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Comcast Says It Isn't Throttling Heavy Internet Users Anymore (cnet.com)
Comcast, which has been throttling speeds to slow down heavy internet users since 2008, has had a change of heart. From a report: Comcast has deactivated this "congestion management" system, according to an announcement this week. "As reflected in a June 11, 2018 update to our XFINITY Internet Broadband Disclosures, the congestion management system that was initially deployed in 2008 has been deactivated. As our network technologies and usage of the network continue to evolve, we reserve the right to implement a new congestion management system if necessary in the performance of reasonable network management and in order to maintain a good broadband Internet access service experience for our customers, and will provide updates here as well as other locations if a new system is implemented."
...and what more nefarious things are coming down the line?
Why would they throttle high utilization users when doing so means that they don't hit the arbitrary data caps sooner? It is much more profitable now for Comcast to let people reach that 1 TB limit each month so they can start racking up the $10/50GB charges as quickly as possible.
Do you believe anything a large corporation states?
If you do - dream on!
we know the ISPs are jerking us around. We know they've got plenty of bandwidth since they'll cheerfully sell it to you for a premium. We also know they're sitting on billions of dollars of cash; much of which was given to them as tax cuts and subsidies for the express purpose of building out their network so they didn't have to do crap like bandwidth caps. This is /., a tech community, so we all know these as facts because half of us our network engineers and the other half are programmers and scientists of one kind or another
Why the heck don't we just elect the kinds of politicians who will force Comcast to do what we want them to do? We never do. Every year we go to the polls and elect the same batch of anti-consumer clowns. At a certain point we're being complicit in the whole thing.
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They are going to change the system to add throttling capabilities based on traffic type now that net neutrality has been repealed.
... websites you visit. Cos now they can.
Comcast throttles both sides of the equation. They claim that they did not, then it was discovered that they did, so they had to admit it. Now, they are claiming that they will not throttle. OK. BUT at some point, a lot of traffic will be slowing down their cable. They will then use this as an excuse for why they need to throttle supply side.
What is needed is to get competition going. Remove the monopoly. Likewise, allow Google and others easy access to public ways.
Finally, at a federal level, require that all local govs be allowed to put in communications utilities if the local citizens vote it in. IOW, state gov can not override the local gov choices to have this.
As long as we have gov sponsored monopolies,and esp without proper regulations on performance AND pricing, then we will always be screwed. So, allow competition to take hold and considering the importance of communication between citizens and gov, I would suggest that local gov have a real need to install the fiber, esp last mile, and then allow competition for managing it along with providing services over it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
and think of creimer and do a double take?
GOBBLELOL!!!
Comcast is not going to throttle users anymore.
They're resorting to whipping.
Recently after the Removing Net Neutrality decision was made (Before it went into law) Spectrum bumped its speed from 60mbs to 100mbs. And now after the law went into effect Comcast is stopping its throttling.
I feel like these companies realize how much we are afraid of ending Net Neutrality, so they are compensating (at the moment) to show how much better life is with out it. ( like how an authoritarian dictator after getting in power, can use his power to force the trains to run on time, to show the public how much life is better with him in power ). Making the public more comfortable about the process only to turn the screws on them slowly later on, when their power has been solidified.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Net Neutrality is gone bitches!
We're turning off the old throttling shit because that wasn't making us money.
Just wait until you see the NEW throttling system.
I guarantee you that every shareholder will absolutely love it.
Fox News and Fox Sports are not part of the deal.
"We're not doing it anymore...
We're not doing it any *less*, but we're not doing it anymore."
I don't know if any of you still see or hear ads, but I was driving a car for a few months where all I had was FM radio, and it was full of Comcast ads.
Comcast advertises speed. Everything is about speed. My wife and I laughed over their ads' suggestion that somehow their wifi was faster than others, as if your ISP determines what wifi equipment you're using.
But anyway, they're saying speed, speed, speed.
If they don't actually have speed, then they are nothing, because speed is what they brag about. So this throttling stuff was severely undermining their marketing. Their ad people must have been furious. "How am I supposed to sell this, if your division can't deliver the one and only thing that I'm selling?"
If you plan of charging the supplier end of the pipe, then you throttle *that* end, not the consumer end of the pipe. You're now selling access to consumers to suppliers (like Netflix), so of course you want to sell as much consumer bandwidth as possible.
Thanks to the lack of Net Neutrality, we're encouraging everyone to use the Internet a bunch right now. Keep using Netflix/AmazonPrime, and strengthen our bargaining position with them. And don't worry about us, internet usage that doesn't strengthen our bargaining position (e.g. peer-to-peer networks or torrents) are about to go away entirely.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
One possibility (I hasten to add that I haven't confirmed this) is that /. readers are less than half of voters.
Forcing people to self throttle or give Comcast a huge profit. Just hope you don't have to reformat your computer and download a few games or you get close to the 1TB limit rather quickly. Sure it's probably enough for one person, but if you have 2 kids who watch videos and download games for their PC or consoles then you run up against the limit every month.
Let's fix the headline.
Comcast Says It Isn't Throttling Heavy Internet Users Anymore
to
Comcast Will Throttle All Users Now
Because what stops them? Nothing.
Since the net neutrality laws expired, the only piece of this to pay attention to is "...we reserve the right to implement a new congestion management system..."
Who will the new data-hogs be? Netflix? Youtube?
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
You know their subscriber base has done nothing but increased in the past decade, yet they no longer need to throttle folks.
This can only mean one of two things:
1) They didn't need to throttle back then either, regardless of the excuse they used.
or
2) They've spent the money to upgrade their network to handle the increased traffic ( LOL )
They've just made a bid to buy Fox (because they weren't evil enough). I imagine that they don't want any complaints to mess up a merger.
Just like every other large company.
Why is Snark Required?
Now that Net Neutrality is no more, why bother to throttle the many many customers directly, when they can first extort money from the major sources of the data, and have those companies up their rates of your service. That way Comcasts great PR machine can indirectly extract more money from your wallet while simultaneously putting the blame on the data-service provider, not themselves. The customer will have no idea why they are paying more for the same services, and no recourse for getting that fee lowered. You can't just pick up the phone to Comcast and renegotiate you bill, because the additional cost is not on your Comcast bill. Arguing with Netflix to tell them to renegotiate a better deal with Comcast has no hope of ever changing anything. You now have no recourse other than finding another network provider, and for customers like me, there is no other provider and they know it.
PRICE CHECK!
Bernie Sanders does. Liz Warren Does. Al Franklin did until the Dems kicked him to the curb over a minor scandal (mostly so that Kamala Harris could clear him from the 2020 presidential field, thanks Kamala).
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show up to your primary. There's tons of pro-consumer candidates. There's an entire party of them trying to take the Democrats over from within called 'Justice Democrats'. They keep losing in the big primaries because folks vote for the pro-corporate establishment candidate.
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and on /. in 2018 I shouldn't have to explain that. It's a false dichotomy and you can't be dense enough to really believe that. You're being disingenuous.
If I have to put a sound bite to it though: We didn't pay Mercedes billions in cash subsidies and tax breaks to give cars away. If we did I'd be pretty pissed I couldn't walk into a dealership and get my free car.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
They may not be throttling users any more, but they're not throttling them any less, either.
It was getting better for a few years, but now it's back to being shitty as hell with random drops off wifi and piddly bandwidth. I would switch to Verizon, but some roommate wants to watch some shitty tv on Comcast, probably some sports bullshit.
"Now that Network Neutrality has been revoked, we reserve the right to implement a new, EVEN WORSE congestion management system if necessary in the performance of reasonable network management and in order to maintain a good broadband Internet access service experience for our customers, and will provide updates here as well as other locations if a new system is implemented.""
There, all better.
Back in a real first-world country, Canada, rogers recently offered 100/10 for $80. Still expensive, but it's unlimited.
So, I run a BT seed box on my raspberry Pi. I'm currently seeding WikiPedia offline "KiWix" for users of third-world repressive countries, like the one south of me.
I set my download to 512 down, and 1 down during 4am-7am. I average around 30Gb/day, which is about 900Gb / mo , in uploads ALONE. Now add about 6Gb streaming activities/day, so add 200Gb of Downloads on average, for 1.5Tb/Mo.
I have kept this up for 6 months.
Looks like no throttling, since I can use all my upload and download bw. I use the Canadian box as a VPN when I am in certain 3 letter acronym turd-world countries.
I get charged $10 for every 10GB I use over 1000GB each month. Hugh pain in the ass.
Unencrypted torrents get super shit speed. creep along at 10-50k. dirt slow. force encryption on and 5MEG/second!
Internet has too high a mark up and it's too expensive to get started. I've read Comcast pays as little as $9/mo to keep a customer going on high speed and charges $70. They can do that because they were basically handed the infrastructure for free and get ongoing subsidies and tax cuts to pay for it. Politically you're not going to remove those. They'll just buy out the politicians. Money is speech after all.
Anyone who tries to compete with Comcast will get shoot down when Comcast drops their pants. We saw this with Google Fiber. Google was profitably selling fiber for $100/mo so the local ISPs cut their prices and upped their speed. Google Fiber was squeezed out and after that the prices shot up again.
Face it, you're not going to fix this with the free market. There's lot and lots of reasons for that and I'm not going to type them all out, but it's time for actual regulation. And that means electing people that will implement the laws. I keep hearing that if only we had a law instead of the FCC, but we _have_ a law. It's common carrier and it was ruled effective. It doesn't do any good to have laws if you don't elect people to enforce them.
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they're getting ready to implement harsh bandwidth caps. They want you used to consuming large amounts of bandwidth when they do.
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Of course what Comcast didn't say was "Well, we're not throttling them any LESS either".
What's being ignored by everyone is the fact that Comcast spies on your encrypted internet traffic as a man in the middle and can even inject/modify data in packets going to your computer.
Don't believe me? Exceed your ridiculously low 1TB per month limit and watch the pop ups that come to your browser even if you're visiting only HTTPS pages using SSL encryption.
T-minus until we release throttling... 5... 4.... 3... 2... 1... Go! And... The quote has been said! All staff, turn on all breaks immediately!!
They're throttling people who hit their 1tb data cap which they identify as "heavy internet users".
How is this functionally different from throttling people at a consistent basis depending on content they're transferring?
They're basically impeding user services, just in different ways, but still there's tangible impact.
My guess is that we'll have something even worse pop up in a week, or so.
Comcast, which has been throttling speeds to slow down heavy internet users since 2008
They were using a system called The Matrix to throttle heavy internet users since at least 2000.
...we reserve the right to implement a new congestion management system...
In other words, they are renaming the system again.
Sat down after a couple beers to play World of Warships. Comcast's fucking router/switch/whatever (69.241.116.206) on their border to Level 3 to the WoWs game server has 70% packet loss right now rendering it unplayable.
Their support is completely utterly useless as always. I've played this game every day for over a year and never had this issue. I find it highly suspicious this happens 3 days after a NN repeal goes in to effect... Like many games, they use torrents to distribute patches, I'm wondering if this got flagged or something.
Take off the data caps whereby you overcharge customers when they use over 1024 GB, you cunts.
At least I don't have them anymore.
your primary vote has enormous power because there's so few voters. But a side effect of this is that it's easy to sway the vote by targeting the small number of voters who show up.
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I love you.
The check is in the mail.
And, I won't cum in your mouth. (Or, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help', if you are a Canadian)