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Your 4K Netflix Streaming Is On a Collision Course With Your ISP's Data Caps (vice.com)
Household bandwidth consumption is soaring thanks to video streaming, new data suggests, and American consumers are about to run face-first into broadband usage limits and overage fees that critics say are unnecessary and anti-competitive. Motherboard reports: Cisco's 2018 Visual Networking Index (VNI) -- an annual study that tracks overall internet bandwidth consumption to identify future trends -- predicts that global IP traffic is expected to reach 396 exabytes per month by 2022. Cisco's report claims that's more traffic than has crossed global networks throughout the entire history of the internet thus far. The majority of this data growth is video; Cisco found that 75 percent of global internet traffic was video last year, up from 63 percent just two years earlier. Cisco says this number could climb to 82 percent in 2022, with 22 percent of overall video consumption coming from bandwidth-intensive 4K streaming. The problem: As monthly household bandwidth consumption soars courtesy of 4K Netflix streaming and other new services, many broadband users are likely to run into usage caps and overage fees that jack up their monthly rates. The report mentions Comcast imposes a terabyte usage cap on all of its service areas except the Northeast, but users can pay an additional $50 per month to avoid such limits.
"But Net Neutrality is about treating all services equal, it should stop this!" some will say... ignoring these very same caps came in during the NN era.
It's quite simple. The likes of Comcast being unable to throttle Netflix/etc directly, opts to put an artificial cap on it's users... then makes sure that some of their services do not eat into that cap... like any kind of On Demand streaming via an X1 console. Sure, that traffic doesn't cross the public internet, but uses the exact same DOCSIS tech in your cable modem which is capped.
Why pay for/use external services when your friendly ISP has all you could ever want/need?
One of these weeks/months I need to sit down with an iPad, streaming over the internet, only Comcast content using their app, but my cable modem... as I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't count against the cap either.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
When data caps were introduced, we all just grumbled and tolerated it because there was nothing we could do.
When net neutrality was revoked, we all just grumbled and tolerated it because there was nothing we could do.
You have one provider for your house. What are you going to do?
Yes, you'll just grumble and then get the extra data plan that has 2TB cap instead of 1TB cap for $25 more. There will be also the $50 more 5TB cap plan that is such a deal and $75 10TB cap. But, a promotion will get you the 5TB plan for $20 more per month for 6 months.
We won't do anything about it but pay more.
Sports.
Nerds don't watch sports. It is not "stuff that matters".
There are sports nerds.
That makes about as much sense as saying there are "dating nerds". Sports don't matter, and if you think they do, you are not a nerd.
ok. so here goes my karma...
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F* you, and your 4k F*ing video streams.
I hope you have to pay through the nose for those 4k video streams. Until the baseline definition for broadband has been bumped up to 1Gigabit/sec, meaning a new definition of the minimum internet connection speed for sale in the US, allowing a few special snowflakes to be used as a rational for the outrageously expensive costs of internet connections that are common here in the US and at the same time leaving tens of millions of people with no access to 1Gigabit/sec connections, whatsoever, due to the criminal diversion of exorbitantly high monthly rates from the long-promised and never-delivered upgrades to our infrastructure, straight into the pockets of their F*in shareholders, is injustice in the extreme.
4k video on your F* phone!, give me a F*ing break, the human being has yet to be born, whose eyes can discern that kind of resolution difference on a 5" screen at 2 ft. Maybe it's worth it on a 60" screen from 12-15 ft away, but on a F*ing phone??????????
>Why is the USA different in this regard?
Because there is no second, third, or fourth ISP for most people.
For example, at my house AT&T is the only ISP available.