
Comcast and T-Mobile upgrade everyone to unlimited data for next 60 days - Elof
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/comcast-suspends-data-cap-for-60-days-opens-wi-fi-hotspots-to-everyone/
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drtillberg
It's too bad that Comcast chose to have inferior upload speeds, about 6Mbps on
standard plans in my region, no matter whether it's 100Mbps down or 1,000Mbps
down. When we're talking work from home, online learning, video conferencing,
upload speed matters. Comcast tries to bury the upload number, I'm kind of
surprised to see it printed in this article, and when I realized the reality I
thought there must be some mistake. There is no option for a higher upload
speed at less than $300/mo, which pays for a full fiber. It's great to have
_an_ option but too bad Comcast chose to make their service inflexibly
inferior in this way.

~~~
nolok
Just got fiber deployed to my small city here in France, and I now pay 40
euros a month for 900 down / 500 up, with a free phone line and IPTV access.
We're barely 8000 people and surrounded by farmers fields for kilometers
around.

And I'm still jealous of eastern countries like romania where they get better
for cheaper.

I don't know how such a high development country as the US can tolerate those
ridiculous price, bandwith and data caps.

~~~
cl0rkster
This is a bit of an old trope. "Size matters". I'm not defending the American
ISP abominations like interference in allowing municipal fiber to be built,
and denying access to poles so new competitors can't access public
infrastructure to build a competing service without unreasonable barriers to
entry. All this anti-competitive crap... Right on, I'm with you.

However... America is ENORMOUS compared to any European state... and mostly
unoccupied. And our government only recognizes the decaying Telco system as a
public utility that we all need access to...

Nevermind. I don't understand either. It's just fully stupid. The size will
make it cost more... Not recognizing it's worth it... For that there are no
excuses.

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olyjohn
Easy for them to do because it costs them nothing. VPNs use so little
bandwidth. What a joke to get some good PR, and sad they are exploiting this
pandemic.

~~~
orborde
Would you prefer that the companies involved did nothing instead of taking
this costless action?

~~~
koolba
Yes as maybe it’d draw attention to the absurdity of the limits vs advertised
speeds.

It’s similar to the security theater at airports. I personally dislike the
entire TSA precheck concept specifically because it works so well. The lack of
pain for frequent travelers has kept the entire system from being replaced
with what’s now the TSA precheck process.

~~~
lwansbrough
“Yes” is a purity test answer.

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iNeal
Any word on people already paying the $50 for no data-cap on Comcast? Should I
remove it for 2 months or did they say they'd waive it?

~~~
techntoke
I'm sure they'll gladly take your money. I got a notification that I was
approaching my limit just yesterday.

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dudul
but... but... don't they enforce this data cap to protect their
infrastructure? I don't get it! What's gonna happen to their infrastructure if
they do that??!!

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jsjddbbwj
A lot of this going on in Spain right now. Higher data caps for mobile
connections (landlines have no data caps here), and some ISPs that have a TV
service have opened it up for free.

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imglorp
Imagine what the world world be like if all hotspots were open all the time.

~~~
inopinatus
1\. Oversubscribed.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)

2\. Less safe. [https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/88853/are-
open-...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/88853/are-open-
wireless-networks-unencrypted)

~~~
acdha
Less safe is less true than it was back when that answer was written: a LOT of
traffic has gone TLS-only and the operating systems most people use are secure
by default. Yes, there’s always a chance of an exploit but these days I’d be
more worried about what links people are clicking on rather than where they’re
sitting.

Congestion is also an interesting challenge: in some cases that’s a problem
(imagine having an AP next to a school) but since the hardware limits have
gone to substantially we’re probably at a threshold point where geographic
separation is enough to avoid that problem for a large fraction of places. The
public library has open WiFi but there are only so many people who are going
to camp out there.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> in some cases that’s a problem (imagine having an AP next to a school)

Really it's the opposite. You put an AP next to a school and it gets the whole
school's traffic off the cell tower and onto a local high bandwidth coax/fiber
network. You save a ton of wireless spectrum by having low power wifi APs
everywhere instead of needing high power cell towers. (And obviously in that
case the school itself would be the best candidate to be operating the open
APs instead of or in addition to whoever lives next door.)

You don't really get a tragedy of the commons either, because the range is so
short. You could go to any given place and find open wireless, but the best
way to get a good signal in your own home is to have your own AP. The
exception would be high density housing where you're actually close enough to
share, but then you do just that -- have all the neighbors chip in to get a
really fast connection and share it. You can keep it open to the public as
long as the other neighbors pay their share, which is cheaper for each of them
than paying for a whole connection themselves as would happen if they defect
and cause you to stop offering it. Or, more realistically, in those situations
HOAs or landlords could install the AP and pass on the cost as fees/rent.

~~~
acdha
> Really it's the opposite. You put an AP next to a school and it gets the
> whole school's traffic off the cell tower and onto a local high bandwidth
> coax/fiber network. You save a ton of wireless spectrum by having low power
> wifi APs everywhere instead of needing high power cell towers.

Note that I was talking about a single AP - not a planned large rollout - and
just the point that there are a few high-density applications where you
actually have to worry about the number of simultaneous users.

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dylz
Is xfinitywifi open yet? I'm still getting a payment prompt.

~~~
ukyrgf
And I'm still seeing a big fat XXX/1024GB usage meter when I log into my AT&T
account.

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unnouinceput
Welcome fellow Americans to the normal citizens that don't even know the words
"data cap". Wish you stay longer then 2 months in this club. Personally I am
member of this club for over 2 decades (as is my entire country btw).

~~~
craftyguy
Good for you. We know the government-sponsored ISP monopolies/duopolies here
suck. It's incredibly naive to think that this fact is lost on us.

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flak48
Obligatory 'we've had unlimited 4g data for $8/month in India since 2016'
comment.

Feels good to be first world at _something_

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pkaye
Those comments are gold:

>AT&T was willing to tap into their Strategic Packet Reserve yesterday and now
Comcast has to follow suit. Let those extremely rare and finite in number
packets flow!

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peterwwillis
A lot of people moaning about how the data caps are unnecessary don't seem to
understand how bandwidth works. If you get fiber or high-speed cable to your
home, yes, you may have a buttload of potential bandwidth. If everyone in a
large metro area tried to use all 1Gbps of their bandwidth at once,
connections for many of them would crawl to about the speed of a 48.8 modem.

There simply isn't enough backbone capacity for everyone to use all potential
bandwidth all the time. But besides just not having enough raw capacity, the
closer you get to reaching capacity, the more knock-on effects from buffer
overruns and collisions and retries and latency and all sorts of shit start to
cause connections to slow further. In order to keep speeds faster near
capacity, you are forced to use traffic shaping to artificially squeeze
capacity in order to make it not _seem_ dog-slow, and falling into an unusable
tailspin.

The caps are there to keep people within practical, usable limits, to prevent
knock-on effects on edges of the network more vulnerable to bandwidth
problems. To reduce that possibility they'd have to invest more money in
unprofitable sections of infrastructure. Charging you more for bandwidth is
effectively a way for them to not invest, because if they did invest, they
would _subsequently charge you more money to cover it_. The caps basically
artificially lower your own bill by getting you to choose to use less data.
It's the choice of "do we piss them off with higher prices or worse service?"

Do they want to charge you more? Of course. Do they know most people won't use
more than 1TB of data per month? Of course; they have trending usage metrics,
they do a calculation, and this is what works to balance what people want with
what they need, and how the provider can afford to pay for maintaining it all.

If they _weren 't_ absolutely enormous multi-headed-hydra conglomerates,
service would be cheaper, better quality, and faster. But they're enormous,
and as such they are inefficient, and as such, very expensive for what you
get. If you want better service, lobby your local government to make municipal
internet legal, because local private providers will never be able to compete.

~~~
forkexec
I don't think you understand what oversubscription means, tiered network
topologies' links increase in performance nearer to the IX, and that someone,
usually the large ISP themselves, often owns the network all the way to the
IX. Cable internet providers in the US get away with extreme oversubscription
in certain low avg bandwidth areas and don't publish these details as required
in other countries.

~~~
gruez
>I don't think you understand what oversubscription means, tiered network
topologies' links increase in performance nearer to the IX, and that someone,
usually the large ISP themselves, often owns the network all the way to the
IX.

Getting to the IX doesn't mean you're home free, though. Your transit
providers are also oversubscribed and links further down the chain could get
congested.

~~~
iscoelho
In this case, Comcast is a nearly-Tier-1 transit provider that spends almost
$0 on transit outside of interconnect/switchport costs. This argument doesn't
really apply. In fact, companies _pay them_ for transit to connect/peer
because they can't afford to not.

>[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/comcast-is-
the-o...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/comcast-is-the-one-who-
should-pay-for-network-connections-cogent-claims/)

>Comcast argued that it could be considered a Tier 1 itself, as less than one
percent of its traffic requires transit.

>As Comcast's market power continued to increase and consumers had less
choice, they actually started demanding payments for connectivity. A larger
Comcast will be able to demand even greater payments.

As for T-Mobile/ATT, they are Tier 1 providers who again get transit for free.
Spectrum is the only resource that is scarce in that scenario.

The same rules don't apply to the larger ISPs. This market is not fair.

~~~
travbrack
Parent comment is talking about link utilization and you’re talking about
transit fees. You’re on a different wavelength (pun intended)

Bandwidth is finite. Links can become congested.

