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SpaethCo
Digital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

SpaethCo to jagged

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to jagged

Re: [Caps] Comcast testing at least two different cap plans

said by jagged:

$10 for 50GB. What a scam

$0.20/GB after you've already hit a threshold of 6x more bandwidth consumption than the average user is a scam?

Alcohol
Premium Member
join:2003-05-26
Climax, MI

Alcohol

Premium Member

said by SpaethCo:

said by jagged:

$10 for 50GB. What a scam

$0.20/GB after you've already hit a threshold of 6x more bandwidth consumption than the average user is a scam?

Yes.

JigglyWiggly
join:2009-07-12
Pleasanton, CA

JigglyWiggly to SpaethCo

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to SpaethCo
Yes. They don't have caps now and everything is working fine.

SpaethCo
Digital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

SpaethCo to Alcohol

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to Alcohol
said by Alcohol:

said by SpaethCo:

said by jagged:

$10 for 50GB. What a scam

$0.20/GB after you've already hit a threshold of 6x more bandwidth consumption than the average user is a scam?

Yes.

Increased usage drives the need to upgrade capacity, and since companies exist to make money you need to offset operating expense with revenue.

What's the better way to accomplish that goal?

GlennLouEarl
3 brothers, 1 gone
Premium Member
join:2002-11-17
Richmond, VA

GlennLouEarl

Premium Member

The so-called "above average" usage typically occurs because some customers use their connections when many/most others aren't using theirs. So instead of portions of the network doing nothing useful for 50% of the time, they'll be doing nothing useful for 45% of the time (just speaking relatively). This is something that drives the "need" to upgrade capacity? Hardly. Caps are marketing BS (aka "scam"). "Upgrades" merely look good in the ads.

If all you're doing is simply more of what every other residential customer is doing, that has nothing to do with business usage. And these business accounts use the same network as the residential accounts--nothing get "upgraded" (except for someone's invoice).

Alcohol
Premium Member
join:2003-05-26
Climax, MI

Alcohol to SpaethCo

Premium Member

to SpaethCo
said by SpaethCo:

Increased usage drives the need to upgrade capacity, and since companies exist to make money you need to offset operating expense with revenue.

What's the better way to accomplish that goal?

Incorrect. They're making money off infrastructure that is already in place. They should upgrade it if they're unable to meet the current demand of customers. Not our problem that their back-end hasn't been upgraded to the current standards. Use some of the $6 billion in net profits they had last year.

SpaethCo
Digital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

1 edit

SpaethCo to GlennLouEarl

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to GlennLouEarl
said by GlennLouEarl:

The so-called "above average" usage typically occurs because some customers use their connections when many/most others aren't using theirs. So instead of portions of the network doing nothing useful for 50% of the time, they'll be doing nothing useful for 45% of the time (just speaking relatively). This is something that drives the "need" to upgrade capacity? Hardly. Caps are marketing BS (aka "scam").

Take a look at the numbers from the 2011 Cisco Visual Networking Index report:
* The average broadband connection generates 14.9 GB of Internet traffic per month, up from 11.4 GB per month last year, an increase of 31 percent

* The top 1 percent of broadband connections is responsible for more than 20 percent of total Internet traffic. The top 10 percent of connections is responsible for over 60 percent of broadband Internet traffic, worldwide.
So there has been a 300% increase in average usage since 2011, and that capacity has largely been created by planned technology refresh upgrades. (ie, that's been paid for out of the portion of your bill that goes to upgrades) This still highlights the problem that you have with runaway usage at the top end, which is what caps and overages are trying to address: 10% of your customer base is responsible for generating the load that drives over half of your demand. The top 1% alone drives 1/5th. Do you let the top 1% continue to run away and drive 1/3rd? 1/2?

Personally, I favor the overage approach. From a network operator perspective, I'm willing to build all the capacity a client could ever want if they're willing to pay for it.

telcodad
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join:2011-09-16
Lincroft, NJ

telcodad

MVM

Managing the growth in residential broadband usage

An article on the CED Magazine site yesterday about all this:

Usage-based service management
By Stephan Collins and Bob Hunt, CED Magazine - June 5, 2013
»www.cedmagazine.com/arti ··· nagement

From the beginning of the article:
quote:
The profitability of fixed broadband service providers is being threatened by the tremendous growth in residential broadband Internet usage.

Widespread consumer adoption of a diverse array of new bandwidth-intensive applications and services is driving increasing costs in broadband networks worldwide.

With faster connection speeds and relentless growth in per-subscriber usage, operators find themselves in an endless cycle of capital spending to expand network capacity in order to keep pace with increasing demand. Meanwhile, broadband ARPU (average revenue per user) remains relatively flat, so rising costs are reflected in lower profit margins.


FifthE1ement
Tech Nut
join:2005-03-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL

FifthE1ement

Member

said by telcodad:

An article on the CED Magazine site yesterday about all this:

Usage-based service management
By Stephan Collins and Bob Hunt, CED Magazine - June 5, 2013
»www.cedmagazine.com/arti ··· nagement

From the beginning of the article:

quote:
The profitability of fixed broadband service providers is being threatened by the tremendous growth in residential broadband Internet usage.

Widespread consumer adoption of a diverse array of new bandwidth-intensive applications and services is driving increasing costs in broadband networks worldwide.

With faster connection speeds and relentless growth in per-subscriber usage, operators find themselves in an endless cycle of capital spending to expand network capacity in order to keep pace with increasing demand. Meanwhile, broadband ARPU (average revenue per user) remains relatively flat, so rising costs are reflected in lower profit margins.

Nice find telco, I usually use anywhere from 100GB to 200GB per month WITH NO TORRENTING (mainly normal browsing and Netflix and YouTube)! When I used to torrent I would use anywhere from 250GB to 1TB! I've even gotten a call from the dreaded Comcast security team (before 250GB cap) telling me if I didn't reduce my usage I would be terminated. Then I got into an hour long argument over how much was to much. They wouldn't state a number. So I said according to this conversation that, BTW I'm recording, if next month I do 999GB vs 1TB+ this month I will be OK, right? He wouldn't agree but they never called again. It felt like arguing with a five year old. According to the Comcast site most people only use 12-14GB per month, I call BS! I have never met one person who used that little, even with only email and normal web surfing!
said by Krisnatharok:

Nice to see higher limits. I am on either Blast or Extreme 50 (I think we are Blast / 30 Mbps upgraded to 50 Mbps, but we see speeds up to 90 Mbps, so I dunno), and we use about 250 GB/month.

This is for a family of three and about 10 devices between us--two of us game, all three of us stream video.

Exactly my point! Netflix can pull 4GB per show and if you have a big family with a couple computers, Netflix, YouTube, connected TV's, video game systems you could easily do 100+GB without breaking a sweat! And Comcast knows it which is why they raised the caps in the trial areas! Also why isn't Comcast's network crashing right now?! The whole reason they started caps was to stop heavy users from ruining it for the rest of their neighborhoods! Why isn't everything just running on fumes or crashing now that everyone can download as much as they want?! It's such a scam to get money and this period of 250GB cap suspension should be proof. Comcast are the biggest scamsters going around! Well next to Verizon and ATT anyway!

5th

entitled
@verizon.net

entitled

Anon

said by FifthE1ement:

The whole reason they started caps was to stop heavy users from ruining it for the rest of their neighborhoods! Why isn't everything just running on fumes or crashing now that everyone can download as much as they want?! It's such a scam to get money and this period of 250GB cap suspension should be proof. Comcast are the biggest scamsters going around! Well next to Verizon and ATT anyway!

5th

Because they keep investing to avoid "fumes" for 99% of the users.

Why shouldn't the 1% that use 20% not pay their fair share of upgrade investments?

FifthE1ement
Tech Nut
join:2005-03-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL

FifthE1ement

Member

said by entitled :

said by FifthE1ement:

The whole reason they started caps was to stop heavy users from ruining it for the rest of their neighborhoods! Why isn't everything just running on fumes or crashing now that everyone can download as much as they want?! It's such a scam to get money and this period of 250GB cap suspension should be proof. Comcast are the biggest scamsters going around! Well next to Verizon and ATT anyway!

5th

Because they keep investing to avoid "fumes" for 99% of the users.

Why shouldn't the 1% that use 20% not pay their fair share of upgrade investments?

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you! But first don't tell me the only reason you are capping plans is to protect your network from heavy users as that is a lie (as Comcast has said many times that their network would fall apart without throttling and caps, well guess what they have neither now and it's not falling apart). Also then let the higher users pay more and the lower users pay less.... But no, why would they want to do that? They can keep collecting $60 from people who only check their email once a week this way! Comcast is a bunch of scammers and they want to have their cake and eat it too! And it's Comcast's job to invest in their network and there shouldn't be any extra money put towards that! If you are a plumber and you come to a person house do you charge every home an extra $5 future new van fee? No, you add the cost into your total business plan. Today businesses, not only Comcast but all other huge companies, think they can charge us for what they are supposed to be providing as part of their service. I mean in my area the power company wants to charge us for them to change the poles that carry electric, WTF?
said by Aozora:

Yeah and this is quite scary. I'm wondering if Comcast does implement such stringent caps if they will service the same apartment with two HSI plans since we currently use about 750GB on avg.These caps were good in 2007. But apparently stuff uses more bandwidth nowadays or it sure feels like it.

At $10 for 50GB we would have to pay about 80 extra and it's cheaper to just get another plan in that case.

In the image is a low usage month where I believe I watch one episode of a show online if that.

You can get a business account which costs about as much as one and a half normal accounts and it has no caps. That will solve your problem. And if you use Netflix as your only form of video you will fack up a huge amount of bandwidth. Lets say you have just two people using Netflix (not even counting YouTube or other internet browsing) and you both watch 4 hours (minimal for most people) of tv per person. 8 hours per day and most content on Netflix is HD so 4GB per hour times 8 equals 32GB PER DAY! 32GB per day multiplied by 30 is 960GB or almost 1TB of data per month just on Netflix! Now add in more than two people in your home, video game systems, YouTube, internet browsing, computers, tablets, phones and you're looking at double that! I think a fair cap is 1TB or more! AT LEAST! And the bandwidth is only going to rise with more connected devices and quality of shows rising, 4K, new future apps and devices! These caps are limiting internet innovations in a huge way! The new video codecs aren't ready and compressed video quality always sucks anyway, simply look at Comcast's HD to make my point. According to ATT, Comcast, Verizon the internet apocalypse is coming yet there is no data to support this!

5th

telcodad
MVM
join:2011-09-16
Lincroft, NJ

telcodad

MVM

said by FifthE1ement:

said by Aozora:

Yeah and this is quite scary. I'm wondering if Comcast does implement such stringent caps if they will service the same apartment with two HSI plans since we currently use about 750GB on avg.These caps were good in 2007. But apparently stuff uses more bandwidth nowadays or it sure feels like it.

At $10 for 50GB we would have to pay about 80 extra and it's cheaper to just get another plan in that case.

In the image is a low usage month where I believe I watch one episode of a show online if that.

You can get a business account which costs about as much as one and a half normal accounts and it has no caps. That will solve your problem.
:
5th

FYI - You can see the latest Business Class tiers and pricing back in this thread: »Re: Business Class price increase
jagged
join:2003-07-01
Boynton Beach, FL

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Re: [Caps] Comcast testing at least two different cap plans

Charging end users $0.20/GB when Comcast buys bandwidth at less than $0.02-$0.05/GB and 50%-80% of the HSI monthly fee is pure profit. Is a scam.

SpaethCo
Digital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

SpaethCo

MVM

said by jagged:

Charging end users $0.20/GB when Comcast buys bandwidth at less than $0.02-$0.05/GB

What they pay in transit costs would be relevant if you were also taking a handoff in a carrier neutral meet-me facility.

99% of the costs are in getting the traffic from those half-dozen regional peering locations through a larger scale network infrastructure that gets the bits to your house.

Alcohol
Premium Member
join:2003-05-26
Climax, MI

1 edit

Alcohol

Premium Member

And that infrastructure is already in place.

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

tshirt

Premium Member

said by Alcohol:

And that infrastructure is already in place.

But not yet paid for.

It's initial and replacement cost has to be allowed for in the rate structure, even when (nessesarily) it is built before payoff.

SpaethCo
Digital Plumber
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join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

1 recommendation

SpaethCo to Alcohol

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said by Alcohol:

And that infrastructure is already in place.

Yes, much of the physical cabling is already in place, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been extensive investment in network augmentation. Most notably: DOCSIS 3.0 rollout and node replacements to have the capacity for multiple downstream and upstream channels. CMTS replacements and upgrades to push from 2, 4 to 8 downstream channels. Upgrades of the metro networks that connect the CMTS hardware from 1 gig to 10gig to 40/100 gig interconnects, etc.

None of that hardware is free, and more importantly, once you buy it you have to have extensive planning and engineering to get it implemented into an existing infrastructure. Maybe you show up someplace and do a bunch of work just to go home feeling good at the end of the day, but most people want a paycheck for their time and effort, and it takes a lot of people to get this kind of stuff done.

I think if you haven't worked on technology on a large scale it's hard to appreciate the costs involved in these kinds of deployments.

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

1 recommendation

tshirt to jagged

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to jagged
said by jagged:

.....Comcast buys bandwidth at less than $0.02-$0.05/GB

those fees get it to Comcast's "front door", you have to pay the added cost of getting it from there to your front door.
said by jagged:

...and 50%-80% of the HSI monthly fee is pure profit.

If that was even remotely true EVERY home would have dozens of providers offering GIG+ plus speed with a free computer/tv/console/bit suckers for everyone.
Actual industry profits average around 10% year after year.
Not a lot for a high cash flow, high capitalization industry.
jagged
join:2003-07-01
Boynton Beach, FL

jagged

Member

said by tshirt:

said by jagged:

.....Comcast buys bandwidth at less than $0.02-$0.05/GB

those fees get it to Comcast's "front door", you have to pay the added cost of getting it from there to your front door.
said by jagged:

...and 50%-80% of the HSI monthly fee is pure profit.

If that was even remotely true EVERY home would have dozens of providers offering GIG+ plus speed with a free computer/tv/console/bit suckers for everyone.
Actual industry profits average around 10% year after year.
Not a lot for a high cash flow, high capitalization industry.

Sounds like you don't know what you're talking about and need to do some research.

The gross profit margin on cable broadband is around 95% per Bloomberg. Look it up.

Comcast is upgrading the broadband by swapping DOCSIS cards not digging trenches. The GIG+ dozens of providers you talk about have to dig people's yards and sidewalks like AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS did. Comcast does not do that it has a network that's already paid for itself many times over.

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

1 recommendation

tshirt

Premium Member

since NO cable provider provides only broadband so you'll have to point out EXACTLY where you came up with that "factoid".

you can't separate Broadband from the rest of the cable business and overall after taxes and other expenses bottom line return on equity was around 10% industry average from 2000 to 2010 and actually is doing somewhat better during the recession as people virtualize vacation and entertain options due to cost+ ie whatever it costs people find it to be an excellent value.
It's fairly obvious you are ignoring the years of major upgrades to the physical plants in most areas (actually a constant ongoing process) that allowed the final step of changing line cards and CPE ( not a cheap process either) to begin the D3 era, now continuing work is allowing faster speeds, IPv6, and the intial work towards D3.1 can begin.

If you look at comcast you will see they are currently performing better then some others in the industry, but remember charter went bankrupt a few years back = a method of shedding the incredible debt load...not really profit.

SpaethCo
Digital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

SpaethCo to jagged

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to jagged
said by jagged:

The gross profit margin on cable broadband is around 95% per Bloomberg. Look it up.

What you're looking at here is a problem with multi-service operators and how financial reporting only includes direct costs.

Revenue is easy to report on: How much did the company charge for Internet access?

The costs of the service get tricky because most of the expense in providing that service is not directly attributable to that line of business, and hence can't be reported against the line on a financial report.

Fiber/Cable plant maintenance? Required for Video, Voice, and Data, so it's not a direct cost of any of them.

CMTS hardware operation and maintenance? Required for Voice and Data, so not a direct cost of either line item.

National IP backbone expenses? Required for Video, Voice, and Data so not a direct cost of any of them.

Field service fleet expenses? Again, all 3 revenue lines.

Facility, hardware, and interconnect costs to transit providers to establish Internet connectivity for broadband Data? This is one of the only true direct costs that gets reported on a MSO financial statement against their broadband product offering.

Financial statements can be tricky to read if you don't know exactly what you're looking at and how the numbers are derived.

telcodad
MVM
join:2011-09-16
Lincroft, NJ

telcodad

MVM

An blog item on the MCN site today:

Comcast’s Big Data Perspective in Prep for NBC Streaming
By Gary Arlen, Multichannel News - June 21, 2013
»www.multichannel.com/blo ··· treaming

AnonMan
@comcast.net

AnonMan

Anon

If usage caps come back ever I hope they exclude all On-net traffic if the real excuse is peering etc.

They peer to many data centers directly so get bandwidth money from the data center and also from me and you as a customer already so no need to double dip with usage based fees.

The internet is turning into gas and power without true regulations... I know, we should tax the internet so we can regulate it and make it cost even more and give a way for companies to make more money still!!!

YukonHawk
join:2001-01-07
Patterson, NY

YukonHawk

Member

said by AnonMan :

If usage caps come back ever I hope they exclude all On-net traffic if the real excuse is peering etc.

They peer to many data centers directly so get bandwidth money from the data center and also from me and you as a customer already so no need to double dip with usage based fees.

The internet is turning into gas and power without true regulations... I know, we should tax the internet so we can regulate it and make it cost even more and give a way for companies to make more money still!!!

Just what we need more taxes!
devnuller
join:2006-06-10
Cambridge, MA

devnuller

Member

said by YukonHawk:

said by AnonMan :

The internet is turning into gas and power without true regulations... I know, we should tax the internet so we can regulate it and make it cost even more and give a way for companies to make more money still!!!

Just what we need more taxes!

And we need the government to manage this because they are so much better than private industry around innovation and infrastructure growth investment.

Be careful what you wish for....

telcodad
MVM
join:2011-09-16
Lincroft, NJ

1 edit

telcodad

MVM

They're saying the U.S. is not a global leader in broadband access and speed as Verizon and Comcast state?

Comcast, Verizon Editorials Distort True Picture of U.S. Internet Service, Experts Say
By Gerry Smith, The Huffington Post - June 26, 2013
»www.huffingtonpost.com/2 ··· 303.html