1% additional cost, they have upgraded by 10x their bandwidth.

Yes, bandwidth gets cheaper over time, but that's besides the point. At any given point in time, bandwidth is primarily limited by compute power: you want to move twice as many bits per second to existing customers, you mainly need twice as much CPU power, and that costs about twice as much in new hardware (if you don't have unused CPU sitting idle).

Not only that

[Sycraft-fu]

I have seen more than a couple services in the EU that are more like giant corporate LANs. What I mean is they give you big bandwidth from you to them, but they don't have the backhaul to sustain it further away. So you get high speeds to others on the same ISP, and to anyone they have some peering with, but try to get something from EC2 and it is not so fast.

You can see this in speedtests too. When I do a speedtest on my line, I pick servers in another state usually. I rarely test anything closer than 300 miles away. There is no speedtest server run by my ISP at all, so I'm always going out on the net. Then you see these ultra-high results posted from someone in Europe and it says something like "server 50 km". They are using a speedtest server in the same city as them, on the same ISP as them. Ok fine, but that says only what you get to your ISP, not to the net at large.

Once thing I'll give my Cox cable connection despite any faults is I get what I pay for. They say 20mbits down, and I get 2.5MB/sec when I download from Steam, Gamestop, Amazon, etc. There are slow servers out there where I get less, but any time I'm on something that has good infrastructure on their end, I get my rated speed.

Thing is the people who use those ISPs often don't even realize it. A couple years ago I remember someone on Slashdot from Japan telling me how awesome their 100mbit Internet was, how they could download a CD in a little under 10 minutes. I had to tell them that is 10mbit speeds, not 100mbit, and I could do the same on my at the time 10mbit cable line. The net was fast for them, they'd never bothered to do the math and see that it was about 10% of rated total speed.

Agreed

[Sycraft-fu]

I think tiered pricing is needed because some people want to use a lot of bandwidth but you can't have a high speed, tons of bandwidth, and a low price all in one. So let people who want a high speed but only to use it a little pay less than those of us who want a high speed and want to use it a lot.

However their charges are stupid, particularly when you look at business class line costs. Business class lines don't have limits, I have one and that is one of the reasons (static IPs and better support are the others). Well, compare the prices between consumer and business lines, and work out the data differences, and that should give you a per GB cost.

For home service they have a tier at 22/5 for $65/month. That has a 250GB usage limit on it (apparently somewhat of a soft cap, if you go a bit over they don't care and they'll call you before doing anything). For full on business Internet they have a 25/4 tier for $200/month. I have home office Internet which costs less, $100/month for 20/4, and does not have a cap, but we'll use their full business Internet as the target as they expect heavy usage there. So on the 25/4 plan you can use a theoretical max of about 7,900GB/month.

Well, let's use the difference to give us a fee. $135/month buys you 7,650 more GB per month. That works out to $0.018 per GB. I'd say it is reasonable to double that, since ala carte does cost more (as they aren't guaranteed the cashflow) and we can do it in bigger increments, say 100GB. So $3.50 for 100GB, we'll just round it up to $4. Sounds fair to me. You exceed your quota, they sell you another 100GB for $4.

Then, if you call and complain, they should offer you the upsell. "Oh you don't like the possibility of extra charges? Well we have professional Internet, without the limits, for just $X per month, would you care to upgrade?" Rather than selling it as "home office" Internet (that's what I have) and making you talk to a different division, and having it on a different bill from cable, make it the pro version. Sell it to people who want moar net (or the features like static IPs). They'd make more money because you'd have people who paid $73 for 500GB of use, freaked out, and then agreed to pay $100/month to not have that happen.

I'm on board with ISPs wanting to charge based on what you want to use, they are just bone headed about it. The tiered pricing they are talking about is stupidly expensive and the companies are stupid about upselling services. If I talk to Cox residential they have no idea about static IPs or removed bandwidth limits and so on. They don't even seem to think to refer you to the business division. You have to research it yourself and then talk to them.

I've been advocating business grade Internet to geeks for years because I all kinds of love mine. I have two servers in my broom closet (my brooms live in the pantry now), a public static IP for my desktop and another for my router that handles my laptop, TV, and so on. It is great and not too bad price wise ($115 all said and done). However they sure as hell didn't market it to me, I had to find it. Even after that I'd get calls from their residential division sometimes trying to market me Internet (for awhile I had residential TV, and business Internet, now I don't have TV, just Netlfix). They couldn't even see I had a business account.

Very stupid and counter productive to making money.

Re:$232.49/month for phone-tv-internet is not enou

[khipu]

The $10/50GB is intended to discourage you from going over the 300GB so that all their customers have a decent experience. Otherwise, a few high volume users cause them to lose lots of low volume users.

Well two ways

[Sycraft-fu]

The easy way, and the way that many complainy pants types do it is torrents. If you are a torrent head that likes to pirate everything you come across, 300GB is something you can do in a couple days. There are more of those than will admit it around here. They love the torrenting of shit and that does it.

However a perfectly possible way is if you have a family, or multiple roommates, and you all partake in streaming TV/movies and downloadable games. If you have a look on Steam, a game download is in the realm of 4-25GB these days for a "AAA game", meaning a big budget title like you get at the store. So knock a couple of those on to a couple of computers and you've gobbled up a decent bit of bandwidth. Then you take something like Netflix. For their high video quality it is about 2.3GB/hour of HD video. Watch just an hour a day and you've done 70GB and that is presuming only one one TV going, and then only for an hour. Then of course surfing, e-mail, Youtube, all that takes some.

So with a few people going at it, wouldn't be too hard to hit. In fact on account of data caps, Netflix lets you turn your quality down in your settings. That's fine and all but it doesn't look as good when you do, it isn't a no-loss tradeoff.

300GB isn't a horrible cap, but it is something a regular family could hit if they do streaming video a lot and are in to computers.

YMWV

[Sycraft-fu]

(Your Mileage Wouldn't Vary), at least not in Canada. Dental isn't covered, neither is vision. You pay up front like in the US, or get some kind of private insurance. I haven't looked in to dental costs, but vision costs are more than the US, my mom likes to get her glasses and contacts when she comes to visit.

Canada isn't the land of milk and honey with regards to medical insurance. What you get depends on the province you are in (and it doesn't transfer in the way you might think it does) and it is basically traditional healthcare, as in general and urgent care. You get in an accident, the ER visit it covered. You need to see a doctor for an illness, the visit it covered. You need dental work? You pay for that. You need a prescription? You pay for that.

I'm not criticizing it or trying to claim the US is better, just that people need to stop with the idea that in Canada everyone gets all their healthcare for nothing out of pocket. Not so much, actually.

Re:YMWV

[adolf]

Well, the tooth thing is a minor problem. It doesn't hurt at all, and it can be dealt with (paid for) eventually. It's just a few hundred bucks that I don't have right now (and I'm not complaining about this particular cost -- it takes time for a small crew of skilled professionals to deal with a broken tooth, no matter the approach, and they need to eat too.)

It's interesting that vision costs more in Canada. Do you mean examinations, or lenses, or both?

Meanwhile, I also understand (from my perspective as a USian) that many drugs are cheaper there and that more of them are available over-the-counter. Drysol, for instance: I need it to keep my feet from literally rotting and will continue to need it indefinitely, but my choices are that I can either pay to see the doctor once a year and get a script for it, or just buy it from Canada where anyone can pick it up the store.

So, contrary to who-knows-how-many laws, I order Drysol from Canada. And a very allergic friend of mine orders a certain expectorant in bulk powder form from Canada and stuffs his own capsules, because he says he can't get it here at all.

But the $640,000 question is this: If Joe the Bum gets cancer in Canada, is he reasonably taken care of or is he shown the door? In the States, a hospital is only required to provide basic stabilizing treatment and/or transfer to another facility, which is almost certainly inadequate for treatment of a long-term illness. And even then, the facility is expected to eat that cost themselves when the patient can't/doesn't pay. (Read: "Unfunded mandate.")

So it works like this: I can go to the ER after an accident, they'll patch me up as good as they can, and send me home with a bill. I can ignore the bill, happen into another accident, and they'll do the same thing. Unquestionably. Rinse and repeat, and they'll just keep on with the "basic stabilizing care."

Which, you know, might be good enough. But accordingly, our hospitals are very expensive for those of us who "can" pay: Think $6,000-per-night expensive for a saline drip, some ibuprofen, and "observation" (which seems to really mean "a call button that gets ignored").

And those families who suffer such a fate end up being totally fucked in terms of their credit rating.

"Congrats, Jones Family! Due to Dad's recent spat with Mono, your credit will be so fucked that not only will you have to stay in your existing house forever, but nobody will even rent you a decent apartment if you decide it's time to move on! And good luck getting a cell phone!"

I've had better, more effective, and more prompt service from a shitty $39-per-night motel (with some tips) and a few bottles of Gatorade, but I still owe the hospital damned near a decade later for having mono.

Back to the topic: I enjoy the hell out of my cheap unmetered 12/1.5Mbps pipe in small-town Ohio, and Netflix et. al are certainly very cool, but I'd much rather have some semblance of healthcare for myself and my peers. IMHO. YMMV.

Re:YMWV

[Sycraft-fu]

Lenses and contacts. Exams seem about the same, like $70ish dollars or something. It is the material that costs more. A lot more in many cases. Mom said contacts were double the price, at least for the ones she was looking at.

Canadian chronic care is variable. If your premiums are current (through your employment and taxes, it isn't completely automatic or anything and doesn't cross through provenience like you might think) you get chronic care, but the quality and availability of it varies. For cancer I don't know, I haven't looked din to it much. My grandma died of cancer, but like 2 decades ago and she was a nurse so that lead to good care at the hospital regardless, but the cancer got so bad because her GP doctor ignored the symptoms and said it was nothing for a few years.

It falls down real big on quality of life care. You can literally wait a decade for things like a hip replacement. There was a SC case not long ago on it so maybe changes will be coming. The SC ruled that just saying care is available but making people wait years was the same as denying it. That part is really bad right now, and one of the reasons my parents maintain US health coverage, so they can come and use it if needed.

Like any system it has good and bad points. There are things in the Canadian system that are very good. Critical care is in the same area as US critical care, but of course you don't get nailed with a massive debt for it. Chronic care is an area that they fall down on more. Vision is a major area they fall down on.

I am not hating on the Canadian system, I just want people to understand more about it. My perception is that many Americans think it is great: Doesn't cost much and everyone gets all the wonderful care they need for no out of pocket cost. It has flaws, I've seen them (I hold dual citizenships). There are plenty of arguments that their flaws are better than ours, however the idea that there aren't is the problem.

Re:How can they complain?

[Cyberax]

I pay $10 for unlimited symmetric 100Mb with real static IP address. Poor Americans.

In Australia we did just this

[thegarbz]

For a while there were a lot of ISPs which not only didn't meter internal traffic, but also some common Australia peers like Pipe networks. A lot of private bittorrent trackers popped up which only allowed users from those networks and they were surprisingly popular, and fast to boot.

A lot of peers also included educational institutions. This was a godsend back when the monopolising bastards in our country decided to cap our unlimited plans at 3GB. Linux ISOs were available from Aarnet mirrors, and the monopolising bastards at least maintained a server which provided updates to popular games. Though I'm not sure that would work in the Steam age.

Anyway all that wasn't enough to stop our regulator from hammering down on them and forcing them to open their networks.

Re:How can they complain?

[worf_mo]

Where is the +1 Enviable tag when you need it!

Looks like a good deal

[Barefoot Monkey]

Unfortunately I can't find any mention of the basic price of the service in the article, but 300GB is a huge cap and $10 for a 50GB top-up is next to nothing. I wish I could get a deal like that.

Seems like an improvement to me

[flibbidyfloo]

OK wait, they are *raising* their cap from 250GB to 300GB, and then allowing you to pay a little more when you go over, as opposed to threatening to cut you off, and people are complaining? It may not be nirvana, but it sounds like an improvement to me.

We stream Netflix and download torrents all the time and so far haven't popped the 250GB cap, so I guess we're a "typical" household. I guess this won't affect me until Netflix upgrades to 1080p streaming. Oh but wait, my Rokus are both connected to 720p TVs, so I wouldn't use that anyway.

Look, I'm no Comcast supporter. I wish we had another option for high-speed internet here, but DSL just doesn't cut it with my need for speed. And if they didn't screw you with their internet-only pricing, I wouldn't have their TV service at all. But it seems like they are at least trying to improve the offering.

When I saw the headline about tiered pricing I was afraid they were going to be cutting the default cap or something. Instead this sounds like good news.

Re:Seems like an improvement to me

[aaronb1138]

It would be vastly better for the market and Comcast customers in particular if the cap stayed the same as usage increases. Eventually "average" users would be reporting the threats and garbage frequently enough for the FCC to take notice and tell Comcast to STFU and step in.

They are introducing a relatively high cap today, with seemingly reasonable terms. In less than 3 years, they will have the same terms and it will be a complete consumer disaster.

First they came for the cell phone data usage, and I said nothing because I did not use mobile data. Then they came for the Comcast users, and I did not speak because I didn't use cable. Now that they have come for my DSL usage cap, there is no one left to speak for me.

Re:How can they complain?

[bkcallahan]

Here in Portland, OR we get 25Mbps/25Mbps for $35. (35/35 for $45 if I chose). FIOS ftw.

"Progress"

[gottabeme]

Consider yourself lucky. Where I live, AT&T DSL added a 150 GB data cap and just raised the rate by $3 a month, without increasing speed. I've been here 5 years, and service has decreased while price has increased! The only alternative is the local cable company, which wants $70 a month and won't sell Internet access without cable TV.

Today I called them to complain. They transferred me from El Paso to Pennsylvania to the retention department. The girl in El Paso was very nice; the girl in PA sounded worn out. But she gave me a 33% discount for a year, for no reason other than that I called and someone transferred me to her.

This tells me that they are clearly overcharging everyone. Fewer bytes + more money = ripoff. But they have a virtual monopoly, so they can do whatever they want. My choices are between the lesser of two ripoffs, or no Internet at all.

Oh, and I called city hall and asked to talk to someone about dissatisfaction with the phone utility. I was told that the phone company is not a utility but a "business." (They're the only phone company! Since when is the phone company not a utility?!) Even though AT&T has a business license from the city, they can do whatever they want without oversight.

Sometimes I wonder if the comments about the golden age of the Internet being over are true. Is it really all downhill from here? So much for technological progress.