More Cable Industry Caps, Overages Coming > A UBB plan can be designed to be revenue neutral

A UBB plan can be designed to be revenue neutral

Can never tell if serious or trolling.

reply to Linklist
I just want Comcast to start charging something, anything, for overages. Right now they're walking away from money.

Kicking higher use customers off or sending them to Comcast's business class product (which is an abuse of that service) isn't the answer now that they are fully DOCSIS 3.

I agree that they shouldn't kick them off. They should "upgrade" them to a service that suits their needs.

However, charging overage fees will eventually bring anger from the average user. We're headed toward more data, not less. While today's caps might be OK for most, cable has been busy raising speeds but leaving caps fixed. Sooner or later this is going to collide with the average user. When enough folks get angry, they are going to look for alternatives. One of two things is going to happen. Either competitors will enter the market because they sense there's money to be made or the lack of competition will cause legislators to regulate. Case in point, I understand congress is considering revising the baggage fee mania of the airlines. Despite competition and Southwest NOT charging baggage fees, it seems evident that the airlines have ticked off their customers enough for even a heavily lobbied and pro-corporate congress to consider taking action.

I don't see a whole lot of difference between the airlines baggage fees and HSI-provider caps with overage fees.

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reply to JasonOD
Of course and we wouldnt expect anything less from you.

I also want the car dealers, super markets, insurance companies, all local utilities, cable / SAT and IPTV, online retailers, the government, movie theaters and gas stations to start charging more too because they are all walking away from money!!!

reply to Abbot7

reply to JasonOD
Comcast does have overage charges - they're the $17 difference between business class and residential class.

Comcast isn't stupid, and they wouldn't be allowing people in business class to use unlimited bandwidth if they weren't making money. Anyone who believes that they are somehow ignorant that heavy users subscribe to business class service is naive. Their system isn't being "abused" - they're offering a better service and you pay more money for it. Their network is so undercapacity, in my area at least, that they make money even on the $43/month residential users who hit their caps. They aren't going to kick off users who pay them $17 more to use a network that has more than enough bandwidth available. That's probably why their business services are slower than their residential services - because the speed of the connection is calculated to be its own cap.

To me, this seems to be a very fair system as it is currently set up. If you want a cap, you pay less for residential service. If you want unlimited service, you pay more for commercial service. You get what you pay for, and Comcast makes money accordingly.

In my opinion, Comcast's business class is by far the best ISP that I have ever had. Unlike FiOS, I always get Comcast's provisioned speeds and have never seen a slowdown below those speeds at any time of day. Comcast's network has never gone out, not even once, and their ping times are lower than Verizon's. I never hear from them about bandwidth usage or running servers. I send them my $60 every month, and it just works.

reply to JasonOD

reply to Skippy25
They likely will if the market bears it

reply to Linklist
They could...but they won't. If UBB was made fairly, customers would actually be able to save money by using less bandwidth. As things stand now, no customer actually sees savings. The best they can aim for is to continue to be screwed at today's rates.

reply to openbox9
Apparently you didn't read my second sentence.

reply to Linklist
I honestly wouldn't know it based upon what I see locally. Many of our utilities seem to be operating on a skeleton maintenance budget.

reply to Linklist
They let people use business class unlimited because they know the typical home user who gets it to go download crazy is also unlikely to be calling in a lot and using that expedited service that business class comes with.
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports

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reply to Linklist
For TWC I see only $150 million devoted to upgrades of their $18 billion business. There are a few billion more for maintenance, subscriber boxes, and expansion, but those don't improve customer service to justify massive rate increases. It also appears that TWC's cost of bandwidth per data customer is about $1 per month!

reply to Abbot7
I did, but you prefaced it with "they never will".

reply to Linklist
You cant be this stupid???

Sorry, but everyone uses the internet for different things and more or less than others. To come up with a current revenue neutral per byte billing makes no sense and then we all get screwed as we use the internet more.

Also the costs of the network have almost nothing to do with usage, they are fixed costs based on the equipment and physical line to your house. If you use your connection to download 500GB in a month your connection still cost the same as someone that downloaded 50GB a month.

You should not get unfair discounts for using your connection less when costs are the same.
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