Xfinity/Comcast data cap - 1.2 TB/monthly

Sky-Knight said:
Wait you mean if I take responsibility for what I do I can reduce my usage and therefore my bill? That's crazy talk!

And also absolutely correct. I was just pointing out how easy and mindlessly it is to hit a 1.2TB data cap.
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First, I have absolutely no argument, none, with what you've said.

My central point is that it is up to the end user to live within the limitations of the plan they've chosen. "Mindlessly" is absolutely, positively no excuse, as far as I'm concerned, ever. And after you've been burned once if you were careless, that should be enough.

@sapphirescales, technology has gotten better, much better. But you seem to believe that better must always mean "limitless" and in my many decades in this business it has seldom meant that, and when it has there's generally a premium price for it. Yes, we're using much more data than we used to. But, yes, those caps where there are caps are substantially, very substantially, higher than what they once were. Unlimited plans do exist, and if you (the generic you) do not wish to monitor your own usage or want truly limitless, then you pay the price. Your attitude seems to be that no one on the using end should ever have to pay attention to anything, even though they've chosen plans that they know are not unlimited. It's never worked that way.
 
@sapphirescales Yeah but we also used to pay for long distance, and that's what built the network.

The rub is of course, the US customer pays about 2x more for bandwidth as they should... so yeah at present prices caps are BS. That doesn't mean they're not justified in the correct conditions. Pay as you go is a valid pricing model, just not as implemented currently.
 
Sky-Knight said:
Yeah but we also used to pay for long distance, and that's what built the network.
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And also what made virtually universal residential service possible at very low prices.

I joined AT&T in 1987, not all that long after divestiture, so got to "live through" a lot of the aftermath during my 10 years there.

I was one of those people who complained pretty bitterly as a consumer at long distance prices. Then, after local and long distance carriers were split (at least for interstate), and you got what was then ultra-cheap long distance, with corresponding leaps in pricing for local service, I complained even more bitterly about that. I had (and still have, for that matter) far less occasion to call long distance than local.
 
britechguy said:
But you seem to believe that better must always mean "limitless"
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It's not limitless. You're limited by your internet speed. Data caps are another limit imposed for the sole purpose of bilking consumers and raising prices while being able to falsely advertise a lower price.

This would be like me charging a flat rate for my services, but then also trying to charge by the hour. For example, it's $129 to back up data, but only if it takes less than 30 minutes. If it takes longer than that, you're charged an additional $50 per 15 minutes. Now imagine that it takes an hour on average for me to back up data so I choose to set the flat rate for only 30 minutes intentionally so I could charge an extra $100 to all my customers while advertising a rate I know that most clients won't pay. That's sleazy, and that's Comcast.

Data caps didn't exist before (at least not with the service providers I use) until people started dumping cable. But yeah, that's just a coincidence, right? That's what Comcast would have us believe.
 
@sapphirescales You could see it that way, but I see it with a twist on that theme.

Caps mean they can sell the basic plans at lower rates, and bill people into larger plans more naturally. Because when you're an ISP it's not just the now speed that matters, it's the consumption over time.

Think about your power bill. You don't pay a flat rate there, you pay per KWH. Charging per GB transferred matches this billing model. And I for one really wish I could simply pay for what I used instead. My monthly costs averaged over the year would be lower.

Again this billing model isn't a problem, it's the fact that ISPs are trying to bill both ways at the same time that's the problem. Either flat fixed monthly billing OR usage billing... not both!
 
@Sky-Knight No, it's greed. If companies actually charged for what you used, old people who don't stream or do anything but browse the internet and check email would have a $2/month bill. But Comcast doesn't want that, so they set a minimum charge. They can't have it both ways. They need to either charge by usage or charge a flat rate. Charging both should be illegal.

Your comparison to electricity is flawed because electricity has a steady, predictable cost per KW. Bandwidth does not. The cost difference between someone using 100GB/month in bandwidth and 100TB/month in bandwidth is negligible because the real cost is in having the infrastructure in the first place, not in how much data is used. That's like charging people per step they take while shopping in a store. TECHNICALLY the floor tiles wear out more the more someone walks on them, but someone spending an extra 10 minutes in a store costs the company like $0.00000000000000000001 so charging them another $10 ($1/minute) is just pure greed and a way to charge more money while hiding the cost to the consumer. "Oh yeah, well we give you 30 seconds for free, so if you finish your shopping in 30 seconds you don't have to pay." Who the heck can shop in 30 seconds? Nobody, and they f*cking know it.
 
We're at 920 gigs for January. We switched Comcast plans in mid December (when we "cut the cord"), so the app shows no history prior even though we had Comcast back then.

3x of us in the house. 3x large TVs....living room, master bed room, daughters room. Wife runs her business out of the house, she's a pretty busy Realtor, a top producer...so she's busy with lots of emails including attachments. TV wise, Master bed room is on from about 0530 til 2300 hours. Living room TV mostly just for a few hours at night. Daytime my wife usually has it on a youtube channel for either streaming music, or some of the "influencers" she watches on YouTube. Or shall I say, listens to...in the background. Yeah she's always been a "needs the noise in the background" since I met her. Daughters the same as my wife...always needs the TV on for background noise.

Daughter in high school, senior, "distant learning".

I figured we'd be close to the limits....we have default settings on the primary streaming services (Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix, CBS All Access). I'll be lowering the rez settings on those....and once warmer weather gets here I'll have no worry since we live on the boat about half the days of each week...so that'll be marina bandwidth.
 
Sky-Knight said:
@sapphirescales You could see it that way, but I see it with a twist on that theme.

Caps mean they can sell the basic plans at lower rates, and bill people into larger plans more naturally. Because when you're an ISP it's not just the now speed that matters, it's the consumption over time.

Think about your power bill. You don't pay a flat rate there, you pay per KWH. Charging per GB transferred matches this billing model. And I for one really wish I could simply pay for what I used instead. My monthly costs averaged over the year would be lower.

Again this billing model isn't a problem, it's the fact that ISPs are trying to bill both ways at the same time that's the problem. Either flat fixed monthly billing OR usage billing... not both!
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I agree. Back in the early days of broadband, we were resellers for an ISP and I was friends with the owners, and colo'd my gaming servers in their data center. I actually met the owners through Quake 2..since they ran a server themselves and were into gaming. Anyways, I learned about average "over subscription" ratios that all ISPs do (they have to, to stay in business), and why business accounts cost so much more, etc.

Residential bandwidth suffers from higher costs due to trying to cover for the small percent of very high bandwidth users. They have to "spread the costs" to all. So yes, I really wish it was a "pay for what you use" pricing model just like electricity, gas in your car, propane or oil for heat, water, etc. If 6x houses on my street are stuffed with kids and they use 3 or 5 TB a month...before this "overage" plan came into play...all of us on the street, even the retired folk who might use 90 gigs...have to help pay for it all. At least this "overage" thing is a step in the right direction.
 
sapphirescales said:
They can't have it both ways. They need to either charge by usage or charge a flat rate. Charging both should be illegal.
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Er, no, or many of us here would be in jail.

I am far from alone in charging a 1 hour minimum for an on-site service call. If the call takes 10 minutes, you're charged for an hour, plain and simple.

If the call requires more than an hour, you get charged in 15 minute units above the hour minimum.

That's precisely what selling data in "a set bulk chunk" with either overage charges, or changes in speed, is doing. It's a standard business practice and has been for various commodities since long before you were on this earth. There's nothing new, nor anything wrong, with this pricing model.
 
@sapphirescales Datacaps absolutely existed before, we used to have pay on use plans for dial up internet. That was the normal pricing for the EU until broadband came along. The US did the unlimited thing, and that's where all this comes from.

This thread is a solid example of that. Why should I have to pay more for my connection because my neighbor is like your family member that leaves the TV on absent mindedly all day? If you want background noise, set your stream to SD and the problem is solved.

People need to be encouraged to be efficient.

Also, it's apparently you haven't a clue how a city wide network actually works, nor do you have a clue how our power grid works. If you did, you'd know why I drew the utility parallels there. If there's a fault it's that our ISPs are utilities yet not regulated as such. THAT is a problem. But this pay for use pricing model to catch bandwidth abusers? No... that's fine.

Well at least it would be fine, if they didn't charge me double and THEN put the cap on top. I don't mind the pricing model, I mind the fact that the cap pricing was implemented without an associated base price reduction. That's double dipping, and while not illegal, nor can it reasonably be made to be so, it's certainly a cause for friction. And again, this also wouldn't be a problem if you had the freedom to simply change providers, but you can't because your local utility that isn't a utility is the only one you can choose from.

Oh and one last thing...

Obama's Net Neutrality rules forbade this practice, Trump repealed them and now the caps are back. But we have Biden now so presumably the Obama era FCC rules will go back into effect again and the fines will fire up for doing this. Because Obama's FCC saw ISPs as quasi-utilities. But unless Congress (or any appropriate more local legislative body) actually legislates ISPs into their utility status... this swing will continue to be swung.
 
britechguy said:
1 hour minimum
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A one hour minimum is different than charging flat rate + an hourly rate. A one hour minimum is completely fair because the pricing is transparent and predictable.

Sky-Knight said:
Datacaps absolutely existed before
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I've literally never experienced one until now and I've lived in multiple states. If you're talking about paying per minute for dialup then I remember that being a thing, but never an actual data cap.

Sky-Knight said:
Obama's Net Neutrality rules forbade this practice
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As it should. It's totally unfair. By all means, charge per hour/minute/gigabyte if you want to, but you don't get to have it both ways. Customers that barely use the service should be charged accordingly. But greedy internet companies don't want to do that because they'd have a subset of customers being charged peanuts.
 
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