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Frontier Has No Plans For Data Caps As They're Not Necessary, Says CEO (consumerist.com) 91

Posted by BeauHD from the overage-fees dept.
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.
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Frontier Has No Plans For Data Caps As They're Not Necessary, Says CEO More

Frontier Has No Plans For Data Caps As They're Not Necessary, Says CEO

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  • Who is Dan McCarthy? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    David Braben is CEO of Frontier.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No, he's the guy who wrote Elite.

  • Doesn't seem to matter does it? People are buying it. Sure it's a business decision, one that is paying off handsomely.

  • Pricing for Abusers, or Abusive Pricing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @05:16AM (#52247657)
    Maybe there are two sides to this argument... On the one side, the progress of technology over the last few years means that companies can squeeze ever more bandwidth out of existing infrastructure, whilst the profits they make would allow for re-investment in more bandwidth if really required. On the other hand, as with any "open access" to a resource, there will always be a greedy and abusive minority that consume considerably more data than average. 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. Part of our challenge as consumers is that our society has become one in which companies are so fixated on profits over service - because "the market" expects it, that this forces companies to make short-sighted investment decisions. So when a telco digs up the road to lay new fiber, they might put in say 50-pair instead of 500 pairs because the latter would have cost 6-7 times more in material cost. But the labor would have been the same, and would have been a huge chunk of the cost. But companies today are no longer prepared to invest for the long term. Any investment for more than 5 years out is considered to be frivolous by the short-terming city traders, who expect a return on their investment tomorrow, not five years out. Sad that we are being technologically crippled by the money men...
    • There are two sides. Three is nothing inherently wrong with customers who use more paying more. The biggest problem I have is that the per unit rates increases outrageously for over-limit usage. If they would have pay for unit usage at a reasonable and steady rate, that would be OK with me.

      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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jthill ( 303417 )

      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.

      • "If "excessive users" are interfering with anybody else, causing that interference was an explicit choice by the ISP."

        Exactly

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gcswt ( 4309907 )
      It's not very fair to blame the companies for having a short horizon. As a corporate stooge myself, I know companies can't trust the Government to stay stable long enough to plan out more than a few years, especially with anything related to information and technology. You can't count on being able to take 10-15 years to get your investment back because the Federal Government likes to whip back and forth with every election. You can't count on taxes, regulations, price controls, etc. staying stable for th

  • Comcast (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bmk67 ( 971394 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @05:17AM (#52247663)

    Comcast, are you listening?

    You don't -have- to be dicks, you choose to.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Frontier has no plans for real broadband either (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AndroSyn ( 89960 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @05:38AM (#52247685) Homepage

    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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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 !!!!

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Babel13 ( 858767 )
      So this. I just made the switch from Frontier to Comcast for my mom. On Frontier she was getting 768k up, 1.5 mbit down and paying something like $90/mo for that "broadband" and phone service. With services consolidated under Comcast she's getting 6mbit up, 90 mbit down and paying $70/mo for tv/phone/internet + equipment rentals, taxes, and extras. Now Comcast being Comcast their installer fucked up the setup and it took me fighting with 3 different customer no-service call center folks, including 1 "super
    • My roommate and I are paying for 100mbps connections and we get that with ease. We regularly have 2+ TV's streaming from our off site Pled server with people gaming with no problem. During the change over... Well... It was a month of random DCs and outages, but its stabled off pretty we recently. Might just be our area.

  • Isn't Frontier Mostly DSL? (Score:3)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @06:19AM (#52247719)

    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."

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dbreeze ( 228599 )

      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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      FiOS in my neighborhood. So far, I'm happy with Frontier service.

  • Everybody hears what they want to hear (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04, 2016 @06:20AM (#52247723)

    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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

    • 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.

  • http://www.cio.com/article/307... [cio.com]

    Basically AT&T and Comcast want to protect their TV revenue--conflict of interest.

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