With 12% Of Comcast Customers Now Broadband Capped, Comcast Declares It's Simply Spreading 'Fairness'
from the not-really-helping dept
Comcast continues to expand its usage cap "trial" into the company's less competitive markets, hitting these lucky customers with a 300 GB monthly usage cap. These users also now face a $10 per 50 GB overage fee should they cross this arbitrary limit, and in a new wrinkle -- have the luxury option of paying a $30 premium should they prefer to dodge these usage allotments altogether. To the non-lobotomized among us, Comcast's intention is obvious: drive up the cost of broadband to help counter the inevitable loss of TV revenues caused by Internet video.With Comcast's usage cap "trial" slowly creeping past around 12% of the company's customer base, Comcast's slow stranglehold over the uncompetitive U.S. broadband market appears to have finally gotten the attention of outlets like the Associated Press. Having been forced to give up the bogus claim that usage caps are necessary due to congestion years ago, Comcast can only try and defend the practice to the AP by insisting it's an issue of "fairness":
"About 8 percent of all Comcast customers go over 300 GB, the company says. Data caps really amount to a mechanism "that would introduce some more fairness into this," says Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas."Except there's nothing fair about it. A tiny fraction of Comcast customers are absolute gluttons (we're talking dozens of terabytes), and Comcast could easily nudge those users toward business-class lines without imposing an entirely new pricing structure. Instead, Comcast customers who used to enjoy pricey but unlimited data are suddenly facing usage restrictions and significant additional fees. And indeed, judging from some of the customers the AP spoke to, most users can see through Comcast's bullshit justification:
"Matthew Pulsipher, 23, lives in the Atlanta metropolitan area and decided to pay Comcast's extra fee for unlimited data to support his family's streaming of shows from Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. But he's not happy about it. "I think the idea of limiting your usage is absolutely insane," Pulsipher said. "It would make sense if the cap was 2 terabytes, but 300 is just low enough to punish streaming."All Comcast's doing here is taking advantage of a lack of broadband competition to price gouge a captive audience. And while only 8% may cross the cap now, Comcast clearly hopes to have usage caps in place before Internet video (and 4KTV, and virtual reality cloud-driven gaming) hit critical mass. It just hopes if it moves really really slowly -- and pretends it's an agent of altruism -- most people will be too stupid to notice what's happening.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: broadband caps, data caps, fairness, price discrimination
Companies: comcast
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I don't think that's how you spell "extra profits".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~swc/onlive/onlive.html
Latency is real, and even under the most perfect of circumstances, you're still not going to beat the speed of light in terms of latency. Now follow this up with the issue of motion sickness due to latency as detailed here:
http://oculusrift-blog.com/john-carmacks-message-of-latency/682/
And you'd require 20ms or less of latency just to be in the acceptable range, which is incredibly low for even basic gaming applications, much less "virtual reality cloud-driven gaming"
So no, don't lecture me about knowing more when I try to tell people something. You need to understand the reality of this outside of some high-in-the-sky dreaming that isn't physically reasonable.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
calling NYC and all other duped cities
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And when watching a video, even knowing the video is a minute long (which you don't before clicking the link) doesn't tell you much about how much data it'll use. If the video is very high quality it'll use up a ton more data then a lower quality video.
Browsing the web with a data cap is like shopping at a grocery store where nothing has prices on them. And where you have to buy anything you even touch.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Yeah, they say it's outright theft! As if they get to pump craptastic ads none of which I ever care about, regardless of their network efficiency onto my computer, all reporting back to hundreds of data aggregators feeding my data to ad servers, while both cores of my aging CPU blast away at 50% utilization after loading the page threatening to crash my computer.
Bite. Me! They're doin' it wrong and should die screaming in a fire.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'm (not very) shocked!
That's a hell of a lot more "heavy users" than when they first implemented these caps, and no doubt going up every day. No surprise when speeds go up, usage goes up, and the cap stays virtually the same.
Just to put this in perspective (again), with their 105 Mbps service you can hit the 300 GB cap in about 7 hours.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I'm (not very) shocked!
... IF your ISP provides the service you PAY for!
Why is that IF so small, while the PAY is so big?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I'm (not very) shocked!
Framed as "You can get 50 HD movie downloads per month" seems a lot more reasonable "You only get 7 hours of Internet per month."
So, your analogy is pretty disingenuous.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: I'm (not very) shocked!
Or backed up your PC. Or restored it. Or lots of other ways. Believe it or not, the internet is useful for more than just watching movies!
"Framed as "You can get 50 HD movie downloads per month" seems a lot more reasonable "You only get 7 hours of Internet per month.""
If you use the service you payed for, at the service level you payed for, you only get 7 hours. Claiming that most people don't actually use what they payed for does not make it ok to punish those that do.
"So, your analogy is pretty disingenuous."
I would counter that your myopic view of real world internet usage is pretty disingenuous. Stop pretending that these caps don't affect real people. 8% is no small number.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: I'm (not very) shocked!
AricTheRed used the ridiculous tactic of assuming you used your full capacity non-stop to illustrate how fast you hit your cap. That is unrealistic use, and any capacity planner in the world (telecom, roads, restaurants, schools, etc) knows that usage is not binary - full or nil.
The old, and quite stupid, trope of "If that's the cap, and my network speed is X, I would use it all in T!" Why is it stupid? Well, you've just given the ISPs a disincentive to offering you better speeds. Think about it, the faster the X speed they offer you, the more pissed off you get about how short T is.
So, I expressed his model not in terms of TIME in which the cap would be hit, but in terms of quantity of movies, at which point it looks a lot better.
You are free, of course, to do backups, uploads, or Spotify instead of the movies. You are not the first to point out that the Internet has more than one use.
"Claiming that most people don't actually use what they payed for does not make it ok to punish those that do."
The people of your town do not use the roads in town to your fullest right to use them. If you all did, you would "punish" yourselves for that rate of use, and hopefully realize that network planning is NEVER based on everybody using their full capacity at all times.
What I'm writing isn't popular. I know that. So you don't want to agree. But it's right.
"Stop pretending that these caps don't affect real people"
Can't see where I did that. Caps suck. I sure don't want one. But I see the economic realities that cause them. They are twofold:
1) not enough competition, so your ISP will take what they can
2) real requirements for CapEx to upgrade networks as users consume more data.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I'm (not very) shocked!
You suckers ought to be storming their gates for this abusive behavior. They should be crucified for proposing it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Comcast spreading Fairness
Without caps, Google Fiber is spreading Unfairness!
/sarc
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
could be either actually
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
My grandfather, who raised pigs, had a different name for that smell which seems appropriate in this case. He called it the smell of money.
Here's a pro tip for those of you not as familiar with agriculture. This machine is not a fairness spreader.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Have you tried getting business class internet?
I can't vouch for Comcast, but I tried to get a business class DSL from AT&T once, they refused. Since my residence wasn't a commercial address, they wouldn't let me pay more for better business class service. No negotiating, just no.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Comcast and Zero Rating
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Comcast and Zero Rating
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
/S
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
All about cord cutters
That's why I am hanging onto my Roku 2 boxes: they still support non-HD video, so require less bandwidth.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Woe to the Cord Cutters
I have friends and family that have fully "cut the cord" and I suspect their usage is much higher than mine.
Thankfully, TWC has not capped our connections - yet. Considering I have no real competitive options in my area should they choose to do so, I'm not particularly happy with this trend.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Woe to the Cord Cutters
Thankfully, no caps on TWC. Thanks, TWC!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Rural Internet and Caps
with the idea that family use would be faster..
recently youtube, hulu, and many others went to 60fps video.
Large data hit.
I play a few games that are not optimized..
For all of this, and the ISP thinking That speed is what we need. There is a Data cap. 300gig. and it wasnt hard to hit.
The idea of increasing Speed, and not the CAP..even in a Family home..is stupid.
Think about all the devices you have that USE the net..Your PHONE, Computer, Xbox/PS, Amazon movie/Roku/.../...
Then the idea that the Next level of payment adds 100gig, and is $30 more..
This is going to be a fun time..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Rural Internet and Caps
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Are They Paying To See Ads?
What is more interesting here is the confluence of this story, and the recent brouhaha over ad blockers and ads.
For people actually hitting those 300GB caps, and being asked (forced) to pay the extra $10, what portion of their > 300GB was advertising?
I mean, I really don't know. What portion is it? Assuming they're streaming long-form video, it may not be a huge share, but if it's over 5GB, it starts to matter.
Do the anti-adblock people really think we want to pay our ISP bill, and an extra mark-up to stream their annoying pre-roll and multi-media ads?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Comcast started here
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That's Capitalism
Yeah...that's what capitalists do. The idea that it's about providing the best product at the best price always was BS. They only lower prices if there's competition - and they do everything they can to remove or cripple competition, or simply collude with it in ways that they can claim aren't collusion.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: That's Capitalism
No, it was just always an option. There've been many very good companies which, through their great work and understanding of the philosophy and their business, gave their customers the best they could give them, even as they controlled a monopoly. They preferred to play the long game.
Others ran to politicians to get self-serving laws passed to screw their customers and benefit their shareholders with quick and short term profits.
It's sad both approaches have so far remained both profitable and legal. One should have supplanted the other by now as being far more logical, profitable, effective, but politicians ...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Dear networks: I will torrent all of your shows illegally, and the people who put up the torrents cut out any commercials if there were any.
Dear advertisers: Every show that you advertise on, I will torrent. I will never see your commercials. So you have wasted money.
In other words, if Comcast throttles me or keeps adding caps and other fuckery, then advertisers and networks, you will not get any revenue from me. It's your choice, you can get on Comcast's side, or you can get on the consumers' side.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What I expect.
What I expect is exactly how CDN works for ISP's when they buy their data.
Translation for Patrick Zarrelli:
When Eye pay four 250mbps I expect an maximum of 65.7 TB of data per month. Luckily Eye don't have an cap because my house averages 15 to 25 TB per month.
What Eye expect is exactly how CDN works for ISP's when they bye there data.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Once you cap the top 8%, you can cap the top 8% again, lather rinse repeat
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Internet Nazis
[ link to this | view in chronology ]