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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.
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When net neutrality was revoked, we all just grumbled and tolerated it because there was nothing we could do.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".
Given that my ISP is Google (actually, WebPass, which is now owned by Google Fiber): No, it's not.
(But I don't have a 4K streaming box, or any need, given I don't have a 4K TV given that you can't tell the difference at normal seating difference and I couldn't get a 4K plasma screen if I wanted to...)
What are you going to do?
Develop a better video format which can deliver the same image quality at a lower bitrate. The AV1 encoder is still slow but it's improving. Dav1d is a fast decoder implementation.
Netflix sees AV1 as its primary next-gen video format.
I'm a what now? And I made no such statement, only pointing out these caps are a result of NN, and your mental gymnastics deliberately hide the reality of why these caps exist.
I never said they were, I said that caps were a result of it. Big diff.
Correct, which means...
Separate only if you treat it as completely separate, and not the logical outcome of having one hand tied behind their back when trying to milk the consumer, so opting to use the other hand.
I've read the page... and you misunderstood it's meaning.
Yes, streaming Netflix or usage of another (3rd party) app which is running on the X1 traverses the internet, so they count that against your data cap.
What it doesn't say, is if an X1 streaming app, running on an phone or tablet, using the wifi which ultimately goes through a stand alone cable modem (separate from the STB) and into/through the Comcast network. Does it traverse the internet? Depends on how Comcast architected their systems. Chances are, it's not going to a datacenter sitting next to where your cable modem terminates, but if it hopes via a private circuit (physical or virtual) over to a cloud provider, or other remote data center... is that still traversing the internet?
Mighty big incentive for Comcast not to count usage even when a non STB is being used to consume Comcast provided content, which is the entire point I raised, which you completely missed.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
.. has no caps.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
It's not 3 consecutive billing cycles. It's three billing cycles, period. They give you two 'courtesy months', after which they are gone.
But why believe me when I'm on Comcast and have data to support what I'm saying. Looking back over the last 10 (complete months), I only went over my cap twice:
Year Month Usage
2018/10 893
2018/9 1029 (oops, 5 gigs over, minus one courtesy month!)
2018/8 1003
2018/7 2089 (I knew I was going to go over on day 10, so went nuts on an offsite backup project... which cost me a courtesy month)
2018/6 1011
2018/5 942
2018/4 1003
2018/3 1021
2018/2 1021
2018/1 985
And a quick look at the bandwidth reporting page of theirs says a little red icon, next to which is the text: "You have used 2 of 2 courtesy months in which you can exceed your data usage plan without charge.", and clicking on the more info link has a popup which says: "Going forward, if you exceed your data usage plan you will be charged $10.00 for each 50GB of additional data provided, but charges will not exceed $200 each month, no matter how much you use. Or you can purchase our Unlimited Data option for $50 additional a month."
That does not sound like the wording or data of it requiring three consecutive billing cycles... because if it was, I'd be happy to be good 1 or 2 months out of three, going wild in a specific "backup all the things" month.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
look. I am happy to see net neutrality disappear. Why? Because the REAL issue is not net neutrality, but the monopolies that we have granted and to the wrong groups. In less than 3 years, there will be 2 massive sats network offering internet. With the competition between those 2 AND on the ground, it should push down price and remove caps.
BUT, at the same time, we need to push local gov to install fiber as a utility. The provides real competition and increased speeds.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What 3rd world backwater....oh....it is the US....I see. In the modern world, you get somewhere between 100MBit and 1GBit symmetrical at a reasonable price these days, no caps.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I can get an unlimited data plan on my phone through my current provider, Cricket, for about $50/mo. If I want the ability to tether or hot-spot, it's an extra $10/month & I suddenly have a cap of 9 GB/mo. With newer phones, I can stream unlimited 4K video, as long as I keep it on the phone. If I want the ability to tether my laptop or tablet to the phone, I've suddenly got an expensive data cap. What gives?
Dude, baseball stat nerds predate computer nerds by many years. Hell, punch cards were probably based on baseball score cards.
Not a nerd but am a Geek, I fully accept the value of participatory sports so that families can enjoy them and stay fit and healthy, spectator sports are shite though. Especially the super disgusting government subsidised sports advertising, what the hell, government tax dollars subsidising sports so the sports can sell advertising and pretend they are fucking heroes and super stars, ohh fuck off with that shit already and all to sell crap advertising, note their preferred advertising cigarettes, addictive sugar drinks, junk food, alchohol, all so fucking productive to society, talk about taking tax payers dollars and setting them on fire. Why do they do it, so piece of shit politicians can stand next to jock strap douche bags, whilst the jock strap douche bag tells everyone how great the piece of shit politician is, our tax dollars basically being used to pay for political advertising and the bloated salaries of the most useless people.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Sometimes it's not that easy.
I live in London. I struggled to get any signal at all. The UK turned off analogue years ago. And DVB-T / T2 literally wouldn't get a signal. I gave up trying for the last year.
I only returned to it recently (the RPi DVB-T hat looked cool and I wanted to set up tvheadend) and then ended up with the following config:
- A huge loft aerial that gets nothing, even with a booster, despite being in between some of the UK's biggest transmitters - Crystal Palace and Hemel Hempstead. I literally bought it myself as I couldn't believe that the signal from a HUGE shared aerial could be as weak as it was, and it ended up being even weaker. Despite being huge, dedicated, amplified and aligned precisely with very precise diagnostic tools with explicit signal statistics beyond "signal strength".
- A shared loft aerial and a serious amount of kit to share it across three properties (the boxes for it are in my loft and I googled them and they cost GBP1000 each).
- A GBP50 signal booster off Amazon on the end of it to actually bring the signal from something that "can see but can't lock on" to something that locks on enough to actually watch TV.
- At least two DVB-T sticks, the RPi hat thing and I even borrowed an ordinary TV because I was convinced something was wrong.
- A whole bunch of new coax, because even the manual-crimped ones affected the signal I was getting so I had to go "perfect" all the way.
Bear in mind that I live in a third-floor flat, with clear-line-of-sight (if not actual sight because of the distance involved) to both transmitters. I live inside the M25 (basically the road that circles and demarks "London" proper). We have 4G and fibre and all kinds of things, I'm not out in the sticks somewhere.
And it was a struggle involving boosters, new cable, loft aerials, pissing about aligning them precisely etc.
I'm trying to do DVB-S too now, because we also have a shared one of those. That looks to be better, according to my neighbours, but it's still not this a case of "use OTA, it'll work".
For the last year, I paid for a subscription to TVPlayer.com - it was just easier than faffing about. Bear in mind that I never paid for broadband (DSL), and was streaming it all over 4G... that actually worked out better, cheaper and gave me more channels than anything OTA, even including the data package.
I spent nearly GBP100 on kit to get a DVB-T signal I could watch. And that was in an already-established house with GBP1000 of shared aerial equipment.
Don't even ask about HD channels. I don't care and didn't look, but I have a small handful of whatever is on there, and they only mirror the SD channels but cut-out more.
If that's the kind of problem I'm seeing just miles from Central London, I highly doubt that "just use OTA digital" is going to be the end-solution for everyone that's filling up their data with Netflix.
ok. so here goes my karma...
////rant////
////rant off ////
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??????????
My 3rd world country ISP has no data caps. If it imposes them, I will swiftly move to the next ISP. If that one imposes data caps, I will move to the third, and the fourth. If all of them impose data caps, the anti-trust council will heavily fine them all.
Why is the USA different in this regard?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
>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.
I'm in Canada, a country even worse then the USA when it comes to this stuff. The problem is that basically there's the phone company and the cable company for competition. Seems that when there is 3 or less competitors in a market, it's not so much that they collude, just don't compete. ISP A raises its price, ISP B sees this and thinks, "good idea" and raises its price.
Infrastructure is expensive and the phone and cable companies don't share their wires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism