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Comcast Predicts Usage Cap Within 5 Years
finalcutmonstar (1862890) writes "With net neutrality dying a slow painful death, it is no surprise that in an investor call yesterday Comcast executive VP(and Darth Vader impersonator) David Cohen predicts bandwidth caps within the next 5 years. The cap would start at 300 GB and cost the customer subscriber an extra 10 USD for 50 GB. But, Cohen stated that 'I would also predict that the vast majority of our customers would never be caught in the buying the additional buckets of usage, that we will always want to say the basic level of usage at a sufficiently high level that the vast majority of our customers are not implicated by the usage-based billing plan.'" Update: 05/15 13:58 GMT by T : Correction: Cohen is actually talking about data transferred, rather than stored (as headline originally had it), as reader MAXOMENOS points out.
Nice network you have there, it would be a shame if something happened to it...
Headline: "Comcast predicts storage cap"
Story in a nutshell: Comcast exec predicts bandwidth cap.
WTF?
Finding God in a Dog
I suspect this has less to do with prediction, and more to do with prescription. As in, they want to set up the expectations that will guide the perceptions of the public and of policymakers in regards to what is a "reasonable" amount of bandwidth to be consuming, in order to justify their ridiculous overage charges.
Its not so bad as long as you can keep the fear from your mind.
The cap would start at 300 GB and cost the customer subscriber an extra 10 USD for 50 GB.
And I bet that the cap would proceed to move down to 250 GB and so on. USA is the only country where internet access quality is actually moving in reverse.
that is how long it takes with LTE on max speed to reach the cap.
Those who regulate their telephone sector strongly, and those who don't. The US is in the latter category, and the majority are going to suffer for it. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not in the US. I feel for you guys.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
How long until we hear that?
Caps will definitely come. Not because they are "needed to help manage network congestion" or some other reason that the ISPs will trot out. They'll come for four simple reasons.
1) Video over the Internet threatens their own video services. Caps help make Internet video more expensive (via overage fees) and will help drive people away from Internet video.
2) Even if people use Internet video, the ISPs will get more money and they can never resist the smell of money.
3) The ISPs have monopolies (or near monopolies) in their service areas so they can do whatever they want and the public needs to take it.
4) They are big and powerful enough that they will make sure they have enough politicians "donated to" to prevent any government action against them.
Of course, they will keep on trotting out the "small group of users is slowing everyone's speeds down and caps will make them pay their fair share" line to justify the caps. The real cause of any slowdown will be because they take their profits and don't reinvest them into upgrading their networks. After all, why upgrade? It's not like there are any competitors to beat in the market or any government officials with backbone to pressure them into speeding up connections.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Comcast sent me an email late last year saying they would change my data usage agreement to the above.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
With the rise of Google Fiber and increasing usage via legitimate services such as Netflix online (not to mention what happens when 4K kicks in, arguably within 5 years?), HULU, and HD video conferencing, this prediction looks to be terribly off-base.
No, no. This is just some idiot CEO for an awful company completely misunderstanding the nature of his own business and making and horribly inaccurate and hamfisted prediction.
Then again, he probably makes 500 times what I make, so I guess he must be doing something right!
I predict in 5 years ill have a laundry list of null routes for various advertising providers and comcast hardware. I'll torrent every show and every song because to listen to them again on pandora will put me over my 'cap.' I'll have constructed a cantenna out of an array of garbage cans strapped to the roof of my house and have an army of ASIC hardware working round the clock to crack every WPA and WEP AP i see.
Oh, and I'll switch to dryline DSL and robocall every politician in my state asking for municipal high speed fiber. I and everyone youve ever infuriated with deep packet traffic shaping 'its comcastic' advertising blitzkreig will petition our government to bury you as we boycott your shit-tier service.
Good people go to bed earlier.
They just refuse to tell anyone what it is, or give you any warning that you have violated it before they disconnect you.
The thing that is most amusing about these people is that, out of one side of their mouths they whine about how they don't have the capacity to give everyone truly unlimited Internet like they advertise, but out of the other side they have as much as anyone is willing to pay for, with no limit.
It really is time to label Internet service as a public utility and place it under proper regulation.
When I canceled my Comcast subscription due to the cap, the person handling the call explicitly told me there was no legitimate reason for that kind of usage so I must be a pirate. When I tried to politely explain that my Netflix usage exceeded that, I was again told there was not legitimate reason for the kind of usage.
So true... and they'll ignore the obvious stuff like Netflix, Steam, and the other modern e-business models that have greatly increased our average monthly bandwidth. I'm in Canada and I got tired of paying Rogers (AT&T) $68 a month for a 120GB cap, only to habitually over-step that line (I'm a habitual line-stepper, as Charlie Murphy would say) and get charged up to $100 more - thankfully laws prevent them from charging any more than $100 extra per month, but that's still $168 in a month just for internet. I've recently switched to Acanac where I'm paying less than $50 for the same speeds with no cap. Hopefully US customers will be able to find smaller/independant ISPs that offer something similar... switching away from the big guys when they make stupid moves like this is the only way to ge the message across - vote with your dollar! Don't be shy to sign online petitions and send out emails to politians on the upcoming bill they have to vote on, too.
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77 77 77 2e 6d 65 6c 76 69 6e 73 2e 63 6f 6d
I already have a 300GB cap with Comcast. I am in one of their 'test' markets. His numbers stated are the correct numbers. $10 for every additional 50GB..
I often upload and download a lot for work purposes and I have 5 people on many internet connected devices at home so we almost always go over.
The problem is we do not have any viable alternative in my area :(
Usage caps (not storage caps) have absolutely ZERO to do with net neutrality. First off, they're explicitly allowed under the rules that the FCC tried to put in place, that were recently shot down by the courts. Secondly, even if the FCC were to reclassify broadband under Title II (i.e. as a telecom service), as a lot of tech companies want them to, they'd STILL be allowed. Voice phone service, which has long been regulated on the same terms that many want the FCC to use for broadband, certainly allows for usage caps, always has.
Have you seen what has happened because of the Google Fiber rollout? Here in Austin, you have AT&T scrambling to match the offer after the mere ANNOUNCEMENT by Google that they intended to offer service, and now there's a local ISP called Grande doing the same (although they already had a few fiber rings around the city to service their business customers, so their entry into the fight was a simple choice). That's right, with nothing other than a statement of intent, we have a virtual land race for uncapped near-gigabit internet for under $80 a month. If that's not competitive economics at work, I don't know what is.
Thing is, Comcast is so insanely profitable they have no need to 'recoup their revenue'. They do not have some magic entitlement to such profits, esp when they get them in part by promising service levels they can not actually provide.
The only thing I don't like about Google fibre from what I've seen is the pricing. Putting it at $80 a month makes it unaffordable for many of the low income homes. They have a lower speed option which I believe is only 5Mbit, which is actually decent, if you can find the money for the upfront costs. This seems to vary by location. It would be nice if they offered something in the middle for around $20-$30 a month which had a better amount of bandwidth, like 20 or 30 Mbit. Although I suspect if they did that, most people wouldn't pay for the Gigabit option, as almost no home user needs that kind of speed.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
They tried billing per simultaneous IP address a long time ago; the response to that was network address translation (NAT) boxes. ISPs would see only one computer, made by Linksys, NETGEAR, D-Link, etc. In order to truly bill per device, they'd need to employ even deeper packet inspection than they already do, including things like requiring installation of its TLS MITM's root certificate or requiring use of Trusted Network Connect (which gives the ISP administrative rights to your PC and locks out home use of free software operating systems). This is why your "modest proposal" won't work.
Thing is, Comcast is so insanely profitable they have no need to 'recoup their revenue'. They do not have some magic entitlement to such profits, esp when they get them in part by promising service levels they can not actually provide.
You know what's better than insane profits? More insane profits. And unlike data, there's no profit cap.
I am not a crackpot.
In two months, I'm moving to a new home that has both Comcast and FiOS available. At that point, my cable modem will go live in a cardboard box until I move again.
While I don't believe for a second that Verizon won't jump on the data cap bandwagon once everyone else is doing it, they haven't spent the last few years pushing data caps onto their customers.
The problem is that home users aren't willing to pay for a a guaranteed speed, unlimited usage line which is how the ISPs actually pay for their bandwidth, and how datacenters pay for their bandwidth. What they really want is a high speed line that is only in use for a few hours a day, and for the rest of the day is completely dormant. This is because most of the bandwidth is consumed using streaming services, and everybody is home during the same time. The 95th percentile doesn't really work for home users, because they still want a high speed connection for 3 or 4 hours a day, which is way outside the 95th percentile. You can either have slow connections with unlimited bandwidth, or fast connections with a bandwidth cap. They won't sell you a fast connection with no cap, because there's no way to limit how much usage the customer will consume. On a 30 Mbit connection, you can download over 7 Terabytes of data in a month if you used it constantly. They don't want users taking advantage, but they want to be able to give users a reasonable speed so they can stream a couple movies at the same time if they want.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
In Kansas City Google will give you a free 5 Mbps connection. That's enough to do most things you'd want to do on-line like email, Web browsing, even streaming video. I would think that would cover most people who can't afford the $20-$30 a month.
Which is why ISPs could turn off the meter during the wee hours when the network is uncongested, to give home users an incentive to shift more of their bulk downloads (iTunes movies, BitTorrent movies, MMO updates, and operating system updates) to those hours. It's a compromise betwen how ISPs pay for bandwidth and what home users will understand.
AT&T already has data caps. I was informed recently that I had exceeded mine, yet their site is such a pain to find it I had little idea how to assess my usage.
If the model was shifted to paying for the data you use regardless of your line speed, at least it would be fair; You get what you pay for, no more, no less.
Charging by amount of data transmitted doesn't necessarily make it "fair". Sometimes it isn't the amount of data that matters but the speed at which you get it. I don't use a huge amount of data but when I dial into a VPN, latency and other speed issues matter. Data that doesn't arrive in a timely manner can be useless. Furthermore the cost of transmitting a unit of data is not a linear cost. The price for Comcast to transmit 10MB of data is not double what it costs to transmit 5MB of data to the same location. The variable cost component of the equation is quite small. The amount of data that would have to be transmitted to truly affect Comcast's cost of service is enormous.
Exactly how "fair" is it to sell the service based on an arbitrarily capped speed (which they don't guarantee) AND cap your bandwidth (which they will not advertise)? Exactly how is that anything except for misrepresentation when they bury the limitations in the fine print?
Obviously you don't actually understand what we have been complaining about. The complaints are all about the speed advertised as being 50mbps when in reality you could never possibly get better than 5mbps up or down. These are about not getting what you are paying for, not that they can't physically provide the advertised speed (though in most cases this is actually true).
Bandwidth is a totally different story. The amount of data you send down a line is divorced from the speed in which you send it. They have the capacity to meet bandwidth demands with very little trouble. They simply throttle the speed to extort more money, but the amount is not at issue when you talk about Netflix being extorted on peering arrangements from the consumer side of the story. From the Netflix-Comcast perspective, it is amount of data which is at issue, since when you peer the data transfer is supposed to go two ways. The issue is Netflix's providers like Cogent sends something like 95% more data than they receive, in which case the peering arrangement is not symmetrical. And that's where you get people bitching on one side. This whole thing was about traffic shaping between peering ISPs, not bandwidth to consumers.
If you don't understand the issue you really shouldn't make stupidass, snarky comments like that.
Maybe I am in the minority but i find it *very* acceptable. Coincidentally the figures they are bandying about are very close to how my tariff works.
I use AAISP in the UK. I switched to them on the premise they delver 'unfiltered' internet. They also don't do that 'unlimited' internet crap. All in all they are what anyone here with half a brain *should* want from their ISP. (technically savvy too)
Their base no-extras package give you 100GB a month, You can also pay for 200GB or 300GB up front for a slightly reduced rate, if you go over you get auto billed for another 50GB at £10.
Sure its not the cheapest internet, and it means I have to use ADSL (around 60-80meg, with the occasional very short outage) vs cable (150meg with virtually zero downtime in the 13 years I was with them)
im not shilling and I don't want your sign up bonus. I just want to make sure everyone knows about them so they never go away!
Invaders must die
Presumably those were two non-overlapping groups of whiners?
I don't have a problem with capped internet. I know, it's heresy to many people here, but I really don't. The marginal cost for bandwidth isn't zero and no amount of wishing by Slashdotters will make it so. It makes sense that there's a mechanism in place to limit the impact of heavy users on lighter, if they're both paying the same costs.
Of course, having said that, I fully expect Comcast to go about implementing a theoretically sensible idea in the most discriminatory, expensive, heavy-handed, and frustrating way possible. What the hell is wrong with those guys?
It's not arbitrary; Everyone north of Tier 1 providers pay per gigabyte of data they transfer over Tier 1 backbones. T1 don't pay each other because they agree to transfer each other's data without charging ("Peering agreements"). Paying per gigabyte is how the internet actually works; The speed is limited only by the hardware.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
you forgot to divide by "number of people in household"
My electric bill is $.98 if I don't use any electricity. My gas bill is $4 if I don't use any gas. My water bill is $2 if I don't use any water. Comcast wants to charge you what you're paying now (which is already making them a healthy profit), and add overages on top of that. They want the perks (heavy users paying more) without giving light users the benefit they deserve.
I'm fine with paying for my usage too, but the use charges need to be reasonable, and the base price needs to come down. We don't have enough competitive pressure in the US broadband market to keep prices in check.
That is because you don't have true unlimited internet, so you don't know what you're missing.
Here I have Verizon FIOS, 150 down, 65 up, true unlimited bandwidth (and I use a ton of it, many terabytes every month).
Once you've had it, metered is just stupid.
Unless you're downloading games regularly, watching high def videos online, or torrenting stuff, data caps should never be a problem.
The trouble is a lot of people are now doing most of the above. People who aren't don't care about caps, since they'll never get close to 100gb a month without those three.
Yea, that is nice, but you have a few problems with your example.
First, by the time this cap is in place, we will be at 4k streaming.
Second, many homes have more than one person. We have 5, the kids often watch something on the iPad, mom and dad are on the TV, etc.
Then the PS3 is downloading patches and updates in the background, as is the multiple Windows computers, and every month or so the iPads update as well.
Heck, our new Sony 3D TV has had three software updates itself in 6 months.
Then there is backups, I use two backup programs, Crashplan and Backblaze, to backup our family videos, pictures, and documents, it is about 6TB worth of data (2x of course)
Then there is steam, I have many, many games on Steam, and they have lots and lots of patches that auto update.
Then there is online play, SWTOR probably doesn't use tons and tons of bandwidth, but running for a few hours probably uses a decent amount, and they have patches to download every two weeks or so.
We easily use multiple terabytes of data in a month, and not a single byte of it is pirated.
You're right, so long as you don't actually use your connection, caps aren't a problem.
Of course, if you don't do any of that, then a basic ADSL connection would be just fine and 10 years ago is calling.
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We cut DirecTV off 4 months ago, we are a 100% streaming home now.
We have 5, the kids often watch something on the iPad, mom and dad are on the TV, etc. between Netflix, Amazon Prime videos, Vudu, we use a lot of bandwidth, and that will only go up once 4k streaming comes out.
Then the PS3 is downloading patches and updates in the background, as is the multiple Windows computers, and every month or so the iPads update as well.
Heck, our new Sony 3D TV has had three software updates itself in 6 months.
Then there is backups, I use two backup programs, Crashplan and Backblaze, to backup our family videos, pictures, and documents, it is about 6TB worth of data (2x of course)
Then there is steam, I have many, many games on Steam, and they have lots and lots of patches that auto update.
Then there is online play, SWTOR probably doesn't use tons and tons of bandwidth, but running for a few hours probably uses a decent amount, and they have patches to download every two weeks or so.
We easily use multiple terabytes of data in a month, and not a single byte of it is pirated. We are also not that unusual, many families are cutting the cord, our friends have dropped cable or sat TV and went to all streaming. They have XBoxes and PS3s, and computers that update, etc...
300gb is either a lot, or not nearly enough, depending on your situation.
Unless you're downloading games regularly, watching high def videos online, or torrenting stuff, data caps should never be a problem.
The trouble is a lot of people are now doing most of the above. People who aren't don't care about caps, since they'll never get close to 100gb a month without those three.
That's not really true. One of the big issues that no one is talking about (which is the real promise of an open/unfettered Internet) is that data caps (as well as server port blocking) limit the ability of the individual content producer (reasonably priced video recording equipment exists at prices that an individual can afford) to make their content widely available. That is a threat to the content providers who control the broadband internet services.
In addition, those content providers who want reasonable access to customers will need to either pay up or not be able to reach their target audience. Data caps also make cable TV more palatable, as it won't count against the data caps. It's the classic "rent-seeking" behavior of the monopolist. Nothing more, nothing less.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Disclosure: I'm a certified cost accountant.
Everyone north of Tier 1 providers pay per gigabyte of data they transfer over Tier 1 backbones.
The cost per gigabyte of data is a relatively small percent of the cost incurred by companies like Comcast. Comcast's gross margins are somewhere around 70% and the cost per gigabyte would properly be accounted for under Cost of Goods Sold (also called Cost of Revenue - second line on the income statement under Revenue). Comcast's net margins are around 10% which means that the cost of moving data cannot account for more than around 30% of their expenses even if every penny of COGS was used to pay for data - which it definitely is not. In reality the real number as a percent of their total expense is probably somewhere around 10-15% at most. It's not trivial but it is a small percentage of what they actually pay out each period.
Paying per gigabyte is how the internet actually works;
I assure you that the cost per gigabyte is only a relatively minor portion of the costs involved and realistically it's not the biggest one. Don't confuse revenue models with cost models. Most of the actual cost of the internet (far in excess of 50%) is in hardware, maintenance, electricity, sales and overhead. All of these are fixed costs, unaffected by your data usage. Don't take my word for it, look on their financial statements yourself.
In all fairness, why should you get 2TB of bandwidth for the same price as the other 90% who are using 500GB? That's a significant difference. You should pay more.
Granted you probably are, because you probably have a faster connection. I think if they are going to cap, the cap should be larger for faster connections. If I buy a 3/1, it should be around 300gb, if I by a 15/5, it should be 5 times as much data too.
Cheap storage VM.
In all fairness, why should you get 2TB of bandwidth for the same price as the other 90% who are using 500GB?
Because this encourages people to use more bandwidth. When people use more bandwidth, it encourages investment in infrastructure. When infrastructure is invested in, speeds get faster for everyone.
I never understood the argument for conservation of bandwidth. Sure, we could start nickle and diming everyone for each bit they push. That would indeed put downward pressure on the amount of traffic flowing across these links, which should in turn stave off any need to upgrade the infrastructure. Is that what we want? Why?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I don't have a problem paying more.
What I have a problem with is paying "punishment" overage charges.
It does not cost Comcast $10 to deliver another 50GB of data after the first 300GB has been delivered.
The real cost is in running the line to the house and setting up service in the first place. Beyond that there is a forever lower cost per bit.
If it were $10 per month per TB of data, I'd have no problem with that. $10 per month for 50GB is just absurd, Call of Duty Ghosts on the PS4 is almost that large.
As it stands, I pay $100 a month to Verizon to provide me with 150/65 service, if I'm really such a burden to them, they could charge me $10 more a month per TB and I could be ok with that, it is a reasonable charge for data.
At $10 per 50GB, they might as well just cancel my service and say "we're not interested", since that is what would happen.
That's not really true. One of the big issues that no one is talking about (which is the real promise of an open/unfettered Internet) is that data caps (as well as server port blocking) limit the ability of the individual content producer (reasonably priced video recording equipment exists at prices that an individual can afford) to make their content widely available. That is a threat to the content providers who control the broadband internet services.
This is worth highlighting and elaborating on. Comcast reps have said before that data/streaming (like comcast on-demand) that you pull from Comcast's network will not count towards the bandwidth cap. Now they might counter that the cap is intended to reduce the stresses on their peering links with the rest of the Internet, so internal stuff -shouldn't- count. That may even be true, but they have also denied Netflix's offers to place Netflix caching servers within Comcast's network to reduce the stresses that Netflix users cause by streaming. They refuse because they would rather have Netflix users pay more for bandwidth instead, and they would rather congest the links and be able to blame it on Netflix so they have a weapon against Net Neutrality.
An Internet provider should not be a content provider; there is an inherent conflict of interest. Forget Comcast's takeover of Cox, Comcast's actions against its competitors are the real problem here. The US needs an end to the local cable/telco monopolies/duopolies.
Simply threatening them with competition isn't enough. Even if an FCC chairman grew enough of a backbone to challenge the big ISPs (and the whole corrupt system didn't stop him), where is this competition coming from? It's a nebulous threat that, without serious changes, will be taken as seriously as threatening to fine someone a bajillion dollars. Even the "can't merge if it reduces competition" won't work because, technically, Comcast and Time Warner Cable don't compete. The big ISPs have carved up the US so effectively that it's a rare occurrence for them to compete in an area.
My proposal would be:
1) Split the TV Service/Content, Customer Internet Access, and Networking companies apart. No company selling one would be able to sell another due to conflicts of interest.
2) TV Service/Content companies would continue as they always have. (Only without selling Internet access.)
3) Networking companies would build/maintain the networks and would sell access to their networks to the Customer Internet Access companies.
4) Customer Internet Access companies would sell subscriptions on those lines to customers.
5) Networking companies would be considered a public utility like private companies that provide electric power.
This would ensure that no company would restrict Internet access due to owning competing TV content. Also networking companies would have to put their profits back into their infrastructure and wouldn't have to let multiple companies sell Internet access to customers across their lines.
Of course, the chances of this being enacted are about the same as the proverbial snowball's chance in hell.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Data caps don't hurt uploads in basically all cases. Even in outside cases, there will be more down than up.
And that will be true when I'm offering my feature-length movie for sale as a download? My point is that everything these guys are doing is to maintain their power and monopoly to keep out competition. Do you believe competition is a bad thing?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Right, but the problem is, I don't really have any other choices...
Where I live, I have Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.
That really isn't a choice, where one of those goes, the others will follow.
AT&T doesn't offer anything faster than ADSL at 6 down 1.5 up, which isn't even really a choice.
Comcast offers 50 down, 20 up, for the same price Verizon is selling me 150 down, 65 up ($100 a month).
Beyond that? Nothing, those are my choices.
So really what we have is a duopoly and it should be regulated as such. Or the service provider should be split from the company that put lines in the ground.
That happened in Texas with power, the company that builds and mantains the power lines is OnCore Electric Delivery, you can buy the actual electrons from hundreds of different companies who all pay a line charge to deliver them to you.
As for Internet, if the GB and TB were charged according to their cost, I actually wouldn't mind. The first MB delivered would probably be $25 a month, but after a TB of data, each additional TB of data should be a few dollars a month at most.
The idea that 50GB of data should cost $10 per month extra to deliver is absurd, that's the problem.
That, and the truth is... the real cost is in running fiber to every home, setting up a monthly billing system, and convincing people to call and sign up...
Additional data once all of the above is in place isn't really that expensive...
That's strange. I host three different domains off of my residential Internet connection.
IMHO, this is because my ISP is not a content provider and has no incentive to limit their customer's access to the Internet. The TCP/IP suite of protocols (surprise!) was, despite the usage model that has been forced down most folks' throats, not designed to be exclusively client/server.
The problem is that most people don't realize the power and control they *could* have if they were given the opportunity. The Internet is, perhaps, the ultimate free speech mechanism, but we allow our corporate overlords to keep us from realizing its potential, with, among other things, the abusive contracts you mention.
More importantly, why is it that the ISPs that are content providers (whether they be cable companies or resellers of cable/satellite TV (like Verizon), restrict you from running servers? There are some good reasons to limit SMTP servers, as it's an insecure mechanism (despite strides that have been made vis a vis STARTTLS, SPF, Domain Key, etc.) which can be easily handled by routing emails through the ISP's SMTP servers. However, other than that, there is no inherent reason that servers should be restricted.
The ISPs that do this do so to protect the content distribution ends of their business, and to reduce their costs (not passed on to their customers, thank you very much) by throttling upload. That's not to say that users who wish to increase their upload bandwidth shouldn't pay for it, but other than the fact that ISPs want to control content (whether it be blogs, family websites, legitimate media distribution, or the "next big thing") and continue rent-seeking behavior without investing in infrastructure, there is no reason to throttle upload.
Granted, technologies like ADSL have those limitations built in (allowing ISPs to rape users for SDSL links), but fiber (as with Verizon FIOS) and other broadband mechanisms, have no such limitations, other than those imposed by those with a vested interest in imposing such limitations.
You say I have no point. I say that as long as you take the shit on rye you're being given, while being told it's prime rib, you are denying the real promise of the Internet. Can you say Stockholm Syndrome? Sure you can. I knew you could. [with apologies to Fred Rogers]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Better than what I've got. 25 down, 5 up, $62 per month (with 100 down, 20 up available for $100/month from the same ISP). Other parts of my area have DSL at up to 6 down 1 up for about $35/month, but I'm not in range for that. Mobile has tiny bandwidth limits (and the unlimited ones can't match even the DSL connection's speed). Satellite has about the same drawbacks as mobile, except that it also costs more. Even what I have has a 250GB soft-cap (they'll send you letters when you go over, but I haven't heard of anyone actually being cut off).
Internet in the US is a terrible mess, but it seems like you've got it better than most.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Your contract doesn't allow you to host servers (especially for commercial use) in your residential connection. So, you don't have a point.
Oh, and who said anything about commercial use? There are a myriad of applications (political speech, collaborative creative activity, social networking without personal data theft, intellectual interchanges, family communications and on and on) that can benefit from upload speeds/server hosting that have no commercial implications at all.
I have no issue with commercial vs. residential tiering. I do have a problem with restrictive and abusive corporate policies that limit speech, creativity and liberty.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Unless you're downloading games regularly, watching high def videos online, or torrenting stuff, data caps should never be a problem.
The trouble is a lot of people are now doing most of the above. People who aren't don't care about caps, since they'll never get close to 100gb a month without those three.
The problem is that the hogs of today are examples of what the average customer could be doing 10 years from now.
10 years ago, 3 Mbps down/384 kbps up DSL was widespread. Streaming video was uncommon. There was no YouTube, and Facebook was exclusive to Harvard. Windows XP SP2 was not yet released. Perhaps a 10GB cap would have been reasonable, and data hogs would pay exorbitant prices for cable.
Now, "selfie" is a thing. My chattering devices are constantly looking to communicate with Google (Android), Apple (iOS and MacOS), and Microsoft (Windows Update). I probably go right past 50GB regularly, and I don't do Netflix. This has been enabled by the relentless falling prices of Internet transit. (Historical trends) Games, Netflix, and BitTorrent aren't the only things pushing bandwidth usage up.
So, it's alarming to see a Comcast exec, proposing in 5 years to limit the Internet to the Internet of today. He wants to stop progress. It's especially galling because he's already double-dipping. He's trying to triple-dip. He's charging consumers for the cable Internet connection, he's charging Netflix for access to those consumers, and now he wants to charge again to use that connection that 2 parties have already paid for.
Have a nice time.
In all fairness, why should you get 2TB of bandwidth for the same price as the other 90% who are using 500GB? That's a significant difference. You should pay more.
Simple answer? Because I have an ISP that knows how to manage traffic responsibly. Sadly you guys in the US don't, see up here in Canadaland Teksavvy has this program called ZTC or Zap The Cap. What happens is, between 8pm to 12am you get a reduction in download speed and the rest of the time you can download as much as you want. But if you don't want to use it, you can always schedule your downloads for 2am-6am I think the time frame is, and there's no cap then during that period anyway.
See this isn't rocket surgery. And really I *am* getting 2TB of bandwidth for that 90% who are using 500GB, I'm simply voluntarily restricting my usage during peak.
Om, nomnomnom...
In all fairness, why should you get 2TB of bandwidth for the same price as the other 90% who are using 500GB? That's a significant difference. You should pay more. Granted you probably are, because you probably have a faster connection. I think if they are going to cap, the cap should be larger for faster connections. If I buy a 3/1, it should be around 300gb, if I by a 15/5, it should be 5 times as much data too.
Bandwidth isn't data transfer. I pay for bandwidth. Bandwidth is data/time. If I'm paying for 20Mb/sec, what difference does it make if I download 20MB/month or 60TB/Month? Unless, of course, you have some sort of alternate agenda (like making it much harder to use media from the Internet rather than from the cable TV part of your business, or to restrict your customers from getting the service they've contracted and paid for). Since we already pay for the bandwidth, why shouldn't we be allowed to use it to its fullest? Just because many people don't use what they already pay for, why should those who do be penalized?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
An Internet provider should not be a content provider; there is an inherent conflict of interest. Forget Comcast's takeover of Cox, Comcast's actions against its competitors are the real problem here. The US needs an end to the local cable/telco monopolies/duopolies.
Absolutely. I'd go even further and say that the "last mile" owners, shouldn't be ISPs either.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
From the call:
David Cohen - Comcast Corporation - EVP:
"we are not sure we know what paid prioritization or what a fast lane is...I think a fast lane sounds bad. But since we don't know what it is, or what the definitions of it are, it's a little bit hard to be able to react to it...I believe that whatever it is, a fast lane, paid prioritization, whatever you want to call it, has been completely legal for 15 or 20 years....Our offer is to comply with the 2010 FCC Open Internet Order, which did not prohibit paid prioritization."
"there is nothing in Title II that provides authority for saying that all services have to be treated the same. In fact the whole history of Title II has been that telecom carriers regulated under Title II are absolutely allowed to provide different levels of service for different amounts of money. Think about Bell's providing different level of service to businesses versus residences."
"There is the last mile market where we as an ISP deliver content to our customers and charge customers for that content and they access the Internet by going through Comcast as an ISP. And there is what I'd call a first mile market, which is the way in which the Internet at large, the Internet Edge providers, content providers, get their content onto our network to be able to be consumed by our consumers."
"The open Internet debate is about that first market. It's about the last mile market and it's about treating, making sure that consumers have an open and unfettered access to all of the content on the Internet, that there is no blocking, there is no discrimination in the way in which they get access to that content. The old extreme example, when a consumer types into her browser www.barnesandnoble.com, she should not be directed to Amazon because we have a deal with Amazon that says we will direct any book-related search to your site. That was the original extreme example of how we as ISPs could disrupt the Internet and could violate a principle of net neutrality.
And in this day and age it would relate to a consumer being able to get advertised speeds and excess whatever content the consumer wanted through those advertised speeds. The interconnection market is a completely different market and it functions in a different way. It is a market that it would argue is intensely competitive."
"I think the ISP market is competitive but the interconnection market is intensely competitive. There are dozens of very large players in that space who are selling transit services. The competition is so intense in that market that the pricing in the interconnection market has dropped 99% in the last 15 years."
"And so among the dozens of large players here, Comcast alone has 40 companies with which we have settlement-free peering. That is we don't pay them anything, they don't pay us anything because our traffic is roughly in balance. And there was a time when Netflix was using Akamai, Level 3 then Cogent and their traffic was in balance with our traffic."
"So there was no way in that model for us to collect anything without completely disrupting the business model and structure of the interconnection market, which I think would be a mistake to do. So I think that the right way to do this is to use usage-based billing and do it on the last mile and to do it in a fair and non-discriminatory fashion. And I think that is the way you can deliver the equity proposition that heavier users pay more and lighter users pay less."
"Reed's argument that he should have free transit, and it is a Cogent argument as well, that there should be free transit is just a cost shifting argument. That's an argument there is cost for transit providers, content delivery, networks, other transit providers to connect to our network. There is a cost to that.
And if Netflix doesn't bear its share of those costs to connect to the network then we have no choice but to raise prices for everyone else. Even though Netflix is responsible for one-third of the traffic on the Internet at peak times, tha