

Comcast plans data caps for all customers - opendais
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/05/comcast-plans-data-caps-for-all-customers-in-5-years-could-be-500gb/

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bediger4000
Does any rational basis for data caps exist?

If you saturate your connection with Comcast until you hit your data cap, and
then turn off your cable modem for the rest of the month, you'll cause more
trouble than if you stream Netflix from 2am to 2pm, and don't do much during
peak hours, exceeding your data cap by factors of 2 and 3.

This looks an awful lot like one of two things:

1\. Abysmal ignorance of how TCP/IP networking actual happens.

2\. Monopoly rents by another name.

Can anyone say for sure which one it is?

Can anyone else say why Comcast's few competitors aren't trying to steal
customers by blaring ads about how they don't have data caps?

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wmf
I think it's more like physcologically conditioning customers to use less
data.

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bediger4000
But why would a data provider ("ISP") do that? Do they want to have the ISP
part of their business de-valued? Or at least not increase in value as fast?

I realize that you can't say definitively that "Every new valuable service is
going to increase customer data use" but that's pretty close. Web pages have
gotten bigger (and more diffuse) with time. What we want from web services has
changed over time, basically using more data as time increases.

If Comcast et al conditions customers to use less data, then all they're doing
is putting brakes on change. They're trying to limit what new services can
provide by making those services less acceptable.

So, a double whammy: monopoly rents increase, and there's less chance of a
disruption to the incumbents in the marketplace.

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wmf
If you're selling "unlimited" service for a fixed price, of course you want to
encourage customers to use less. ISPs don't care about new services; they're
already getting as much money as their customers are willing to pay so
increased profit must come from reducing costs.

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bediger4000
I'd buy that, except that I already gave an example where a pattern of using
broadband service below a data cap causes more trouble than 2x of 3x over the
cap with another pattern.

The only way that a data cap could possibly reduce costs is to actually reduce
overall usage enough so that Comcast (or whichever ISP) can cut physical
hardware and the personnel to service it. Preventing future increases by
conditioning consumers seems like a bad bet if you want to reduce costs now.

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wmf
Caps are definitely a crude tool, but given that most usage is going to be
during peak hours anyway, lower overall usage usually translates to lower peak
usage.

And yes, when I talk about reducing costs I really mean reducing the rate of
increase of bandwidth demand relative to the rate of decrease of bandwidth
cost due to Moore's Law.

