| datttt if no cap on 50+ tiers...
then i will give cumcast a hi five
that wud actually be awesome |
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 RobIn Deo speramus.Premium
join:2001-08-25
Kendall, FL
kudos:3 | said by JigglyWiggly:if no cap on 50+ tiers...
then i will give cumcast a hi five
that wud actually be awesome
Que? |
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 whfsdudePremium
join:2003-04-05
Washington, DC
 ·T-Mobile US
| Competitive Markets I wonder if Comcast intends to enforce these caps in their competitive markets (most of their urban NE division).
Right now they're slightly beating Verizon FiOS on price here. Once they add overages, it will be likely that many users will pay the higher monthly price for FiOS rather than pay/worry about overages. |
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| Reasonable If this is the approach Comcast will take going forward, 500GB is reasonable for Blast, and I wouldn't consider that punitive. If the cap is nonexistent for the Extreme 50/105/300 tiers beyond that, or even larger, I think people would have very little to complain about.
I would see Comcast much more favorably if this were rolled out instead of what they're trying in Nashville. |
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whfsdudePremium
join:2003-04-05
Washington, DC Reviews:
·T-Mobile US
| said by osravens:If this is the approach Comcast will take going forward, 500GB is reasonable for Blast, and I wouldn't consider that punitive.
Not really. You're restricting the activities that a household will do based on the cap. Onlive + Netflix + Backblaze + Bitcasa can eat up over a terabyte a month. |
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| reply to whfsdude
Re: Competitive Markets I question whether they enforce those caps at all in areas, like most of the DC area, with high FiOS penetration. Shutting customers off under the previous cap system would have caused those people to just go to FiOS and never come back.
Comcast is beginning to advertise on the DC stations how they are increasing speeds at no additional cost, a slight at the FiOS Quantum marketing which did raise prices considerably for a lot of customers. |
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 LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | Even a 300GB cap is reasonable for internet video I have a Netflix streaming account and an Amazon Prime free videos account and watch a good amount of videos on my SmartTV with WiFi and get nowhere near the cap. I watch about 10 hrs/week of online video and am on the internet constantly and still don't exceed 50 GBs/mo. If you are approaching or exceeding the caps it is likely you are doing a lot of online backing up of your systems hard disks or are a heavy user of bittorrent file sharing systems.
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»www.mittromney.com/s/repeal-and-···bamacare
»www.mittromney.com/issues/health-care |
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| reply to whfsdude
Re: Reasonable Sure, any cap will be a restriction, but Blast is not one of the higher tiers. I'll withhold some judgment on the overall picture, not knowing what happens to Extreme, but very few people are ever coming close to using a terabyte per month currently. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect those people to pay for higher tiers for more usage. I do, however, think it's double dipping to charge those people for the higher speeds and then for the higher bandwidth. It should be common sense that the higher speed connection is going to use more bandwidth.
Comcast is at least showing they understand bandwidth usage is increasing, and that they're moving with the times. We have to give them credit for that. |
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Kamus
join:2011-01-27
El Paso, TX | reply to Linklist
Re: Even a 300GB cap is reasonable for internet video said by Linklist:I have a Netflix streaming account and an Amazon Prime free videos account and watch a good amount of videos on my SmartTV with WiFi and get nowhere near the cap. I watch about 10 hrs/week of online video and am on the internet constantly and still don't exceed 50 GBs/mo. If you are approaching or exceeding the caps it is likely you are doing a lot of online backing up of your systems hard disks or are a heavy user of bittorrent file sharing systems.
So what you are saying is, you live by yourself? |
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KearnstdElf WizardPremium
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ | reply to whfsdude
Re: Competitive Markets My guess is they will only enforce if someone goes way over. However the new overage system might be fully automatic. in which case unlike the old system where a person likely had to review huge overages, this new setup might just automatically bill.
That said with what the highest speed tiers cost, they should be uncapped. At over $100/mo for the fastest tiers, I think they make up for lost CATV revenues from the person watching Netflix instead.
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports |
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 IowaCowboyWant to go back to IowaPremium
join:2010-10-16
Springfield, MA
 ·Comcast
·Verizon Broadban..
1 edit | Winning the cord cutting war If the purpose of caps is to cut down on cord cutters, they should give higher caps or waive caps for cable subscribers (such as a 500 GB cap for expanded basic subscribers, 750 GB for digital starter, 1 TB for digital preferred and unlimited Internet for digital preferred with one or more premium channels. And increase the caps by 25 percent if they add digital voice to the mix (triple play). I come nowhere near the 250 GB limit (I use about 20-30 GB per month but mom plays Internet games on the computer). As for my TV, that is what cable is for.
Comcast is a cable company and their core business is pay TV, the Internet and phone is a side product. It's like going to a restaurant and buying dessert (Internet) and a soda (phone) without buying the entree (cable tv). The restaurant would be put out of business if their customers occupied a table for dessert and soda without the entree. That restauraunt would rather sell all three (entree, beverage, dessert). If it was not for Comcast's cable TV offerings, you would be paying 4-5 times more for Internet because maintaining infrastructure is expensive. Plus, you have to pay for tech support (both field techs and call center reps), regulatory costs, among other costs. While I have supported the breakup of broadband monopolies, Comcast could divest their Internet business and still be profitable because they could still charge access fees (like paying a local phone company for dial tone) and the third party ISP would provide the Internet content (customer choice like paying for long distance). And they could waive those access fees if you subscribe to pay TV and you would only have to pay the ISP fees. They could also charge third party ISPs for access to their facilities (like CLECs are charged by the ILEC).
Comcast could also operate on the food court model where the cable plant is like a food court and the content providers/ISPs have to pay Comcast for access their network but the ISPs/content providers (the food court tenants) charge for their service but Comcast (the mall) maintains the infrastructure.
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I wish I still lived in Iowa; Everything there from rent and groceries to Cable TV is much cheaper in Iowa (especially with an overbuilder in town). |
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whfsdudePremium
join:2003-04-05
Washington, DC Reviews:
·T-Mobile US
| reply to osravens
Re: Reasonable said by osravens:I do, however, think it's double dipping to charge those people for the higher speeds and then for the higher bandwidth. It should be common sense that the higher speed connection is going to use more bandwidth.
(This is kind of on a tangent. and I'm not opposing your comment.)
If Comcast is trying to extend the life of their copper network and the caps were about limiting congestion, we should actually see an opposite of the what the plans reflect.
The most expensive plans would be slower speeds but would be unlimited.
Likewise, the high speed plans should be cheaper but capped. |
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 tshirtPremium,MVM
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA
kudos:3
·Comcast
1 edit | reply to whfsdude
So you might need to skip one or more of those activities, or buy more capacity to fill that "need". I'm guessing the "$10 per 50GB " or similar will still be available.
for those that have higher bandwidth desires Fios (in those few areas they go head to head) might be a better deal, for most ComCast will offer equal speeds and adquite capacity at a lower price point which seem to be a primary market driver right now. |
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| If I lived in a Comcast/FiOS market, I would still go FiOS because I feel they have a superior TV product. Also, still largely, higher upload. Of course, Verizon would rather offer me 3 Mbps DSL for all eternity, so I'm stuck.
But it's clear Comcast is lapping all the other cable companies in innovating with broadband. |
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 IPPlanManHoly Cable Modem Batman
join:2000-09-20
Washington, DC
kudos:1 | Been saying this for years now... If this is indeed true, then I've been right about what I've said for years: Faster speeds results in higher levels of usage. Having the same cap regardless of provisioned speed was ridiculous. I've said that repeatedly on DSLR.
Being able to download things faster means that you'll download higher resolution content and more of it. You'll stream more because it's faster. You'll send full resolution movies/videos because it's faster. You'll do more in the same amount of time because it's faster. Why people argued against me on this, I'll never understand.
So for all those who said I was wrong, who said that faster speeds don't mean higher levels of usage... Looks like Comcast proved you all wrong.
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"We're going to start at one end of (Fallujah), and we're not going to stop until we get to the other. If there's anybody left when that happens, we're going to turn around and we're going to go back and finish it."
Lt. Col. Pete Newell: 1st Inf. US Army |
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whfsdudePremium
join:2003-04-05
Washington, DC Reviews:
·T-Mobile US
| reply to osravens
Re: Reasonable said by osravens:If I lived in a Comcast/FiOS market, I would still go FiOS because I feel they have a superior TV product. Also, still largely, higher upload. Of course, Verizon would rather offer me 3 Mbps DSL for all eternity, so I'm stuck.
Not to get too local here but this applies to the DC Metro area, PHL, NJ/NYC, and Boston which are pretty big Comcast markets in the NE.
I know some users who are not switching to FiOS in DC even though it's available to them. This has actually been brought up a bunch of times on the local listservs and the subreddit.
1. The big reason to stay with Comcast here is they recently have been rolling out hundreds of hotspots in DC.
2. Price. Double play (TV + Internet) is about $20/mo cheaper.
3. Installation pains/effort.
With that said, Verizon is still finishing many neighborhoods and will have a complete rollout in the next year for all of DC proper. Conduit was just recently put up in my alley for FiOS and the tech doing it said by December at the latest for my whole neighborhood. If Comcast implements the cap in my neighborhood they will lose at least 50% of their customer base come next year. |
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 Jerm
join:2000-04-10
Richland, WA
kudos:2 | reply to JigglyWiggly
Problem MATH So lets get this straight:
For rough math sake, say $50/month for 300GB
At overage rates $10GBx300 = $3000!
So they are saying once we hit 300GB data is worth 60X more?!!! |
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| reply to whfsdude
Re: Reasonable Don't forget Pittsburgh and Harrisburg in that.
Most of Allegheny County has FiOS now. I'm not sure of the deployment in Harrisburg, but I know it's in both Dauphin and Cumberland counties. |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | reply to Kamus
Re: Even a 300GB cap is reasonable for internet video said by Kamus:So what you are saying is, you live by yourself?
So what you are saying is, a person who lives alone should pay the same price as a family of four? |
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tshirtPremium,MVM
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA
kudos:3 Reviews:
·Comcast
| reply to whfsdude
Re: Reasonable said by whfsdude: If Comcast implements the cap in my neighborhood they will lose at least 50% of their customer base come next year.
You really think 50% ACTUALLY use more than 500GB?
how did they survive the 250GB cap?
BTW boston itself seems to be shunning Fios so that market can't really be on the list, and many of the others aren't fully rolled out.
Probably each service will have it's diehards, and a certain number will wander back and forth for a few promo discounts.
getting people to actually switch is very difficult, Fios had a big speed advantage (which most people wouldn't notice in a blind test) but now CC is close, CC is cheaper and can sit on that price for a while and even offer some promos, fios is still under priced for the debt load. (their wireline division is at a pathetic 2.8% margin, largely due to fios) investors expect the higher single digits or more for a regulated utility, so more price increases are almost inevitable.
And we've seen a number of people here that tried fios and then returned to a previous/different carrier.
It is apparently not nirvana for everyone. |
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