
Comcast's 1TB data caps start to roll out nationwide - marmshallow
https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/06/comcasts-1tb-data-caps-start-to-roll-out-nationwide/
======
readams
We need to move to a system where a tightly-regulated utility owns the wired
infrastructure only, and leases access to a wide variety of ISPs, video
services, etc. This solves the problem that the infrastructure costs involved
create a natural monopoly while avoiding Comcast misbehavior.

Otherwise I think it's safe to assume that once the caps are entrenched, they
won't ever be increased and they'll try to move everyone into a regime like
cell phone data is currently: high prices, tightly metered, innovation dead.

~~~
bigdubs
T-Mobile is an example of cellular companies responding to tight competition
and differentiating by removing caps / usage fees.

The key is competition though, as you've pointed out.

~~~
kuschku
You do realize T-Mobile is on a full EEE trip there?

Look at Germany, where they existed for a while already, and have pushed
against net neutrality, refuse to peer with companies unless they get paid,
_replace ads in websites with their own with MitM proxies_ and so on.

T-Online/T-Mobile are the worst of the worst.

~~~
bogomipz
What is EEE?

Unfortunately paid peering is pretty much the norm these days unless you are
part of the exclusive club of Tier 1 ISPs, not that I'm defending it. I don't
have much great to say about any of the wireless carriers but I feel like
T-Mobile is at least trying new things. The T Mobile One plan for instance is
really great if you travel internationally. I don't know of any other carrier
that is doing that.

~~~
l1n
"Embrace, extend, and extinguish", also known as "Embrace, extend, and
exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found that was
used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product
categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with
proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to disadvantage its
competitors. [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace_extend_extinguish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace_extend_extinguish)

------
ar0
To be honest, I am often wondering: wouldn't it maybe be better to have a
provider that has clear data limits in place (and reasonable charges for
exceeding them) but otherwise provides full, unrestricted, unmonitored high-
speed connectivity including IPv6 for server usage instead of having an
apparently "unlimited" connection with lots of throttling, filtering, "best
effort" and peering games of chicken? After all, "unlimited" is not really
unlimited (moving bits does require physical materials which are limited) and
primarily means that low data users subsidize high data users.

Now, don't get me wrong: from what I have read, Comcast seems to be a prime
example of the second kind of ISP _and_ they are implementing data caps, so
yes this would make me try to switch as well. But dismissing data caps in
general seems not to be the right approach for me.

~~~
scrollaway
If you're in the UK, you are exactly describing Andrews&Arnold's business:

[http://aaisp.net/](http://aaisp.net/)

Full, unrestricted, unmonitored, uncensored, IPv6-compatible compatibility
sold by the gigabyte.

They are honestly fantastic (I'm even using them as my mobile provider - and I
don't live in the UK anymore). However, if you use them you'll understand why
this model can't go mainstream: It gets expensive pretty fast, especially if
you aren't paying attention.

However I will straight up recommend AAISP to the UK HN crowd. If you don't
know them, please look into them!

~~~
dingaling
I actually have an anecdote about leaving AAISP and going to an 'evil-capped-
service'...

AAISP applies time-and-byte-based billing, with higher billing rates in the
evening. One buys a number of billing 'units' at the start of the month and
these deplete with the calculated usage, if you exceed your purchased units
then they add another one and charge you.

Eventually this reached the point where my wife was asking 'how much will it
cost to watch this video?' and we were trying to work-out whether it would fit
in our purchased allowance, given the time of day, or require a top-up. So it
was easier to move to an equally competent ISP ( Goscomb ) who offered various
capped tiers, so now she can just look at the usage level and determine
whether she can watch a 1.5GB video or wait until next month. There is also
less fear about how much my self-hosted services are costing me.

Several months after I migrated-away from AAISP the latter cancelled the
underlying broadband service on my line. So they're not infallible, either...
and they never did apologise. Thankfully Goscomb fixed the issue and soaked-up
any charges from BT, the infrastructure provider.

~~~
scrollaway
Well, yeah, that's a metered connection for you and it's what I was talking
about: You need to keep it in mind all the time. Or, you need to overprovision
in order not to worry about it.

They have a 1TB service now which is very cheap, same as Comcast, so for most
people I actually think this problem is solved. Back when I used them, my
usage was greater than today and I was ordering only 300GB monthly so it was a
pita. Yet look at me still recommending them :)

> _So they 're not infallible, either... and they never did apologise_

Honestly that doesn't sound like them, unless it legitimately wasn't their
fault. Ring them. Hell, ring them today and ask for an apology I'm fairly
certain you'll get one. They did mess up when I was moving out as well, by
turning it off a day early - I gave them a ring and it was fixed in 10 mins,
and they did apologize :)

Now today I'm stuck with an ISP that doesn't train its staff on what IPv6 even
is. I can't call it about increased latency or 70 disconnects a day without
being asked "have you tried turning it off and on again". I can't get
transferred to a manager. I can't get a refund despite 4 months of completely
unusable service.

I'll take the constant worries of metering over eating meat from a butcher
that doesn't know what a cow is.

------
existencebox
Let me tell a tale.

Recently I was cancelling my comcast for wave. I was charged an early
cancellation fee of multiple months service (The cancellation was due to
moving out of my apt at end of lease to a house for which comcast did not
offer service). The early fee was not on my original contract; and was
apparently added without my consent in the interim, and the lower level
managers intended to enforce despite their inability to even provide me
service.

I refused this and continued to escalate until I got a surprisingly high tier
manager who talked like a techie and seemed to understand a thing or two and
had a degree of self awareness (when told "Thanks for your help, I'm sorry you
work for such a shit company since your good effort could be better used in
better actors" he responded with "yeah I know; at least it pays the bills").
He made ALL my problems disappear and listened to my complaints of a decade
with Comcast, and why I'd never go back, seeming legitimately remorseful and
sad that the company has been generally anti-consumer, promising that they
were pushing to improve things and acknowledging the pain I felt to the degree
of comping multiple months+fees.

So my question. Is that an act? Or is this another poor middle manager trying
to do his best? Are they really so tuned out as to how much ill will they're
generating such that I had "not comcast" as a prerequisite to the massive act
of _buying a house_? And to the other half of that question; how can we make
them feel the pain more as consumers? (legal action of course but in
addition.) As a tech influencer I do all I can to try and tell people about
the great local ISP alternatives in my area if they aren't aware, but it seems
like comcast lives in its own little bubble where the realities of good
consumer practices just don't apply. (or maybe I'm being pessimistic and the
hammer will drop in a few decades, I don't have many good prior historical
examples with similar enough context to extrapolate, if anyone else does I'd
be curious)

~~~
wernercd
I've found that they just like to make it harder to get stuff fixed or changed
in favor of the customer.

Let me tell a tale:

I've been with my fiance for ~10 years now. We've had Comcast for ~8 of the
ten years. We had a "full" internet/cable package for ~6 of those 8 years.

Every year - like clockwork - she would get a bill after the "year" intro
period and the price would go up. I'm not sure of the numbers but from ~100 to
~150 or somewhere in there.

Why like clockwork? Because every year she would call and say "cancel the
package... oh? you'll extend it? AND add another pay channel bundle? Okay...
talk to you next year".

With each year it got harder and she had to fight longer - sometimes through
multiple calls. When it got escalated to cancellation managers they would
inevitably change their minds.

It finally got to the point last year that we actually canceled everything
except for the _ABSOLUTE_ basic cable. No HD. Only half of the channels (no
MTV, HGTV, etc).

The reality is simple: It's them or... dialup? Satellite? couple other crappy
options. The joy of "monopolies". They know that people who want channels MUST
go through them.

Thankfully Netflix, Amazon Prime,... plex :) have picked up the slack so we
actually aren't bother much by the loss of HBO and the like...

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _The reality is simple: It 's them or... dialup? Satellite? couple other
> crappy options. The joy of "monopolies"._

OTA channels + indoor antenna. Workes pretty well for me. We watched the
Olympics that way, and more recently the presidential debates.

------
godzillabrennus
Many folks don't have an option to switch away. If we want change we need to
vote it in. That reminds me to get back to work fixing the problem.

~~~
throwaway98237
Agreed. Much like public utilities. The Internet is already a public utility
in my mind, but we still regulate it like cable television. That must change.
But, looking to utilities, one sees the democratization and decentralization,
due to battery and solar technologies, taking place in that sector. It would
be wise to leapfrog some of the solutions and get straight to a decentralized,
private-mesh/public-utility solution as soon as possible.

~~~
throwaway98237
Thanks for the feedback (down-vote). Would appreciate an accompanying comment.
Then I could reconsider my position and perhaps alter it.

~~~
oldmanjay
Paying attention to the downvotes on your comments isn't terribly helpful on
HN. Mostly it just leads to more downvotes.

~~~
throwaway98237
Thanks for telling me how HN works. I've never been here before. Oh wait. I've
been here for years. So, my experience has let me to a different point of view
than you have. But, you know, thanks for making those assumptions and giving
your your advice.

~~~
oldmanjay
I assumed that a person who broke a well-known community convention may be
ignorant of the convention. Feel free to continue breaking them with your
throwaway.

~~~
throwaway98237
Conventions are meant to evolve. But boy, do you really like making
assumptions. Show me a rule I'm breaking, and I'll gladly revise my behavior.

------
SallySwanSmith
And I just switched to a local provider and am cancelling my xfinity tv and
internet. I'm done with them.

------
ralusek
I have had an extremely hard time getting an answer to this question. It is my
understanding that it is either very negligible, or an entirely non-existent
cost that is incurred by an ISP to transfer more vs less data. They basically
just facilitate the infrastructure, is that correct?

I understand with mobile data you're actually competing for frequency space,
among other issues, but this is not analogous to how data over cable works.

~~~
bajsejohannes
The cost of transferring more data on current infrastructure is negligible.
However, ISPs have a maximum capacity that's well below their number of users
multiplied by the user's maximum bandwidth. They're just making a bet that not
everyone will use all their bandwidth most of the time. At some point, average
utilization goes up, and they have to buy more infrastructure to handle it,
which is what costs money.

~~~
wmf
Only peak time (e.g. 8 PM) utilization matters and caps generally don't reduce
it. It's definitely true that increased peak usage requires ISPs to upgrade
their networks, but their pricing is almost totally disconnected from costs.

------
LeoPanthera
I wish I could migrate to a local provider, but in my area there is literally
no other option. We don't even have a phone line, and even if we paid AT&T the
surprisingly huge fee to have them install one, we still wouldn't be able to
get DSL because we live too far from civilization. (About 10 minutes up a hill
just outside Redwood City in the CA Bay Area.)

So whatever Comcast want to do, we're literally stuck with it.

------
unabridged
>If one TB is exceeded, $10 is charged for each additional data block of up to
50 GB/month $200 overage charge limit - no matter how much data is used

>Unlimited Data Additional $50/month No overage charges — no matter how much
data is used each month

Can't they just cap the overage at $50? Why the nickel and dime-ing just to
get an extra $150 from a handful of customers who forgot to monitor their
usage and make a phone call?

~~~
techsupporter
> Why the nickel and dime-ing just to get an extra $150 from a handful of
> customers who forgot to monitor their usage

They want that ARPU to go up by $50 for the people who think they're heavy
users but aren't _always_ heavy users. Best of both worlds from their
perspective: someone who only hits 1TB a couple of months out of the year
could wind up giving them $500/year of "free" money (10 months of not going
over but still paying the unlimited charge). And someone else who doesn't go
over except once but does it really big kicks in another $100 or so.

It's all about the ARPU.

------
chaostheory
You can pay $50/month more to Comcast if you don't want to be capped. I'm not
happy about it but at least there's an option. I don't pirate and I use about
5 TB of data a month.

------
nodesocket
I loathe Comcast/Xfinity with a passion. My bill went from $129 a month
(internet/tv) to $240 a month starting in Sept. This 1TB internet cap is
complete nonsense.

I don't understand why they just can't run their business responsibly and not
try to screw and scam their customers.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _I don 't understand why they just can't run their business responsibly and
> not try to screw and scam their customers._

When corporations are more powerful than the law or the political process,
then of course they can do whatever they want.

The law of this land is "whoever has more $$$ wins".

~~~
nodesocket
Not on board, and don't agree that law and political processes should be
enforcing pricing and business constraints on Comcast. We need more companies
and competition, and the market will force them to change.

~~~
xj9
That doesn't work for utilities or infrastructure.

------
tzs
Whenever bandwidth caps are discussed, many people say that there is no
technical reason providers like Comcast need to have a limit. It's all just to
make money on artificial overage charges and/or to discourage people from
canceling their cable TV in favor of internet streaming, and that these ISPs
can only do this because they are often the only high speed provider in their
area.

Question: if that is true, then how come on the server side of things, where
we do have competition and so can switch to a different hosting provider if
one charges too much for bandwidth, we don't have major hosting providers
giving us unlimited bandwidth?

~~~
paulmd
Do you mean data _transfer_ caps? That's what we are discussing here.

You can buy unmetered shared hosting (famously, Dreamhost) or even unmetered
servers/rackspace. The problem is that at the end of the day everyone involved
knows it's an illusion. You can't sell an infinite quantity of data and so any
service is oversold to some degree. And since transfer is just the integration
of bandwidth consumption, so there are hard limits to what you could ever push
through a given server (though the service will ask you to fuck off long
before this point).

Furthermore, servers are largely business-driven. Pretend "unlimited" hosting
is fine for toy projects but in business long load times or outages are lost
money, so reliability is a must and SLAs are the order of the day. Nobody will
sign a SLA on "unlimited", bandwidth (to handle peaks) is more important than
transfer anyway, and the larger your needs the more you will pay. Every dollar
you spend on wasted capacity is a dollar that comes out of your profit.

Anyway, what it largely comes down to is that consumer internet access is a
"best-effort" service and that's not acceptable in a datacenter. Data still
costs money to deliver even in a "best-effort" service but it's super minimal.
The marginal cost of a gigabyte of data is around a tenth of a cent per
gigabyte. All of the cost is in the last-mile infrastructure, so overage
charges are just a cash grab. I would be perfectly fine with being billed at
say $15/mo for hookup plus actual data charges but that's not what's being
offered here.

------
throwaway98237
As more and more of "our lives" are live online, this is going to be an issue
we must confront. On one hand, we need to admit the hard realities that the
internet is a physical network that requires real world resources, and every
time we pretend that limited resources are unlimited we end up in trouble. On
the other hand we can't say, you've reached your cap, so we are in the right
to charge you to utilize public resources or attend "online protests" (I
realize this immediately runs into net neutrality issues).

------
jdpedrie
I got this email yesterday, and called today to cancel my service.

The guy spent several minutes getting more and more belligerent, telling me
that I was mistaken, that there had always been a data cap, in fact the data
cap was being raised from 300gb to 1tb! The only real difference was now the
cap was going to be enforced.

I laughed at him and told him I wasn't going to argue, just cancel the
service.

~~~
brianwawok
There was a 300gb cap but it wasn't enforced. Kind of a joke.

------
sidlls
Now if only I didn't constantly see "insufficient bandwidth" on Amazon or
apparently-throttled downloads and streaming of other data with my
"Performance Pro" package I could start being more upset about the bandwidth
cap and less about being charged ridiculous rates for paltry bandwidth.

------
mankash666
Pre emptive strike against fledgling IPTV services. Imagine a world where all
your TV channels are delivered online. Except it'll be a reality in under 10
years, and Comcast wants a cut of it's made irrelevant

------
rb808
Aside from torrenting, how could you possibly use more than 30GB a day every
day?

If you do use that much surely its fair you pay extra as you're probably using
more data than the rest of the block.

~~~
llama052
I eat up more than 30GB a day from video streaming alone.

Think of how connected households are today, you've got everything connected
to the internet now. Smartphones, Tablets, Laptops, Streaming devices in every
room, learning devices/gadgets for kids. You've got Netflix/HBO/Prime video,
Spotify, apple music, Cloud backup services will eat into that bandwidth as
well.

Just checked my last months usage and I've used 1.3TB of data, and it's not
that I'm doing anything crazy, it just adds up.

~~~
sytelus
HD streaming costs 5Mbps. Even if you want 24X7, your total bandwidth
consumption would be 1.6TB/mo. It seems unlikely that you can eat up 1TB just
by streaming videos.

~~~
msh
4K Netflix is about 25 mbit

------
tjohns
If you've got no other choice besides Comcast, it's worth noting that their
business plans don't have data caps. (Though they are slightly more
expensive.)

~~~
x2f10
It's over double the cost for my 100-down line.

------
bgentry
It took a 30 minute phone call just for them to flip the switch that starts
charging me an extra $50/mo. Followed by another 20 minute call to get my plan
price reduced with a promotional rate.

At least the 2nd rep was nice and told me to call back in the 2nd week of Nov
for even more discounted special offers.

------
pasbesoin
Is their business product still uncapped? Going to remain so (to the best of
anyone's knowledge)? Been thinking of switching to that. Unfortunately,
Crapcast is the only option for me, here.

------
meesterdude
And i live in philadelphia, where Comcast has an agreement with the city that
prevents other ISPs from operating. Verizon can (because $$) but there are
other ISP's outside the city like RCN that aren't allowed in.

------
JustSomeNobody
>If one TB is exceeded, $10 is charged for each additional data block of up to
50 GB/month $200 overage charge limit - no matter how much data is used

I can't parse that. There appears to be some punctuation and words missing.

~~~
detaro
From the article:

 _The third time it 's exceeded within a 12 month period, however, the
"courtesy months" go away and users will be charged $10 for an additional 50GB
of data, which will continue happening to a limit of $200 per month._

------
zenobit256
As someone affected by this in the Washington area, is there any other ISP
somebody would recommend? Comcast was my last resort, but this just floors me.
A terabyte is easy to blow through in a household!

------
bogomipz
And yet every time one of these near monopolies pleads their case in front of
the FCC and DOJ they always state that said merger will be good for consumers.

------
Florin_Andrei
The big, ugly company that should just die and be replaced by a utility
doesn't want to die.

------
wesleyd
I've just signed up for sonic.

~~~
r00fus
Just realized they are available for my address - but only as Fiber to the
Node (operated through ATT's Fiber + copper to house).

Has anyone actually used this? I imagine it wouldn't be as cool as FTTH, but
maybe better than Comcast (which shows as 25M down for me even though I have
50M signed up).

------
Tempest1981
Anyone else notice that they picked 1024 GB, vs 1000 GB? Extra generosity. :-)

------
LeifCarrotson
The text of the emails they're sending out is:

Information about a New Terabyte Internet Data Usage Plan

We’re writing to let you know that we will be activating a new XFINITY
Internet Data Usage Plan in your area. Effective November 1, 2016, your
XFINITY Internet service will include one terabyte (that’s 1,024 GB) of data
usage per month. With a terabyte of data you can stream between 600 and 700
hours of HD video, play more than 12,000 hours of online games, or download
60,000 high-res photos in a month.

[Note about your personalized usage vs 1tb]

One terabyte is a massive amount of data – less than 1% of our customers use
that amount in a month. However, we still want to make sure you understand
your options and choose the Data Usage Plan that works best for you. If you
believe you will need more data, an Unlimited Data option is available. Our
data plans are based on a principle of fairness. Those who use more Internet
data, pay more. And those who use less Internet data, pay less.

One Terabyte Plan and Unlimited Data option:

One Terabyte (TB) included/month

If one TB is exceeded, $10 is charged for each additional data block of up to
50 GB/month $200 overage charge limit - no matter how much data is used

Unlimited Data Additional $50/month No overage charges — no matter how much
data is used each month You can also track and manage your usage so there are
never any surprises about how much data you use. Here are a few tools you can
use:

Data Usage meter – Monitor how much data your household has used with our Data
Usage Meter.

Data Usage Estimator - Estimate your data usage with our estimator Tool.
Simply enter how your household typically uses the Internet and the tool will
estimate your monthly data usage.

Notifications - If you approach, reach or exceed one terabyte of data usage,
we will send you a courtesy "in-browser" notice as well as an email. You can
also elect to receive notifications at specific usage thresholds and set up
mobile text notifications. Learn more about notifications here. Usage
notifications will not be sent to customers who enroll in the Unlimited Data
option.

For the less than 1% of customers who do exceed one terabyte of data usage,
we’re offering two courtesy months, so customers will not be charged the first
two times they exceed one terabyte while they are getting comfortable with the
new plan.

If you have any questions about the new Data Usage Plan, please visit
[http://dataplan.xfinity.com/](http://dataplan.xfinity.com/).

Thank you for being an XFINITY Internet customer.

Sincerely,

Tim Collins Regional Senior Vice President of Comcast's Heartland Region

~~~
beamatronic
>> we will send you a courtesy "in-browser" notice

Another good reason to use SSL everywhere

------
mindslight
I would really like to see the FTC go after them if they continue to advertise
speeds above 3Mbit/sec.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - patronize your local DSL provider
before it's too late.

~~~
dpark
I don't understand any of this comment. What is the 3Mbit/sec in reference to?
I get significantly faster speed than that all the time. Edit: Oh, you're
trying to assert that bandwidth==cap subdivided to the second level. No,
that's absurd.

I don't understand how switching to a local DSL provider would benefit me. I
don't like Comcast at all, but cutting my typical bandwidth by more than 75%
doesn't seem like a net gain. I like Netflix more than I hate Comcast.

~~~
mindslight
First, the bulk of consumer use does not require high instantaneous bandwidth.
And from what I recall, cable companies generally throttle those uses anyway!

But the real value of the comparison is seeing exactly what game cable
companies are playing. Their last-mile links happen to have higher bandwidth,
but really they do not want to actually carry the corresponding traffic. So
they advertise the irrelevant speeds in big print, and then do everything they
can to restrict the actual service provided. Meanwhile I'm consistently doing
>2TB/mo on DSL.

Don't let CableCos' misleading advertising fool you, the US's last-mile
communications infrastructure basically stagnated two generations back.
Competition between cable and DSL is _the official national policy_ , and
moves like this one make it quite clear that they are providing similar
service.

If you're in an area that still has a CLEC, you might even find a provider
that actually has technical people answering the phone!

~~~
dpark
> _First, the bulk of consumer use does not require high instantaneous
> bandwidth._

The bulk of consumer use also doesn't require high usage caps so this is an
extremely noncompelling argument.

My house also does a ton of streaming and I do a lot of remote desktop. I do
care about decent peak throughput.

> _And from what I recall, cable companies generally throttle those uses
> anyway!_

Maybe? I'm super in favor of net neutrality but I also recognize that
_throttled_ cable internet is still faster than unthrottled DSL.

> _Meanwhile I 'm consistently doing >2TB/mo on DSL._

So by your math, a whopping 6Mbps.

