Comcast Is Raising Its Data Caps From 300GB To 1TB (arstechnica.com) 145
An anonymous reader writes: Comcast has announced today it will be raising its monthly data cap of 300GB to 1TB beginning June 1st. They will however charge more to customers who want unlimited data. After June 1st, less people will need to buy unlimited data from the company. Previously, users were charged an extra $30 to $35 a month for unlimited data but now they will have to pay an additional $50 for unlimited data. "All of the data plans in our trial markets will move from a 300 gigabyte data plan to a terabyte by June 1st, regardless of the speed," Comcast's announcement today said. The reason for the change? Customers are exceeding the 300GB cap. In late 2013, Comcast said only 2 percent of its customers used more than 300GB of data a month. That number was up to 8 percent in late 2015.
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I have fiber from AT&T, and while they DO have terms in the contract that lets them limit me, they never have.
And yes, I've downloaded 1TB in the period of a few days, which is way beyond the "cap", but I've never been bothered about it.
Perhaps because I don't torrent?
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There are campaigns right now to legally forbid data caps on home internet, here on Brazil: what I think of it? Pure nonsense...
"Unlimited nights and weekends" (Score:4, Interesting)
If broadband ISPs insist on having data caps (which they really shouldn't), they need to adopt a schedule like the old cell plans. Not necessarily the same "night and weekends" model ... but that old jingle was stuck in my head
People who shape their traffic and plan large downloads at overnight aren't clogging up the lines. Why punish customers who are making their best efforts to not impact other people? We should be rewarding that behavior.
Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends" (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast hates giving you what you paid for.... Comcast rewarding customers? HA!
Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends" (Score:4, Informative)
Comcast hates giving you what you paid for.... Comcast rewarding customers? HA!
They aren't rewarding customers. Having a nights and weekends policy would only benefit them. The extra capacity is free and being wasted at night. Yes, they might lose a small amount of money from overage fees or people that don't pay to upgrade to unlimited but this should be more than compensated for if even a small percentage of their customers scheduled their large downloads for after hours. This would increase their capacity and improve their performance instantly without them spending a dime. I'm very surprised that noone who is considering caps in the first place hasn't already done this.
Re:Which they really SHOULD (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should Comcast give everyone unlimited access to a self imposed limited resource?
Fixed that for you
Re:Which they really SHOULD (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Which they really SHOULD (Score:4)
What a pity that Comcast's enforced monopoly results in usage of their network. Boo-fucking-hoo for them.
If they operated their retail network like real carriers do on a wholesale level by setting a 90th percentile rate based on actual usage, charge for THAT and make reasonable allowances for overages that would be closer to fair. As it is now, it's a shell game since their metering favors the house and not you, the customer.
I'd prefer HONEST metering, but Comcast aint interested in that.
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Then you don't know what you're talking about. I buy "wholesale" bandwidth for servers an I can EASILY get 20TB for less than $80. While bandwidth isn't free, you need to stop drinking the ISP Kool aid. They are price gouging every customer and stealing from every tax payer.
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Buying Internet in a datacenter is unrelated to the commercial considerations of a residential ISP.
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What a pity that Comcast's enforced monopoly results in usage of their network.
Where is Comcast a government-enforced monopoly ISP?
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Nearly everywhere they operate, they are the government-enforced monopoly CATV/cableTV,
Everywhere they operate they may be the only franchisee for cable TV, but they have non-exclusive franchises. In fact, federal law prohibits exclusive franchises. That makes it NOT a government-enforced monopoly.
As for ISP service, there is no franchise system for that, and thus no government monopoly there, either. So what if they are the only incumbent cable-TV delivered internet service? That doesn't make them a monopoly as an ISP. "ISP" and "cable" are not synonyms.
Hate on Comcast for real wrongs, not
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In fact, federal law prohibits exclusive franchises.
Federal law may prevent "exclusive" franchises, but doesn't prevent sole franchises. The local government is enforcing "sole franchise" status, even if not "exclusive".
So what if they are the only incumbent cable-TV delivered internet service? That doesn't make them a monopoly as an ISP. "ISP" and "cable" are not synonyms.
Non sequitur. Read GP. " Comcast's enforced monopoly " There was no mention that the enforced monopoly was an ISP monopoly. That was asserted by you, as a strawman non sequitur. Either they are the sole licensee for the CATV service (making them the "exclusive" one, for the English definition of that word, even if not the legal definiti
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Federal law may prevent "exclusive" franchises, but doesn't prevent sole franchises.
Being the only franchisee isn't a "government-granted monopoly". It is a representation of the economic truth of the matter.
The local government is enforcing "sole franchise" status, even if not "exclusive".
There is no "sole franchise status". There is a franchise which, of course, the government would enforce as any other contract. But they cannot enforce "sole franchise", because that would make that franchise exclusive. To be enforcing some "sole franchise status", the government would have to tell any applicants that they cannot have one because Comcast already has the one sole franc
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But they cannot enforce "sole franchise", because that would make that franchise exclusive.
But they do. When your opinion and reality conflict, believing your opinion to be more correct is a mental illness called "neurosis".
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Re: Which they really SHOULD (Score:1)
Your first mistake is thinking bandwidth is a limited resource for major ISPs. It's virtually unlimited compared to your home connection. Netflix will send as much data to you as you want as a subscriber and charge nothing for it...they're not limited with their bandwidth.
Yet you bought into the idea that the major ISPs are...
Backbone and transport circuits are huge, and cheap now for the carriers. They're also not really even being utilized. Wish I could post the graphs.
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It's not "self imposed" but cost imposed. Data caps are a proxy for bandwidth use. If everyone used too much bandwidth, they'd have to buy more. So caps impose usage penalties designed to reduce overall bandwidth usage, to decrease cost.
Except that Comcast has explicitly said that the caps are not about resource management. They are solely a money-making scheme. And they are not uniform across Comcast's network. For example, I live in Eastern MA, where Comcast competes with Verizon FIOS (whiich has no caps). Guess what? Comcast has a 250G cap which is "not currently enforced".
http://time.com/money/4143682/... [time.com]
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For most of the civilized world it was a limited resource...10 years ago. And most of the world kept up and have very high data rates for a reasonable monthly cost. But the US is an outlier because the telecom and cable companies pocketed their rent-seeked profits (i.e. dividends, stock buybacks, Congressional junkets, etc.) instead of upgrading infrastructure.
If Comcast invested in their infrastructure there's no reason every home shouldn't have 100Mbs service. At that rate none of this would be an issu
Re: Which they really SHOULD (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the limits are false.
Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, etc. have made their own little monopolized diamond business, creating artificial scarcity.
The problem is that they've done this to a basic utility service, instead of an exorbitant luxury item like diamonds.
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A year ago Cox raised the limit of "unlimited" from 400 to 2T in my area.
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The person you're talking to, is you, in the mirror. Just thought you might want to know, since you seem to be a bit stupid. Well, very stupid, actually.
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Re: Which they really SHOULD (Score:3)
There's a fundamental aspect of bandwidth that I think you're missing. It's always there. Any time that the lines are under-utilized is simply wasted. All those late-night hours when the lines are empty ... that unused bandwidth doesn't queue up and wait to help offset rush hour the next day.
Think of it like lanes on the highway. If we could somehow convince the big traffic jammers (big-rigs, perhaps) to run between 8pm and 4am, that would alleviate traffic for the average commuter.
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If we could somehow convince the big traffic jammers (big-rigs, perhaps) to run between 8pm and 4am, that would alleviate traffic for the average commuter.
Like torrenting stuff instead of using Netflix...
(Is there a way to tell Netflix that you're going to watch some movie or TV shows *tomorrow* night and have it download the data for you from 10PM to 6AM?)
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Not that I know of ... but that would be an interesting new feature. Especially for shows that come in seasons.
It should be pretty simple for Netflix to preload the next 2 or 3 episodes of a given show. Maybe just load 90% of each frame, so that I can't actually be watched off-line, but the download requirements to stream it during peak hours are reduced significantly. Watch a few episodes per night, let Netflix queue up the next few for tomorrow.
Of course... that all assumes that Netflix and Comcast can
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My (large) ISP is not in the content creation business.
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People who shape their traffic and plan large downloads at overnight aren't clogging up the lines. Why punish customers who are making their best efforts to not impact other people? We should be rewarding that behavior.
Because they'll clog the lines during the overnight. Comcast has a ton of money. They can afford to install fatter pipes. If people only made a stronger demand for municipal service, the threat of actual competition would make pricing and service much more reasonable.
Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends" (Score:5, Insightful)
For the extreme users, you both may be right, but that's still just the 1% - 2% of top users.
300gb/month is approximately 5.5 hr of HD streaming from netflix per day (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-much-monthly-bandwidth-doe-136401)
That may seem like a lot for one person, but it wouldn't be very difficult for one person to use that and hold down a normal job.
If you consider a household, which both the comcast and netflix subscriptions allow, then you could easily burn through that much, as at least 8% of their customers are doing now (according to TFS).
That's just legit streaming, with no torrents or other large downloads, nor any intensive work stuff, and completely ignoring all other internet usage. I doubt those users are going to schedule their streaming TV/movie watching for off peak hours. There's a reason the peaks are where they are now, and it's damn near all streaming video.
IMNSHO, I think:
* they shouldn't be allowed to charge per GB without offering better tools for their users
* once they do though, they should offer a base package (300-1000gb seems fine for that), and then a flat per-GB fee above that.
* get rid of speed restrictions if they use caps or charge per-GB (if everyone is paying same price per-gb, everyone should get the same bps)
Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends" (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking at my usage in the TWC control panel, I regularly use 300 GB+ almost every month. All of which is streaming from Twitch or Youtube, web surfing, and gaming. Most of my entertainment is from those sources.
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The best way price the service is by content agnostic simple bandwidth with guaranteed minimums (not the phony *Up to* a gazillion MB/s). Rationing data is not needed. Pay for the pipe, not what goes through. You can still offer incentives for off peak usage. The American consumer fell down in not demanding it be done that way. We really need muni-fiber to put up some real competition against these people.
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The American consumer fell down in not demanding it be done that way.
Sorry, not all of us are rich enough to pay off every legislator down the chain to oppose Comcast's government-enforced monopoly.
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Just stop reelecting the ones that are bought off. Don't blame them for winning. The power comes from the voters' preference. They are the ones selling out to the highest bidder.
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Sure, because the next guy will be squeaky clean of course.
Look, you can always tell that a politician is lying because his lips are moving. Pick this thief or the other thief, your choice.
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You take your chances on the first attempt. But why in the world would you reelect him or the party when he screws up? And then you got these kind of guys in there for five or six terms, what is up with that? The problem is now self inflicted. It's not even politics anymore, it's a pathology.
Single-issue voters (Score:1)
But why in the world would you reelect him or the party when he screws up?
Presumably because he hasn't screwed up on other issues that are important to other voters. For example, a lot of voters think increasing or decreasing a woman's right to choose to kill her unborn child outweighs numerous sins in other areas.
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Regardless, my whole point has always been that it is not the "system's" fault. All choices are still personal no matter what the motivation.
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"they" shouldn't provide the tools at all.
NIST or equivalent body should be generating the standards for measuring traffic use, and if Comcast wants to charge per-GB, they need to provide everyone with a NIST-calibrated and certified meter. Just like your water meter, your gas meter, your electric meter has calibration stamps and seals to indicate that yes, what they measure is accurate.
That meter should have a 0-cost
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Blah, semantics on "they", but I agree 100%.
You noted some of the questionable areas, such as headers, DOCSIS, DDoS's, etc.
For all header stuff, I'm fine with or without it included, and it's easier to include it, so that's fine - as long as it's sold that way.
For DDoS's, there would have to be some way to work with them on that, similar to getting SMS spammed on a cell phone with a limited plan - they'll work with you, and block that stuff. If they can't block it, that's at least partially their fault. Poi
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Metering the content instead of the bandwidth is completely ass backwards. "Saturation" is a purely bandwidth issue. The "content" doesn't change, it is merely copied into memory/cache/storage. And what's the deal? I thought "broadcasting" should make it a non issue.
Re: "Unlimited nights and weekends" (Score:3)
Then pick a different time.
The 8% of users who are exceeding 300gb per month simply should not be able to saturate the lines. If 8% of users can create a traffic jam, we've got bigger problems.
Meanwhile, Comcast can see their own metrics, even if they don't release that info publicly. So they can pick a time-frame that's currently underutilized, make that the "unlimited" time, and the big-downloaders will adjust accordingly.
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It's best to regulate the bandwidth, not the volume of data. Then "saturation" is not an issue.
Not Limited Everywhere (Score:2)
Comcast does not have caps in all locations. [xfinity.com] I have uncapped bandwidth on Comcast in Portland, OR.
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Re: Not Limited Everywhere (Score:1)
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"back in the day" (1990s) I had a dialup provider who fingered me for "violation of the TOS" unspecified infraction, and terminated my account - which was fine since their 14.4Kbaud dialup service was delivering about 100 baud of actual throughput during prime time hours after they signed on more customers than they could service.
I'm pretty sure they didn't like the fact that I used to download usenet newsgroups 8 hours a night, and since most people didn't do that, they just jettisioned the 2% of their cus
Re:"Unlimited nights and weekends" (Score:5, Interesting)
They can't. Even if they thought it was a good idea systemically.
So if they implemented time based data surcharges, they would drive users to piracy. Since Comcast and Time Warner both have significant media holdings, any policy that incentivized piracy (would be a non-starter.
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Yes, you can [arstechnica.com].
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I hadn't heard about this, thanks... but until it supports HBO, Hulu, Twitch, YouTube, and a dozen others I'm not remembering off the top of my head it's close to irrelevant.
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cron (Score:2)
The number of people who want to download huge files for offline use and who are willing to stay up until a particular time of night to start the download
You don't have to stay up if cron or Task Scheduler stays up for you.
is similarly tiny,
When Microsoft is pushing out a new 3 GB "build" of Windows 10 to hundreds of millions of Windows Update clients, that's certainly not "tiny".
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The lines aren't clogged up an any time. As soon as you realize this is a move to monetize bandwidth rather than congestion control, it makes more sense. If it really was about congestion they would just throttle everyone equally during heavy congestion to keep the links from saturating.
Continuous Rate: 4Mb/s (Score:3)
If I'm doing my math correctly, 1TB is about 4Mb/s over a month. Or closer to 3, depending on the definitions they're using (base-2 TB vs. base-10, etc.).
I run a tor relay at over 1MB/s, so that alone would more than double the new cap. I've very glad I'm on FiOS. Though I suppose I'm at the mercy of Verizon if they start doing the same thing.
That is how you legitimize the caps (Score:2)
In the past Comcast has never specified what the caps were. And I am talking about residential plans. They were only reporting top 5% users (or in their thinking abusers). Theoretically in the past you could have used 2TB. They would have included you in the shitlists, but that would have been it if you only were flamboyant for one month.
Right now it is a cap that been added. Some might think it is yuge, that they will never use it.
Several things will happen:
- More people will switch to Netlfix and
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Comcast has had defined caps (250G then 300G) in some markets as a "test" for a while (including mine, for 3-4 years now IIRC).
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Correction. Comcast has defined caps in ALL markets, however, only in a select few trial areas have they actually been enforcing them. I'm currently in one of the areas not in the so called trials, but I do have a cap -- they just don't squat about it if it I exceed it (which I do every month). The 1TB cap I can almost live under.
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Going here: https://customer.xfinity.com/M... [xfinity.com] tells me:
"927GB used Note: Enforcement of the 250GB data consumption threshold is currently suspended."
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What about throttling? (Score:2)
So Netflix has equipment inside the Comcast network and works fine, but as of a few weeks ago my connection is completely useless for regular non-text based use. I don't come anywhere near even the 300Gig transfer. What is up with that? I've complained but nothing happens.
I can't stream Linux Action show from Jupiter Broadcasting.
I can't stream twitch.tv (I find geek and sundry, kerbals, and others as excellent background noise similar to talk radio...but not enraging like talk radio)
I can't even stream
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When comcast did this to me several years ago, I moved to at&t. I recently moved from at&t to google fiber after they doubled the bill to penalize us for not ordering their uverse thing and just have them as an isp.
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but as of a few weeks ago my connection is completely useless for regular non-text based use
When this happened to me, I logged into my cable modem (SB6141) and looked at the signal strength status page. It was waaaaaayyyy down, so I called Cox -- on Saturday afternoon -- and they came out Monday morning. After replacing a bunch of cable and connectors from the pole to the corner of my house, the signal is much better and speeds are greatly improved.
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Last time this happened to me, YouTube was throttled so much that it was faster under TOR than under the normal unadulterated connection. Granted, while you probably shouldn't use TOR for streaming videos... you can.
If you have VPN access to your work network, that'll work a lot better. I did a lot of that once I was given access.
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Regardless of what any carrier tells you, bandwidth is measured in bps not Bpm. The scale of a month is irrelevant to the networking media or any intermediate devices.
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I agree that it is a poor metric to be billing on. They really should separate out the data on how much bandwidth you use during peak hours from how much you during non-peak hours. I think that would go a long way towards curbing peak usage unnecessarily. All of a sudden that steam download of a 50Gb triple-A title can wait to download at 3am if it means saving a few dollars for a lot of people rather than starting at 7pm.
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Again, it is not how much data you consume over a lengthy period of time, it's literally a measure of how many bits are flowing the split second you are using it. And any system will use as much as it can, even visiting a 10kb websites can use 20Mbps worth of bandwidth for a very short period of time (there are limits off course due to the speed of light and latency).
For Comcast to be honest they should say: Hey, we give you 1Mbps down guaranteed, 10Mbps burstable.
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You do realize how silly what you just said is, right?
Again, it is not how much data you consume over a lengthy period of time
...
it's literally a measure of how many bits are flowing the split **second** you are using it.
So you are arguing that they shouldn't be able to measure it per month because that is measuring data per month and month is a length of time, but they should be measuring it per second.. which second is a length of time. LOL.
And
For Comcast to be honest they should say: Hey, we give you 1Mbps down guaranteed, 10Mbps burstable.
How about up to 10Mbps? Oh wait, that is what they say.
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You don't understand the technical differences. Bits per second is a measurement of data transfer rate, how many characters physically fit over a data line, it is not a measurement of limits. A 10Mbps line is only capable of 10Mbps whether you measure it over a month or a year.
MB/month is a data capacity limit and they are an artifact. There is no physical limit to the amount of data you can transfer over any length of time as long as you remain within the bounds of your data transfer rate. Your line doesn'
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At some point when I wasn't watching, Cox bumped my cap from 250GB to 700GB. (No, I wasn't getting any usage warnings, and my bill hasn't gone up either.)
A better solution (Score:3)
Comcast needs to have its own service, Stream TV, imputed against Comcast's own data caps. This will ensure that Comcast does not gain a corporate advantage via exploiting data caps in a monopolistic fashion.
Then, every other ISP needs to have the same thing occur to prevent the same malfeasance by Comcast from spreading further.
However, fundamentally, I think the definition of wired broadband need to change to assume the following.
Wired bandwidth you are provided is a constant stream.
Can we just have municiple broadband? (Score:2)
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Well, if an earlier poster got his/her math right, then it costs $28/mo for everyone to average 1TB/month (4Mbps average). I'd be willing to be metered at double that rate, to be honest, and I'm a pretty big bandwidth user for a 3 person house (~400-600GB/mo). It would still cost me 1/3 of what Comcast charges me (And I've never been charged for cap-exceedence).
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Those broadband networks were paid for a decade before these kids were born, by guys like me with our municipal bond issues and subscriber fees. And if you say anything about "upgrades" I'm gonna laugh right in your face.
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What the hell are you talking about? There's nothing in my local ISP (Cox) that's the same as it was 15 years ago, much less 30 (when I was just a cable subscriber). Heck, even the last 40 yards of coax from "that box on the street corner" has been replaced a couple of times.
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I've heard this number before but that number is actually $7/month per 1 mbit/s. Multiply that by the amount of mbit/s they get from their upstream connection. That said, it's still probably far far less than the total number of mbit/s they sold each of their users so they are making a huge profit.
I don't understand how the cost can be related to the maximum throughput. The major expenses are infrastructure and personnel (and I bet payroll is the biggest). For a given infrastructure over a given geographic area, there's a max supportable bandwidth, then you have a big infrastructure cost to support anything higher. Once you pay that, though, you have another maximum bandwidth (say 10 or 100 times the previous)
So, to say it's linear ($7/mbit/s) doesn't seem right. It's more a function of populatio
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Re: Can we just have municiple broadband? (Score:4, Interesting)
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We have FTTH municipal broadband in Longmont Colorado. Speed is 1Gbps (that's 1000 Mbps for you comcast folks) Up AND down for $49/Month. Forever. No stupid "specials" that eventually expire. No data caps either! And yes we stream HD all time.
If our small city can do it, so can yours. The city only recently rolled out this service, and hundreds of residents have ditched comcast and centurylink for service that is more than an order of magnitude faster, at a much lower price. Local competent customer service
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[nice story omitted] This is the future.
I'm not sure. With the mergers, the lobbyists, wholly owned legislators, content provider-ISP relationships, etc., I think that it may not be the future. They are doing everything they can to reduce the community broadband competition, like they did everything to gain monopolies in their service areas. A lot depends on who runs the FCC. The decision to override the state laws against community broadband (see this [arstechnica.com]) could easily be overturned by the next administration. It could easily kill your service.
Reasonable enough, I guess (Score:1)
While I'm not thrilled with the concept of traffic limiting in general, this is an amount of data that will easily accommodate a full family of average users, or even a couple of power users.
I've been keeping track of my bandwidth usage for 5 years, even though I've always had true-unlimited plans via business class service. My absolute highest month, ever, was 670 GB. Most months are around 250 GB, and I consider myself a power user, like most people on this site probably do.
Sounds like they've found a rea
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Family of 4 on Comcast here.
We did 1.4TB in January, and 1.2TB in Feb.
667GB in March, but we went on vacation for 14 days.
We don't torrent. We don't have cable TV service, we use Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.
We may be the exception, but I see more families heading my direction rather than ours.
Why not discount low use? (Score:2)
I use less than 30 GB a month. That's a tenth of the old limit and less than a thirtieth of the new limit. Instead of paying my $50 a month bill as usual, can I return my unused portion for a $45 discount? Odds of that ever happening are of course zero.
I just reviewed my router logs (Score:2)
Turns out I've had the same router since 2013, which keeps bandwidth logs.
With one rare exception (where I managed to blow through 150GB in a single day??) I've never exceeded more than 200GB, that exception month being 227GB. I consider myself a power user, but in reality most months floated around about 120GB/mo.
300GB sounds fine for most users, I have to really push it to try and burn up 250GB, let alone four times that amount. Maybe I need to upgrade to a 4K display to stream 4K netflix?
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See, that's when you're supposed to buy multiple connections. You know, like how you're required to get multiple otherwise-useless TV set-top boxes now to access basic cable.
I remember when they switched over. I had a TV card that was compatible with the digital cable signal. It was great. I could tell the software to record something at a specific time, just like a DVR. Then the signal became encrypted and the card became less useful. I could hook up the set top box to the computer, but the computer couldn
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You know, like how you're required to get multiple otherwise-useless TV set-top boxes now to access basic cable.
Who requires you to get multiple STB just for basic cable access? I can see "one", but not "multiple". And even "one" probably isn't required. Comcast would have been happy to let me turn mine in -- it means one less OnDemand user.
I had to rent a Comcast DVR if I wanted that feature again.
There are other, non-Comcast options. SiliconDust sells them, for one.
Oh so much better... (Score:2)
Finally enough bandwidth for a Steam sale! (Score:2)
Finally enough bandwidth for a Steam sale!