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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :(
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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. 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