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Consumer Complaints About Broadband Caps Are Soaring (dslreports.com)
Karl Bode, reporting for DSL Reports: Consumer complaints to the Federal Communications Commission about broadband data caps rose to 7,904 in the second half of 2015 from 863 in the first half, notes a new report by the Wall Street Journal. The Journal filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the agency to obtain the data on complaints, which have spiked as a growing number of fixed-line broadband providers apply caps and overage fees to already pricey connections. According to the Journal, the FCC has received 10,000 consumer complaints about data caps since 2015.
Most consumers can deal with a data cap fine... if it is reasonable. It turns out most people are reasonable Internet users: They use it to get what they want, and leave it idle otherwise so that others can share. It is only some people who really abuse it (like torrent heads who download any and everything just to have it) that would complain about any cap, no matter what it is.
However rather than use it as a tool to help network quality, ISPs get greedy and try to use it to milk extra money from consumers. That means they want to set the cop too low on purpose, so people overrun it and have to pay more.
Like I have no issue with my data cap on Cox. For one, it is quite reasonable, 2TB. That's a lot of usage, even with a high speed line. So the chances of me hitting it are very low, even if I have a month where I'm using a ton of data for whatever reason (like restoring from an online backup or something). Also it is a soft cap. If I hit it they don't shut me off, just call me and pester me (or maybe not even that if it isn't much over, I don't know I've never hit it). Only if there are repeated problems would they act.
Now compare that to my boss who's on Comcast and ends up hitting his cap every month. Part of that is because he has a family whereas I'm single but more is because it is a 300GB cap. Our line speeds are the same (or near enough) but Comcast gives 15%ish of the bandwidth and it is a hard cap, you go over you pay a ludicrous amount for more. He's really annoyed, and I would be too in that situation.
It seems when they start charging money for it, they just can't help but get greedy and stupid.
They (we) don't want unlimited bandwidth. They want to use the bandwidth for as long as they want (and paid for), not some ridiculously short time and then get charged again for the bandwidth that they already paid for. For example, 50Mbps is good for 16TB/month, not 200GB/month. A broadband connection that's capped at 200GB is a burstable 0.6Mbps connection, not a 50Mbps connection.
"There can be no "unlimited" plans period. They don't work. All you can eat may work for Golden Corral, not so much for an ISP."
You mean, they can't work over there in the Corporatist States of America, right? Because it clearly works here in Sweden, with plenty of ISP's competing. Right now, it's saturday prime time, and I still get my full capacity, despite living in a neighbourhood where my ISP alone has over 400 households as customers, and 80 in my house alone.