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."

Comments

Of course not

[camazotz]

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.

Re:Of course not

[TheRealMindChild]

Metered utilities like gas and electric have an actual cost for consuming an actual resource. Even if we are arguing that metering internet is reasonable, it isn't at the level they wish to charge.

Re:Of course not

[DontBeAMoran]

We should be paying per gigabyte and no more than ten times the cost to the ISP.

So that's like.... $0.00001 per gigabyte for the users?

I don't understand why we put up with this

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:I don't understand why we put up with this

[Sperbels]

I think the answer is pretty clear: Because politicians don't do what we want them to do.

If you have a good solution, I'll subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:I don't understand why we put up with this

[ArhcAngel]

Why the heck don't we just elect the kinds of politicians who will force Comcast to do what we want them to do?

Because someone like that would never run for election. And if they did the reigning political forces would crucify him by any means necessary. You can see it right now. Trump isn't technically a Democrat OR a Republican and he's certainly no politician. Both parties have been doing everything in their power to either oust him or bring him under their control. The reason it hasn't worked is he doesn't care about his political clout only about getting what he wants. Who wants to put themselves and their family through that kind of heartache?

this is why net neutrality does not matter

[WindBourne]

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.

Getting the trains to run on time.

[jellomizer]

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.

Translation

[Actually, I do RTFA]

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.

RIP net neutrality

[linuxwrangler]

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?

How their statement is created

[Required Snark]

Policy Change: Increase Profit/Decrease Usability => Lawyer => Public Relations => We're making things better for Users!

Just like every other large company.