Comcast To Charge $30 For Unlimited Data Over 300GB Cap 229
For some time, Comcast has been testing 300 GB monthly data caps in certain markets. An anonymous reader notes a policy change unveiled today that gives customers in those markets the ability to switch back to unlimited data for $30 extra. Previously (and currently, for customers who don't pay the extra $30), Comcast would charge $10 per 50GB above the cap. "Comcast's intent on this front has been clear for some time. Comcast lobbyist and VP David Cohen last year strongly suggested that usage caps would be arriving for all Comcast customers sooner or later. The idea of charging users a premium to avoid arbitrary usage restrictions has been a pipe dream of incumbent ISP executives for a decade." The new policy goes into effect on October 1.
Limited unlimited (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Limited unlimited (Score:4, Insightful)
Any presidential candidate that runs on the platform of regulating ISPs like a public utility has my vote, regardless of their stance on any other issue. I don't understand how this system is allowed to continue. It's clearly not a free market nor will it ever be.
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Wrong idea.
Vote for the one that wants to regulate INFRASTRUCTURE as utility, that force to split infrastructure (laying and maintaining the cables and related hardware) from the network services, and allow anyone to use those same cables on equal basis (so Comcast infrastructure who owns the cables, has to charge Comcast ISP the same fee as Slashdot ISP to use the same cables).
Then you get a free market with real competition. Otherwise you're still stuck with local monopolies.
Re:Limited unlimited (Score:5, Informative)
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Naturally, Comcast will argue that they have competition from phone company DSL. Except they make it clear many times a day that it is not comparable service.
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Interesting. In my country it's the opposite - the more you use the cheaper (per unit) it gets, at worst, the unit price stays the same.
For example, the electricity provider has multiple plans, for example you can choose a higher fixed fee but a lower kWh cost which only makes sense if you are using more power.
Some gas stations have loyalty cards that lower the price for gas the more you buy.
Natural gas is the same.
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Electricity rate going up as you use more - that seems weird as the company should be happy that you use more (and pay more in total since some costs of delivering the electricity are fixed, no matter how much you use).
In my country, all companies usually have their own loyalty rewards, discounts etc - grocery store A gives discount for shipping in grocery store A, grocery store B gives discounts for shopping in grocery store B etc. The logical extension of that is fuel stations - fuel station A gives disco
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Same here. Electricity gets less expensive per unit the more you use. Gas has a fixed unit charge then on top the rates vary. Both far to expensive. How may percent did the rates rise this last year ;) At least electricity is quite cheap off peak. But unlike the US there is only one timezone so demand does drop overnight and you got to keep the power stations running. That is for residential use. Industrial use is often done by negotiation. From what I remember of a huge scrap steel recycling plant that us
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Put enough current through anything and it will melt :)
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Big electromagnets to lift the scrap into a vat partially filled with molten metal. Then lower the rods and electrocute it. How many megawatts does that require? The power lines outside and the transformers and the people negotiating the price of the electricity. How much did it use? No idea.
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That is no problem, but they must not be allowed to advertise it as an unlimited plan. It also indicates that the government must work on strengthening free competition.
Do I have to pay for the gigabytes of malware advertisements they try to force feed me?
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if you type the URL into your browser, then yes.
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if you type the URL into your browser, then yes.
Until they make adblock illegal, not so much.
Television in all forms is finding out that if we are fed a constant diet of catheter ads, Jesus Christ SUE someone, and medicine advertisments that sound like something designed to kill you, and vaginal mesh and mesothelioma ads - the content better be incredibly good. And it's not. People are cutting their Cable TV subscriptions.
Which is all to say, people only put up with so much shit. If i have to watch the malware ads, and cannot turn them off, I'll j
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The idea is to provide no-cap content, content that does not add to you download meter ie content they charge to publish. Then over time ramp down the cap, lower and lower and lower. This to use their access monopoly to create a publishing monopoly, everyone wants to charge the equivalent of xbox licensing fees money for nothing because they can.
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The point behind "unlimited" plans is that the extent of the subscriber's own usage, by themselves, will not impact either how much they need to pay for the service, or what levels of service they may have formerly used, but be restricted from utilizing in the future.
Simply put, whenever any metering of their usage which may occur is used strictly for reporting purposes, the adjective "unlimited" can reasonably be construed to apply. The fact that there may be physical limitations on their usage indepen
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There comes a point where the speed of light gets into your way doing downloads. You're talking only 80 copies of Windows 10 per month you know.
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... You're talking only 80 copies of Windows 10 per month you know.
That sounds like a very sad habit...
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A non-profit I know of did this last month on their broadband connection: downloaded 34 copies, rather than make a bootable flash drive. They walk among us.
In reality, they know no better.
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You do know that cordcutters who use their streaming subscriptions, HD at 3GB/hr, four hours a day [google.com], already blows that cap, right? That that's just for one person at less than the national average video usage per day?
What they're doing is stifling competition that hasn't really gotten traction yet. There's a term for that: monopolizing the market. It makes things scarce, it makes them expensive, and it makes them bad.
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I cut the cord long ago, but do you have a citation for the national avg video usage/day?
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It's linked in the two-line post you're replying to, So not only is the simplest possible google less attractive than braying demands, clicking a link is a bridge too far?
You do know that cordcutters who use their streaming subscriptions, HD at 3GB/hr, four hours a day [google.com], already blows that cap, right? That that's just for one person at less than the national average video usage per day? What they're doing is stifling competition that hasn't really gotten traction yet. There's a term for that:
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And as an appendage, we know that cord cutters are in the group of four hours/day. We don't know how many are viewing as streaming digital, or cable modulated data. How many watch together, or use individual streams? I'm not casting aspersion(s), rather, would like to know the data and its trend.
Organizations like Akamai and others are deploying somewhat massive buildouts to accommodate services like Netflix, and other VoD/streaming services.
Does this help Comcast put on the brakes to other services? We don
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The link
The link [google.com] includes Nielsen's figures, the search returns lots of 5's and 4's and 3's. Nielsen's figure is 4.
You do know that cordcutters who use their streaming subscriptions, HD at 3GB/hr, four hours a day [google.com], already blows that cap, right? That that's just for one person at less than the national average video usage per day? What they're doing is stifling competition that hasn't really gotten traction yet. There's a term for that: monopolizing the market. It makes things scarce, it makes them e
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Yeah, would love the source. I'd like the breakdown of RT, VoD, modulated digital vs streamed digital. I'd like to see actual vs trend, and forecasts, but I'll take what I can get, consider the source, and digest that.
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You do know that cordcutters who use their streaming subscriptions, HD at 3GB/hr, four hours a day [google.com], already blows that cap, right? That that's just for one person at less than the national average video usage per day?
Netflix requires 3.0Mb/s (megabits / s) for HD (less for SD). that's 375KB/s.
http://www.bandwidthplace.com/... [bandwidthplace.com]
375KB/s * 60s * 60m = 1.35GB / hr. at that rate, you could watch HD content for 222 hours straight (9.25 days) before you'd hit your 300GB cap. seems pretty reasonable to me.
source: math.
Not everyone lives alone (Score:5, Insightful)
at that rate, you could watch HD content for 222 hours straight (9.25 days) before you'd hit your 300GB cap
Divide by the number of people in the house who watch Netflix. And subtract all other uses of the connection, such as operating system and application updates on all devices in the household, downloads of purchased video games, web surfing, YouTube, and video chat with relatives in another state.
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The level is designed to create two tiers. It's not based on cost or available infrastructure, it's designed to extract more money from a certain percentage of subscribers who are stealing from Comcast by sharing their internet connection with their families.
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at that rate, you could watch HD content for 222 hours straight (9.25 days) before you'd hit your 300GB cap
Divide by the number of people in the house who watch Netflix. And subtract all other uses of the connection, such as operating system and application updates on all devices in the household, downloads of purchased video games, web surfing, YouTube, and video chat with relatives in another state.
exactly.
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somehow I use 250GB during the busy Netflix season. Plus I purchase current TV shows through iTunes rather than owning/renting a DVR. I'm a cord-cutter and watch TV via antenna as much as possible.
I was surprised how much I use - according to the meter on my router. My child is now starting to watch Saturday morning cartoons on Netflix too. So 300 could be a real value.
My wife uses her iPad for Netflix. And we have an AppleTV for the living room (which gets the main use). I believe my Netflix is stre
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...which I should also point out I realize that is ~35 hours of HD TV (at 1080)..... and I cannot believe I watch that amount. So I question my router.
Comcast used to claim that they had a place to look up usage - but last time I went to the help page the control panel link went to a dead page.
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Ok...2.25GB/hr is not 3GB/hr. And in my actual download experience with 720p HD on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant Video combined I average more like 1.79GB/hr (roughly 4Mbps for an HD feed. The recommended 5Mbps connection is to allow for buffer and burst, doesn't mean that a feed will always use 100% of it). But I'll use the 2.25 number. 2.25GB/hr * 4hrs * 31days = 279GB. That means that watching 4 hours of High Definition video per day (much more than the average time my family puts into non-inter
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I do a lot of downloads and have 4 people in the house any of whom might be watching Netflix, Hulu, Sling, or Youtube at any given time. I don't think I've came in UNDER 700GB in a year or two and have hit 1.2TB in a month before.
That said, If they offered this I wouldn't have any issue with them charging (or me paying) an extra $30 a month. That's a REASONABLE fee. I don't mind paying a reasonable fee - I just want the ISP to butt out and stop worrying about how much I transfer (that said, my current IS
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I'm going to make them hurt for this. I normally use right at about 400 to 450 GB a month. They charge me $30 for that. I actually try to keep my data usage under control and stay close to my 300 GB limit.
Since Comcast is determined to squeeze me. I will pay the extra $30 for the unlimited usage but I'm going to use it. I will have to use at least 450 GB a month to make it worth it. So every month I will use at least 450GB, and I'm going to attempt to double it just for spite. Being a vindictiv
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That is a good start. I always wanted my own private usenet news feed.
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Speed of light limits ping, but not throughput.
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We have limited limiteds, things that are limited, and limited unlimiteds, things that seem unlimited yet are still limited, but we also have things that are also unlimited unlimiteds, that is to say things that are truly unlimited (until you read the small print).
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Sue them in small claims court for the entirety of the plan for that 6 months. It is breach of contract. I assume you have a copy of the contract?
Old enough doesn't matter (Score:2)
they must easily have over a million accounts old enough to have originally hooked-up to 'unlimited' plans.
So what? In my experience, Comcast is far less likely to use contracts longer than a year with an early termination fee than the phone company is. Most customers I imagine are on month-to-month terms. This means if Comcast wants to end unmetered plans, a customer can just choose to cancel service.
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DSL (Score:2)
I switched from cable back to DSL when my local cable company added a 300 GB cap. My upload speed is slower, but I would rather have no caps than a bit more speed and worry that the kids are watching Netflix a few hours too many a month.
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Yeah
Comcast tried $100 a month with no TV for just Internet??! Talk about highway robbery. My dsl really sucks and feels like it's 2005 rather than 2015 with 7 megs a second. My phone losses calling and email abilities if I run Windows update. Sigh
But at least I have no caps and a $40 a month and not $100 price
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Yeah
Comcast tried $100 a month with no TV for just Internet??! Talk about highway robbery. My dsl really sucks and feels like it's 2005 rather than 2015 with 7 megs a second. My phone losses calling and email abilities if I run Windows update. Sigh
But at least I have no caps and a $40 a month and not $100 price
And it's likely more RELIABLE than the cable connection, to boot.
They almost got it right (Score:5, Insightful)
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The real non-dick move would be to rate limit you or even cut you off at 300GB and then allow you to actually choose to pay for the overage.
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You mean using the product he paid for, oh corporate bootlicking AC?
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Personally, I think it's the ones burning up 300+GB/month and countless hours of their lives watching fucking TV who are firmly attached to the corporate teat.
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Why should other people throttle their use to suit your 1980's bandwidth needs? Just call up AOL and tell them you want a modem of moderate speed, nothing fancy.
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QoS throttling is what keeps your neighbor's torrents from impacting you, not a cap.
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A 300 GB/mo cap is better than the 10 GB/mo cap of cellular or the 10 GB/mo cap of satellite.
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Funny thing is, my local cable system used to belong to Time-Warner. Were they great? No, they were really expensive, and the speeds weren't that great - but the customer service was actually customer service.
Meanwhile, in Canada... (Score:3)
Just a money grab (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason they are making any changes is because the FCC is considering doing something.
As a point for comparison where I live there are two cable providers, Cox and Comcast, covering different parts of the city. Cox has a data cap, but it is 2TB. Also that is a soft cap. If you hit it, nothing happens. They may call and complain at you if you do it too much, but that's all. It is there to try and keep people reasonable, and so they can cut off someone in truly egregious cases (I've never actually heard of anyone getting cut off).
Now somehow both these companies can make money, yet only Comcast charges for overages and yet has much lower caps.
It is just a money grab. While some kind of soft cap or throttling can be needed to make sure people play nice (we can only have Internet fast and cheap if people share, otherwise the backhaul is prohibitively expensive) low hard caps with overage fees are just used to try and make more cash.
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a flat number was chosen to stop the Netflix data guzzlers
and yet they can stream the same data over the same cables from comcast's streaming service without affecting their data cap
and then they say that they are doing it because of capacity issues
As long as they are clear.... (Score:2)
If this results in their advertising clearly stating what I get for my money, it is a very good thing.
TFA does state that they will email when adding each additional $10/50GB block to your plan.
Now, it we can get a bit more competition in each of our communities, we will be all set,
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TFA does state that they will email when adding each additional $10/50GB block to your plan.
getting raped on your internet bill is so much less terrible when they also spam you
I can already see the Slashdot headlines (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck 'em. I don't know who to consider dumber - Comcast, or any of their customers who fall for this again.
Comcast giveth and I taketh away (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time Comcast increases my bill, I drop a feature that costs the same amount. They're getting perilously close to the point where that feature will be "TV".
An open message to Comcast execs: be absolutely sure you're ready to make customers decide between your content and Netflix. I bet you'd be surprised how often the response won't be what you'd hope.
Re:Comcast giveth and I taketh away (Score:4, Insightful)
An open message to Comcast execs: be absolutely sure you're ready to make customers decide between your content and Netflix. I bet you'd be surprised how often the response won't be what you'd hope.
Good luck with that. Netflix is busy dropping content [slashdot.org], using the rationale that you can get that content from cable TV instead. We're approaching a point where the only winning move is not to pay; I predict many folks will soon cancel cable and Netflix, and just go back to torrents.
Re:Comcast giveth and I taketh away (Score:5, Informative)
Netflix is always dropping content to rotate in content they didn't already have (note I didn't say "new" content). They've always operated this way. The other option is to charge more and have a larger selection. I think I'm with most people in saying I would rather them rotate in new content than have a totally static library of movies after they hit the limit of what they can afford to license.
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We're approaching a point where the only winning move is not to pay; I predict many folks will soon cancel cable and Netflix, and just go back to torrents.
Go back to torrents...?
Some of us were smart enough to see the game for what is is and refused to play in the first place.
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last time i checked, you need internet to use netflix. if they own the pipe, they win regardless.
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So you still pay them the same amount but you use less of their services.
Sure, that'll teach them!
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Does it just have to do with rising prices? After all, there's always inflation, so rising prices as such are normal. Or does it more have to do with being able to do without the extra services?
GP suggests that next he's going to cut TV service. Obviously, TV service has little value to him, or he'd be willing to pay for that. Same for whatever other services Comcast offers. When Internet is the one remaining service, will GP cut that as well? Or suck it up and continue paying the higher fee, because it's t
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4K streaming? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast just officially killed 4k streaming. We'll be stuck in the dark ages of the Comonopoly while the world upgrades.
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Drop to a cheaper data rate and add the $30 unlimited data.
or better yet, use comcast's own streaming service which somehow by miracle magic does not consume any billable bandwidth
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Wait, other countries have 8000 mb/s? (Score:2)
Comcast offers 10mb/s for $90, and in foreign countries they get 8000mb/s for $20. We'
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No it doesn't. It doesn't have a service rated for 10 MILLIbits per second. The service they provide me is 25 MEGAbits per second, and it costs $53.95 per month, not $90 per month.
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Also while I'm talking about corrections, I did calculate the new hike in my calculations, but I said I didn't.
Maybe lets just go by the gist of what I said.
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8Gbps - no.
1Gbps - some countries have that.
I have 600Mbps (that was upgraded from 500Mbps at no cost - the 500Mbps was an upgrade from 300Mbps - again at no cost, the 300Mbps was an upgrade from 80Mbps - and at that time my cost actually went down - all this from the same ISP) up and down with no limits.
Google Fibre (Score:2)
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Yeah... to about 2 cities a year. At the rate their glacial rollout is progressing, I'd be lucky to see Google Fiber in my suburban neighborhood before I die of old age.
Get a business plan (Score:2)
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I have comcast business, and I see no where on my terms of service, or anywhere on comcast businesses site that claims "a dedicated chnanel on teh coax without sharing it with my neighbors".
As far as I'm aware, comcast business cable (not business ethernet) simply uses the same residential network to deliver services.
business plan require a modem rental (Score:2)
it is Comcast policy that static IPs require a modem rental and that can run you $10-$20 mo on top of your base rate.
ATT better they have a max overage fee (Score:2)
ATT better they have a max overage fee vs a pay up front to be cap free.
Makes you wonder (Score:2)
If they're going to give you a deal for unlimited data if you sign up for a multi-year Triple Play contract.
And then have you re-negotiate for a "promotion" every six months or so. That re-negotiation bullshit is why I cut the cord in the first place.
Here's what happened when I signed up for Comcast (Score:4, Informative)
Anyhow, I went to their local office to sign up for service and get my equipment. I asked the rep specifically and in no uncertain terms, "is there a data cap?" The answer was no. To be sure, I explained what I meant - some limit over which I would be charged extra. The answer was still no. This was in June.
In December, I got an email announcing the "great news" that the cap was being raised from 250 to 300GB! So I called them and pointed out that this was complete and total BS, as I had been assured that no cap existed, so they weren't actually raising it they were creating it. The response was, "Oh, there was always a cap, we just didn't enforce it." I asked who was lying to me, the person telling me there was always a cap, or the manager at the service location. Not receiving an answer, I suggested they fuck themselves, sideways, with a chainsaw. Several later calls ended the same way.
I stopped peering linux and other 100% legitimate torrents just in case. I got a call one month that I was exceeding the cap, and had another long phone battle and had to threaten to take it up with the FTC to get them to waive it. I again recommended chainsaw insertion several times. Most conversations I had with Comcast involved that recommendation, as well as pointing out how they lied to me on several occasions.
My new provider, Charter, makes "No Cap" part of their marketing. They have yet to lie to me about anything. Comcast did try to extract an "early cancelation" fee from me when I moved, despite the fact that I made every effort to retain the service, and it was they who broke the contract by refusing to provide service at my new address. Also, when I told them I was moving, I told the woman they better not try to charge such a fee after I made a good faith effort to continue service. She said they wouldn't, since it was their fault and not mine. I was then transferred to someone who said, "$250". They appear to have dropped it.
Comcast lies. The way they do business is abhorrent, and it needs to stop. If someone is filing a class action suit, let me know. I want in.
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> Heck, we have 40 Gbps ports campuswide and three 100 Gbps ports. We slurp that much data in one minute.
The gas station down the street has larger tanks than my car. What's your point?
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And the gas stations pays a bit less that what they sell for. Commercial pricing for a 10ge connection full out is down below 5k a month that's 200 users at 50mbs all month for which they charge at least $50 (I'm rounding assuming etc etc etc) or about 10k. A 100% markup over cost of goods is excellent. Places like netflix are happy to shove gear into their network (and paid for the privilege) to reduce that cost to near 0 ar just space/power/cooling and a switchport. In effect the markup for watching s
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Comcast gets to define what unlimited means. Deal with it, or start your own telecommunications corporation.
comcast only exists because government agencies are kind enough to allow comcast to run their wires across government property
this is not a perk that is available to the individual
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Comcast gets to define what unlimited means. Deal with it, or start your own telecommunications corporation.
In most of their markets Comcast has been granted a monopoly by the local authorities so you couldn't legally compete with them even if you had enough money to.