Cox Expands Home Internet Data Caps, While CenturyLink Abandons Them (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Cox, the third largest U.S. cable company, last week started charging overage fees to customers in four more states. Internet provider CenturyLink, on the other hand, recently ended an experiment with data caps and is giving bill credits to customers in the state of Washington who were charged overage fees during the yearlong trial. Cox, which operates in 18 states with about six million residential and business customers, last week brought overage fees to Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, and Oklahoma. Cox was already enforcing data caps and overage fees in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Ohio. California, Rhode Island, and Virginia technically have monthly caps but no enforcement of overage fees, according to Cox's list of data caps by location. Massachusetts and North Carolina seem to be exempt from the Cox data caps altogether. Similar to Comcast, Cox lets capped customers use 1TB of data a month and charges $10 for each additional block of 50GB. Cox will introduce a pricier "unlimited" plan later this year, Multichannel News reported. If Cox continues to match Comcast's pricing, the unlimited data plan would cost an additional $50 a month above what customers normally pay. A year ago, CenturyLink started a data-cap trial in Yakima, Washington, imposing a 300GB-per-month cap and overage fees of $10 for each additional 50GB. But instead of expanding the overage fees to more cities, CenturyLink ended the "usage-based billing program."

Comments

Would be interesting if we had a choice

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> [BrandA] Expands Home Internet Data Caps, While [BrandA] Abandons Them

I guess this would be mildly interesting if we had a choice between two companies for cable/broadband service. However, as things stand, cable/broadband service is similar to Obamacare plan providers: residents of many if not most countries simply don't get a choice and have to pay whatever the local monopoly wants.

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[pr0fessor]

Century link is dsl and cox is cable those are the only two internet options in my area.

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[MBGMorden]

That was true 10 years ago when high data users meant "bittorrent users".

These days a ton of people are watching all of their TV via Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, and other streaming services. While they may not have a good feel for how much a given amount of data is, the average user can certainly be affected by a cap now.

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[Slashdot Junky]

These days a ton of people are watching all of their TV via Netflix, Youtube...

Plus, the cap applies to the account, and households with more than one person are having to share the monthly usage allotted by the account's service plan. I have one user in my house, me, as a general rule, so I am not likely to find an imposed cap to be a problem. If I had a wife and a couple of kids, I'd be in a different boat.

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[cayenne8]

I have Cox Business internet only (no tv, no phone) and is only $69/mo.

No caps, no blocked ports, a low level but decent SLA....

Why would anyone get the consumer version?

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[pr0fessor]

If you and every neighbor are streaming HD and online gaming after work for 3-4 hours between 6PM and 10 PM then you won't exceed the cap and the network will still lag at that time of day not because a few users are hogs but because everyone showed up at the same time. You want to blame the teenagers that are out of school for the summer and sitting around playing xbox all day, it's not their fault everyone comes home around the same time every evening.

CAPS are a way to create more revenue without spending more.

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[pr0fessor]

6 month introductory deal 25mbps for $74/mo after that it's $139/mo that's about the best they offer in my area.

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[ncc74656]

As it happens, Cox and CenturyLink are the two options we have in Las Vegas. I've had cable-modem service since 2000, back when it was Prime Cable. I've had no reason to switch until now, and the email I received recently showed only one month out of three where I somehow went over 1 TB (and the other two were a fair bit under). If overage charges become a regular occurrence and if CenturyLink is at least competitive with speeds and prices (currently paying about $70 for 50/5 Internet-only service), a change might be worthwhile.

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[ncc74656]

I used to have business service so I could self-host my mail and websites, but residential service and a VPS are cheaper than business service (and most VPS providers provide 100/100, if not 1000/1000 anymore), but I'm currently paying $78 per month for 50/5 residential and about €15 per quarter for an offshore VPS. Cox's current business offerings include $85 for 25/5 or $135 for 50/10. Residential rates max out at $100 for 300/30, by comparison.

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[Solandri]

simply don't get a choice and have to pay whatever the local government-granted monopoly wants

FTFY.

The solution is already within our power - get your local government to stop granting these stupid monopolies. For whatever reason, that is the choice we made - instead of letting the market sort this out with competition, we decided it would be better to let elected government officials do it through regulation. And they chose/were bribed to create monopolies via regulation which are causing all these problems. We can

• Pressure our elected officials to change the regulations,
• or vote the bastards out and replace them with new politicians who won't grant monopolies,
• or decide that regulating this was a bad idea in the first place because there's no accounting for the stupidity of politicians, and restore the free market and let competition fix it.

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[macwhiz]

How do you think this would work, exactly?

Let's presume you're fine with the way streets looked soon after the invention of the telegraph and telephone, with huge bundles of wires blotting out the view as dozens of companies ran their own lines on every street, often causing poles to fail from sheer overload, crushing cars and people. (Yes, there is a reason why the government doesn't allow just anyone to attach stuff to the poles.

With no regulation forcing them to do so, do you believe that the power company or telephone company—whichever one owns the actual poles in your area—is going to let just anyone attach wires to their poles? You could have a regulation forcing them to allow it... and they'd charge an insane price per pole. You could have a regulation setting a fair market price (good luck getting that past conservatives), but then they'd find "safety reasons" to block competition. Do you know why you don't already have separate poles for power, phone, and cable on every street? Because regulations force the pole owner to share.

Okay, so let people set up their own poles, right? Because who wouldn't want a new forest of poles on their street? Well, the existing poles can be there because the government allows them to be there—they're on the right-of-way granted to the government for the street. (You technically own the land under the street, but the laws give the government the right to put a road along the border of your land and make certain improvements; the right-of-way is usually about six feet wider than the road.) But you want to get rid of that regulation... so your competitive company is going to have to negotiate with every single homeowner to get their own right-of-way to plant poles. Yeah, no one is going to abuse that and ask for obscene cash.

What about just forcing the existing companies to share their lines, providing wires or bandwidth at wholesale cost? Well, that's a regulation, and we tried that in the 1990s and the existing companies threw a fit and got it overturned.

Most communities would gladly allow a well-funded competitive company to attach to the poles in their area, if that company showed a real commitment to a full buildout and looked like they might actually get it done. The problem is that no one wants to do it. Hell, the existing competition for cable—the phone company—is packing it in and giving up in many areas (looking at you, AT&T and Verizon). It's not that regulations make it impossible to compete; it's that financial reality makes it impossible to compete in most areas—unless you're a taxpayer-funded co-operative that has different financial realities. The regulations exist to limit the abuses by the de-facto monopolies, not create them.

Re: Would be interesting if we had a choice

[KGIII]

If you use DSL, chances are good that you have many choices, even though lots of people don't seem to know this. DSL is on the copper POTS lines and subject to different legislation.

Because I use DSL, I have the PUC watching my back. I can use any service provider that is willing to serve me. The owner of the lines must allow it, maintain it, and is limited in their abilities to charge for it - they must provision it, at a good price, to any company who wants to provide DSL services, as well as phone services - of course.

FairPoint owns my lines. I once got mad at them, for a billing error, and I switched to GWI. GWI only offered a lower speed capacity, so I switched back after the billing issue had been rectified. I could have switched to a third company, but didn't need to. I had no downtime while switching. I can use any provider who wants to support me - they don't even need to have a business presence in the State.

Chances are pretty good that it is very similar in your State. DSL is subjected to very different legislation because telephones are considered a necessary public utility. This is not true for cable.

Re:Would be interesting if we had a choice

[Cardcaptor_RLH85]

What about just forcing the existing companies to share their lines, providing wires or bandwidth at wholesale cost? Well, that's a regulation, and we tried that in the 1990s and the existing companies threw a fit and got it overturned.

I think you just identified the real way to fix this competition issue completely. You simply allowed the signal of this paragraph to get lost in the noise of all the issues with Solandri's solution.

As far as I see it, there are a few ways to fix the issue of broadband competition in the United States. One way is the one we used in the past for the internet to start in the first place. Require the owners of the last mile networks to connect any ISP to customers at wholesale rates. It worked in the past, that's how we ended up with so many DSL providers originally over phone lines and the @Home company (and others) providing cable internet service before the cable companies got into the business themselves.

A second way would ask municipalities to build their own fiber networks that they manage and allow any ISP to connect to that network if they wish to connect to local customers for voice, video, or data service. We trust our local governments with our lives when we trust them to maintain the streets we drive on so, why wouldn't most communities be willing to deal with them maintaining the last mile of a fiber to the home/premises network?

The third way is VERY unlikely but could be done, it would have various State governments use eminent domain on the last mile networks and from there, it would look a lot like option two. The problems here are cost, (my state, Michigan, requires the government to pay 125% of fair market value for any property taken by eminent domain for example) the legal battle that would ensue from such an act and, the fact that effectively nationalizing an industry just feels un-American. Those factors make this solution the least likely of these options.

In short, there are ways to change this lack of competition, but, as they would all require some level of government action counter to the best interests of the large ISP's I can't see it happening anytime soon.

Century Link still had them in my area

[rsilvergun]

I'll have to switch to business internet to get away from them. And I know this is going to make folks uncomfortable but let's face it, this is a direct response to the new administration's policy in regard to both Internet providers and anti trust law.

First I heard of it

[rsilvergun]

was the letter I got yesterday saying they were doing it effective immediately with a 2 month 'grace' period. They'd back down several times. What's more they've been trying to merge and buy smaller cable companies and data caps were one of the reasons they got blocked. That's why I brought up anti-trust. Cox (and Comcast) both want to expand by buying up competitors and were doing several pro customer business practices to try getting the regulators on their side. Now that the regulators have changed they don't need to do that anymore. As the head of the FCC said, we can all just move.

Re: more Slashdot SJW whining

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent post was censored to -1 by abusive moderators.

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with your opinion there. To quote the entire parent post:

Get over your whining, snowflakes.

Nonconstructive and offensive preamble.

If you don't like data caps, get a different ISP.

Bad assumption that everyone has a choice in service providers in their area.

Feel free to also move to a location with different ISPs. It's not hard at all.

Arrogance in stating that mobility is easy. For most people this is a very hard thing.

So all in all, I would agree with the -1 moderation. Not a post worthy of being seen by anybody. (Except those who read at -1 for fun. :))

Re:Economic Question

[Pascoea]

For example, will it cost Cox more if I download 10 Tb in a month than 1 Tb?

Yes. Similar to an airplane full of mail, there is a finite amount of stuff you can put on a fiber line or an airplane. If they have to add more routes (a new fiber line, or another cargo plane) to accommodate the traffic, there is real cost there. Now, I know that the typical bitch in articles like this is "They sold me an unlimited plan, therefore I should get unlimited data", but that's not what you were asking.

Thanks, can I have $20k

[rsilvergun]

to cover the cost of the move? I'm including the cost of selling my current home and buying a new one. I might need $40k. Maybe $100k if I have to get a new job and it doesn't pay as much. That's no trouble for you, is it? It's easy, right?

Yeah, I know, I'm feeding the trolls, but what scares me is somebody might mod this joker up.

Per their SEC filing it costs them $9/mo

[rsilvergun]

to offer internet service. That came from their last SEC filing and if there's one place you don't lie it's your SEC filing. I pay $80/mo for service. That's $71/mo of pure profit times however many million subscribers. There's a reason they airdrop lawyers every time a town mayor sneezes and it comes out sounding like "Municipal Broadband". Broadband, like healthcare, is much, much cheaper when it's paid for by the government and they know it. They don't want _you_ knowing it.

Re:Per their SEC filing it costs them $9/mo

[jezwel]

Broadband, like healthcare, is much, much cheaper when it's paid for by the government and they know it. They don't want _you_ knowing it.

I think it's more that government doesn't have that fierce profit motive so they can offer a service at near cost price. Economy of scale re: exiting from the local municipality network might increase costs a bit, but certainly not to the tune of $71/month/connection...

Re:Per their SEC filing it costs them $9/mo

[T.E.D.]

I think it's more that government doesn't have that fierce profit motive so they can offer a service at near cost price

Cox doesn't have that either. They are a monopoly in nearly every market they are in. As is probably reasonable, due to the extreme up-front cost in laying all that cable. Cable is what is known as a "Natural Monopoly". All the problems people associate with government-run services are really just classic problems with monopolies: the rules are just different when the people making the decisions don't have to worry about you running to a competitor.

The only real difference between a corporate monopoly and one run by the government is who it is accountable to. Government agencies are at least indirectly accountable to their voters. However, if you aren't a Cox shareholder, you have no say in decisions Cox makes like this one.

Re:Economic Question

[gmack]

The overage cost on my server is € 1.17 ( US € 1.33 ) per TB. My server provider also has hardware upgrade costs which I can only imagine are higher since they have to support larger traffic volumes since their minimum package comes with 2 TB monthly while charging less than Cox does.

The only difference is that the server hosting space is more competitive, if my provider gets more expensive I will simply leave so they can't suck my wallet dry the way home ISPs can.

Then let them upgrade their bloody network

[rsilvergun]

I give them billions in taxpayer subsidies for it. They then pocket those subsidies, skip the network upgrades, shut down municipal broadband and then claim there's just not enough bandwidth. But there's always _plenty_ of bandwidth for their Pay-Per-View networks to stream in glorious 4k for $100 a program. Meanwhile their SEC filings show internet costs $9/mo to provide (customer service included).

Not to sound rude, but why is it so hard to accept that your being lied to?

Re:Then let them upgrade their bloody network

[Pascoea]

I never claimed that Internet providers were honest or implied they weren't happily bending us over at every opportunity. Was merely pointing out to AC that there are per-unit costs for delivering Internet. I do find your $9/month claim to be a bit dubious, care to provide a source?

Re:Caps???

[DontBeAMoran]

What makes you think we don't have monthly data caps in Canada? Not only do we have caps, they're even worst! How would you feel about paying $10 per GB over your limit?

Mod parent Up

[rsilvergun]

For the record I'll be switching to biz class service before the fees kick in. It'll be $12/mo more and 10 mbps slower (for $20/mo more I could be 40/mbps faster but I don't see the point). This has nothing to do with QoS. It's a money grab because they can. If we had a different administration they might get slapped down when they did it. At the very least they're upcoming buyouts for other companies would get denied. But right now they're feeling pretty bold.

As an MSP and Internet Reseller....

[Zurkeyon3733]

We just dropped our business relationship with COX over this. Good thing we have several Options here in central Florida!

Misleading headline

[Bill Hayden]

When I saw the headline, my first thought was "Finally! Their caps are so low!" Unfortunately, it's the not the cap itself that's expanding, it's the number of people forced to bear it.

Hopefully CenturyLink serves some/more Cox markets

[sethstorm]

Would be nice for CenturyLink to show Cox the error of their ways by picking up Cox customers.

Trouble is that you don't own your VPS.

[sethstorm]

One can stop payment on a physical server's network connection and retain it if so one chooses. One cannot do the same for a VPS, even if one wished.

Never mind that there are privacy issues with not owning your own hardware.

Re:Trouble is that you don't own your VPS.

[ncc74656]

One can stop payment on a physical server's network connection and retain it if so one chooses. One cannot do the same for a VPS, even if one wished.

Daily (or more frequent) backups ensure that no matter what happens to the host, you have your data.

Never mind that there are privacy issues with not owning your own hardware.

Depending on what you're doing, that could be a problem. Mine hosts a few websites and my personal email. If I cared to do so, there may be additional measures I could take to secure my email against potential bad actors at the hosting provider (anyone know of something that works with Postfix to PGP-encrypt all inbound mail?). As for the websites, most of that is intended to be publicly viewable; that which isn't has various protective measures in place.

Also, if you noticed, the service I'm using is priced in euros, not dollars. It's hosted in northern Germany, where it's a little less likely that our three-letter agencies would get unfettered access to it. I'm not under the impression that it's totally bulletproof, but it's likely worth at least a little.

Not so.

[sethstorm]

It's just revenue generation, not any good purpose.

If it really was about that, they'd limit speed.

Re:CoxWiFi

[Slashdot Junky]

Interesting! Surely they are tracking these connections as well to at least manage abusers. If they aren't policing these connections, it does look like a possible way to skirt, albeit with drawbacks for sure, the cap. I imagine a bridge could maybe be put in place to connect a person's router/firewall equipped LAN to Cox's public-side WiFi network provided by the person's own Cox-provided router. If Cox is paying close enough attention, one would need to distribute their usage in such a way that both the private and public routes are being used, and this can't be a switch once the cap has been reached. Such a switch would be a tell-tale sign of skirting. Instead, the person would have to maintain two networks where some devices hang off the private route network and the rest hang off the public route network.

Re:Phoenix area Cox bullshit

[I'm just joshin]

Cox no longer offers specific "Home Business" Internet plans. They've been rolled in with the other Business ones.

Re: more Slashdot SJW whining

[tepples]

Only most people have a choice between cable, DSL, mobile broadband, and satellite broadband.

In practice, this is a choice between cable and DSL because both mobile broadband and satellite broadband have caps that are two orders of magnitude tighter than those described in the article.

Let's say hypothetically that you move to escape substandard home Internet access. And then the day after you move, the cable ISP and DSL ISP serving the area to which you moved substantially tighten their caps. What's your next step?

Re:Hopefully CenturyLink serves some/more Cox mark

[Bing Tsher E]

CenturyLink can promise whatever they want.

I abandoned them when it became obvious that they were only a Last Mile provider here. That means we always had an excellent DSL connection, but there were days and days when there was no DNS or any kind of connectivity past the DSL connection.

CenturyLink provided tech support that consisted of 'unplug your modem' quality, and after weeks of dealing with intermittent zero connectivity I gave up.

My only conclusion was that they were not interested in selling me anything over copper wire.

You're missing the lie

[rsilvergun]

the lie is that the fixed costs necessity bandwidth caps. Given the enormous profitability of Internet and the massive government subsidies on top of those profits it's clear that it does not. The subtext to your original comment is that bandwidth caps are acceptable because costs must be contained. A bit of knowledge at the costs involved shows that to be false. And that's before we talk about stuff like network speed, QoS, throttling options and advanced network techniques. We're being had. And it's really, really obvious.