Comcast Wants To Put Data Caps On All Customers Within 5 Years

[tbarnett]

Hurry up Google Fiber!!  I can't wait to drop TWC.

[McKay]

 

No, MS backtracked because they were getting hit in the pocketbook (lower sales). Companies will ignore bad press if their top line isn't affected...

Never have and never will. Companies will only respond to bad press when it has a direct affect on their top line revenue. If people complain without direct action then the companies will ignore the complaints as their bank account tells them whether people really care.

 

You can bet, if Comcast is successful with this it will roll across the ISP territory in the US. Consumers need to push back hardcore to scare ISPs into line, but I doubt they will as it is very challenging to explain this issue to non-technical users.

 

They'll respond because bad press will most likely have an impact on their sales. It'll also hurt the thing they care about almost as much as money, their reputation, their public image. If there is no public backlash you can bet they'll roll it out. But if people are very vocal about it things will be different. I wholeheartedly disagree with public complaints and criticism of companies "never having" and "never will" have an affect on companies. 

[jerzdawg]

Cell phone plans are billed based on usage (at least here in the US only a handful of carriers are still unlimited).  Sadly unless there is legit competition for these huge companies there isnt much hope.  People stick with Verizon cell phone plans because of the coverage and reliability, they prob have the highest prices and horrible customer service but with so few alternatives.. the consumer puts up with it.  I am shocked my Fios service has not been capped ..

 

 

edit - the above info applies to US only

[+LogicalApex MVC]

They'll respond because bad press will most likely have an impact on their sales. It'll also hurt the thing they care about almost as much as money, their reputation, their public image. If there is no public backlash you can bet they'll roll it out. But if people are very vocal about it things will be different. I wholeheartedly disagree with public complaints and criticism of companies "never having" and "never will" have an affect on companies. 

Companies only care about their reputation as far as they can relate it to actual revenue. If the press is writing negative stories, but customers aren't actually cancelling their service or boycotting the companies products then the company will just ignore the bad press. This is why Comcast continues to raise rates even while the press has constantly berated them about it... This is why Comcast continues to charge an extra $10/m for customers to receive HD versions of the channels they already pay for.

 

If all you do to change a company's course of action is to yell on Twitter or on forums or hope that the New York Times will complain in some front page article... Well good luck on getting meaningful, real, change.

 

Those methods only work when customers who hear the message subsequently start boycotting the company until changes are made...

[Alwaysonacoffebreak]

As a current TWC customer, this saddens me. My household is very bandwidth heavy, with four people who play online games, two of which also spend hours a day on Youtube, and they all also stream Netflix....throw in some Windows updates occasionally on 5 computers and it adds up quickly. Looking at my router, it's pretty common for us to go up to 250-300 GB/month.

 

Currently don't have any caps but we may be forced to go to the much smaller competition in this area given the TWC/Comcast merge.

 

250GB and with 5 PCs? What? Me and my wife alone went over 600GB last month. Thankfully ISPs cant pull this crap here.

[Hum]

Won't someone think of the poRn ...

[xrobwx71]

Ridiculous. One-third of Americans have no choice when it comes to broadband providers, meaning that they simply have no choice but to put up with it. This is why you need a strong and effective regulatory authority to prevent consumers from being abused.

The free market will eventually take care of this crap. It's happened many times before with many other industries. 

[madd-hatter]

Comcast won't exist in 5 years.

[123456789A]

Only Comcast offers Xtreme 1 Gbps internet services, where you can reach your data cap in 3 hours.

[sava700]

Comcast is the worst. Sadly I have to use them because they are a monopoly in my area.

 

Same for me, there is DSL but the speeds of it are not yet equal to what Comcast can give me. If they do a cap of anything under 300G per month I'll have to bail as I use just about close to that now.

[xrobwx71]

I am re-signing up with Comcast tomorrow. I chose the 105 Mbps as opposed to the 50 Mbps speed I currently have with WOW (Wide Open West) I have 2 years so hopefully they will wait the 5 years and then I'll leave. Hopefully we'll have the Google Fibre by then or Verizon.

[Nagisan]

250GB and with 5 PCs? What? Me and my wife alone went over 600GB last month. Thankfully ISPs cant pull this crap here.

You both must be very heavy users.....600GB is a TON of data in one month. 250-300GB is a regular range for my household, but I have seen it as high as 500-600 GB....depends on what exactly everyone does over that month. To be fair, one of the PCs is only used for a couple hours total per day to check email/facebook/weather from a very light user.

 

If you are pulling 600GB per month, you must be streaming a hell of a lot or something. Netflix claims 3GB of bandwidth per hour of standard HD streaming. That breaks down to 200 hours per month to hit 600GB per month (obviously this doesn't account for web browsing/email/whatever).

 

Assuming 5 hours of HD content on Netflix per day, thats 450GB per month, not counting browsing/email/facebook, which realistically would never reach close to 150GB per month.....you must watch a lot of streaming stuff or host a small web server or something.

 

That being said, every user has different internet habits, which is why data caps shouldn't be allowed. If someone is going over the proposed data caps now, adding a data cap will not curb their usage, it will make them go to another provider, meaning the company gets less money which means they can't do as much to improve their infrastructure (though we all know that extra money is simply lining pockets, not improving infrastructure).

[ensiform]

I'm in one of the areas that is getting spun off into the new company eventually.  Assuming the Comcast TWC merger does go through, and considering Comcast has bought and paid for Washington, I don't see it not happening.

 

The ISPs simply don't care though.  Instead of keeping up with the times and spending some in the now, they only look at improving the networks as being an immediate loss and not the bigger picture in the long run so they stifle progress.  So they'd rather add "features" that make it look like the value for your services can go up (and the prices) even though we might not even want them.

[Alwaysonacoffebreak]

You both must be very heavy users.....600GB is a TON of data in one month. 250-300GB is a regular range for my household, but I have seen it as high as 500-600 GB....depends on what exactly everyone does over that month. To be fair, one of the PCs is only used for a couple hours total per day to check email/facebook/weather from a very light user.

 

If you are pulling 600GB per month, you must be streaming a hell of a lot or something. Netflix claims 3GB of bandwidth per hour of standard HD streaming. That breaks down to 200 hours per month to hit 600GB per month (obviously this doesn't account for web browsing/email/whatever).

 

Assuming 5 hours of HD content on Netflix per day, thats 450GB per month, not counting browsing/email/facebook, which realistically would never reach close to 150GB per month.....you must watch a lot of streaming stuff or host a small web server or something.

 

That being said, every user has different internet habits, which is why data caps shouldn't be allowed. If someone is going over the proposed data caps now, adding a data cap will not curb their usage, it will make them go to another provider, meaning the company gets less money which means they can't do as much to improve their infrastructure (though we all know that extra money is simply lining pockets, not improving infrastructure).

 

A lot of FTP activity in one month, streaming local TVs, downloading games (I format more often than is normal for whatever reasons), downloading other stuff and well it hits pretty quick.

 

Everytime I hear about internet caps I shiver a little. I just cant grasp the idea even tho I was forced to it for half a year when in the UK. :/

[theyarecomingforyou]

The free market will eventually take care of this crap. It's happened many times before with many other industries. 

No it won't. In fact the mega-merger between Comcast and Time Warner will only exacerbate the situation. The only interest the free market has is making a profit; when there is no competition there is no incentive for businesses to respect consumers or offer reasonable prices. In fact when businesses get into a position of power they abuse it, like the exclusivity contracts we've seen in many regions.

 

The US broadband market is fundamentally broken.

[xrobwx71]

 The only interest the free market has is making a profit; when there is no competition there is no incentive for businesses to respect consumers or offer reasonable prices. 

Part1: No ######.... That would be the exact reason I went into business in the form of opening a paint store. 

Part2: There is competition. I don't think it's unreasonable to charge me $150.00 a month for 105 Mbps internet, 260 channels, Phone service.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

Part1: No ####.... That would be the exact reason I went into business in the form of opening a paint store. 

Part2: There is competition. I don't think it's unreasonable to charge me $150.00 a month for 105 Mbps internet, 260 channels, Phone service.

No, there is at best a duopoly, at worst, a monopoly situation for 99% of US Internet connections. In order for their to be perfect competition (which is when the market is at its best) there has to be 5 or more players in the market and their products have to be perfect substitutes for each other (meaning the customer can switch between them without a whole lot of pain).

 

The US broadband market is limited by who has run actual cables by your house (usually limited to one or two companies if you're lucky...). You can't easily jump and switch as a substitute doesn't exist. This gives the provider an undue amount of power and you end up with what we have... Monopolistic pricing aimed at extracting the most money out of the market as possible.

[theyarecomingforyou]

Part2: There is competition. I don't think it's unreasonable to charge me $150.00 a month for 105 Mbps internet, 260 channels, Phone service.

One-third of US households have only one provider to choose from, with many more only having two. It is not even close to being a competitive market, which isn't helped by the FCC approving mega-mergers.

[KeeperOfThePizza]

Seriously? I pay $185.00 a month for your service.  $2200.00 for the year.

[notta]

Good news!! I can now drop my 150 mbps connection and leave Comcast. Verizon is now offering me 2 plans in my area .5 to 1mbps DSL or 1.1 to 15 Mbps DSL. Life is good. I love options!

[statm1]

No no, there's no illegal monopoly or competition in any of your cities Comcast with Time Warner because in a lot if not all of them you sign agreements with the municipality making you the sole provider of cable. So another cable company is prohibited from competing with you. Our area was supposed to get updated to 300+Mbit in 2015.. Hopefully Comcast won't derail that when it takes over!

[Anibal P]

No no, there's no illegal monopoly or competition in any of your cities Comcast with Time Warner because in a lot if not all of them you sign agreements with the municipality making you the sole provider of cable. So another cable company is prohibited from competing with you. Our area was supposed to get updated to 300+Mbit in 2015.. Hopefully Comcast won't derail that when it takes over!

 

 

Those agreements ARE illegal, government does not have the permission to create de facto monopolies, hence why in many states they have been forced to allow electric, gas. and water competition, and guess what, rates go down unless like here in CT the morons in the Gov capped high and low rates so there's actually little real competition

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

My ISP tried this. It backfired so badly, they removed it in less than a month. Now if ISP's had this from the start, the backlash might not have been so bad, but you can't go from "use as much data as you like", to "now you have x amount of data you can use". Poor marketing. Plain and simple.

[statm1]

Those agreements ARE illegal, government does not have the permission to create de facto monopolies, hence why in many states they have been forced to allow electric, gas. and water competition. . .

They are considered legal agreements though because there are other sources of tv/internet available, i.e. satellite, telecom, and in other areas fiber. At least when you stay in the context of a single area.

 

There is only one provider in most areas for the utilities so its a whole different story from the cable situation.

[Nashy]

Lol data caps and people are whinging.  This is the norm, it's really not an issue.