
Comcast Enters Wireless Business With $45-a-Month Service - gm-conspiracy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-06/comcast-enters-wireless-business-with-45-a-month-service
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devnill
You can cut the irony with a knife. I left Comcast after they imposed data
caps in my area which I struggled to stay under.

I have several roommates and we generally consume media via streaming
services; primarily twitch and netflix. It seems to me that Comcast is using
data caps as a 'streaming tax' for cord cutters.

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mikeash
None of the "unlimited" plans are actually unlimited. They just use soft caps
where you're throttled to 2G speeds after you exceed your allotment, rather
than charging you overages. Some carriers are starting to do this for _all_
their plans, so "unlimited" is now just becoming a weird and misleading term
for one particular data cap. At least on AT&T, the "unlimited" plan isn't even
the one with the largest cap, so it's particularly bizarre.

No doubt Comcast's "unlimited" offering will be similar. You may not get
charged overages, but good luck watching more than a few movies per month with
it.

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seibelj
It's so ridiculously easy to start an MVNO now-a-days, someone here should
start a Hacker News cell company that guarantees to be open and not do a bunch
of bullshit with your data. You only need ~100k subs to be profitable, with
all this privacy news lately I bet you can hit it with the privacy conscience
consumer

~~~
stanleydrew
I started an MVNO called Charge ([https://charge.co](https://charge.co)). It's
not as easy as you think to hit 100K subs.

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rb808
That looks great, I haven't seen a data only plan that works with phones - I
thought Google and Apple banned that. Its kinda hard to compete with the
tmobile $30 plan, I might use this though.

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compsciphd
t-mobile's $30 walmart plan no longer exists (i.e. if you have it you have it,
but no one new can get it)

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sailfast
The chart says it all. TV fees per subscriber are still so lucrative that they
will pay you to stay to the tune of $20/month. Not sure how sustainable that
model is since you will not be able to charge more for that down the road, but
maybe this works for shareholders in the short term.

As a general trend I only see this leading to greater consolidation in the
market. Less providers means less churn which seems to be their target.
Fingers crossed we get to the point where buried wires are no longer a
limiting factor and more entrants can begin competing.

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gm-conspiracy
Comcast is late to the party as a "mobile content provider".

To "compete" in the US now, these companies must provide both content and
mobile connectivity.

Reminds me of Douglas Rushkoff's "Exit Strategy" (vertical brand alliances),
or some weird v2 of Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL.

Telecom offerings in the US is a sad state of affairs.

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timmaah
What is the catch on their "unlimited" marketing speak?

Also.. how are the towers going to handle this new "price war"? I've found
them already overloaded in a number of places around the U.S.

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cbhl
They're hoping to offload most of the data to xfinitywifi access points that
run off of the Comcast modem-router combos in people's homes and businesses.

Not unlike Google Fi, which also shifts between Wi-Fi and LTE for the "best"
signal.

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matt_wulfeck
This kind of pricing is mediocre. The market research clearly shows them
pricing support that is just below "gouged by incumbents".

Nothing to see here. Still waiting for a truly disruptive company to turn this
oligopoly on its head.

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peter303
Wont last. Comcast tends to offer half first year, then the full price later.
And it raises most prices 10% every year.

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Brendinooo
>The Philadelphia-based company is using the new service, called Xfinity
Mobile, to entice its 29 million subscribers to stick around as more options
become available to watch shows and movies online.

This is interesting to me - Verizon's Fios service is the main competitor to
Comcast in my area. If Comcast's goal is to keep people from switching away
from cable and Internet, I wonder what Verizon has to gain by letting Comcast
use their cell network.

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dangrossman
> I wonder what Verizon has to gain

Wireless spectrum to run their LTE network. The MVNO agreement was part of a
2011 deal with a consortium of cable companies including Comcast to sell their
wireless spectrum licenses.

[http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/02/technology/verizon_spectrum/](http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/02/technology/verizon_spectrum/)

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creeble
Nice uncover!

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creeble
"Now you can get our legendary Comcast customer service for your mobile phone
too!"

I should offer to help them write ad copy.

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EduardoBautista
Well, it is legendary I'll give them that.

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sunwooz
I can't ever imagine using Comcast again after being forced to wait through
their customer service.

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qntty
What's the advantage of getting an AT&T unlimited plan at $90/mo when you can
use an MVNO like cricket that uses AT&T's towers and pay $60/mo? Are people
just locked into existing contracts?

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seanmccann
Cricket has speeds throttled to 8Mb/s. VoLTE, Wifi calling, and some other
features are only available to AT&T postpaid accounts (may be available
now/soon?). Also postpaid account are allowed some domestic roaming, which can
be important if you travel to rural areas that don't have native coverage.

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mikeash
Good fucking luck with that. Comcast has lots of customers for its wired
services only because it exists as a monopoly or duopoly in the markets it
serves. Wireless is _way_ more competitive.

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nashashmi
Is this a result of net neutrality rules being over? Or net privacy rules
being over?

Also what are the implications of Comcast subscribers already using Xfinity
hotspots for free?

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joecool1029
>Is this a result of net neutrality rules being over? Or net privacy rules
being over?

No, people have been speculating about cable providers jumping into the MVNO
game long before the current administration. It was logical once there was a
lot of hotspots deployed. You need to look at more recent developments, like
LTE-U getting approved:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum)

> Also what are the implications of Comcast subscribers already using Xfinity
> hotspots for free?

Maybe/likely the voice traffic is QoS'd, maybe hotspot service gets a little
slower when lots of subscribers are on the access point.

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avifreedman
I used to be a Comcast wireless customer, but it cost much more than $45/mo,
and was called Comcast Metrophone :)

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rabboRubble
Ha. No.

