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roboman01
@68.56.150.x

roboman01

Anon

[Caps] Comcast will have cap fees

Its coming and was reported on FoxNews this morning. Here we go again. If they implement this I will be switching back over to Centrylink. I don't use the internet that much but I don't agree with monthly caps each month.

davidc502
join:2002-03-06
Mount Juliet, TN

davidc502

Member

[Caps] Re: Comcast will have cap fees

said by roboman01 :

Its coming and was reported on FoxNews this morning. Here we go again. If they implement this I will be switching back over to Centrylink. I don't use the internet that much but I don't agree with monthly caps each month.

I don't know that the sky is falling for Comcast customers. I believe Comcast will be realistic about what 95% of their customers use, and come up with a realistic data cap.

If you don't use much internet, and the cap doesn't affect you, there's really no reason to leave, unless you're standing for a principle.
moonpuppy (banned)
join:2000-08-21
Glen Burnie, MD

moonpuppy (banned)

Member

Let's see if Comcast will tell you what that caps are. The last time, they said there were caps but could never say what they were.

JohnInSJ
Premium Member
join:2003-09-22
Aptos, CA

JohnInSJ

Premium Member

said by moonpuppy:

Let's see if Comcast will tell you what that caps are. The last time, they said there were caps but could never say what they were.

You mean the 250GB cap that they said was the cap?

andyross
MVM
join:2003-05-04
Aurora, IL

andyross to roboman01

MVM

to roboman01
This was reported a few days ago, and there is an article on the main broadband reports home page. Mainly, he did mention that they would try to keep the cap to the point where about 95% (or something like that) would not be affected. It did mention he could see it being 500G in 5 years.

»Comcast Confirms Usage Caps Going Nationwide After Trials [157] comments

train_wreck
slow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN
Cisco ASA 5506
Cisco DPC3939

train_wreck to JohnInSJ

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to JohnInSJ
said by JohnInSJ:

said by moonpuppy:

Let's see if Comcast will tell you what that caps are. The last time, they said there were caps but could never say what they were.

You mean the 250GB cap that they said was the cap?

or perhaps the 300GB cap that is enforced in certain areas now, and mentioned in both the terms of service and on the website account page listing your past months usage?
rody_44
Premium Member
join:2004-02-20
Quakertown, PA

rody_44 to roboman01

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to roboman01
Finally, maybe now we will see our rates stabalize.

Juan Doe
@69.245.244.x

-1 recommendation

Juan Doe to roboman01

Anon

to roboman01
said by roboman01 :

I don't use the internet that much but I don't agree with monthly caps each month.

Customers that consume less than the cap are profitable.

Customers that consume more than the cap are not.

No business survives if they are not profitable, right?

train_wreck
slow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN

train_wreck

Member

said by Juan Doe :

Customers that consume more than the cap are not.

mind explaining why?

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

tshirt to roboman01

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to roboman01
While it's weird to actually have fox news and Karl Bode See Profile reporting the same thing, they are quoting SPECULATIVE ramblings by Comcast executive VP David Cohen who said " the company would aim to set the limit at a level where "the vast majority of our customers" wouldn't be affected. He speculated that the limit might be set at 350 gigabytes or 500 gigabytes per month. A cap of that size would allow you to download or stream between 70 and 125 HD movies, which typically run about four or five gigabytes in size. "
so he's guessing at 350 to 500GB in the base package.

in that 5 year time span HE may not be in charge of that, and other more technical heads may push for higher limits.

while some sort of cap is likely, DON"T PANIC, it may not effect you or it may raise your monthly cost somewhat but still allow true highspeed internet.

camper
just visiting this planet
Premium Member
join:2010-03-21
Bethel, CT

camper

Premium Member

said by tshirt:

in that 5 year time span HE may not be in charge of that, and other more technical heads may push for higher limits.

 

I remain to be convinced that "other more technical heads may push for higher limits".

At the Executive VP level within a corporation, decisions are not made upon a whim. Especially the strategic decisions such as capping the monthly data allocation of HSI customers.

Five years from now, will 4K video be far more common, and requiring far more bandwidth? What other network-enabled applications will be consuming that allocated data? If so, will Comcast's HSI raise the caps appropriately?

Also, what's the sense of a "true highspeed Internet" when it just means that you reach the arbitrary data allocation cap more quickly?

andyross
MVM
join:2003-05-04
Aurora, IL

1 recommendation

andyross to roboman01

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to roboman01
Comcast has responded to their own speculation:
»Comcast 'Clarifies' Comments on Usage Caps [60] comments

camper
just visiting this planet
Premium Member
join:2010-03-21
Bethel, CT

camper

Premium Member

said by andyross:

Comcast has responded

 
I was wondering how long it would be before Comcast would stop calling it data caps.

The marketing-speak data usage policy sounds so much more consumer-friendly.

davidc502
join:2002-03-06
Mount Juliet, TN

davidc502 to Juan Doe

Member

to Juan Doe
said by Juan Doe :

Customers that consume less than the cap are profitable.

Customers that consume more than the cap are not.

No business survives if they are not profitable, right?

Sorry, but I have to respond to this. Comcast's profits are going to be relatively the same if a user uses 1GB or 250GB per month.

Generally, large ISP's are charged 1ยข (cent) per GB that flows to the internet. 2.49 cents isn't making or breaking any ISPs profit margin. the reason is because you have so many people in between, so it all averages out.

Now, if you have a person downloading multiple TB per month, then a ISP may decide it's isn't worth it for that one user, but once again, it all averages out, and they generally won't care.

However, from the ISP perspective, this isn't about users downloading so much that they can't make a profit. This is about TV, and not loosing market share to IPTV sources. So, they may be just protecting their interests.

Also, a article I just read, by a reliable source shows major ISP's have not upgraded infrastructures, in a major way since 2008. Instead they are using profits to purchase other companies, and paying stock dividends (On average). Instead of upgrading they are forcing the heavy hitters in the streaming world to pay for direct connections (peering), so they avoid having to do major renovations.
C4Xplosive
join:2002-02-21
Vancouver, WA

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to davidc502

said by davidc502 See ProfileI don't know that the sky is falling for Comcast customers. I believe Comcast will be realistic about what 95% of their customers use, and come up with a realistic data cap.

If you don't use much internet, and the cap doesn't affect you, there's really no reason to leave, unless you're standing for a principle.

:

Considering years ago when usage caps first came into existence and the claims back then, yeah I wouldn't believe Comcast would be very realistic about their claims.

They made it a point of saying 90% of people used less than 10GB per month. They provided absolutely no data to back up such a ridiculous claim. Including the region used, how they selected the individuals, how many were used for the statistical analysis, etc.

In a era where are homes are heavily connected that 90% number is impossible to swallow without clarification. My family uses more than 5GB of data on their phones just playing around doing god knows what by mid-month. I had to literally sit them down and explain to them why the bill was ridiculous and so too was their usage. People will just get used to paying more like a water, gas, or electric bill and that's exactly what ISP's want in general. They know you wont bother looking into things deeper and will just accept it as if it's normal.

Meanwhile billions more from overcharges will come flooding into investors pockets.

Sup Foo (banned)
join:2014-05-01
Denver, CO

Sup Foo (banned)

Member

said by C4Xplosive:

Meanwhile billions more from overcharges will come flooding into investors pockets.

If you believe that, you should buy the stock. You'll make a killing, right?

davidc502
join:2002-03-06
Mount Juliet, TN

davidc502 to C4Xplosive

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to C4Xplosive
Yes, with cellphone usage like it is, it makes one wonder how ISP's come up with their "average" usage numbers.

I agree.
C4Xplosive
join:2002-02-21
Vancouver, WA

1 recommendation

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to Sup Foo
said by Sup Foo:

said by C4Xplosive:

Meanwhile billions more from overcharges will come flooding into investors pockets.

If you believe that, you should buy the stock. You'll make a killing, right?

The average joe isn't going to make a killing, you know that.

NetFixer
From My Cold Dead Hands
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to JohnInSJ
said by JohnInSJ:

said by moonpuppy:

Let's see if Comcast will tell you what that caps are. The last time, they said there were caps but could never say what they were.

You mean the 250GB cap that they said was the cap?

I suspect that moonpuppy See Profile was referring to the invisible cap that preceded the publicly announced 250GB cap. The cap that Comcast refused to reveal any information about, but would get a customer disconnected and banned for a year if they exceeded it.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

DarkLogix to moonpuppy

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to moonpuppy
said by moonpuppy:

Let's see if Comcast will tell you what that caps are. The last time, they said there were caps but could never say what they were.

Well a brief history of the Caps was

In the beginning it was just "excessive usage" with no definition, but then people sued so they made a stated cap of 250GB, then as time went on they felt the need to test ideas and for now the cap has been suspended.
DarkLogix

DarkLogix to Juan Doe

Premium Member

to Juan Doe
said by Juan Doe :

said by roboman01 :

I don't use the internet that much but I don't agree with monthly caps each month.

Customers that consume less than the cap are profitable.

Customers that consume more than the cap are not.

No business survives if they are not profitable, right?

They've shown quite well that the cap isn't about profit or would you like the old days of an undisclosed cap to come back when they'd just perma-ban people using so much that the node was congested because of one person?

train_wreck
slow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN
Cisco ASA 5506
Cisco DPC3939

train_wreck

Member

said by DarkLogix:

They've shown quite well that the cap isn't about profit or would you like the old days of an undisclosed cap to come back when they'd just perma-ban people using so much that the node was congested because of one person?

how have they shown this, exactly? as far as i can tell, caps are about nothing BUT profit.

and on banning "congesting" users, i might argue that, if Comcast sells me a service that allows me, as a single user, to overly congest their node, that's either a failure of their networking designers/engineers to build a system that can handle the bandwidth they're selling, or a failure of Comcast overselling a service that they don't have sufficient equipment available to provide.

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

tshirt

Premium Member

said by train_wreck:

how have they shown this, exactly? as far as i can tell, caps are about nothing BUT profit.

I guess that depends on where you start counting.
It could be equally said that there is zero profit to caps, that those dollars are spent first on upgrades (which surely exceed the total collected in cap fees) and at most maintain the profit margin on those users regular monthly fees.

train_wreck
slow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN

train_wreck

Member

if there's zero profit to caps, then why do they exist in the first place?

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
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join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

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to train_wreck
said by train_wreck:

said by DarkLogix:

They've shown quite well that the cap isn't about profit or would you like the old days of an undisclosed cap to come back when they'd just perma-ban people using so much that the node was congested because of one person?

how have they shown this, exactly? as far as i can tell, caps are about nothing BUT profit.

and on banning "congesting" users, i might argue that, if Comcast sells me a service that allows me, as a single user, to overly congest their node, that's either a failure of their networking designers/engineers to build a system that can handle the bandwidth they're selling, or a failure of Comcast overselling a service that they don't have sufficient equipment available to provide.

Well even with the 250GB "cap" very few users were ever hit in any form but rather they kept to only going after the top .01% that were using a TON of data.

the stated cap was just because a court ruling that they couldn't ban someone for using 4TB of data when the cap was vague and not clearly stated.

Yes IIRC the lawsuit in FL over the old invisible cap was on a user that they banned for well over 2TB of usage over repeated months, and that was back in D1.1 days

their TOS have always said excessive use was not allowed, so sure you can pay for 150/20 service but unless you pay for BCI you can't transfer over 48TB in one month

(150mbit*60*60*24*31/1024/1024/8=just under 48TB)

And if you have BCI and use 48TB in a month they'll suggest strongly that you upgrade to their ent offerings.
DarkLogix

DarkLogix to train_wreck

Premium Member

to train_wreck
said by train_wreck:

if there's zero profit to caps, then why do they exist in the first place?

Florida Lawsuit that's why.
They wanted to be able to take action against users that abuse the system (IE max their connection for such a long amount of time that other users are effected.

Remember if you have say 150/20 and are on a 8x4 modem you're able to use over 50% of the capacity you're connected to, IE over 50% of the capacity that is shared amount many people at that point if there's just a 2nd user like that on the same 8 channels then all the other people will have crappy internet and that will lose them money.

They have since added congestion management to help prevent that issue but the caps are there so if it comes to it they can ban without getting into a losing lawsuit.

Devious
Premium Member
join:2002-08-22
Seattle, WA

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to roboman01
said by roboman01 :

If they implement this I will be switching back over to Centrylink.

CenturyLink has caps on residential service too but do not yet charge a fee if you go over.

This may change when Comcast starts charging again for overages.

Excessive Use Policy
quote:
CenturyLink's download guidelines are designed to support today's download usage patterns. Our updated plans include the following download usage limits:

1.5Mbps plans - 150 Gigabytes
Plans greater than 1.5Mbps - 250 Gigabytes
Source: »internethelp.centurylink ··· eup.html

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

tshirt to train_wreck

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to train_wreck
to pay those costs for ADDITIONAL capacity, so that they don't have to spend that last 10% of the regular fees intended as profit.

train_wreck
slow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN

train_wreck

Member

i have a hard time believing that, if they didn't implement cap fees, they would not be making any profit off of internet services.

davidc502
join:2002-03-06
Mount Juliet, TN

davidc502

Member

said by train_wreck:

i have a hard time believing that, if they didn't implement cap fees, they would not be making any profit off of internet services.

Caps are not about protecting ISP profits (though it will be - read below), but probably about protecting TV interests. At one time, usage CAPS were about network congestion, and it can help curtail someone from running P2P 24/7, but many of those people have gone to seedboxes anyway.

At this point, Data Caps will be about charging additional fees when users go over. It could be someone streaming HD TV content or even the new 4k content from Netflix and OR Hulu. Bottom line, it's going to be a new profit bucket IMHO.