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Comcast Users Must Now Pay $50 Per Month Extra To Avoid Caps (dslreports.com)
Karl Bode, reporting for DSLReports: In a letter being sent to Comcast customers in usage capped markets, the company says that with the recent announcement of usage caps being bumped to 1 terabyte, the company is also capping the amount of additional charges capped users can incur -- to $200 in a single month. As it stands, customers that cross the 1 terabyte limit face overage fees of $10 per each additional 50 GB consumed. But under the revised plans, customers have to pay $50 (up from $30 to $35) extra per month to avoid usage caps entirely. "Because you are an unlimited data customer, we will maintain your current rate of $35 until the end of 2016," the letter reads. Comcast's recent decision to bump their caps to 1 terabyte weren't driven by altruism. With the FCC preventing Charter from imposing caps for seven years as a merger condition, the agency has signaled that it may start getting more serious about cracking down on usage caps in the broadband market.
Today it's Comcast, tomorrow it might be AT&T, the next day it might be some long distance company ... the list goes on, and on
All squeezing the American customers
Where is the government when we truly needs them?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Comcast's recent decision to bump their caps to 1 terabyte weren't driven by altruism.
Um, who cares? How about YOU start your own broadband company and you leave the gates open out of "altruism" and we'll see how long you last. I'm so sick of people interjecting their opinions into every story. If you couldn't find more facts to base your summary on then maybe it's not that big of an issue to begin with.
BTW; humble readers who haven't clicked the link, Karl is pimping his own blog here. Obviously he isn't reporting this news out of altruism either but instead to funnel traffic to his article for page clicks. Turns out that Karl is playing the same kind of games that he thumbs his nose at.
Note to Comcast, you're a fucking ISP. Not a telecommunications deity.
Your job is not to censor, slow competitors, tell me where I can't browse, shoehorn me through your portal, blast me with advertising based on my browsing, cap my usage or tell me that what I want to use the internet for isn't something you're interested in. I don't give a fuck about you.
I pay you to do one fucking thing. And that is because I FUCKING HAVE NO CHOICE, REALLY, RIGHT NOW.
If you can't do this one fucking thing, which is delivering the internet? Get the fuck out of the ISP business.
Because you SUCK at it!
We have a free market! If I don't like it, I can just tell Comcast to fuck off and pay my early termination fee and go with someone else ....
Ahahahahahahahahahaha! God, I crack myself up. See, the joke is that they got a local monopoly.
I'm pretty sure the FCC and AT&T and Comcast and Verizon and Time Warner and the rest of them all hang out laugh at us all. Greedy fucks have to have their cash. 'We the People' my fucking ass. The reality that is forming around us is a lot more scary than the books, movies, music, teachers and government that has tried to predict what it may be via imagination.
. . . pity we can't say, "Sorry, but when I signed, the terms were unlimited bandwidth for $X/month. I haven't signed any changes to the agreement, so deliver, bitches. . . "
But what can you say about an ISP whose Customer Service Policy is cribbed from "50 Shades of Grey" ???
If you look very far upstream from the commodity Internet access service, most of the billing is usage-based. When ISPs sell to each other they use a "95th percentile" standard. The mbps usage rate you're just below 95% of the time is what you get billed for.
Severing the last mile leases from the ISP service would address a number of serious problems, but usage-based billing is not one of them.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
instead they did what they could to make sure maximum profits are to be had.
They are not a non-profit municipal utility, they are a business with stockholders that demand top financial return.
Having said that, I agree that they are blood suckers and I'm looking for a way to cut them from my life...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The future is half "1984" and half "cyberpunk" (corporations become more powerful than governments and run everything)
Actually, I get the impression that Wheeler at some point might have been backstabbed or financially or personally harmed by one of his colleagues or associates while he was in the cable industry. Now that he's a regulator, he seems to be standing in the way of letting cable companies run amok with plans to further and further monetize their customer base.
I think, if we had no regulation, Comcast would gladly charge $10 per GB just like mobile carriers do. I'm not saying we have an awesome regulator who always goes to bat for the little guy -- don't make me laugh -- but I'm saying it could be worse. And it probably will get worse in the future. We will wistfully look back at 2016 as one of "the good years".
This has been in the works ever since Netflix showed up on the scene. Cable TV is dying, and quickly -- and unfortunately for us, all the major ISPs are telecoms and a lot of markets only have a single ISP provider (monopoly).
These abusive business practices is what always happens when you have an unregulated monopoly. Can you imagine how fucked we'd all be if electricity or water or any other 'utility' was unregulated too?
... If only because it's documented and clear about pricing (at least at a glance from the summary).
I know this will be an unpopular opinion here but as an Australian that has lived under data caps since forever (the first broadband cap in Aus was 300mb, raised not long after to 3gb where it sat for a while), even considering how much time has elapsed 1TB is a staggering amount of data.
The biggest problem we had in Australia (... Outside of just generally ludicrously high costs for data) was pland being offered as "unlimited *", where the * basically meant go fuck yourself. This was, fortunately, clamped down on quickly and since then we've had crystal clear (if low) data limits.
I've been in the US for the last 2 years on some vaguely defined TWC plan. Despite having netflix running nearly all day every day (I've not been working for the last year so have had lots of spare time) I could barely manage more than 300gb a month, between me and my partner.
But even so I was constantly worried that eventually someone would be all like "you're using too much data!". Knowing there was a real limit would have been awesome, because I was used to thinking like that anyway and I'm tech savvy enough to deal with it.
I have no problems with data plans, as long as "unlimited" fucking well means what it says, even if you have to pay more for it. Having vague, opaque limits is harmful for everyone. Non-tech-savvy end users can just be filtered or rate capped, but for those of us that actually give a shit about service levels, it needs to be clear what we're paying for and what we're actually getting.
In Seattle I get 1 Gbps uncapped. Thanks to the progressive city council we have multiple providers to choose from.
Why are you saying "Fuck you" to the FCC? Do you understand that they're trying to get the Cable Company to REMOVE the caps?
With the FCC preventing Charter from imposing caps for seven years as a merger condition, the agency has signaled that it may start getting more serious about cracking down on usage caps in the broadband market.
I don't respond to AC's.
cable-cutters going to Netflix, Sling, etc scare the crap out of Comcast, especially as a network owner themselves. Throttling these content providers into Comcast userspace is a (vain) effort to discourage the flood of people fleeing the lousy service and exorbitant pricing offered by Comcast. Notice in the handful of towns deploying Google Fiber, the offers from Comcast suddenly become competitive (I'm in Jacksonville FL, a prospective GF site, and praying to Whatever Gods There Are it gets in here and my neighborhood has availability). I can live with torrenting my Walking Dead fix (Google TV service lacks AMC) for the chance to tell Comcast to take their pricey, lousy service and shove it.
You should see the shit we have to deal with in Canada. Check out our mobile plans while you're at it. It'll make you appreciate what you guys have.
You mean something like this.
I'm looking for a way to cut them from my life...
That won't happen until you vote for a government that will open up the market. You don't have much other choice.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
someone had to say it
at educating people on this topic, before giving up and letting people wallow in their own ignorance.
A dedicated OC3 costs about $7500/mo. 155 Mbps, 149 Mbps after you subtract overhead. That's what you need if you want 149 Mbps without any data caps. (Yes an OC3 is symmetric. Cable can be too, they just dedicate more bandwidth to downloads since people mostly download stuff. It is not an inherent limitation of the technology which makes it "different" from an OC3.)
How then are Comcast, AT&T, etc. able to offer you 50 Mbps for just $50/mo? By doing the equivalent of putting 150 customers on an OC3. $7500/mo / 150 customers = $50/mo per customer.
But this only works if none of those 150 people hogs up all the bandwidth. If one person has torrents running at 149 Mbps for the entire month, everyone else's Internet bandwidth is going to be seriously degraded. So how do you prevent someone from hogging up that much bandwidth? You implement a monthly data cap. 149 Mbps * 1 month = 49 TB. And 49 TB / 150 customers = 326 GB per customer. So if each of those 150 people used the same amount of bandwidth, you'd expect them each to use 326 GB per month.
Not everyone uses that much though, so you can make the cap a bit higher without everything falling apart. That right there is why most ISPs are setting their caps around 300-700 GB/mo. 1 TB/mo is actually pretty generous. And being able to remove the cap for an extra $50/mo ($30/mo for AT&T) is an incredibly good deal. $100/mo is a helluva lot better than the $2500/mo you'd have to pay for a partial OC3 giving you 50 Mbps.
Oh, the FTC could get off their lazy asses and do something, but seeing they are on their knees willing to do anything anyone who stuffs money into politicians' pockets they are going to get away with it.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
People should just switch to Google Fiber. They don't have data caps and the bandwidth is fairly high.
I have a 10 GB cap and have to pay 16 dollars for 2 extra GBs with my beloved satellite internet. Its my only choice (unless I want to use dial up).
When ISPs sell to each other they use a "95th percentile" standard. The mbps usage rate you're just below 95% of the time is what you get billed for.
That's technically true, but misleading.
Lots of ISPs do no-cost peering, they trade traffic in internet exchange points
But more importantly, wholesale IP transit pricing is orders of magnitude cheaper than what Comcast, et al are charging. Once you do the math to convert to bytes/month its less than $5/TB. You can argue about peak versus baseline, and fixed infrastructure costs, etc. But ultimately the mark-up is at a level that could not survive a break-up of the last-mile monopoly.
I'll be sure to let the management of my apartment complex know that is an option. I'm sure they will be thrilled and will jump on that immediately. Perhaps they can even convince Google to wire up the neighborhood! Even though Google Fiber isn't available in Houston, I bet they can make it happen.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
So we all have to move to Kansas City??
Nah. Those idiots are just laughing because Reagan farted. The fuckheads I speak of never get their picture taken and live on a $350 million property that you can't get to. They have stooges who do their dirty work, because, you know, stooges are easy to manipulate because they are infatuated with said fuckheads. All of these action are considered treason. Except it isn't. Cuz money talks and bullshit walks.
A lot of times, there aren't many people who make unusually high demands on a system, but the few who do, do so with a vengeance. Caps are a way to keep them in line, or at least help pay for the excessive resource usage.
Unfortunately, caps are also something that are easily tightened at the whim of a bean-counter.
ACs start at zero. As an AC, you should be aware of this.
That's the truth. Well, sort of. I just signed up with them yesterday, I finally had enough of my crappy DSL line. I couldn't stream HD, and the Internet sometimes had the response time of a slug on quaaludes, so now instead of being treated like crap by Verizon I get to be treated like crap by Comcast; but at least I'll have some decent bandwidth.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Or perhaps, we should smack down the Republican party who wants to maintain the old obsolete business model. Conservatism is just preserving the old way of doing things and ignoring business trends while talking on the other side of their mouths about competition and free market. THey have never been for free markets. FCC is constantly challenged by these guys. Perhaps, if we were to take back congress from these morons we might be in better shape. I don't think government oversight is always a good thing, but it is important that we put good people in charge who can make good decisions just like we do in corporations and businesses.
There isn't a cap because "no one" hits it. There is a cap because "most people" don't hit it. I realize my perspective isn't enough of a sample size to determine average internet usage, but I'd consider myself a fairly heavy user. 3 teens on youtube/netflix daily, me downloading "stuff" (yeah, let's just leave it there), and the usual basic internet browsing/e-mail/etc. I average around 300-350 GB/month pretty normally. To me, a 1TB/month cap seems 100% reasonable. I realize there are use cases where 1TB/month isn't sufficient, not gonna argue that, but if you need that much bandwidth maybe you shouldn't be on a residential internet connection.
I know, I know. "They sold me unlimited* so I should get unlimited" yadda yadda yadda. Bitch bitch bitch. Get over the fact that there is no such concept as "unlimited". It doesn't exist. Everything is limited. It's marketing speak. If you haven't figured that out yet, then I'm sorry.
I'm totally in favor of metered service. Caps are a form of that that are convenient. Basically one can plan a budget of so much for month that's correct nearly all the time but if you want more than that then you can pay incrementally. It's a fine idea that ties charges to usage.
The problem with this model is if there are certain services that escape the cap. If T-mobile can let me binge-on Hulu or if Facebook will let me watch certain parts of the internet they get payola from for free then this is just bending net neutrality over and reaming it hard.
So metered service = good but it has this slippery slope to evil.
therefore I oppose caps until all ISPs divest of content services and are regulated by public utilities. The risk of losing net neutrality is too great. it's directly analogous to the free press.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I just stay out of Washington DC, and do not watch hockey on television.
I am 6 miles from what was the fastest growing city in the state.
I think you're right, without regulation the cable-based ISPs would ramp up data costs so high that video streaming would have been crushed and cable would be the only possible TV option. Netflix would still be only a disc delivery service. It's not clear to me that even the Commerce Department would view it as a monopolistic practice.
I'm not even sure if the existing regulations would have actually stopped it. They wouldn't get away with it now because streaming is too popular and there would be political blowback.
But early on? You wonder why they didn't start with high per GB prices. It would have been pretty easy, and in most places the only competition (when there is any at all) is DSL with serious limits on speed, so it's not like they would have faced a bunch of defection, especially with discounts for TV subscriptions.
Frankly, I don't think per GB charges are a terrible idea. I end up paying about $0.60 per GB when I divide my cost by transit volume. I don't know if my monthly transit of about 160 GB per month is high, low or average.
The good part about per GB charges is that it would in theory eliminate caps as a policy and undermine any argument for them, since in theory the transit pricing would actually reflect the cost to deliver the service, so heavy users would actually be paying for what they consumed, and as consumption went up, the infrastructure could be expanded with the additional revenue.
The bad things, well, artificially high prices just lower than LTE cellular. Not seeing transit revenue as a source of infrastructure investment, just a source of more profits. And there's always the chance that "average" users really only consume 20-30 GB per month and they're subsidizing everyone and that the per GB transit cost would actually be much higher even on a dollar-for-dollar revenue basis to account for "average" users getting a much lower bill.
And this is why the fanatical push towards "cloud" storage of everything is insane nonsense. First it was cell phone data plans, now it's home internet as well.
The industry wants to have it both ways but it's not realistic. These two schools of thoughts are financially incompatible with each other.
While it sucks to live in an apt. complex...and have to get whatever one else does...
I would advise people renting or owning houses, to consider getting a business internet connection if you need unlimited broadband.
I have an older grandfathered lower limits one from Cox Cable..but I pay $69/mo...unlimited, no blocked ports (so yes, I can run servers)...and I even have a basic level SLA.
I once reported my service down about 11pm on a friday night....and by a bit after midnight they had someone on the pole fixing things.
You really don't have to show much proof of a "real business" either...I just had to give them a name, etc....
My plan isn't offered anymore, but for only a few dollars more, you get a bit faster up and down, and it is quite reasonable, I think maybe only $80/mo? I think they also have one cheaper than mine too....
But look for business ISP service to your home, often by the local cable company. Cox is a great one if you have them in your area.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I was thinking the same thing. 1TB seems like an awfully high cap to be worried about. Windows Updates are now peering on the LAN, so five computers will end up downloading their updates once. Business accounts (i.e. the ones actually running servers) aren't subject to the caps. If you're hitting a terabyte a month with torrenting, a rented seedbox will give you better stats and cost less than what Comcast wants for the overage cap. If you're hitting a terabyte a month in video streaming...that's a LOT of video streaming - maybe not quite my place, but is buying the movies off iTunes or good old fashioned Blu-Ray discs, along with an internal streaming server, not a worthwhile project to look at? What about using an Untangle box with their web caching and ad blocking?
Now, the obvious problem is that it was 1TB, and at first I did not speak out because I didn't use 1TB, then it was 500GB...I definitely get that. Sea level is rising, and even though 1TB is incredibly high right now, Comcast is finding fewer and fewer grandmas who are still paying for AOL and use a gig a month, because even she has a Kindle Fire now and is watching streaming video on occasion. Comcast's likely strategy is that going from no-caps to very-high-caps will make it easier to get caps passed at all, and from there squeeze the next fifth percentile, and the next fifth, and so on until they've unilaterally raised rates on everyone who isn't incredibly careful.
In the same vein, I'm not sure if "requiring very heavy users to pony up for their fair share" is the correct place to make a call to arms, but really, how low must they go before they do? Because if it hits 100GB, it means there were dozens of missed opportunities in the past, and there will be no one left to speak for me.
When FIOS came into my town my connection with TWC suddenly went from 20mbps to 200 without any additional charges. They were just like "Umm yeah we're gonna up the speed across the board." It's hard to support the idea that they need to meter my internet usage when they can do this big of bump just because fiber MIGHT be coming to town. (BTW... that fiber rollout stalled.)
I am cutting the cord on my next move. TWC could have avoided this by doing the following:
1. Cut down on commercials. Every commercial I see is an encouragement to purchase shows commercial-free from iTunes.
2. Limit rate increases to once a year. No, seriously, ONCE a year, none of this random "oh we're adding $2/mo. to your modem rental." My income, at most, goes up once a year IF I get a raise.
3. Pick a rate, make it consistent for everybody. I do not want to negotiate. When I got my last rate increase I got a letter that read something like this: "Congratulations, your rate is going up! But not as much as it could! We're giving you $200 worth of services but you'll only be paying $140 of that instead of the $130 you were paying for the last 3 months." TWC is the *only* company that I have to talk to more than once a year because of this nonsense.
Yes, I know we're talking about Comcast, but it's hard to imagine TWC taking the "no-caps" road, especially since a good deal of their revenue comes from advertising. Here's the problem with that approach, though: They're opening the door for competition and they're daring their customers to leave in droves. At least they're keeping me as an internet customer, don't poison that well.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
People should just switch to Google Fiber. They don't have data caps and the bandwidth is fairly high.
True, but their pricing is roughly inline wit cable's prices. AFAICT they no longer offer the $300 lifetime unlimited lower speed class of service, which would have been a good deal for many users.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
What a ripoff. I pay about $50 a month for 1Gbps+TV. I don't have reindeer though.
What fact? Seattle is ranked very high for Internet. Real proof: http://www.geekwire.com/2013/w...
I am 6 miles from what was the fastest growing city in the state.
In 1812?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
fair meter is needed as well.
Most IPS's seem to have ones that error alot and they change you for data sent if your system is off. As well changing for stuff like there own management traffic.
Oh sure, we win one World Series and now you're our friend again? Come for the Fiber, stay for the barbecue...
Many managers of apartment complexes here were more than eager to get hooked up to fiber. They would then boldly advertise that they have Google Fiber.
Yes. I'm surprised you're not already in KC. It has a little bit of everything without the insanity of the coasts.
I live in Longmont, Colorado. The city government is running fiber to the entire city. A guy just strung a piece of glass into a box on the side of my house the other day. Next Monday they come to install the inside port and give me my fiber modem. I'll be paying $50/month for 1Gbps and I can't wait to give Comcast the boot.
So HA! Suck it all you capped mofos. Looks like your big commercial ISPs have put a cap in your arse, so to speak.
There's a house down the street from me for sale if anyone's interested. ;)
FTC did a great thing by declaring ISPs utilities. They were trying to get approval for fast lanes (so they get charge you for Internet access AND then they charge Netflix, Facebook, etc. again to send that data to you expediently while exempting their own services from that charge to give themselves an edge), and the chairman, who was a industry insider, just totally surprised them by letting his conscience guide his actions.
However, he didn't invoke price controls on them, and I think we're either going to need that. ISPs have been merging and buying each other out at a alarming rate such that there are only a few players in the market (and only one choice in many neighborhoods). They are making billions easily, and they are trying to make billlions more by squeezing every dollar they can out of consumers who need this vital resource. How much can they raise the water rate and you'd still pay it? That's what they are trying to do with Internet service. They have plenty of capacity. They are not decreasing the rate of low-bandwidth users. In fact, rates have doubled in just the last few years, when you used to be able to get $30/month if you called retention whenever your promo period was up. They are just trying to make more money off of high-bandwidth users. I'm not against metered service, but low-bandwidth users aren't getting a break. If you look worldwide, everyone else pays much less for much higher capacity Internet and cellular service. We're getting screwed.
- we need 10x the ISP competition, and not just everyone leasing the line from a company already in control.
- Last Mile Monopoly: This is easily beat with analog TV spectrum which solved this problem way back in the 1950s. Reuse it openly for digital last-mile internet and watch the competition soar
- Peering Routers: I want to share through my neighbor's devices. They can be far more capable over the 1/4mile range than we allow them to be.
- These things will not-only stabilize prices, it'll stabilize communication and end kill-switch scenarios.
- Then eventually there's no ISP to kick you off of. Sharing will be standard exposing strict copyright for the farce it is.
Before you say corruption & special-interests stop progress, look how horse-stable monopolies lost to Ford's combustion-engine workshop. Technology enables progress. There are still laws forcing car drivers have carrots for horses, but nobody cares anymore.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
That's true. It's $70/month for just gigabit cable and $50/month for 100 Mbit cable.But you don't get datacaps and throttling. I've had it for about a year and hardly notice it. And that's how Internet service should work. To work so well, that their customers don't think about it.
Is there some kind of petition we can all sign or anything that helps to voice our dismay! Wtf