ISPs Finally Lifted Data Caps. It Only Took A Global Pandemic

from the oh-is-that-all-it-took? dept

During the catastrophic 2018 wildfires in California, Verizon made a painful and memorable gaffe: It throttled the Santa Clara Fire Department’s supposedly “unlimited” broadband data, causing the department to have to pay twice as much as usual to restore internet speeds that allowed it to deploy critical wildfire response.

Now, with the entire globe gripped by the coronavirus pandemic, internet service providers don’t want to repeat Verizon’s mistake. Several major ISPs all over the world have announced that, among other measures, they’re suspending data caps for the duration of the crisis.

It’s something consumers and activists have been calling for — for years. And it only took a global pandemic for ISPs to start listening.

But will data caps come back as soon as countries ease their lockdowns and workplaces and schools start going back to normal? Will ISPs resume their data capping practices even sooner than that?

We have plenty of reason to believe this is temporary. Rather than letting ISPs off the hook right now, we should be preparing ourselves for when some (or all) of them inevitably return to their old tricks. It only takes looking at the history of ISPs and consumer satisfaction to see why.

What Is Data Capping, and Why Do ISPs Get Away with it?

Data capping is a fairly common practice in the internet service provider industry, in which ISPs restrict how much data customers can use with their plans. This can take a couple different forms:

• Tiered plans, in which customers pay for a certain amount of data, and then have to pay overage charges if they exceed the cap.
• Throttling, in which customers pay for “unlimited” plans, but ISPs slow down their internet speeds if they exceed a certain amount of data transfer.

Historically, ISPs have asserted that data caps are necessary to conserve network capacity, but as technology and infrastructure have improved, industry experts have argued that that’s no longer the case.

More recently, ISPs that still use data capping have said it’s to make their services more “fair,” and prevent certain bad actors from “hogging” a network’s bandwidth. Some big players who have continued to use aggressive data capping — including AT&T and Comcast — have subscribed to this philosophy, justifying their caps by telling customers it’s how they address the “unfairness” of some customers using more internet than others.

But those arguments are tenuous at best. We know that data caps aren’t strictly necessary simply because some ISPs have refused to adopt them altogether. And the fact that companies are able to immediately suspend caps in times of crisis further reinforces that there’s no real reason for them — other than for ISPs to make more money from overage charges.

Why Are ISPs Suspending Data Caps Right Now?

On March 12, Vice’s Motherboard published an opinion piece that was pretty critical of ISPs who were still data capping amid the growing coronavirus crisis. Just hours later, AT&T announced it would suspend data caps “until further notice.”

The next day, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai called for ISPs and phone service providers to sign his “Keep Americans Connected” pledge, which called on companies to open Wi-Fi hotspots to anyone who needed them, and not terminate service or charge late fees to customers who were unable to pay their bills due to the coronavirus crisis. The pledge didn’t say anything about data caps, but what followed was a wave of ISPs who not only signed the pledge, but suspended data caps, raised their speeds, and began offering free service to qualifying low-income customers.

It’s clear that amid growing pressure from the public and lawmakers, ISPs have, at least for now, answered the call to do something to help consumers weather the pandemic. None of them want to repeat Verizon’s mistake during the 2018 wildfires.

But are these moves really as pro-consumer as they seem? That would depend on whether data caps are coming back, and we have nothing but evidence that points to some (if not all) ISPs eventually reinstating them.

Are Data Caps Gone for Good?

Some industry experts think the pandemic will spell the end of data caps — permanently.

TechCrunch reported that “Coronavirus could force ISPs to abandon data caps forever.” Fast Company wrote, “The coronavirus might have just killed ISP data caps.”

We’re a little less optimistic than that, and it’s all because of the history and track record of the ISP industry.

2013 was the first year that the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) included ISPs on its yearly survey of consumers. But that year, ISPs came in dead last out of the 43 industries ACSI surveys about — behind even health insurance providers, the postal service, and airlines.

Since then, ISPs have shown consistent year-over-year improvement in their marks on ACSI’s surveys, yet still came in dead last in the telecommunications industry in 2019. As the 2019 report put it, ISPs are “still falling short of providing good service at an affordable price.”

Online complaints and reviews complete the picture of how much trouble consumers have with their internet service providers. This map of the most hated ISPs in each state shows pretty alarming trends in why people feel so strongly about hating ISPs: They report unrelenting billing problems, deceptive pricing, slow speeds, poor service, and misleading sales tactics, even from the biggest ISP companies out there.

This history of bad acting by ISPs gives us pause when we see headlines applauding their efforts to keep people connected during the coronavirus pandemic. If ISPs want to truly do better by their customers, they need to make sweeping, long-lasting changes — like eliminating data caps altogether and for good.

ISPs Have a Long Way to Go

We’re certainly not criticizing ISPs for making things easier on their customers during a crisis.

But while this move is ultimately pro-consumer, the history of consumer dissatisfaction with ISPs should make us skeptical, or at the very least, cautiously optimistic, about how ISPs will act in the future. We have to remember they’re likely to go back to their old tricks, which means more money in their pockets, and a less free internet for all of us.

Christina Marfice has been a professional, freelance writer since college. She covers arbitration and consumer issues for FairShake. When she's not traveling the world or waiting in line at Disney World, she can be found at home snuggled up with her two cats and a cupcake.

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Filed Under: broadband, competition, data caps, pandemic