Comcast Tells Government That Its Data Caps Aren't Actually "Data Caps"

mpicpp (3454017) writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica about Comcast's data caps that aren't data caps:Customers must pay more if they exceed limits — but it's not a cap, Comcast says. For the past couple of years, Comcast has been trying to convince journalists and the general public that it doesn't impose any "data caps" on its Internet service. ... That's despite the fact that Comcast in some cities enforces limits on the amount of data customers can use and issues financial penalties for using more than the allotment. Comcast has said this type of billing will probably roll out to its entire national footprint within five years, perhaps alongside a pricier option to buy unlimited data. ... Comcast's then-new approach was touted to "effectively offer unlimited usage of our services because customers will have the ability to buy as much data as they want."

Comments

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no faith that the government won't fall for this blatant lie.

Re:Sigh

[Lumpy]

Of course they will, while comcast is telling them this, they are stuffing wads of money in the senators pockets. The longer they talk the more money goes into their pockets... Senators need to keep warm during the upcoming winter....

Re: Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Chuckle.

Considering Congress convinced itself that the Affordable Health Care Act was a financial penalty and not a Tax, ( though declared a Tax by the SCOTUS ) I'm right there with you on that :)

It's like car insurance. We don't penalize you for being single, we just give the married folks a better rate :D

Re:Sigh

[ClickOnThis]

I have no faith that the government won't fall for this blatant lie.

I have no desire to defend Comcast. However, I think it's a bit strong to call it a "blatant lie." What I would call it is "highly disingenuous."

Comcast says there's no cap: they won't stop sending you bits, they'll just charge you more if you exceed a threshold. Of course, their definition of "cap" is a thin disguise over their real intent, which is to discourage heavy usage of their network. It sucks, but it is tenable.

Re:Sigh

[Predius]

I want to say this was all debated once in the past back in the dialup era. If you advertised 'unlimited' dialup, you had to deliver and couldn't back door in per hour charges, etc. What makes this any different?

Re:Sigh

[geekmux]

Of course they will, while comcast is telling them this, they are stuffing wads of money in the senators pockets.

You know that talking point is total bullshit, right? What you describe would be a felony offense in the United States. Nor can corporations give money directly to campaigns. They can donate to PACs, which are a special animal in the American political system, but they can't donate directly to campaigns or candidates.

Hey, uh, just FYI, you know what's another word to describe a "special animal in the American political system"?

Corruption.

Enough of your word-mincing. We ALL know how Politicians get bought and sold so let's cut the "total" bullshit here. Call it what you want. I call it what it should be; illegal, because the end result is the same. Corporations controlling government.

Re:Sigh

[master_kaos]

no it isn't bullshit. I live in canada where we even have stricter rules than the US and it still happens here. My dad owns a business and whenever he bids on government jobs his main competitor always wins the contract. Anyways when the owner of the compitor sold the company and retired my dad asked him how did he keep winning the contracts even though the bids were the same. The guy said easy, he would go to whoever is awarding the contract and say "how would your wife like a new washing machine?" and then magically a top of the line washing machine would show up at their house a couple days later (completely off the books of course, he would pay for it out of his own pocket, then just take a bonus out of the company to reimburse himself).

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

So apparently it's not bribery if you get a third party to deliver the money for you?

Re: Sigh

[Cutting_Crew]

how did SCOTUS declare it a tax when it wasnt wriiten up as one in the law? How do they have the leeway to change the definition of something in a ruling? They are supposed to rule on whats before them, not define it as something else in order for it to pass constitutional muster.. ??? The reason it wasnt called a "tax" in the law is because it wouldnt have gotten the votes. SCOTUS ruling it is a "tax" bypasses the whole point of voting for a bill.

Am i missing something?

Re:Sigh

[Shakrai]

We ALL know how Politicians get bought and sold so let's cut the "total" bullshit here.

Yes, they do. But not all of them and certainly not in the manner that the GP presented. One needs to actually understand how the system works before one condemns it and/or proposes fixes for it. Incidentally, most of the people in politics hate the system as much as you do. You think they enjoy spending so much of their day begging people for money so they can fund their campaigns? The real world isn't House of Cards, most people actually enter public service for noble reasons, ranging from the mundane fixing of potholes to the desire to advance a social cause. The problem is two fold:

1) Campaign finance reform is inherently suspect because it's passed by people who have an incentive to make it harder for incumbents to lose elections. There's a reason why opponents frequently referred to McCain-Feingold as the "Incumbent Protection Act"

2) Meaningful campaign finance reform would require a Constitutional Amendment; the idea I most liked was the notion of precluding private donations but giving every American citizen X dollars to allocate as they see fit. It's an awesome idea but one that's utterly unconstitutional. Perhaps you should start building a network for this concept rather than spouting talking points about money going into Senators pockets?

Re:Sigh

[lucm]

We ALL know how Politicians get bought and sold

I get the "bought" part, that is after all how lobbying works (it's not a secret), but how does one "sell" a politician? Do you mean that political parties are pimping out their people?

Also I would suggest that given the kind of loyalty one can find in Washington, the proper term should be "rent" rather than "buy".

Re:Sigh

[cheater512]

This is done in Australia with virtually every single ISP with one tiny exception.

The quota you have is in big print right next to the price.

If you don't tell people what the quota is (in a fair way) then blatant lie does cover it quite nicely.

Re:Sigh

[Curunir_wolf]

They can donate to PACs, which are a special animal in the American political system

Ummm... No. A PAC (Political Action Committee) is simply a funding mechanism for campaigns. Federal laws (since we are talking about Federal elections) prohibit corporations and labor unions from contributing to campaigns, PACs, or generally from spending money to influence federal elections.

You may be thinking of the ability of Corporations and labor unions to create PACs themselves. They can do that, and 501(c)(4) organizations can, too (most issue-advocacy groups do exactly that - MoveOn.org has a separate PAC, as does the AFL-CIO and many corporations like Best Buy, Amazon, and CVS. But they can't contribute their own funds to them). They can also (since Citizen United) do things like fund movies, books, or other media productions that criticize a political candidate, as long as it is not an endorsement or encouragement to vote or not vote for any specific candidate for election.

That may be a thin line - but unless you have a large war chest to defend yourself with expensive lawyers, you better make sure you follow the very specific relations closely, or you'll find yourself the target of an extremely well-funded and organized prosecution, as many have discovered.

Re:Sigh

[lister king of smeg]

To quote Shakespeare,

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,

but since this is politics it ain't no rose and it don't smell sweet.
No the money isn't put into the congressman personal account but the PAC is essentially a campaigning run by proxy. And instead of fiduciary reward other less formal forms of graft are used like their failure of a kid managing to make into a ivy league school, after a suitable donation is given to the university by a company wanting bill passed, high-speed internet may be installed in a senators home neighborhood, he may get high 6 figure sallery job no effort job lined up after his term is ended. Oh and don't forget insider trading is LEGAL for senators and congressman so a insider stock tip to them can make then rich with no repercussions.

Re:Sigh

[lister king of smeg]

They are innocent of corruption!

because they write the legal definition of corruption to insure it does't count them

Re:Sigh

[whoever57]

I think that you missed the note at the beginning of that page:

Note: Portions of this publication may be affected by the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC. Essentially, the Court's ruling permits corporations and labor organizations to use treasury funds to make independent expenditures in connection with federal elections and to fund electioneering communications.

Re:Sigh

[Livius]

Literally stuffing physical cash in pockets, yes.

But there is no shortage of ways to get the money to the right people. In fact not giving money to certain people is often enough to achieve the same result.

You are not paying close enough attention.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehh..

If it's happening with even a single senator or congressman, then guess what... If the rest of the Senators or Congressmen do not corral that criminal in their midst, then the rest of them are guilty of aiding and abetting.

So, either they rat out the crooks, or they all are crooks and all should be impeached, sent to gitmo.

End of fucking discussion.

Re:Sigh

[s.petry]

You are attempting to mince terms to ignore the bribery since it does not come from 1 person/company as opposed to looking at the recipient of the bribe.

40 years ago the rules were different and sure it was called bribery. Today, no such thing. Campaign contributions can be used for clothing if said clothing is used on the campaign trail, it can be used for food, lodging, travel expenses, etc.. etc.. and this is all over the table. People holding offices receive regular "all expenses paid" trips to "seminars" regularly (even though the seminar may actually consist of a couple hour meeting which many don't attend).

So over the table, you can pay for just about all living expenses on "contributions", but we don't call that bribery because it's not directly stuffing wads of cash into someone's pocket. Makes no difference in the long run, because if I don't have to pay for food, clothing, travel, "entertainment", laptops, email, web hosting, and all the other shit I can put on my "contribution" fund I bank a huge sum of money that everyone else would have to pay for living expenses.

Why do you think one of the fastest ways to become a millionaire in the US is to be elected to Congress or the Senate? But of course you will probably claim that facts are fud since it harms your asinine opinion. Make sure you are ignoring the fact that members of the House and Senate can legally use insider trading knowledge to make sacks full of money that you and I would go to jail for (and have repeatedly refused to change the law).

Re:Sigh

[s.petry]

most of the people in politics hate the system as much as you do.

I have two words for that comment. "Ha" and "Ha" again.

Actions speak much louder than words, and Congress had numerous opportunities to make things better and has never done so, continually reducing regulations and oversight while claiming "oh yeah, it's bad and we hate it". If you continue to believe the lie that's your problem, but how about looking at some of the votes for something simple and easy like disallowing congress immunity for using insider trading knowledge.

If it was "most" as you claim that would have been corrected long ago by a simple vote. No such thing ever happened, so how do you continue to believe they hate the system? Seriously, are you that gullible or just a shill?

Re:Sigh

[Maxo-Texas]

Reality...

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/l...

The House Ethics Committee has quietly done away with the requirement that lawmakers disclose their all-expense-paid trips on annual financial forms, National Journal reported on Monday.

Trips paid for by private groups are now no longer required to be noted on annual financial-disclosure forms filed by Congress members, according to the Journal. The move was never announced publicly; the Journal said that it discovered the change in a review of the disclosure filings.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

What new technology exists that would bypass the likes of Comcast?

Emmigration. But it isn't really new. It also comes with health care benefits and previous unknown freedom.

Re:Sigh

[fustakrakich]

Why are you trying to regress back to seventh grade social studies? No, the real world isn't a House of Cards. It's a plain old regular chimp saying, *Pick the fleas off my back, and you can have my girl for the night*.

Yes, some people actually enter public service for noble reasons, and if they want to maintain that "nobility", they will get nowhere, and will lose the next election if they raise a fuss. If they want to get on some committee with real power and influence, and stay in office, and fix those potholes, then all bets are off. They're going make deals, or it all shuts down. They are animals, in not so cheap suits.

I won't call any of this "crooked" per se, because it is perfectly natural behavior. People will do whatever they can get away with. The veneer of civility only holds up while there's something to eat and something to fuck. Let's not read anything into it that's not there, and definitely let's not pretend there's any "nobility" in the system.

Re:Sigh

[NoKaOi]

I say again, I'm not on Comcast's side. I just think that describing Comcast's position in hyperbolic terms (such as "blatant lies") will be self-defeating.

If they use the word "unlimited" and/or say "unlimited Internet for $X" but then put a limit on it or charge you more than $X, then it's a lie. If they say or print it openly, then it is blatant. Therefore, it is a blatant lie.

Obligatory car related analogy: Imagine if a gas station put up a sign that says "Unlimited gasoline for $8!" but then charged $6 for every gallon over 2 gallons. Do you think they'd get away with it?

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Meaningful campaign finance reform would require a Constitutional Amendment;

Sez you.

Lessig has already proposed two methods don't require an amendment.
(1) Require that all donations go into a "black box" and are anonymously revocable. You can give all the money you want to a politician. He can even watch you write the check. But then you can chose to take some or all of the money back without telling the candidate that you reneged. You can even tell the candidate you took the money back if you want to. But you don't have to. So there is absolutely no restriction of speech in the system, but it totally disrupts the incentive for quid-pro-quo because the candidate can never know for sure if you took your money back. Consequently the incentive flips from giving as much as possible to the campaign to reneging and ultimately giving nothing.

(2) Every citizen gets a voucher to "spend" on campaigns, but if a candidate wants to take vouchers they have to forgo private donations. That actually is utterly constitutional because nobody is stopping a candidate from accepting private money aka "speech." They just have to decide if they want to listen to "private" speech or to "public" speech.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

The House Ethics Committee has quietly done away with the requirement that lawmakers disclose their all-expense-paid trips on annual financial forms, National Journal reported on Monday.

Two things:

1. They were still disclosing these trips on other forms that had to be filed sooner.

2. They've rescinded the change: http://www.nationaljournal.com...

Both points are visible in the page for the National Journal article: http://www.nationaljournal.com...

Re:Sigh

[fafalone]

You're either hopelessly naive or thinking of running for office one day yourself. Do you honestly think stuffing a senators pockets with "I'm donating $x to your PAC" is any different than stuffing it with actual currency? Or any of the other dozens of ways you can legally bribe congress, from 'I'll bring tons of jobs to your district' to 'Now might be a good time to invest in a company we're going to announce a buyout on next week' (look at how quickly and quietly they gutted the STOCK Act). All of these are the same thing as outright bribes and to pretend otherwise is nonsense.
And while on the local level, and maybe the state level, sure you have lots of people that sincerely want to effect change, but those aren't the people advancing to the national level.

Re:Sigh

[Jason Levine]

Obligatory Pearls Before Swine.

Money doesn't influence anyone! Also the gumdrop trees in Candy Land are great! ;-)

Re:Sigh

[TFloore]

If there is evidence that a legislator is guilty of insider trading, or any other crime, they should be tried by their peers in congress, not by the justice dept.

The problem here is that doesn't work in practice. For evidence supporting this statement, I give you every internal police investigation into officer wrong-doing ever. If you haven't found it yourself before, how about this article written by an Air Force colonel whose son was shot in the head by police while hand-cuffed in custody. The officers were cleared of wrong-doing by an internal investigation. I don't expect an unbiased viewpoint from this man, but the stats he found don't make "tried by their peers" sound like anything resembling a workable solution.

People and groups put in charge of writing laws, with a history of making laws that benefit themselves and hold themselves to a lower standard than the rest of the population, need more oversight, not less.

Try again.

Re:Sigh

[TheNastyInThePasty]

I have never seen a commercial for home internet service that is explicitly unlimited it's usually:

Blazing* Fast** High-Speed*** Internet**** Up to***** 50****** megs******* for only******** $69.99 per month*********

* Our lawyers advise us to tell you that we are not liable any house fires that may or may not be related to your internet equipment.
** When compared to dial up internet from 20 years ago
*** Only available during off-peak hours
**** Until we decide to deny access to websites that don't pay us for the privilege of being carried to our customers
***** But never actually anywhere near....
****** Random number picked out of a hat, you'll never actually get this
******* Bits? Bytes? Who cares! (Personal story: I asked the Comcast salesmen if he meant megabits or megabytes when he said "50 megs" and he had no idea...)
******** Introductory rate for new customers only. We will double the rates in 3 months after joining
********* Plus taxes, fees, extra charges, and tribute payments

I get it.

[master5o1]

I have access to unlimited amounts of petrol because I am allowed to purchase as many tanks as I need.

Re: I get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Gas" is short for Gasoline, just like "Petrol" is short for Petroleum.

Re:I get it.

[Kjella]

I have access to unlimited amounts of petrol because I am allowed to purchase as many tanks as I need.

Works for the US military, with more tanks you can acquire more oil...

frist psot

[Anonymous Coward]

first post courtesy of my high speed comscat connection!

Monopolistic thuggish behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

We need the government to build fiber to every residence in America and lease the glass to anyone that wants it.

Re:Monopolistic thuggish behavior

[jxander]

Because those jackbooted thugs at the energy company ... wait, no. They're pretty reasonable.
You were talking about the monopolistic thugs that provide my municipal garbage collection service? No, actually that's pretty cheap too.

Re:Monopolistic thuggish behavior

[the eric conspiracy]

For me it goes like this:

Electric company - thug
Water company - thug
Gas company - ok
Cable company - thug
Wireless company - thug
Phone company - thug (stopped using 8 years ago because they wouldn't repair their lines)
Trash company - ok

So there are 7 private companies I deal with for important services. FIVE of them are monopolistic thugs that do things like sending bills without reading the meters and fail to keep their infrastructure in reasonable repair (try having to boil water for two weeks because the water company didn't repair their treatment facility after a storm damaged it years ago and see what your opinion on this is).

These state sanctioned monopolies are the children of Satan. Or maybe Eris. They get into the regulators knickers and generally then do anything they please.

Comcast is now bidding to own the interwebs. Tell whoever you can that this would be a disaster for America.

Re:Monopolistic thuggish behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

You pay a private company for water? Where is this Randian paradise in which you live?

Re:Monopolistic thuggish behavior

[93 Escort Wagon]

Unlikely. Price out your cable bill compared to your water or gas bill.

I'm not actually sure what your point is. My water bill is less than half of my recently-cut-by-$60 Comcast bill. Heck, until we cut back on our Comcast "services", their bill was threatening to approach our electricity bill.

Re:Monopolistic thuggish behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

We need the government to build fiber to every residence in America and lease the glass to anyone that wants it.

Learn your history. The government already paid the LECs a couple hundred billion to do this years ago.

They squandered it all instead.

Now the taxpayers are left holding that bag and some of the worst broadband infrastructure on the planet.

Re:Monopolistic thuggish behavior

[mjwx]

You pay a private company for water? Where is this Randian paradise in which you live?

The third world where the water piped in isn't potable.

As I've often said, the blind Randian believers need to go and live in a third world "libertarian paradise" for a few years where you can pay for absolutely anything and have to pay for absolutely everything. Want the police to help you, expect to shell out. Want the court to do anything, reach into those pockets. Need help from the government, dont expect it to come cheap.

Living in a place like this is great... when you earn western levels of money and a yearly income of $25,000 USD makes you part of the 1%... but not when you're a regular working pleb doing 12 hour days for $4000 USD a year... All Hail Rand.

come on Google Fiber

[Dan667]

everywhere Google Fiber has set up shop has completely changed the landscape of what these legacy internet providers offer. Google's rollout cannot happen fast enough and even if comcast matches it people will still dump them due to these types of policies.

Re:come on Google Fiber

[machineghost]

The problem is, Google Fiber isn't some product they're rolling out slowly, but eventually to the whole country. Instead, it's jut one of their little experiments. As much as we'd all love them to, Google has expressed no interest in becoming America's ISP (or at least not any time soon).

Re:come on Google Fiber

[dontbemad]

Atlanta resident, here.
I'm currently paying Comcast a pretty hefty premium for 50 Mbps speeds with a 300 Gb cap every month (which is pretty easy to reach when you torrent and stream a good deal). Google Fiber is possibly coming here in the next year or so, and I can not be happier about it. Even with Google's "reckless spying", supposed GFiber outages, and everything else, what Google is really doing here is a forcing competition in a market that hasn't seen the legitimate face of that... well... ever.

Re:come on Google Fiber

[Trogre]

Is there anyone here who is using Google Fiber?

I would be curious to know how well home servers (www, email, SSH) perform when on this, especially given Google Fiber's original prohibitive TOS and Google's desire for you to keep everything on their servers. I see they have updated their TOS since the EFF kicked up a stink, but would like to hear from anyone who is actually using it.

Re:come on Google Fiber

[Charliemopps]

Everywhere huh? Google Fiber serves less than 10,000 people (last I checked) out of over 300 million in this country. Google shows up in a town, then asks people to sign up, and only installs where the capacity is concentrated. This ensures the highest amount of profit possible. I keep coming into these threads and trying to explain this but Slashdot seems to be completely oblivious to how ISPs work. Yes, to the tiny part of the country google is offering service they are doing great. But they are never coming to your house... not unless you live in a major metropolitan area. The problem with internet access in this country is not located where Google is offering service. When some rural town gets Google fiber, let me know... then they'll be on to something. But this? They're offering service in areas that are already flooded with ISP options, this is not progress.

But what of Netflix

[Mr D from 63]

So, what will Netflix do when a customer can't get access to the data that they paid Comcast to deliver to said customer?

Re:But what of Netflix

[jxander]

Comcast is getting to double-dip from Netflix with the new agreement you mentioned... why not go for the triple dip and charge customers extra on top of the extra they're charging Netflix, on top of the "unlimited" plans they're already selling.

Re:But what of Netflix

[joocemann]

What competition? I have comcast. I do not want comcast. I want internet access.... I have comcast. :(

In the name of all of their nasty business practices, I have wanted to cancel service for a long time. But my government is failing at anti-trust law. My culture and society is absolutely dependent on internet access. Thus, my government is failing me and forcing me to give money to bad people that do not deserve my money.

Semantics

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's technically not a cap because you can exceed it. No, this argument didn't work for cellular carriers. Bill shock was invented by AT&T first.

Re:Semantics

[crbowman]

If you claim (in large print) to be selling me unlimited internet access and are then charging me more when I go over some limit, then yes it's a cap, and the FTC dam well ought to be going in and bitch slapping any company doing this type of thing even if they put an asterix with words in tiny print to the effect of "when we say unlimited what we really mean is as long as you don't exceed the limits we actually put on it"

What's the max bandwidth of coax cable?

[swb]

And in most areas, how "full" is the coax line between my house and the fiber node? Ie, how much of the usable coax bandwidth has been allocated to cable channels, on-demand viewing, phone service, alarm monitoring, and Internet access?

Has switching from NTSC analog to all those HD channels (even though they are compressed, etc) been a net gain in usable bandwidth on the coax or just a wash?

I always just wonder if Comcast isn't just trying to keep that coax cable capable of handing TV and Internet by various means of suppressing bandwidth consumption on Internet usage.

The suck for Comcast is when that coax cable "runs out" of bandwidth and there's no room to cram yet another HD sports channel on. A project to migrate from coax to fiber would be a total nightmare for them.

I'm not trying to defend or justify anything they do, I'm sure it's at least half oriented towards nickle and diming and profiting off of manufactured scarcity but coax cable shared by many dwellings seems like a major bottleneck that will eventually have to be addressed and it will not be cheap.

Re:What's the max bandwidth of coax cable?

[Cute Fuzzy Bunny]

If I recall correctly, the same amount of space a television channel uses is around 10-12Mb/s of continuous data. Current modems can bond 12+ channels. The more that people stream instead of requiring live tv, the more channels can be allocated to internet. Each modem can be configured to use different channels. While there is one piece of wire from the street to your house, there are many piece of coax AND backup unused cable throughout your neighborhood. Each neighborhood has a junction with bazoodles of cable to it and probably fiber.

So the short answer is they can allocate gigabits of data streams in your neighborhood, and with numerous backbone options from there to the main office they have all the bandwidth they need for the foreseeable future. And it doesn't 'run out', it just gets slower at the shared wire level for the user. Which is why netflix looks like crap at 7PM every night.

Re:What's the max bandwidth of coax cable?

[apraetor]

Cable internet doesn't require every modem in a town to share the same limited spectrum. Similar to the way DSLAMs would be put into each neighborhood to terminate DSL, cable companies use CMTS (cable modem termination systems). The cable company deploys HFC (hybrid fiber-coaxial) boxes which each contain a CMTS; each of these can serve several thousand cable modems, depending mostly on the amount of available channels (read: not used for TV) for use on the coax and the amount of bandwidth being allotted to each modem. This system still requires *some* fiber, but far less than FTTH. This configuration also allows for each HFC to have multiple CMTS units inside it -- so as bandwidth requirements per household rise the cable company can add more CMTSs and further subdivide the networks.

Re:What's the max bandwidth of coax cable?

[Kjella]

Well, from the looks of it a coax cable can carry anywhere from 1000-1500 6MHz channels @ 42.88 Mbit/s so 42-63 Gbit/s, subtract TV channels (200 @ 10 Mbit? = 2 Gbit/s), divide by number of subscribers sharing the rest. It shouldn't take that much money to cut a loop in half though, just pick a midpoint and run two coax cables straight to the central office. Considering how rapidly things progress with competition I really doubt there's any technical difficulty in delivering more.

Re:What's the max bandwidth of coax cable?

[adolf]

And it doesn't 'run out', it just gets slower at the shared wire level for the user. Which is why netflix looks like crap at 7PM every night.

No. Netflix looks like crap at 7PM every night because they ditched Akamai and started their own CDN which is typically backhauled by Cogent, and Cogent tends to have terrible connectivity.

data burqa?

[turkeydance]

cap/burka/asshat...whatever.

Pre-emptive stance prior to 4K TV services

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect the plan is to get these "Caps" in place prior to broader adoption of 4K TV services. Once 4K catches on the users will have a choice of routinely exceeding their 300GB/month limit or buying their 4K content from Comcast who will likely not count their content toward the monthly data limit. Might be a nice way to tilt business away from other content providers such as Amazon, Vudu, etc.

Regarding these "Caps" I had quite the conversation with Comcast before I dropped them and had to settle for DSL without a cap. First of all, the cap kicks in at 300GB/month, after that you are charged $10 for each subsequent 50GB allotment. This rate is higher than the $/GB before you exceed their limit. There is no rollover for unused GB's. So, if you go on vacation and only use 100GB in August you can not carry the unused amount into July or subsequent months.

The plan is like cell phone plans years ago. Higher, 'gotcha' rates if you go over. No rollover minutes. You can buy business service from Comcast at a higher rate, a 2 year obligation, and they must own the modem. This effectively doubles your monthly rate before they started the unlimited plan you used to have before the limits were imposed.

I think it is fare to charge for higher usage. However, the overage fees are prohibitive and will subsequently block the open adoption of future bandwidth intensive services for vendors other than Comcast. I am hoping a new wireless standard will jump past Comcast's copper infrastructure.

Re:Pre-emptive stance prior to 4K TV services

[kramerd]

I have business service from Comcast (there are no reliable alternatives in my city). It is actually $4 per month cheaper, since I use my own modem. Turns out that isn't a problem, and you don't have to rent it. That being said, I have just as many internet outages as when I had Comcast residential internet service, and it certainly isn't any faster. I just don't have data caps anymore.

Re:Pre-emptive stance prior to 4K TV services

[fafalone]

Even 1080p could push people over the limit. Getting everything I can in HD, 1080p if available, (e.g. all movies and maybe 2/3rds of TV) I've averaged just over 300GB/month for the last 24 months, even hitting 720GB one month. And I'm the only person on this connection. You get a whole family on the line (or god forbid 3 college kids sharing an apartment), and exceeding it is probably already common.
This is squarely targeted at those not getting their TV from Comcast NOW. No need to wait for 4K. I suspect they won't do this is areas where they have competition. I've had Optimum and now FiOS in my current home, and neither have these caps. Meanwhile my old house, where it was Comcast or 2Mbps DSL, was one of the very first places they rolled out caps to, and it was 200GB.

They want websites to pay for exempt status

[apraetor]

Comcast wants to do what AT&T does -- pressure 3rd party service providers, such as Netflix, to pay a "fee" in exchange for their traffic being exempted from monthly usage limits.

Brilliant

[ruir]

I once run the IT department of an ISP, and data caps were a substancial source of the revenue. Lets say it could reach to 1/3 of our Internet net revenue, some months exceeding it. To be fair, at the time the international bandwidth was severely constrained, and in a post p2p world, you would have a change without some form of control. However, we were very clear about it, those were data caps, period.What I should call it nowadays then? Voluntary taxes? Net speeding fine? Tax for changing to the competition? One is always learning...

Depends on a lot of things

[Sycraft-fu]

The main question is how many channels are allocated for DOCSIS. Each channel gets you about 38mbps of bandwidth, though more can be had on newer standards with 4096QAM (if the SNR is good enough to support it). So if there's 4 downstream channels then a max of about 152mbps total down (upstream is separate).

How many channels can they add? Not sure with current DOCSIS specs, but the wire limits are either 600mhz for old systems, or 1ghz for most new ones. So you cold probably get in the range of 166 total channels or 6gbps or so. Of course in reality, some of those channels have to go to TV and so on.

Now DOCSIS 3.1 is adding new methods for operation and supposedly will pull 10gbps down. Not sure how much of that is tested and how much of that is pipe dream but it is what the spec claims.

Such lying assholes ...

[gstoddart]

"effectively offer unlimited usage of our services because customers will have the ability to buy as much data as they want."

So our unlimited isn't unlimited, and our caps aren't caps.

This is like saying you have an all you can eat restaurant, where you pay for everything you eat individually under the notion that you can buy all you want.

This is lying to consumers, deceptive marketing, and just plain bullshit.

If the FTC or someone isn't giving them the smack down on this, then we can pretty much expect corporations to start making up their own meanings for words and getting away with it.

Greedy bastards.

Yes, an experiment like Gmail

[raymorris]

It was an experiment. One that was successful enough that they've decided to do 38 cities for the next phase. Gmail was an experiment. So was [insert long forgotten Google project here ]. Some of their experiments don't turn out, and Google shuts it down. Others take off, like Gmail. At this stage, Google has invested a couple hundred million dollars or so, so that shows a significant level of commitment- they're probably not going to shut it down tomorrow.

One of the criteria Google uses to decide where to go next is the local competition. Comcast can probably convince Google to stay out of Milwaukee by offering 100 Mbps for $80. If Comcast is offering 10 Mbps for $80, Google knows they can get all of those customers. For consumers, we win if Comcast and AT&T keep Google at bay by offering a decent service at a different price, which is in fact happening in cities that Google is considering. Google wins by scaring the ISPs into offering faster service too - that means Comcast is providing a faster connection to YouTube, Gmail,and Google Docs.

Fruit of the poisonous tree

[tepples]

I don't know about Canada, but here in the States they have the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine that evidence from a constitutionally impermissible chain of investigation is inadmissible in court.

It's called 'bundling'.

[Behrooz]

I get the "bought" part, that is after all how lobbying works (it's not a secret), but how does one "sell" a politician? Do you mean that political parties are pimping out their people?

It's called 'bundling'., where existing wealthy donors who have already contributed the legal maximum 'sell' the candidate to their friends and business associates, effectively leveraging their personal connections and access to shepherd more funds to the campaign.

What has more political clout than one maxed-out contributor when it comes time to make policy? A fucking cartel of maxed-out contributors.

Given that your average congresscritter spends ~20% of their working hours trolling for contributions just to have a decent shot at getting re-elected, you can imagine how influential successful bundlers are.

Makes you wonder just how much we'd save by spending a couple billion a year on public financing of elections.

China comparison...

[Rick in China]

So, in China, a 20mbit fibre package can cost you approx. $12 USD (varies by city). Electricity, for me, in Chengdu, costs about $20-$30 per month for a family of 3 in a reasonable size place with a lot of appliances, computers, and gratuitous 24/7 air purifiers running. Water is far less at maybe $15/month, and gas is also quite low around $15/month.

Internet is extremely cheap. There is an option to bump it up to a 100mbit fibre connection in most areas, which runs a whopping $45 or so per month.

Those are fixed prices, because traffic is unlimited - and speed tests from everyone I know who runs the various speeds actually come in at close to the advertised speeds for downstream traffic (although upstream is usually like, 2mbit in comparison).

Unlimited. Oh, and no DMCA, nobody gives a FUCK what you download - as long as you don't need a VPN to connect to the content (which is like 99.9% of the torrents in the world) in which case make sure you get a VPN provider that ignores DMCA :D

LOOK!

[hurfy]

All you can eat pizza.... ...only $1.00 per slice.