Comcast Is Raising Its Data Caps From 300GB To 1TB (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Comcast has announced today it will be raising its monthly data cap of 300GB to 1TB beginning June 1st. They will however charge more to customers who want unlimited data. After June 1st, less people will need to buy unlimited data from the company. Previously, users were charged an extra $30 to $35 a month for unlimited data but now they will have to pay an additional $50 for unlimited data. "All of the data plans in our trial markets will move from a 300 gigabyte data plan to a terabyte by June 1st, regardless of the speed," Comcast's announcement today said. The reason for the change? Customers are exceeding the 300GB cap. In late 2013, Comcast said only 2 percent of its customers used more than 300GB of data a month. That number was up to 8 percent in late 2015.

Comments

"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[jxander]

If broadband ISPs insist on having data caps (which they really shouldn't), they need to adopt a schedule like the old cell plans. Not necessarily the same "night and weekends" model ... but that old jingle was stuck in my head

People who shape their traffic and plan large downloads at overnight aren't clogging up the lines. Why punish customers who are making their best efforts to not impact other people? We should be rewarding that behavior.

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[Lumpy]

Comcast hates giving you what you paid for.... Comcast rewarding customers? HA!

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[fustakrakich]

People who shape their traffic and plan large downloads at overnight aren't clogging up the lines. Why punish customers who are making their best efforts to not impact other people? We should be rewarding that behavior.

Because they'll clog the lines during the overnight. Comcast has a ton of money. They can afford to install fatter pipes. If people only made a stronger demand for municipal service, the threat of actual competition would make pricing and service much more reasonable.

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[unrtst]

For the extreme users, you both may be right, but that's still just the 1% - 2% of top users.

300gb/month is approximately 5.5 hr of HD streaming from netflix per day (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-much-monthly-bandwidth-doe-136401)

That may seem like a lot for one person, but it wouldn't be very difficult for one person to use that and hold down a normal job.
If you consider a household, which both the comcast and netflix subscriptions allow, then you could easily burn through that much, as at least 8% of their customers are doing now (according to TFS).

That's just legit streaming, with no torrents or other large downloads, nor any intensive work stuff, and completely ignoring all other internet usage. I doubt those users are going to schedule their streaming TV/movie watching for off peak hours. There's a reason the peaks are where they are now, and it's damn near all streaming video.

IMNSHO, I think:
* they shouldn't be allowed to charge per GB without offering better tools for their users
* once they do though, they should offer a base package (300-1000gb seems fine for that), and then a flat per-GB fee above that.
* get rid of speed restrictions if they use caps or charge per-GB (if everyone is paying same price per-gb, everyone should get the same bps)

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[JoeMerchant]

"back in the day" (1990s) I had a dialup provider who fingered me for "violation of the TOS" unspecified infraction, and terminated my account - which was fine since their 14.4Kbaud dialup service was delivering about 100 baud of actual throughput during prime time hours after they signed on more customers than they could service.

I'm pretty sure they didn't like the fact that I used to download usenet newsgroups 8 hours a night, and since most people didn't do that, they just jettisioned the 2% of their customer base who was using up 25% of their bandwidth. Didn't help them, they continued to provide absolutely unusable service to all the customers who signed on for year long discount lock-in contracts, and were replaced by newer providers who did slightly better at managing growth.

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[The Raven]

They can't. Even if they thought it was a good idea systemically.

• What's sucking most people's bandwidth? Streaming.
• What can't you timeshift? Streaming.
• What can you timeshift? Torrenting.

So if they implemented time based data surcharges, they would drive users to piracy. Since Comcast and Time Warner both have significant media holdings, any policy that incentivized piracy (would be a non-starter.

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[Shadow99_1]

Looking at my usage in the TWC control panel, I regularly use 300 GB+ almost every month. All of which is streaming from Twitch or Youtube, web surfing, and gaming. Most of my entertainment is from those sources.

Re: "Unlimited nights and weekends"

[jxander]

Then pick a different time.

The 8% of users who are exceeding 300gb per month simply should not be able to saturate the lines. If 8% of users can create a traffic jam, we've got bigger problems.

Meanwhile, Comcast can see their own metrics, even if they don't release that info publicly. So they can pick a time-frame that's currently underutilized, make that the "unlimited" time, and the big-downloaders will adjust accordingly.

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[Wycliffe]

Comcast hates giving you what you paid for.... Comcast rewarding customers? HA!

They aren't rewarding customers. Having a nights and weekends policy would only benefit them. The extra capacity is free and being wasted at night. Yes, they might lose a small amount of money from overage fees or people that don't pay to upgrade to unlimited but this should be more than compensated for if even a small percentage of their customers scheduled their large downloads for after hours. This would increase their capacity and improve their performance instantly without them spending a dime. I'm very surprised that noone who is considering caps in the first place hasn't already done this.

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[Ichijo]

What can't you timeshift? Streaming.

Yes, you can.

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[fustakrakich]

Just stop reelecting the ones that are bought off. Don't blame them for winning. The power comes from the voters' preference. They are the ones selling out to the highest bidder.

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[FrankHaynes]

Sure, because the next guy will be squeaky clean of course.

Look, you can always tell that a politician is lying because his lips are moving. Pick this thief or the other thief, your choice.

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[fustakrakich]

You take your chances on the first attempt. But why in the world would you reelect him or the party when he screws up? And then you got these kind of guys in there for five or six terms, what is up with that? The problem is now self inflicted. It's not even politics anymore, it's a pathology.

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[tlhIngan]

* they shouldn't be allowed to charge per GB without offering better tools for their users

"they" shouldn't provide the tools at all.

NIST or equivalent body should be generating the standards for measuring traffic use, and if Comcast wants to charge per-GB, they need to provide everyone with a NIST-calibrated and certified meter. Just like your water meter, your gas meter, your electric meter has calibration stamps and seals to indicate that yes, what they measure is accurate.

That meter should have a 0-cost way of reading it - i.e., a display showing how much you've used.

Until that is satisfied, there is no way to do this properly.

Think about it for a moment. There is no standard way to measure a byte. is it 1TB or 1TiB? What bytes are you including? TCP/IP headers and above? Or are you going to toss in DOCSIS headers as well? (your cellphone provider typically includes OTA packet headers and SI prefixes in their plans - the former adds around 10% overhead on average, the latter, well, you know).

Also, will there be a way to disconnect? If you're being DDoS'd, it's going to be annoying to pay for that kind of traffic, so if there is a way to disconnect and incur 0 usage...

Thus, if you're going to sell something on a per-anything, you need to make sure your measurement tools follow a standard.

Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends"

[unrtst]

Blah, semantics on "they", but I agree 100%.
You noted some of the questionable areas, such as headers, DOCSIS, DDoS's, etc.
For all header stuff, I'm fine with or without it included, and it's easier to include it, so that's fine - as long as it's sold that way.
For DDoS's, there would have to be some way to work with them on that, similar to getting SMS spammed on a cell phone with a limited plan - they'll work with you, and block that stuff. If they can't block it, that's at least partially their fault. Point here is that I don't expect this to be automatically handled.

That said, my largest concern would be broadcast traffic and scans.
If all my neighbors are generating traffic that I'm ignoring, I don't want dinged for that - I guess there should be a way to filter before the meter.
If there are a bunch of spam/virus scans/attacks, I don't want dinged for that. Currently, blocking that traffic is the users responsibility. That shouldn't be the case when charged per-GB because they are allowing that on their network and you have no control over what people send to you.
Perhaps a stateful meter will be needed - only outbound connections, or established sessions coming in. Inbound SYN is metered only if the inbound firewall allows it. It'd be quite a clusterfuck, but that's why they shouldn't charge per-GB :-)

Continuous Rate: 4Mb/s

[crow]

If I'm doing my math correctly, 1TB is about 4Mb/s over a month. Or closer to 3, depending on the definitions they're using (base-2 TB vs. base-10, etc.).

I run a tor relay at over 1MB/s, so that alone would more than double the new cap. I've very glad I'm on FiOS. Though I suppose I'm at the mercy of Verizon if they start doing the same thing.

Re:Which they really SHOULD

[geek]

Why should Comcast give everyone unlimited access to a self imposed limited resource?

Fixed that for you

A better solution

[brennz]

Comcast needs to have its own service, Stream TV, imputed against Comcast's own data caps. This will ensure that Comcast does not gain a corporate advantage via exploiting data caps in a monopolistic fashion.

Then, every other ISP needs to have the same thing occur to prevent the same malfeasance by Comcast from spreading further.

However, fundamentally, I think the definition of wired broadband need to change to assume the following.

Wired bandwidth you are provided is a constant stream.

Re:Which they really SHOULD

[Anonymous Coward]

For most of the civilized world it was a limited resource...10 years ago. And most of the world kept up and have very high data rates for a reasonable monthly cost. But the US is an outlier because the telecom and cable companies pocketed their rent-seeked profits (i.e. dividends, stock buybacks, Congressional junkets, etc.) instead of upgrading infrastructure.

If Comcast invested in their infrastructure there's no reason every home shouldn't have 100Mbs service. At that rate none of this would be an issue as that's more than enough to serve multiple streams of Netflix and anything else to the average household.

Point is, caps shouldn't even be a conversation topic in the year 2016.

Sorry, no tears for Comcast and their ilk here.

Re: Can we just have municiple broadband?

[johnsmithperson123]

Y'know, I'm a small government fan but also an aggressive anti-truster. Seems to me that we should just start threatening to smash the ISPs into tiny little pieces if they don't improve.

Re: Which they really SHOULD

[jxander]

Because the limits are false.

Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, etc. have made their own little monopolized diamond business, creating artificial scarcity.

The problem is that they've done this to a basic utility service, instead of an exorbitant luxury item like diamonds.

Re:Can we just have municiple broadband?

[inode_buddha]

Those broadband networks were paid for a decade before these kids were born, by guys like me with our municipal bond issues and subscriber fees. And if you say anything about "upgrades" I'm gonna laugh right in your face.

Re:Which they really SHOULD

[AK Marc]

It's not "self imposed" but cost imposed. Data caps are a proxy for bandwidth use. If everyone used too much bandwidth, they'd have to buy more. So caps impose usage penalties designed to reduce overall bandwidth usage, to decrease cost.

Re: Which they really SHOULD

[jxander]

There's a fundamental aspect of bandwidth that I think you're missing. It's always there. Any time that the lines are under-utilized is simply wasted. All those late-night hours when the lines are empty ... that unused bandwidth doesn't queue up and wait to help offset rush hour the next day.

Think of it like lanes on the highway. If we could somehow convince the big traffic jammers (big-rigs, perhaps) to run between 8pm and 4am, that would alleviate traffic for the average commuter.

Re:Which they really SHOULD

[FrankHaynes]

What a pity that Comcast's enforced monopoly results in usage of their network. Boo-fucking-hoo for them.

If they operated their retail network like real carriers do on a wholesale level by setting a 90th percentile rate based on actual usage, charge for THAT and make reasonable allowances for overages that would be closer to fair. As it is now, it's a shell game since their metering favors the house and not you, the customer.

I'd prefer HONEST metering, but Comcast aint interested in that.

Re: Which they really SHOULD

[Woldscum]

A year ago Cox raised the limit of "unlimited" from 400 to 2T in my area.

Re: Which they really SHOULD

[Nutria]

If we could somehow convince the big traffic jammers (big-rigs, perhaps) to run between 8pm and 4am, that would alleviate traffic for the average commuter.

Like torrenting stuff instead of using Netflix...

(Is there a way to tell Netflix that you're going to watch some movie or TV shows *tomorrow* night and have it download the data for you from 10PM to 6AM?)

Re:Which they really SHOULD

[AntronArgaiv]

It's not "self imposed" but cost imposed. Data caps are a proxy for bandwidth use. If everyone used too much bandwidth, they'd have to buy more. So caps impose usage penalties designed to reduce overall bandwidth usage, to decrease cost.

Except that Comcast has explicitly said that the caps are not about resource management. They are solely a money-making scheme. And they are not uniform across Comcast's network. For example, I live in Eastern MA, where Comcast competes with Verizon FIOS (whiich has no caps). Guess what? Comcast has a 250G cap which is "not currently enforced".

http://time.com/money/4143682/...

Re:Single-issue voters

[fustakrakich]

Regardless, my whole point has always been that it is not the "system's" fault. All choices are still personal no matter what the motivation.

Re: Which they really SHOULD

[plague911]

Any they are not necessary. So big whoop. The internet is necessary for modern life which is the whole point.

Re:Which they really SHOULD

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you don't know what you're talking about. I buy "wholesale" bandwidth for servers an I can EASILY get 20TB for less than $80. While bandwidth isn't free, you need to stop drinking the ISP Kool aid. They are price gouging every customer and stealing from every tax payer.