 gatorkramNeed for SpeedPremium
join:2002-07-22
Winterville, NC
kudos:2 | Wouldn't it be something if.... we had 10-15 different local providers to choose from...
I wonder if it would make any difference.
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What the heck is a GatorKram? »www.gatorkram.com |
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 jmn1207Premium
join:2000-07-19
Ashburn, VA
kudos:1 | Comcast Speed Increases Comcast will point to the recent speed increases and claim that they are doing the customer a favor, and when my rate increases inevitably come, they will use this as justification, yet it's nothing for them to bump my speeds.
They can charge more for their service while saving money on the back end. I think there are a lot of folks out there that would rather keep the speeds they have, but pay fewer dollars for it. I know, not gonna happen. |
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| The Bandwidth Cap Scam All I'm seeing is that it keeps getting cheaper and cheaper for ISPs to provide massive amounts of bandwidth yet for the end consumer the price of bandwidth seems to be doing the complete opposite of that chart.
Somebody's getting duped into overpaying for bandwidth here... and it's not the ISPs. |
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 bbeesleyVIP
join:2003-08-07
Richardson, TX
kudos:5 | Only part of the network costs IP transit costs are only a small portion of the total cost of delivering service to a group of subscribers and saying these have gone down is akin to saying "gas prices are cheaper so the cost of a car is going down"
bandwidth consumption continues to necessitate investment in Long-Haul and Metro network capacity at rate that appears to be accelerating (100G interfaces are not cheap) and increasing speeds to subscribers requires investment in local delivery infrastructure
It could be argued that revenues are increasing and this should be included as well
A study on bandwidth costs really needs to include all the above to get a clear picture of whether it is getting cheaper or more expensive to run these networks |
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Reviews:
 ·Time Warner Cable
 ·Verizon FiOS
 ·voip.ms
| reply to 09129800
Re: The Bandwidth Cap Scam If that weren't for a comedic curtain call, a vast majority of the heavy bandwidth streaming is done IN NETWORK via CDN so there are ZERO transit charges. In addition with peering agreements these costs may even be lower.
They were really getting killed w/ P2P because they were really having to pay some $$$, but now with P2P being replaced by In net CDN, they are loving life, and on top of that they can charge Netflix and the like for in network access in their datacenters. A true double dip.
Of course the transit exchange are only going to be at major hubs at the lowest cost. |
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| reply to bbeesley
Re: Only part of the network costs The costs you mentioned are all one time, fixed costs. How do they justify caps and overage fees? |
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 swintecPremium,VIP
join:2003-12-19
Alfred, ME
kudos:4
 ·RapidVPS
 ·Sprint Mobile Br..
·VoicePulse
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to bbeesley
No kidding. Also, when was the last time taxes, permits, running a call center, electricity, vehicle fleets, etc etc and then supporting employees via health insurance and benefits have gone down? There is far more costs to being a residential ISP than just bandwidth.
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Usenet Block Accounts | Unlimited Accounts |
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Reviews:
·Time Warner Cable
·Verizon FiOS
·voip.ms
| reply to bbeesley
Well if you look at Comcast latest quarter (the biggest) their capex went DOWN 5% YOY and their free cash flow went up in cable 22%. In addition Capex as a portion of their revenue went DOWN from 12.2 to 11.1% of revenue. And this is during a MAJOR upgrade to docsis 3. ROC (Return of Capital) increased 38% from last year.
So there is you analysis. HSI is a cash cow, and that is even with the 7% uplift in programming costs.
Alll the engines are firing and the cash is rolling in, that's why they need to add caps (I mean overage charges) so they don't go bankrupt because the $3.5b in free cash they just generated just on cable in the last 90 days will make it hard to get by. |
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 BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | reply to bbeesley
said by bbeesley:IP transit costs are only a small portion of the total cost of delivering service to a group of subscribers and saying these have gone down is akin to saying "gas prices are cheaper so the cost of a car is going down"
bandwidth consumption continues to necessitate investment in Long-Haul and Metro network capacity at rate that appears to be accelerating (100G interfaces are not cheap) and increasing speeds to subscribers requires investment in local delivery infrastructure
It could be argued that revenues are increasing and this should be included as well
A study on bandwidth costs really needs to include all the above to get a clear picture of whether it is getting cheaper or more expensive to run these networks
Those cost are already paid by the customer. The fact is Comcast bandwidth costs are at least 1/3 of what they were when they started this cap in 2008 yet only increased the cap by 20%. |
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| reply to swintec
said by swintec:No kidding. Also, when was the last time taxes, permits, running a call center, electricity, vehicle fleets, etc etc and then supporting employees via health insurance and benefits have gone down? There is far more costs to being a residential ISP than just bandwidth.
This is a strawman. What do the costs you cite have to do with caps and overages? Those are all requirements of any business, and the largest ones benefit the most from economies of scale. |
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bdnhsv
join:2012-01-20
Huntsville, AL | reply to swintec
That's all true swin. There is definitely inflation and there is incremental investment needed from time to time. I'd also suggest you look at the P&L of 2 or 3 of these large ISP's. They are seeing revenue flatten in various categories (MSO's are seeing residential video flatten or decline, while LEC's are seeing their residential landline revenue do the same). So they feel the pressure to try and compensate for that somewhere, and the big revenue growth areas for them are HSI and in the case of the MSO's commercial services. There's going to be some more changes in the business models these companies use, and it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. |
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 somms
join:2003-07-28
Salt Lake City, UT | reply to gatorkram
Re: Wouldn't it be something if.... said by gatorkram:we had 10-15 different local providers to choose from...
I wonder if it would make any difference.
»www.utopianet.org/residential
I have a choice of a half-dozen different residential ISPs with my municiple FTTH. I would say it does make a difference!  |
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1 edit | Do any of those Utah providers have no bandwidth caps?
XMission certainly has caps.
The speeds and pricing of UTOPIA ISPs are put to shame by Google Fiber.
I'll take Kansas's tornadoes over Utah's Mormons any day. |
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somms
join:2003-07-28
Salt Lake City, UT
1 edit | said by 09129800:Do any of those Utah providers have no bandwidth caps?
XMission certainly has caps.
The speeds and pricing of UTOPIA ISPs are put to shame by Google Fiber.
I'll take Kansas's tornadoes over Utah's Mormons any day.
»Re: The greedy incumbents should be worried....
Google 1Gbps fiber will rule when it gets installed in the future but I'll take the FTTH I have right now over either Comcast/Xfinity or Qwest/Century Link or whatever the greedy incumbents have relabeled themselves as this financial quarter!  |
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| Well, if you're stuck with Comcap and CenturyStink, I don't blame you for sticking with UTOPIA. That cable company and that telco both have bandwidth caps now and as such they are useless.
Still, I'd take the uncapped cable DOCSIS 3.0 offering from Time Warner over capped UTOPIA. |
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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
 ·Verizon Online DSL
·RoadRunner Cable
·Comcast
| reply to 09129800
Re: The Bandwidth Cap Scam *shrugs* Some Comcast areas can get 50/10 for under $80. It's not great, but it's not the worst thing either.
You know what's bad? Some places can't get more than 3 Mbps for less than $40, or more than 3 Mbps at all unless they want highly-capped ViaSat exede. |
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| This is false. All of Comcap's packages are really only around 1 Mbps, because that is the maximum average speed you can use them at in a month.
With Comcap's new Internet Overcharging bandwidth capping scam in place, if you actually use that 50 Mbps Comcap plan to its full potential you will be looking at a monthly bill of over $3,000.
50 Mbps can do 16 terabytes of traffic in a month. $10 per 50 GB of data used is obscene.
I would take uncapped 3 Mbps over Comcap's capped garbage any day. |
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 LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | reply to bbeesley
Re: Only part of the network costs said by bbeesley:IP transit costs are only a small portion of the total cost of delivering service to a group of subscribers and saying these have gone down is akin to saying "gas prices are cheaper so the cost of a car is going down"
bandwidth consumption continues to necessitate investment in Long-Haul and Metro network capacity at rate that appears to be accelerating (100G interfaces are not cheap) and increasing speeds to subscribers requires investment in local delivery infrastructure
It could be argued that revenues are increasing and this should be included as well
A study on bandwidth costs really needs to include all the above to get a clear picture of whether it is getting cheaper or more expensive to run these networks
+1
People can keep posting these news items about backbone bandwidth prices dropping. But they ALWAYS neglect to mention that isn't where the majority of the costs are. These backbone costs could drop to ZERO and it wouldn't appreciably change the cost of delivering broadband to the home.
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»www.mittromney.com/s/repeal-and-···bamacare
»www.mittromney.com/issues/health-care |
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LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | reply to sonicmerlin
said by sonicmerlin:The costs you mentioned are all one time, fixed costs. How do they justify caps and overage fees?
»Re: Only part of the network costs
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»www.mittromney.com/s/repeal-and-···bamacare
»www.mittromney.com/issues/health-care |
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Reviews:
·Time Warner Cable
·Verizon FiOS
·voip.ms
| reply to 09129800
Re: The Bandwidth Cap Scam That may be a hasty decision. 3 Mbps can barely get you 1 HD stream. Consumption models for any service are not priced to 100% of theoretical usage. I would surmise if you needed to download 16TB that you are probably running a business and need another tier.
Keep in mind there are no caps because they will happily sell you units of 50GB for $10. These are just surcharges.
The point I have made is that allowances (not caps) are set by actuaries, and have no real connection to the infrastructure because there is no infrastructure problem. It is meant for revenue enhancement and to keep video streaming from usurping the ever rising cable cost. And you have sports to thank for that.
This is totally the behavior of a monopoly. Raise prices arbitrarily for a falling price commodity.
You should be angry, however they know you need internet and until somebody breaks these guys up, it is going to get much more expensive to make up for the content fees.
100% of this problem is the content cost. This is driving all of the rest of the bad behavior. |
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