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Businesses The Internet Communications Network The Almighty Buck News Technology

Comcast Rolls Out Nationwide 1TB Data Cap (theverge.com) 243

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Comcast's home internet data caps are going live for a majority of customers starting November 1st, the company announced today. Called the "Xfinity Terabyte Internet Data Usage Plan," the cap restricts the amount of data you consume in your home to 1TB per month regardless of the speed of your plan. Comcast claims 99 percent of customers use less than 1TB per month, but it does now offer an unlimited option for $50 more per month. Back in April, Comcast bumped its data cap from 300GB to 1TB after consumer backlash and renewed regulatory concern from the FCC. And until today, the plan has been active in select markets for 16 states. But starting November 1st, the list will add 18 new markets, bringing the total number of states with the terabyte data cap to around 30. Notable exceptions include New York and nearly the entire northeast. For a full list of included markets, check Comcast's online FAQ.
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Comcast Rolls Out Nationwide 1TB Data Cap

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06, 2016 @08:28PM (#53029031)

    No cap for me, I'm using the neighbor's open xfinitywifi for free. Thanks, Comcast is fuckin awesome!

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06, 2016 @08:29PM (#53029037)

    The chocolate ration has gone up to 20 grams a week!

  • by tgetzoya ( 827201 ) on Thursday October 06, 2016 @08:31PM (#53029039)
    I use about half that now every month. I use Netflix and MLB.tv daily, among other things. I see this as future-proofing for when 4K becomes the standard.
  • Wow (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BradleyUffner ( 103496 ) on Thursday October 06, 2016 @08:35PM (#53029063) Homepage

    How much congestion can these people be causing if it only costs at extra $50 to "fix" it?

    • Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Thursday October 06, 2016 @08:40PM (#53029085) Homepage Journal

      None. The purpose of caps from cable companies isn't to cover the costs of infrastructure improvements. It is to serve as a disincentive to dropping cable TV service, just as it always was.

      • Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)

        by epyT-R ( 613989 ) on Thursday October 06, 2016 @08:44PM (#53029095)

        Then I'd pay the $50/mo.. still cheaper than cable.

      • It is to serve as a disincentive to dropping cable TV service, just as it always was.

        Uhhh, what? The fee doesn't change depending on your cable TV subscription or lack thereof.

        Now, what I want to know is, what is an "in-browser announcement"? (Yes, I know, but let's be angry about an actual abuse here. Changing the content you get from a website so it pops up a window is deliberately breaking the internet standards. Just like running a defective name server is.)

        • Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)

          by PrimaryConsult ( 1546585 ) on Thursday October 06, 2016 @09:33PM (#53029275)

          With a data cap they assume instead of streaming shows people will watch them on TV.

          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            Exactly. If you watch enough TV that those 4K streams from Netflix put you over the cap, they'd rather you spend $50 on a cable TV subscription than $50 a month for more data, because additional cable customers give them better negotiating power when it comes time to renegotiate their contracts with the networks.

    • Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)

      by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Thursday October 06, 2016 @09:23PM (#53029243)

      Congestion is not related to data caps. Data caps are a way of charging for the amount of data someone uses over a long period of time. Congestion is related to bandwidth.

      It's like justifying charging a toll on the only single lane road from place a to place b because there are daily traffic jams. It doesn't matter whether or not you charge a toll, the traffic jams cannot be 'fixed' by a toll booth if you need more lanes. If you hike the price high enough, someone will eventually come along and build the necessary two lane road, but until then, your toll booth just pisses people off even more.

      With the Internet it's the same, except that a two lane highway costs almost no money (Netflix and Internet Exchanges have even offered extra lanes at no cost) and Comcast-and-co is conspiring from anyone else building a second lane.

      • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        It's like justifying charging a toll on the only single lane road from place a to place b because there are daily traffic jams. It doesn't matter whether or not you charge a toll, the traffic jams cannot be 'fixed' by a toll booth if you need more lanes.

        For that to be true, demand for travel on that road during rush hour would have to be perfectly inelastic, but perfect price inelasticity of demand only exists in theory, not in the real world. Unless and until you can prove otherwise, your claim that traff

        • by tepples ( 727027 )

          perfect price inelasticity of demand only exists in theory, not in the real world.

          What would buyers substitute for the privilege of traveling on a given road?

          Besides, market power [wikipedia.org] need not be "perfect" in a theoretical economics sense in order to trigger restrictions under applicable competition laws.

          • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

            What would buyers substitute for the privilege of traveling on a given road?

            What would they substitute for (1) driving (2) alone (3) on that particular road (4) during rush hour when the congestion toll is highest? Lots of things, and I just gave you four hints.

            • by guruevi ( 827432 )

              That's not how analogies work. You are defining an Internet that doesn't require electrons, allows bigger packets to require the same bandwidth as smaller packets, has multiple providers and allows you to schedule the necessary packets in advance.

            • You appear to have been sidetracked by the analogy [allthetropes.org], as the implied workarounds don't apply so well to Internet access.

              What would they substitute for (1) driving

              What alternative to driving were you considering, and what would its Internet counterpart be?

              (2) alone

              What's the Internet counterpart to carpooling? Visiting a public library that offers Wi-Fi access to patrons and uses aggressive caching proxy to aggregate cookieless retrievals of the same resource?

              the only single lane road from place a to place b

              (3) on that particular road

              The stipulation in this analogy was that no other practical road exists.

              (4) during rush hour when the congestion toll is highest?

              Comcast does not vary the fact

        • by guruevi ( 827432 )

          For most people though here is only one road. It's the road they HAVE to take to get to anyplace. The problem is physically moving often doesn't help, you'd have to move to an entirely different state just to get better Internet.

          The Internet is a perfect example of the relative inelasticity of demand. Demand grows irregardless of an individual's provider. Sure you can try to curb your usage to a point but I'm wasting several GB's in bandwidth on my mobile plan just doing simple things like e-mail. A 2GB dat

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday October 06, 2016 @08:39PM (#53029079)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by swalve ( 1980968 )
      Where do you get those movies from?
    • by Ichijo ( 607641 ) on Thursday October 06, 2016 @10:05PM (#53029407) Journal
      25 Mbps [netflix.com] is 22.5 gigabytes for a 2-hour movie. So you can watch 44 4K movies per month with a 1 TB cap.
      • by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        I'm sure that will come as a significant concern to college students and people working at a "part-time" employees at pizza hut, but as an adult with a full time job, I wish I had that kind of time. I've been "binge watching" Game of Thrones since April and I'm just now getting to the start of season 4 :( I can't imagine what life is like for parents.

      • While that sounds impressive it is not.

        44/4 = 11 movies per week or around 1.5 a day. Yourself, kid, and spouse watching 2 hours per day is 6 hours per day! Now you're over.

        Do they run Windows 10? Since updates are cumulative they can exceed 900 megs easily. Last month MS released 3 of them 900 X 3 = 2700 X 3 = 8 GB. Now let's say you are a geek who works in IT? You then probably have VMS each running updates as well and you download Isos right? Most geeks use VMS not just for running Windows but also to e

    • Name a single movie that simply must be in 4K to be worth watching.

      99+% of movies are not worth watching at any quality.

      Good, or great, movies are worth re-watching but after you have watched it once, you don't need to glue your eyeballs to the screen to re-watch it. What you end up doing, more and more with each re-watch, is listen to it.

      How high a quality do you need for re-listening? Personally, DVD is more than good enough for anything I like to re-watch, including masterpieces like Lawrence of Arabia

  • I got an email that said my data usage has been 639 GB average over the last three months, and my new cap was 1TB. I'm a little worried about this, as that's 639 GB average over the three months that I've been deployed (USAF) and my family is the one getting me there. I wonder where I'll be sitting on usage when I get home!
  • Since I don't have any caps currently, guess it's in my best interest to download all the shit I want now.

    • Yup, better download all of the Internets. Then you can just browse what you have local rather than using up your cap.

  • Terabit or TeraByte
    Fortunately the area I live in has Charter

    • Well, TB is terabyte, so I'm assuming it was used correctly. The B would be lowercase were it bit in proper usage.
  • by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday October 06, 2016 @09:46PM (#53029317) Homepage

    I am now blocking ALL ads.

    Your adverts now cost me money.

    I am also going back to ripping BluRays and storing them on a NAS. Screw Netflix and other services if I am now being punished for using it by the ISP.

    Comcast is forcing me to do all this, so if Anyone is angry, please call 1-800-COMCAST and complain.

    • by 6Yankee ( 597075 )

      Are those bastards at Comcast (but I'm repeating myself) still injecting ad code into webpages?

      Get paid for the ads, get paid for overages caused by the ads. Nice work if you can get it.

  • but that would require our gov't stepping in, and nobody likes doing that.
  • You just suckered me in to a 2 year contract a couple months ago. You can't change the terms on me now.
    • These terms may be altered by Comcast at any time. They are required to give you notice. That notice can be printed on the back of your next statement in grey 5pt type.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        and changes to the terms, in most states, also gives you a way out of the contract, too.

  • The argument to make H.265 mainstream just got a lot stronger.
  • Nice upgrade from 300GB/month. 1 TB is much more reasonable. I wonder if the cap will still be hidden deeply in the ToS.

    • by Scutter ( 18425 )

      Data caps are not reasonable. They just started giving you worse service for the same money. If you want your old, uncapped service, your monthly rate just went up by $50.

  • Not only is my market far from any Comcast territory, they don't do any caps.

    That, and having Business Class as an insurance policy is kind of nice too.

  • by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @05:20AM (#53030265) Journal

    Even now, after adding most of the USA to this data cap -- they've avoided the entire Washington DC metro area (Northern Virginia and Maryland included). I'm very thankful for that as a MD resident stuck using Comcast for broadband .... but am I the only one who suspects this is on purpose? Comcast probably figures they won't get push-back from angry legislators as long as they make sure all of THOSE folks aren't affected by the changes.

  • by zifn4b ( 1040588 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @06:48AM (#53030533)

    One thing Comcast's plan doesn't cover is that based on current internet usage and popular applications (Netflix, Pandora, etc.) their research suggests 1TB is a reasonable cap for 99% of customers. But what happens when more rich applications come out, video resolution goes up and don't forget that new fangled Internet of Things (IoT). Are they going to adjust the caps based on what "reasonable" is on an ongoing basis? I bet not. That in and of itself is not reasonable. Comcast's PR firm has gone to great lengths to present this in agreeable terms on the basis of reasonableness and they did somewhat of a good job but it still looks like there is an opportunity for an unethical cash grab it's just it will be in the future not in the present.

    Fortunately, we have a system that deals with this called free market competition. On that note, Google Fiber/Verizon FioS where you at? I'm ready to switch if you want to become a competitive force in this market space. Get your game on.

    • by Holi ( 250190 )
      I don't know about Google but Verizon has halted it's FIOS roll out. If you don't have it now, do not ever expect to see it.
    • "Are they going to adjust the caps based on what "reasonable" is on an ongoing basis?"

      Yes. That's what this is. When "1TB is NOT a reasonable cap for 99%" of their customers, they will look at the stats and adjust according.

  • I bet the answer is at least "some", and that customers in those areas are getting a surprising message that their non-existent cap is being raised to 1TB/month. I'm basing this on my own experience of them "raising" my non-existent cap to 300GB/month.

    And do they actually face any extra costs from the %1 this affects?

  • Will be interesting to see what they do in markets with actual competition, like Chattanooga, TN, which has fiber service: http://chattanoogagig.com/ [chattanoogagig.com]

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