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Comcast Expanding Data Cap Locations, Training Reps To Avoid Subject (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader sends news that Comcast is about to expand its 300GB data cap to more cities in the Southeastern U.S. "Newly capped areas include Little Rock, Arkansas; Houma, LaPlace, and Shreveport, Louisiana; Chattanooga, Greeneville, Johnson City, and Gray, Tennessee; and Galax, Virginia." This happened at the same time organizations are calling on the FCC to investigate Comcast for this practice. A helpful Comcast employee decided to leak the internal training on how Comcast plans to message these data caps to consumers. For example, they direct their representatives to tell customers that areas without a data cap actually have a 250GB cap, but it just isn't being enforced. They even suggest avoiding the term "cap," instead preferring "usage plan." There's also this: "If a customer calls in with any questions associated with the usage policy and how it relates to Net Neutrality, Netflix or observations about how XFINITY services are or are not counted relative to third party services, do not address these items with the customer."
A pattern of behavior clearly deserving of trivialization and therefore acceptance.
Soon as this hit my area, I signed up for the $30 extortion fee, bc 300 gigs is a joke and my household crosses that in a week easy. Now, I make it a point to use as much bandwidth as I can, downloading every goddamn cat video on the internet, twice, daily, while playing games online and streaming netflix on multiple devices most of the day, just because.
I'm getting every damn pennies worth out of it.
I'd be okay with "usage plans" if I got credited back for the data I didn't use. If I use 200 of my 250 plan this month, then use 300 next month, I shouldn't be charged an overage. I'm paying to use X amount of data. Where the hell is my change back for the stuff I didn't use?
http://gizmodo.com/5043253/comcasts-250gb-data-caps-now-official-starting-in-october
Comcast support is so horrible it's the go-to for making memes. Anecdotally, the people I know with Comcast have no other viable solution. If that's a more general case, it's monopolistic lock-in based on area. If it's not, why do people still use them?
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
So basically they have a formal policy to mislead, misdirect, or lie to their clients in order to implement a policy and pretend it's always been there?
Isn't shit like this illegal?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"do not address these items with the customer."
.
There's a good discussion here.
That's what Comcast has done. Their network capacity has been so overbooked that if everyone actually tried to use what they think they're paying to get, the whole thing would grind to a halt. It makes me wonder how many network engineers tried to tell management that what they were doing was a really bad idea, and how many of them got fired for daring to explain it to them. Now they're painted into a corner, and rather than invest in expanding their network to meet demand, they'll just tell everyone who is paying them 'tough shit, deal with it, it is what it is' and hang up the phone in your face -- then badger you to death when you try to cancel their 'service'. They've painted themselves into a corner, and are denying it furiously. Meanwhile they're allowed to buy up more and more other companies so they can corner the market.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
300 gig caps is a class action lawsuite waiting to happen as many games and streaming content alone can easily scream past the cap within a week or less if you're setting up a new media system.
Pretty sure that any Chattanoogan in their right mind doesn't even have Comcast to begin with.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Chattanooga is one of the cities mentioned and if I recall offers municipal fiber. If Comcast isn't completely shut out by consumers in that city by now, they will be very soon.
after common carrier reforms were passed this year its really shocking to see internet providers still pulling crap like this. Comcast considers this a trial because its hoping if it rolls the whole thing out slowly enough then maybe, just maybe, it wont face scrutiny by the FCC and a class-action lawsuit.
caps, wireless hotspot whoring, advertisement injection and yes, even SRVFAIL hijacking should have come to an abrupt halt under the FCC reform. Turning your callcenters into crisis hotlines that grill you in ESL about what you use the internet for are also a pain in the ass. stop advertising internet service i can buy over the internet if it just means i have to spend 2 hours on the phone to seal the deal 3 days later when a truck drives by to hook my internet up.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Comcast was saying at one point that caps/overage fees were needed to reign in bandwidth hogs who were clogging the network. Since then, they've admitted what we all knew from the beginning: This isn't about network management/congestion.
The reason reason for caps and overage fees is simple: Cable TV. Cable TV revenues are declining as people move from watching Cable TV to getting video entertainment from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and other online sources. The cable companies don't like this because it means money flows to other companies instead of to them.
Now, cable companies tend to have a monopoly for wired, high-speed Internet access in their areas. (If not a monopoly, then likely a duopoly with the phone company.) They are using their monopoly control over Internet access to prop up their Cable TV business. By establishing caps and overages, they can ensure that people: a) Are limited in what they can stream and b) wind up paying the cable company if they stream too much. The overages raise the price of streaming videos. Instead of paying under $20 for Netflix and Hulu, you might wind up paying $40 or more. Suddenly, streaming "costs more" than cable TV would and (Comcast hopes) people will abandon streaming and come back to the cable company.
The big problem (for Comcast) in all of this is that it's illegal for a company to use their monopoly position in one market to squash competition in another market. That's exactly what Comcast is doing here and the FTC/DOJ needs to investigate and stop them.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
They even suggest avoiding the term "cap,"
The "C word" used to refer to something different.
"We're not going to cap your data, we're just going to ummm, 'rate limit' it according to your 'usage plan'...and the rate limit will be zero bytes per day. Thank you for being a Comcast customer!"
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
System sucks!
It seems like google fiber is the only fair ISP. I wish they would roll out to my area so they could kill off AT&T and Cox.
Too bad the current evile ISP monopoly was able to effectively kill the requirements of The 1996 Telecommunications Act (fiber to the home for everyone in Ameria with an open backbone for any provider to access) without killing their grants and tax breaks. They basically took the money that the taxpayers gave them to build out fiber, spent some of it bribing congress with lobbyists, and pocketed the rest. Then when netflix came along AT&T has the gaul to say that netflix should have to pay to upgrade AT&T's infrastructure because AT&T payed out in bonuses and dividends the money that we the taxpayers already gave them to upgrade said infrastructure. Every ISP exec, lobbyist, and congressman involved should be in prison for defrauding the taxpayers.
Great!
So how are filling your broadband requirements now?
Isn't funny how in so many areas, the only viable solution for anything other than dialup is comcast?
Forget the bankers... it's time to break up these cable companies and their anticompetitive practices.
Conal O'Rourke was right Comcast needs to be investigated for breaking the law.
comcast needs to use there power to make ESPN and Disney channel premium channels that alone can drop the cost of a cable plan by at least $10-$15 /mo.
Regulation of monopolies is a distant second to the only real option: Competition. You have to get more providers to choose from in any given area or this will only get worse. Having three or four cables under the street and going into the house when you only use one seems wasteful, but it is the necessary overhead for actual competition, and competition is necessary to find a fair price in a market economy.
Data usage page:
17GB used
Note: Enforcement of the 250GB data consumption threshold is currently suspended.
when 640k got you a lot!
How? This is the same company that pays their retention reps for successfully retaining their customers using whatever means necessary.
We don't even need Net Neutrality to fix this. All we have to do is require that any service with bandwidth caps not exclude any of their own services from those caps.
.
Just as Microsoft did with their online storage, Comcast will eventually say that the extra $35 for unlimited is no longer valid. Now $35 gets you only an extra 200GB. If you want more, well there's $50 for 500GB, or $75 for 700GB, etc.
I'm probably in the .01% in usage. I remember one month I did 1TB. I'm curious about their congestion issues, and their actual costs.
I think they should just raise it to something ridiculous like 1TB, and be done with it. Most people don't use that much anyway, and people that do, like me, will.
But of course we don't want to pay anymore, and rightly so (if it's not about congestion).
We live in the day and age of unlimited talk and text. Why not data? Especially when I've heard employees from ATT spouting that they have the entire country laid with fiber, and that all "costs" are all "profit."
IDK if his bragging was personally beneficial to him, but I suspect it was.
What, of course, would always solve these issues is more competition. And we all know (well I do) what stands in the way of that: local, state, and federal regulations. http://www.wired.com/2013/07/w...
Then there is their broadband service (my area does not have DSL) but I don't want to pay those crooks more money. OK so I man up and cut the cord. crap someone sent me a 80MB file. I will be dead of old age by the time I download using dialup.
mfwright@batnet.com
"If a customer calls in with any questions associated with the usage policy and how it relates to Net Neutrality, Netflix or observations about how XFINITY services are or are not counted relative to third party services, do not address these items with the customer."
This sorta reminds me of an experience I had with AT&T. I have one of the grandfathered unlimited plans. In 2011 AT&T started throttling unlimited users indiscriminately, some only using a gig in a month and then *BAM* modem speeds. I was never affected mainly because I never really used that much data (I do now... somewhat vengefully...) but I did want to know exactly what their minimum spec for throttled transfers was. That seems like a reasonable question, right? If they're offering an unlimited plan but throttling the speed, they should tell me what the minimum speed is otherwise zero kb/s is an option, meaning that's unlimited.
I had several phone calls and emails with them about that, 3/4ths of the conversation was them trying to convince me that it'll never affect me. "You can always use wifi!", "You don't actually use that much data", "a little data goes a long way!", and so on. I actually had to tell one rep that I had already heard all that and it didn't apply (I made up a story about going on a long business trip to a place with no wifi...) and she was nice enough to get her supervisor involved, and SHE had to listen to the bit about how we always have wifi and all that stuff. If the call didn't' take so long I would have considered that funny.
Their final answer was to tell me that their network throttling speed was proprietary information about their network performance and that I had no business knowing anything about it. Nice chaps, I hope they enjoy their 100 million dollar fine over it. Too bad Comcast isn't paying attention.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
They probably don't currently have the technology in place to meter during the day, and be unlimited at night.
If unmetered early mornings is easy for satellite ISPs to deploy, why can't a much bigger company such as Comcast put it in place quickly?
Heavy Internet users should consider getting a business account.
Provided your representative is willing to offer a business account to an individual without a business license and a commercially zoned service address.
You play by their rules, or you go play somewhere else.
I recommend everyone do precisely that.
"Go play somewhere else"? Not everybody has the financial resources to just pack up and move out of a Comcast-serviced area. Other Slashdot users have pointed out that finding a new job and a new place to live for your family aren't exactly trivial,[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7], especially if the ISP in your new area will likely just get bought.
How do you burn through 300 GB in a week?
By having more than one person in the household, for one. If one copy of Netflix downloads 1 GB/hr, three will download 3 GB/hr.
Why would the FCC investigate comcast? As already pointed out many times, the FCC's flavor of "Net neutrality" is not the same that everybody thought they were getting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7WHoqsRuxU
Capacity to carry data at peak time is a finite resource. In addition, subscribers to services other than satellite have historically voted with their wallet against "complicated" plans that distinguish peak time from non-peak time because subscribers' attention is another finite resource. This is why satellite ISPs are more likely to offer unmetered early mornings than ISPs using any other last mile.
So how are filling your broadband requirements now?
Isn't funny how in so many areas, the only viable solution for anything other than dialup is comcast?
By choosing employers outside such "so many areas" whenever it comes time to relocate, I'm guessing.
I fled from comcast 3 years ago. It was a cesspool of suck at two different addresses. The cable TV frequently went down. Internet service was very spotty. I was calling them about once a month with one problem or another. I was fucking pissed off. Their "solution" was always to send me a new modem or a technician. I started asking them WTF was this technician gonna do that the last one hadn't tried already.
So I went with DSL. I won't sing the praises of Century Link because their customer disservice is just as bad as Comcast's but their service actually works - MOST of the time. The first couple of years I had about 1 outage (that I noticed) per year and both were less than an hour.
I'm paying for 12 mbps and I usually get a little more. That's plenty for me and probably for a lot of users even with multiple people accessing the network at the same time. YMMV of course but it's more than adequate for me. I can get speeds equal to Comcast if I want - they did bump my plan up for a while due to one of the outages I mentioned.
I think many people are baffled by the promise of high speeds and they think they need it so they'll pay for a Porsche when all they do is drive to church on Sunday at 20 miles per hour because it's only a mile away.
Do you live in an area whose ILEC is Frontier Communications? Frontier licenses the FiOS brand from Verizon, from which Frontier acquired operations in several markets in June 2010. Frontier might be allowed to extend FiOS-branded fiber to the premises into areas not covered by the agreement between Verizon and Comcast.
Yeah you will need a good download manager for that assuming you dialup isp kicks you after 3 hours like the ones here do.
Set aside about 5 hours for the transfer.
I used to average about 100MB usage per day on dialup. 53.2kbps connection I had a really good quality line. left it connected 24/7. had to redial every 3 hours or so.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
I wonder if Comcast has internal projections that show the cable TV business -- ie, delivering real-time TV broadcasts -- basically dying over time.
That would depend on NHL, NFL, MLB, and NBA dying. These sport promotions have sold long-term exclusive live video rights to national and regional networks commonly included in multichannel pay TV packages.
If Comcast actually had the power you think it has, its NBCSN would be able to outbid ESPN for Monday Night Football effective 2021 when the rights come up for sale again.
"You can always use wifi!" doesn't help if the Wi-Fi router is connected to a satellite modem on a plan with a 10 GB/mo cap because satellite is the only broadband offered in your area that isn't Comcast.
I love to hate on Comcast as much as anyone, but the quote in the summary really was taken out of context.
The full quote from the document is:
Leaving off the last sentence escalating the call to someone who is more thoroughly trained in how to bullshit the customer changes the narrative. Without it, it sounds like the policy is to just ignore the customer.
If you can get television and internet for the same price as you can just get internet and netflix then why wouldnt you just pay one bill for more?
Because someone wants the shows exclusive to Netflix more than the shows exclusive to Streampix.
For example, they direct their representatives to tell customers that areas without a data cap actually have a 250GB cap, but it just isn't being enforced.
Well of course. It's called getting your foot in the door. They roll out a "cap" that isn't enforced, and simply start enforcing it little by little in different locations. Why are you complaining when it was there all along? /s
comcast needs to use there power to make ESPN and Disney channel premium channels that alone can drop the cost of a cable plan by at least $10-$15 /mo.
Unfortunately Comcast is in the weaker negotiation position relative to Disney and ESPN so threatening to drop them i they don't go premium is not a viable course of action.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Fiber, copper, and wireless are to communication like roads are to transportation.
It is not practical for 4 different private companies to be granted easements and right-of-ways on the exact same corridor in order to run 4 different toll roads side by side. In fact, it is generally a bad idea for a private company to be granted any easement or right-of-way using police power. If a company owns property, they can build a road across that property. If they don't own it, they can lease it, or purchase or lease a right-of-way. But all of these involve private property rights, not government-granted monopolies.
It is possible and in some places it is common for the government to grant multiple carriers right-of-ways through the same corridor. But it is also common for the government to grant exclusive rights through a corridor. Individual property owners are not compensated for this and have no control over it.
Communications infrastructure should be run more like transportation infrastructure. The actual fiber/copper/spectrum should be publicly owned. Zoning and city planning should take infrastructure into account, and infrastructure should be built out to accommodate zoning/planning. The equivalent of gas taxes would be much simpler for communications infrastructure because actual usage is easy to measure.
The trick is compensating utilities for all the existing material they have installed in public right-of-ways. The transition from current private providers to a publicly-owned provider might take some effort, but shouldn't be a show stopper. If you simply "bought" each provider for €$¥1/customer/month paid over the next n years, the current providers could be fairly compensated. You could do it without increasing the customers' bills because you would actually save money by eliminating redundant infrastructure.
Are they doing in this in areas where Google Fiber exists or where it is coming to? I bet when Comcast has real competition they'll back down from caps. Anyone have any experience in towns where Google Fiber and Comcast are both available?
They say this is about fairness, not congestion.
That makes no sense to me.
In a packet network, the cost is strongly related to the max rate on each link.
When the links are not congested, adding more bytes is nearly free.
When the links are congested, each byte is costing somebody else the ability to send more.
Fairness could be about charging something which relates to the cost of service.
This cap does not consider if the bytes were used during congestion or not, so they have little to do with cost of providing service.
Fairness could be about how well the service works for one customer versus another.
But that is congestion management, front and center.
This seems more about a questionable congestion management scheme than fairness.
It certainly is a marketing choice on their part.
I remember when dial-up cost you per minute of usage. Then unlimited dial-up came out. Of course competing ISPs drove down costs. One problem though was the incessant busy signals due to capacity planning failure. Some users just jumped ship to someone else because it was cheaper.
Of course if you lived in a rural town you couldn't get a local dial-up number. You had to pay either long-distance or purchase a $20/month for unlimited calling to only 1 phone number.
I'm disgusted by the number of users who know about the crap Comcast pulls and then go and excuse there own bad behaviour of subscribing saying 'it's faster than DSL'. If Comcast is a problem then CANCEL the service. I have ADSL and it's certainly sufficient for HD content. 10-25Mbps might seem small, but it's not bad at all. In fact in my experience Comcast's services tend to just appear at first glance to be greatly better. In reality I've often found that Comcast's services are far far worse. Either the service is extremely slow during prime time when you *actually* are on- or they cause disconnects of certain content/traffic shaping / etc. If you tell me I'm going to get 80mbps and then you don't provide ANY service for some traffic that's outright fraud in my book.
It's hard to take a stand when Comcast is the sole broadband provider. Or when an alternate provider actually costs MORE than the uncapped, business class service Comcast offers.
I had a local co-op approach me about putting in a line as they expanded into our area. I told them I though ti sounded great. Except they were only offering T1 service at $150/mo. Now, I'm all for the reliability of a T1 line, but getting 1/30 the download speed and 1/10 the upload speed for twice the cost makes it very hard to "send a message" to Comcast.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
As a forced Comcast user, out of curiosity, I checked my usage. It's day 5 of the month and I've used 70GB so far...previous months I've downloaded anywhere between 260 - 290 GB of data.
I work from home and access all my work data over my internet connection (I move very few files around - it's mostly rdp/ssh sessions, git interactions), use voip phones (both work and home), my kids almost exclusively watch "tv" via Netflix and YouTube and I would say my wife and I maybe watch 4-5 hours of streaming tv a week. Apart from that our internet usage isn't anything out of the ordinary and we're still exceeding the cap.
Comcast is insane if they think classifying anyone over 250GB of consumption a bandwidth hog especially as streaming services continue to grow in popularity - and eat into cable revenues.
If I had any real choice of provider, I'd be switching away from Comcast in a heartbeat.
...I get 25mbits ADSL without data cap for 38 euros per month. And that's just the top of the iceberg.
At that price, I also get unlimited national and international phone calls to landline and mobile from my home phone and also unlimited SMS messages and two hour voice call with my mobile phone (wich corresponds to my typical usage, I'll pay someting like 0.10 euros per hour if I use more).
To use my phone with my ISP, I just had to order a free SIM card from them that I can put into it as my phone is not locked to any mobile operator.
This 38 euros package also includes TV, with about 400 channels (the 30 most popular ones are in full HD). When I signed the deal, I also received the nice NAS that is included in the package. It packs a 500GB hard drive that I can access from any device on my LAN to put stuff on it like movies to watch on my TV or music to stream ect... I actually use that box alot as I can play mkv files on my TV with it. Right now, I can also request my ISP to replace that box with the newest one that also supports 4K.
It also has a "built in" torrent client that I schedule frequently to download large files when I sleep. My ISP also built a very effective ad blocker in the router that was, at the time it came out, enabled by default (but finally reversed it to opt-in). This free box (that's actually its name) also has a blu-ray player.
It has been several weeks since the city has begun deploying fiber in my neighbourhood, even tho I live within a average area with about 50K peoples in my city. Soon enought I'll be able to upgrade to FTTH, believe it or not, at no additionnal cost.
Also, if I'm not happy with my current ISP, I can leave it whenever I want as I'm not bound by any commitment period and got more than half a dozen competing ISP to choose from, who will also do the paperwork to end my current contract for me if I ever decide to jump ship.
Now I'll let you guess wich country I'm from. I'll give you some clues: I live in a country that is regularly mocked in the US press, tv shows and even by some politicians ( http://time.com/4099175/jeb-bush-republican-debate-france-apology/ ). We've been called names like "socialists" and "communists" and described as lazy peoples.
But it really amaze me how much crap you guys have to put up with your internet and telco companies each of the numerous times I read a story like this.
There is actually one really good reason for the salespeople not to discuss this, at least not unless they're specifically vetted and approved to: the salespeople *Don't understand the numbers*. I've had times on the phone with ISP sales reps when I have to make them check whether the "b" is lowercase or uppercase when they're marketing speeds. This is their job and they don't know whether they're advertising megabits or megabytes. If they start trying to explain to customers how many movies they can watch without following a very good script, most of them are going to be *wrong*.
Comcast is a monopoly in most of their regions. They're frightened to death about the problem of cable cutters getting their programming online instead of from their cable service. Limiting their subscribers ability to watch online solves this problem.
Signed,
Municipal Fiber.
But if they don't offer what I want to watch on TV this ain't really going to promote not cutting the cable either.
By not letting people eat bread, they ain't going to turn to the shit sandwiches you offer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Revoke their charter.
Problem solved.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
OK. So using the first believable ball park figure from a recent article (first Google hit) 22.55 million subscribe to Comcast for internet access.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=22.5+million+x+12
For any single $1 they can raise rates across the board... that's $270 million a year added revenue "for the hell of it".
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To charge even $10 more across the board per user per month...
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=22.5+million+x+120
is $2.7 billion dollars a year increased revenue "for the hell of it".
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Quarterly revenue increase from merely billing more is
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2.7+billion+divided+by+4
$675 million per quarter.
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http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=675+million+divided+by+3
$225 million a month for basically printing the 6 pages of "training" for staff and telling billing people to change prices.
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Monopoly. This is also [another vastly-cared-about-angle-of-attack on the public's lifestyle]. It is concurrent with many other issues. So, if you get too busy worrying about this and spend your time on it you might get a Jewish POTUS because you were too lethargic to inform the electoral college and public of the dangers of a "Friend of Israel" Commander in Chief of the #1 military in the history of Earth.
What does that extra $225 million a month enable Comcast to do? Fight tooth and nail to screw the public more. The more you pay them, the more they can fuck you up. See why we have anti-monopoly laws?
I recently spoke to a "desk guy" in a Comcast office. It was for somewhat related reasons to this article. I mentioned the math of price increases and how it matters as far as revenues. He got snarky/cocky and said.. what? Are you an economist? I said no I'm a day trader. He got quiet as fuck. Somehow even the customer service plebs feel empowered like fuck you, you're just the public.
It is also overly simplistic terms to reckon a "price increase = mere revenue increase". As a publicly traded company even an alluded-to revenue increase or a hint/smell of a revenue increase can lure investors and institutional investors into raising the share price. Now let me see if this was true.
https://encrypted.google.com/#q=cmcsa
Yep. The uptrend since 2009 is that of a company willing to jack any and everybody for the sake of revenue. P/E of 19.31. Market cap of $155.6 billion.
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/cmcsa/financials
Speak to them and calmly re-iterate the concerns, pointing out Comcast/XFINITY's training when necessary.
It sounds like that Comcast doesn't want to fall foul of NN and have someone admit it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I think the confusion comes from the use of the term "waifu", which can mean a body pillow printed with a drawing of a Japanese cartoon character that a lonely man wishes he could marry.
The city I live in (Brunswick, MD) has Verizon for land line phone service, and they sell you up to 6mbit DSL as the fastest Internet service they offer. Comcast is also available here for TV, phone and broadband -- and with them, you can purchase up to 200mbits down / 10 up. (For some weird reason, they won't give you more than 10mbits up no matter what package you buy here. They tried to tell me it had to do with a limit because their central office is too far from here, but it sure looks artificially capped to me. When you run speed tests, you see it immediately bang up against the 10mbit upload speed limit and get throttled right back down again as soon as it hits 11-12.)
The interesting thing is, FiOS very quietly crept into a neighborhood in town where new construction is taking place (Brunswick Crossing). Initially though, I was told almost nobody purchased it or kept it for any length of time because they could only offer broadband Internet, not television. Comcast supposedly had exclusive rights for the TV in our area. I believe as of just a month ago or so though, that has been lifted and the full FiOS bundle is available for them.
It's not possible to get FiOS anyplace besides in the Crossing housing development out here though. The rumor is, Verizon claims it's "not feasible to run fiber through the hilly terrain the rest of the city consists of" -- but they found a relatively low-cost/easy way to extend service to the one development that sits on flat land, outside the main part of the city.
Caps are when bandwidth is cut off or throttled when you hit a threshold. Metering is when you're not capped, but instead price-gouged for any bandwidth over that threshold. The latter is obviously much more lucrative when there's no actual congestion.
I highly doubt most people will ever be affected by a 300GB cap. One comment said his household would reach that in a week?? What household hits 300GB capacity of internet in a week?? Seriously, do you have a commune of 4K movie watchers? I see nothing wrong with caps for certain services and I see a better alternative for others who want more is to pay more for a better service with no caps or much higher ones. Especially those who suck down 300 GB in a week!
Interesting. Every modem that Comcast/Xfinity gives out now has the Xfinity hotspot turned on. So if my neighbor, (or anyone within range,) uses the 'my' hotspot I will get the usage added to my data limit.
To top it all off there is no easy way to turn that hotspot off, as Comcast's web set just returns an error when you click the button to turn hotspot feature off. And customer disservice just gives you the run around with, "Sorry, I don't know how to do that. / Sorry, it just gives me an error at this time. Try again latter.)
Does it strike any one else that not being able to turn off the hotspots is tried to Data capping. I.E. Money!