
Comcast has disabled a throttling system that it deployed in 2008 - koolba
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/comcast-says-it-doesnt-throttle-heaviest-internet-users-anymore/
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tzs
> But even before implementing data caps and overage fees, Comcast already had
> a method for ensuring fairness in pricing. Comcast has long required heavy
> Internet users to pay more than light Internet users by charging higher
> prices for higher bit-rates.

I think he's tying speed and data more closely than is justifiable for most
people.

Many people (I'd guess maybe even most) want higher speeds not in order to use
_more_ data. They want it in order to use the _same_ data as they now use but
with less waiting.

Comcast just upped me from 220 mbps to 500, for example. That is not going to
have much affect on my data usage. It will just mean that when, for example, I
decide to play an old MMORPG that I haven't played in a long time I won't have
to wait as long to download all the patches I missed. It won't mean that I'll
play more games.

Same story when a year ago they upped me from 120 to 220. And a year before
that when it went from 90 to 120.

~~~
rabboRubble
I think he's tying speed and data more closely than is justifiable for most
people. > you assume that people control their data usage that closely.

I see a natural inflation in data usage because the services I use are
inflating the data supplied to my requests. Streamed video sizes increase, I
actually have had to use my cloud back up (3 times unfortunately) in the last
3 months so I've had to download 250gb * 3 because I actually had a cloud back
up, web page sizes increase from ad-bloat, my hard disk is larger, so my back
up size needs increase.. And so on, and so on, and so on...

The speed increases are just a way to eventually tip you into data overages if
the data cap does not increase proportionally to the speed increase.

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alexdumitru
I really don't understand how ISPs became like this in the US. In Romania I
pay $9.9 for 1000 Mbps down / 500 Mbps up with no data caps or throttling and
it actually works, even though piracy is huge here, so people use a lot of
bandwidth.

[http://www.speedtest.net/result/7391249917](http://www.speedtest.net/result/7391249917)

~~~
rayiner
The sibling post's point about differences in prices/costs below is correct.
The dominant cost of deploying and maintaining fiber is labor costs, which
vary dramatically by country. It's not like consumer electronics that is all
made in China and costs the same around the world.

The Romanian model of "micro ISPs," ISPs serving a few blocks here and there,
is also illegal in most U.S. cities. The U.S. places a very high value on
universal coverage, both of lower-income people and rural people. In nearly
any U.S. city, the only way you will get permission to build Internet service
to _anyone_ is if you agree to also serve low-income communities or rural
parts of town, even if doing so isn't profitable.

~~~
Reedx
Really? Does that apply to Wireless ISPs? (i.e.,
[https://startyourownisp.com/](https://startyourownisp.com/))

~~~
rayiner
It applies to any service that offers cable television, which in the US market
is a basic part of the economics of the business. Americans still
overwhelmingly expect to get television service bundled with broadband.

I used to live in an apartment building with both cable and fiber. Nobody
subscribed to the fiber because the fiber provided didn’t have a franchise to
offer television service. It was nuts—I was the first person on a floor of
almost a hundred apartments to get the fiber service. I found out because the
ONT had been misconfigured when it was first installed years before. People
just didn’t care—they wanted their cable package with ESPN. It’s why Google
Fiber offers a television package—a broadband only service is not competitive
in most US markets.

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readams
Comcast has been playing the long game with the data caps. They know that
everyone's needs will increase over time and we'll move from a cap that
affects few people to one that affects most people. The cap will never
increase however. What will increase is ways for Comcast to monetize the cap.
Not like anyone has a choice, right?

~~~
Reedx
A long game that could (and hopefully will) backfire once there are other
options. There will be no loyalty to Comcast when it happens.

~~~
munk-a
Unfortunately they're also participating in the "Let's sue all municipal ISPs
into the ground" strategy, which might preclude the ability to have other
options.

~~~
zenbane
Let's see them try to sue space! Hopefully Starlink will be successful.

~~~
greglindahl
All of the satellite systems have a limited density of receivers, making them
unable to have very many urban accounts: Oneweb, Starlink, O3b, etc.

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joecool1029
Throttling/deprio only makes sense when your network sucks or you are spectrum
constrained (as in the case for mobile isp's).

Comcast could make the argument when they were overprovisioning their nodes
like crazy the network sucked, but higher order modulation and more channels
in newer DOCSIS standards, fiber being run everywhere to nodes has really
improved the situation.

Less of a cash grab, more of a bandaid to handle misallocated resources.

The final argument could have been made for peering costs, but Comcast is
really big now, so I doubt they have to pay much if anything for transit.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Throttling /deprio only makes sense when your network sucks_

Throttling is a reasonable response to the power-law distribution of network
usage combined with flat-rate pricing.

At a certain point on the curve, a marginal user will cost more to service
than they will produce in revenue. This means (a) you service them at a loss
or (b) distribute their loss over everyone else, _i.e._ increase prices. The
problem with (b) is as you raise prices, people at the other end of the
distribution (the unusually light, _i.e._ profitable, users) will start de-
camping. Balancing these factors is difficult, and almost necessitates capping
or throttling.

The dumb move was promising unlimited data for an unlimited period of time.

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Simulacra
That's nice that they don't throttle any more, but how about those data caps?
A data cap is like a baggage fee on an airline: Once it's there, it's never
going away.

~~~
notheguyouthink
I'm very anti-Comcast, so this isn't a defense.. BUT, aren't data caps.. fine?
Nothing is unlimited, so why pretend you can get an unlimited amount of data?

Now that doesn't mean data caps themselves are the right solution to the
"problem" _(conceptually!)_ , I'm just speaking to change the frame of mind of
this.

Imo, what we should be demanding is an SLA for normal customers. Cap speed or
data, I don't care, but give me what I'm paying for at all times.

As I see it right now you're getting capped on bandwidth, total data, and
absolutely no guarantee about any of it working. It's the worst of all
aspects.. for customers, great for Comcast I'm sure.

~~~
gascan
Basically we are tangoing around sparse provisioning.

Users feel like, "Hey I paid for a 1Gbps link, I should be able to saturate
1Gbps 24/7".

Providers know that 99% of users don't need 1Gbps 24/7, so to reduce the cost
of the service, they sparsely provision.

Caps of some form, either on speed or on bandwidth (or N Mbps speed cap after
Y GBs of bandwidth) are the way they keep users within the limits of the
network.

~~~
notheguyouthink
Like I mentioned here[1], data caps don't serve to truly limit bandwidth
congestion though. If you oversold your pipe by 50 users, totally 150 users,
and all 150 are online at 5pm your data cap is not helping. Furthermore, even
if those 50 did previously cap, that means that you need to cap that
percentage of users that you oversold.

Ie, if you're overselling by a large margin than you'll need to be capping a
lot of people. Not the same amount as the "large margin", but a significant
portion of your users need to not be accessing the pipe at 5pm.

This is why I think they should just get rid of caps, and instead give us a
meaningful SLA. They won't however, because they have _massively_ oversold
their network[2].

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17306906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17306906)

[2]: I don't know if they've actually oversold their network, it's just clear
that there is data troubles based on user traffic. Personally I think Comcast
is purposefully limiting traffic based on marketing strategies. Ie, when
Google rolled fiber into Portland, suddenly Comcast's "available speeds"
massively spiked to stay competitive with Google. Which indicates that they
had a lot more than they were selling.

~~~
peterwwillis
Data caps are not about quality of service. Data caps are about getting people
who need more data to pay more money for it, so that the service provider
doesn't have to increase the cost of every customer's data plan. Instead, only
the customers who need more data will pay more. The increased cost is a cost
of doing business, but they have to get the money somehow. They chose to only
increase some people's costs versus increasing everyone's costs. This is what
they mean by "fair pricing".

~~~
amazon_not
No, if you wanted "fair pricing" you'd have congestion pricing. Hard data caps
are just a way of bilking the subscribers for more money.

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dahdum
Hypothetically, if they have a new throttling system they’d like to launch now
that net neutrality is dead, I think they’d do exactly this. Get some PR spin
for turning this one off, and implement the new website/service throttling
system as a slow boil just as they did data caps.

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rkarroll
They're about to buy Fox. Probably doing this to look good to regulators.

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kevin_b_er
Yeah why throttle them when you can hand them pure profit surcharges instead?

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cautionarytale
Awful headline. They're supposed to provide infinite product for a fixed price
because the author wants it?

~~~
pwinnski
The article does go into some detail to support their claim. You might not
agree with the claim, but the headline is suitable for the article.

~~~
rconti
It doesn't, though.

As a thought experiment, what if the caps went away tomorrow? Is it possible
that the network would become saturated? If so, that is to say the caps might
be reasonable. If not, how do you know that's the case?

I'm not any happier with Comcast than anyone else; I recently moved from 1Gbps
service to 250Mbps service with them, and I was always bumping up against the
'cap' on my 1Gbps service. I want a better provider. But nothing in the
article proves that the caps are useless nor a money grab.

~~~
ra1n85
>Is it possible that the network would become saturated?

That's on Comcast to handle as a part of building and operating a network. It
should not be the concern of the customer.

~~~
0x0
Cost of network construction and maintenance is always passed on the
customers, though. Without considering Comcast specifically, generally it'd be
somewhat unfair and unreasonable if most users have to pay more to subsidize
the "elite 0.1%"'s data usage. So I think it's not as black-and-white as you
make it out to be.

