Frontier Has No Plans For Data Caps As They're Not Necessary, Says CEO (consumerist.com) 91
An anonymous reader writes: Frontier's CEO Dan McCarthy has said at an investors conference that the company has no plans to institute data caps that squeeze overage fees from data-hungry customers, yet. "The nice part of technology and what has happened is that transport costs continue to decline," he explained. "We have not really started or have any intent about initiatives on usage based pricing," said McCarthy. "We want to make sure our products meet the needs of customers for what they want to do and it does not inhibit them or force them to make decisions on how they want to use the product." He did note that data caps could someday come into play: "There may be a time when usage-based pricing is the right solution for the market, but I really don't see that as a path the market is taking at this point in time." The gist of what McCarthy is saying as noted via Ars Technica is that data caps are a business decision, not a network necessity.
Who is Dan McCarthy? (Score:1, Informative)
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I think GP was referring to this [wikipedia.org]
Re: Who is Dan McCarthy? (Score:4, Informative)
I think GP was referring to this [wikipedia.org]
The summary should have mentioned that the company is Frontier Communications [wikipedia.org]. It should have also mentioned that nearly all of their customers are on DSL. It is easy to offer no data caps when your customers are sucking data through a narrow straw and aren't going to get much anyway.
Re: Who is Dan McCarthy? (Score:4, Insightful)
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And my FIOS connection has become absolutely horrible since. Yesterday, I had a movie stop for buffering three times in the first hour - it was not so good, so I gave up at some point.
In the evening, my bandwidth is 1/10th of what it used to be. Between 12am and 2am, I experience periods of total inaccessibility.
I have more or less stopped gaming and I have a lot less time for movies as we recently had a baby girl. But a few years ago, I'd have been screaming bloody murder and would have been looking for
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I'd still suggest contacting customer service, and if the issue is not resolved, escalate it to a consumer complaint to the FCC.
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I've tested mine several times: 50/50 or better. I am seeing little to no latency increases either.
But, none of that matters, congrats on the baby. You'll find a lot of stuff changes after the first.
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No, he's the guy who wrote Elite.
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Sold crack to him too.
Ahh, so you must work for the CIA.
data caps are a business decision... (Score:1)
Doesn't seem to matter does it? People are buying it. Sure it's a business decision, one that is paying off handsomely.
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Caps are bullshit. Charge by the bandwidth and all you infrastructure angles are covered.
Re: data caps are a business decision...motivation (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh, they are capacity caps, not peak usage caps. How does it matter if you download now vs at night? Peak usage limits on bandwidth make total sense, but that's not what providers are doing.
How the market will react is by not purchasing bandwidth heavy services. And if the carriers start excluding specific services in the usage count, then they should not only lose their common carrier status but also all these right of way mono/duopolies that they are provided by regulations.
Re:data caps are a business decision...motivation. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that Comcast's goal is to make you watch less streaming content from Netflix and the like, and watch more cable TV instead.
So, yeah, I guess that it "influences behavior", but in a completely self serving manner for Comcast.
Frontier doesn't seem to care what you use their broadband for. Hell... they have Netflix built into the IPTV boxes, and offer Amazon Prime subscriptions to new customers.
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Seeing as how many ISPs (in the US) are practically monopolies in their area, yes it does matter.
Pricing for Abusers, or Abusive Pricing (Score:5, Insightful)
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I ran across this article which reports one Verizon customer used 77 TB in one month [arstechnica.com]. He has a rack of servers in his home. If you allow someone to take advantage of you, there will always be someone to take you up on the offer.
Re: Pricing for Abusers, or Abusive Pricing (Score:5, Insightful)
And still even with that outlier, at this point it is not a concern about network congestion.
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And still even with that outlier, at this point it is not a concern about network congestion.
Maybe it isn't a concern for Frontier (yet). But look at their footprint and you will see it's very different in terms of density and demographics. Verizon for example might just have more serious bandwidth abusers, as evidenced by the fact that their territory includes Philadelphia, which is solely populated by terrible human beings.
Just ribbing you there, Philly. I grew up in Bucks County, so we're paisans and we probably bumped into each other on South Street or at the Spectrum! Ha ha! Please don't trac
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"serious bandwidth abusers"
LOL, witch hunts
Re: Pricing for Abusers, or Abusive Pricing (Score:2)
No Philly, screw you. Everytime you keep tricking me into thinking "THIS time the Phillies/Eagles will win!!" Nope tricked me again!
That's why schnell and I moved out of Bucks the minute we could start driving. Anywhere away from New Jersey... Philly was the bonus. Do miss roaming around Franklin Mills thou.
Re:Pricing for Abusers, or Abusive Pricing (Score:5, Insightful)
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And you?
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According to the article, he was using dual 150mb connections, and later, a single 300mb connection.
Considering the vast amount of bandwidth he has, 70 some terabytes is not that much traffic.
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Maybe its petty, but I never liked the term 'caps' as it implies a limit that can't be exceeded. Its often really tiered pricing under another name.
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Maybe there are two sides to this argument
There are. One of them is a greedy and abusive minority sucking in the ignorant with lies.
as with any "open access" to a resource
Network bandwidth isn't open access.
The challenge for an ISP or telco is to strike that balance between reasonable pricing and protecting the reasonable majority from a handful of excessive users
That's not a challenge for anyone. Congestion avoidance is a solved problem, an automated algorithm, _the_ automated algorithm that picks what to send or drop next. If "excessive users" are interfering with anybody else, causing that interference was an explicit choice by the ISP.
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"If "excessive users" are interfering with anybody else, causing that interference was an explicit choice by the ISP."
Exactly
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Comcast (Score:5, Interesting)
Comcast, are you listening?
You don't -have- to be dicks, you choose to.
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Frontier has no plans for real broadband either (Score:5, Interesting)
In most of Frontier's service areas "broadband" counts as shitty adsl where you are lucky if you get 3mb/s down. They don't need caps, because you can't download anything anyways.
Seriously, if you've got the choice between Frontier and 4G connection, go with whatever 4G provider there is. Praise FSM if you've got Comcast in a Frontier service area. Seriously, Frontier is that bad, you will be BEGGING for Comcast. They're that bad.
Frontier pretty much has taken over the unprofitable areas of Verizon's wireline business. They have no desire for infrastructure upgrades, or really anything other than getting you to keep paying.
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I have Frontier - on a good day ( sunny, no wind, 68 deg F) I get 1mb/s down...I couldn't hit a cap if I tried!
Tech support has pretty much told me my area is over subscribed and there are NO plans to upgrade - 100% monetized, any upgrades are a total cost - can't take $$$ from those shareholders...
My choices are cellular or satellite (both expensive) or move ( seriously considering this option).
I would kill for Comcast !!!!
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In most of Frontier's service areas "broadband" counts as shitty adsl where you are lucky if you get 3mb/s down. They don't need caps, because you can't download anything anyways.
I was going to say "they don't need caps, because you can't download anything anyways, because their service is down as often as it's up." I got my in-laws a new 21.5" iMac with the 4K display. We set it up in their home where they have Frontier. I went to show them a 4K video on YouTube, and it took 15 minutes to load completely. They ended up having me swap the new iMac for the old one they had at their business. They have Comcast for business, and the 4K videos stream no problem.
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Is that you Dan?
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This is the truth. Frontier's sub-DSL speeds and frequent outages make data caps unnecessary, because none of their customers could ever hit those caps.
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Your sarcastic argument presumes that those who are sitting on the nation's wealth earned it, and that those laboring to produce the wealth are getting a fair return for their labors. The daily headlines of corruption by the wealthy and their corporations, compared to the stories of average citizens struggling to stay out of debt to the corporate world, is evidence to the contrary.
Socialism, capitalism, communism, anarchism, etc. all have characteristics suitable for certain situations in societies, but non
Isn't Frontier Mostly DSL? (Score:3)
If it is mostly DSL, might the quote be translated to:
"We deliver service over an inherently bandwidth limited transport technology. We don't need caps because our delivery technology is too slow for anyone to reach them anyway."
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DSL can go faster if the distances are short.
The big question for those looking to upgrade "broadband" speeds is whether it's a good idea to install active outdoor infrastructure to go from fiber to faster shorter DSL lines or whether it makes more sense to take fiber all the way to the customer premisis.
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Bingo. To be fair, I'm located halfway up a holler in Yancey County NC, but here's my results from Frontier's speed test:
Last Result: to Dallas TX
Download Speed: 1573 kbps (196.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 399 kbps (49.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 123 ms
Jitter: 2 ms
6/4/2016, 9:14:07 AM
Last Result: to Atlanta GA
Download Speed: 1539 kbps (192.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 369 kbps (46.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 72 ms
Jitter: 1 ms
6/4/2016, 9:18:28 AM
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FiOS in my neighborhood. So far, I'm happy with Frontier service.
Everybody hears what they want to hear (Score:4, Informative)
The users hear "caps are unnecessary". The investors hear "there will be caps when the market is ready to pay more". Everybody's happy. Good CEO.
About face (Score:2)
I remember them singing a much different tune a few years ago - back about the same time Time Warner started playing with the idea, they were only too happy to institute caps, and when in Rochester, NY you had Frontier with caps, and TWC threatening them, people got so pissed off we nearly had them pushing for a law against data caps in Congress.
This is true! (Score:2)
When I had Frontier for Internet they were unable to deliver more than 9Mbps up and it always failed when it rained. No reason at all for a cap when you cant deliver service to your customers.
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When I had Frontier for Internet they were unable to deliver more than 9Mbps up and it always failed when it rained. No reason at all for a cap when you cant deliver service to your customers.
Same here in CT. My service has cut out for 60 seconds or so, 10 times this morning already. They don't need to worry about caps when they just keep cutting off my connection mutliple times each day.
Sonic's CEO feels the same (Score:2)
http://www.cio.com/article/307... [cio.com]
Basically AT&T and Comcast want to protect their TV revenue--conflict of interest.