PSA - Comcast users - Data Cap

[nakedfrog]

I mean, it doesn't sound entirely wrong. If the majority of users don't reach 1TB they probably don't give a shit.

How does that translate to "consumers want data caps"?

 

[Puffnstuff]

In the bigger picture I supposed it's better than a shower cap.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I mean, it doesn't sound entirely wrong. If the majority of users don't reach 1TB they probably don't give a shit.

Charter trying to say that consumers want data caps doesn't sound entirely wrong? lol....ok kiddo.

 

[snoopy7548]

Consumers don't want data caps. I'd wager the vast majority of consumers have no idea how much data they're actually consuming.

If the majority of users don't hit 1TB, why even impose caps in the first place? Oh, right... it's nothing but a cash grab, at a time where tons of people are working from home/staying in more and will certainly exceed the caps.

Damn Snoopy, what were you doing to use up all of that bandwidth? I've been averaging 600 GB a month, and that's with me working from home all the time.

Streaming videos of dog shows, of course!

 

[ultimatebob]

Thinking about this as an IT person, the interesting thing is that there probably should be a data cap for misuse of the service. If someone on your network is downloading 50 TB of crap every month and slowing down the network for your neighbors, they probably should cut that person off at some point.

The real question is where the set the cap. Would 2 TB be fair? How about 5 TB? At what point are you really impacting the performance of the network for other users?

 

[sdifox]

Consumers don't want data caps. I'd wager the vast majority of consumers have no idea how much data they're actually consuming.

If the majority of users don't hit 1TB, why even impose caps in the first place? Oh, right... it's nothing but a cash grab, at a time where tons of people are working from home/staying in more and will certainly exceed the caps.




Streaming videos of dog shows, of course!

Please tell me you have watched the movie Best in Show.

 

[snoopy7548]

Thinking about this as an IT person, the interesting thing is that there probably should be a data cap for misuse of the service. If someone on your network is downloading 50 TB of crap every month and slowing down the network for your neighbors, they probably should cut that person off at some point.

The real question is where the set the cap. Would 2 TB be fair? How about 5 TB? At what point are you really impacting the performance of the network for other users?

Maybe a starting point is to do it by speed, and figure how much one person can transmit while running 24/7, then divide that by six (or four hours per day of constant use). For a 100Mbps line, that's 4.3TB, which IMO is reasonable. For a 1000Mbit line, you're looking at 43TB, but you're also paying a premium for the speed and you'd assume the network was built to handle it, or that at least some of the money you're giving your ISP is being reinvested in network improvements...

 

[ch33zw1z]

Thinking about this as an IT person, the interesting thing is that there probably should be a data cap for misuse of the service. If someone on your network is downloading 50 TB of crap every month and slowing down the network for your neighbors, they probably should cut that person off at some point.

The real question is where the set the cap. Would 2 TB be fair? How about 5 TB? At what point are you really impacting the performance of the network for other users?

The variables here are entirely dependant on your neighborhood, town, etc.. and corp like comcast isn't going to micromanage each contracted town, that's costly, it's easier just to say "here, 1.2TB is your max or we charge you more". Obviously, that's what they did here. I'm sure they have a queried list of heavy users and 1.2 TB is probably on the low end but they want that money.

In terms of slowing it down for my neighbors, that's not my problem, I pay for my speeds, i want to use them whenever I want, even 24x7, it's not my problems if comcast doesn't invest in the infrastructure to support all the accounts they hold in a given area.

 

[snoopy7548]

Please tell me you have watched the movie Best in Show.

Nope, never seen it. What's it about?

 

[sdifox]

Nope, never seen it. What's it about?

... Dog Shows.

Best in Show (film) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[ch33zw1z]

Nope, never seen it. What's it about?

Dog show!

Edit, sdifox beat me to it. I watched that movie way back, those people are nutters

 

[bbhaag]

Thinking about this as an IT person, the interesting thing is that there probably should be a data cap for misuse of the service. If someone on your network is downloading 50 TB of crap every month and slowing down the network for your neighbors, they probably should cut that person off at some point.

The real question is where the set the cap. Would 2 TB be fair? How about 5 TB? At what point are you really impacting the performance of the network for other users?

Hmm that's a good question. Were should the cutoff be and who should decide it? Right now it's up to the ISPs to decide which doesn't seem quite fair.

I read the story linked in the OP and saw the cap set by Comcast was 1.2tb which to me didn't seem that unreasonable. My current local provider which is MTCO Communications has a 1tb cap across all their tiers of service. Of course my family exceeds that limit so I pay an additional $15/month to extend our cap to 2tb and of course if we exceed that we get charged additional fees based on usage.

I mean honestly this has got me thinking hard about moving over to Comcast. Which as crazy as that sounds in my area at least they provide a cheaper service with a little better speed and a higher cap than my current provider.

 

[snoopy7548]

Hmm that's a good question. Were should the cutoff be and who should decide it? Right now it's up to the ISPs to decide which doesn't seem quite fair.

I read the story linked in the OP and saw the cap set by Comcast was 1.2tb which to me didn't seem that unreasonable. My current local provider which is MTCO Communications has a 1tb cap across all their tiers of service. Of course my family exceeds that limit so I pay an additional $15/month to extend our cap to 2tb and of course if we exceed that we get charged additional fees based on usage.

I mean honestly this has got me thinking hard about moving over to Comcast. Which as crazy as that sounds in my area at least they provide a cheaper service with a little better speed and a higher cap than my current provider.

That's actually reasonable. Where Comcast pisses in your face is when they charge you $10 for an extra 50GB; a maximum of $100 for an extra 500GB. $15/1TB sounds much better than $10/0.05TB.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Hmm that's a good question. Were should the cutoff be and who should decide it? Right now it's up to the ISPs to decide which doesn't seem quite fair.

I read the story linked in the OP and saw the cap set by Comcast was 1.2tb which to me didn't seem that unreasonable. My current local provider which is MTCO Communications has a 1tb cap across all their tiers of service. Of course my family exceeds that limit so I pay an additional $15/month to extend our cap to 2tb and of course if we exceed that we get charged additional fees based on usage.

I mean honestly this has got me thinking hard about moving over to Comcast. Which as crazy as that sounds in my area at least they provide a cheaper service with a little better speed and a higher cap than my current provider.

With 100/6 connection, my family of four exceeds 1.2TB nearly every month. It's really not that hard to do, and as @Jaskalas pointed out earlier, moving to a 4K stream or two makes it even easier. I pay $80/month and use my own modem and router to save some bucks.

Comcast is making this change when more people are at home using their networks far more than ever before, with higher usage software than ever before. It's purely a cash grab, and they can't even explain why they doing it more than "the average is 308GB, what's the problem?"

The $15 for a 1TB seems reasonable, however, imo

 

[ultimatebob]

In terms of slowing it down for my neighbors, that's not my problem, I pay for my speeds, i want to use them whenever I want, even 24x7, it's not my problems if comcast doesn't invest in the infrastructure to support all the accounts they hold in a given area.

The problem with that logic is that if everyone downloaded files 24/7, Comcast couldn't afford to offer residential service at the prices they are currently set at. Bandwidth might be cheap in 2020, but it isn't free. At some point, a heavy usage customer should stop being treated as a residential customer and be required to purchase a business plan that's truly unlimited.

 

[snoopy7548]

The problem with that logic is that if everyone downloaded files 24/7, Comcast couldn't afford to offer residential service at the prices they are currently set at. Bandwidth might be cheap in 2020, but it isn't free. At some point, a heavy usage customer should stop being treated as a residential customer and be required to purchase a business plan that's truly unlimited.

I'd be totally fine slightly less pissed with data caps on residential internet as long as my unused data rolls over and never expires.

 

[ch33zw1z]

The problem with that logic is that if everyone downloaded files 24/7, Comcast couldn't afford to offer residential service at the prices they are currently set at. Bandwidth might be cheap in 2020, but it isn't free. At some point, a heavy usage customer should stop being treated as a residential customer and be required to purchase a business plan that's truly unlimited.

I would argue that comcast shouldn't sell speeds they can't support.

Side note: I was checking out the speed offerings on their website, and the Internet only 1Gbps plan went from $120/month to $190/month. I believe that's the only one with no limits tho. Which, if you think about our discussion is both ridiculous, and makes sense, simultaneously, lol.

 

[brycejones]

The problem with that logic is that if everyone downloaded files 24/7, Comcast couldn't afford to offer residential service at the prices they are currently set at. Bandwidth might be cheap in 2020, but it isn't free. At some point, a heavy usage customer should stop being treated as a residential customer and be required to purchase a business plan that's truly unlimited.

ffs, end all bans on municipal networks and require real competition.

Even during the pandemic crunch they didn't have capacity problems on their networks. Its an artificial limit to drive increased earnings nothing more.

 

[bbhaag]

That's actually reasonable. Where Comcast pisses in your face is when they charge you $10 for an extra 50GB; a maximum of $100 for an extra 500GB. $15/1TB sounds much better than $10/0.05TB.

Yeah that is what MTCO does as well. We pay an additional $15/month to raise the cap to 2tb. If we exceed that 2tb limit then they charge us an additional $7.50 for every 50gb used beyond the 2tb cap.

 

[ultimatebob]

ffs, end all bans on municipal networks and require real competition.

Even during the pandemic crunch they didn't have capacity problems on their networks. Its an artificial limit to drive increased earnings nothing more.

Connecticut was supposed to start allowing municipal broadband networks a few years ago, but no town has had the guts to start rolling one out yet. Comcast must have some REALLY good lobbyists working in Hartford, throwing up permitting roadblocks.

 

[bbhaag]

With 100/6 connection, my family of four exceeds 1.2TB nearly every month. It's really not that hard to do, and as @Jaskalas pointed out earlier, moving to a 4K stream or two makes it even easier. I pay $80/month and use my own modem and router to save some bucks.

Comcast is making this change when more people are at home using their networks far more than ever before, with higher usage software than ever before. It's purely a cash grab, and they can't even explain why they doing it more than "the average is 308GB, what's the problem?"

The $15 for a 1TB seems reasonable, however, imo

Oh yeah don't get me wrong I totally agree. It's super easy for our family of four to exceed the 1tb cap that MTCO has so that's why we pay extra every month. I don't think it's right and I hate data caps as much as the next guy. I was just comparing our local providers and it got me thinking maybe Comcast isn't that bad. We only have two in our area anyway(Comcast and MTCO)well supposedly Frontier could be considered another option in our area but after 5 years of dealing with them we will never go back to the steaming pile of crap known as Frontier Communications.

 

[snoopy7548]

Connecticut was supposed to start allowing municipal broadband networks a few years ago, but no town has had the guts to start rolling one out yet. Comcast must have some REALLY good lobbyists working in Hartford, throwing up permitting roadblocks.

A fairly-rural town near me (Princeton) was in the process of rolling out municipal broadband, but ended up transferring the rights to Charter for some reason, so that's what they have now.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Connecticut was supposed to start allowing municipal broadband networks a few years ago, but no town has had the guts to start rolling one out yet. Comcast must have some REALLY good lobbyists working in Hartford, throwing up permitting roadblocks.

Westfield MA has their own called Whip City Fiber (Westfield is call whip city), my bid lives there and dropped comcast asap and pays way less for a gig symmetrical connection.

Another town up here called Holyoke has Holyoke Gas and Electric running their own, and the IT guys there take contracts for other towns to run fiber networks also.

There's some slow progress out there, and I agree with ya, big ISP's levy their weight as much as possible.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

How does that translate to "consumers want data caps"?

Of it ends up with lower costs for them and higher costs for the data usage...

Sounds similar to our tax structure - I'm always okay with THEM paying more.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Of it ends up with lower costs for them and higher costs for the data usage...

Sounds similar to our tax structure - I'm always okay with THEM paying more.

Don't worry, when they privatize all schooling, they can curtail the heavy users cuz consumers want learning caps, who cares of your paid your taxes. Then when roadways are privatized, they can bill you for driving more than your allotted miles cuz consumers want mileage caps. I mean, who cares if you know how to use the library or paid to drive 65 instead of 55, wouldn't want to clog up those roads or fill those halls