 pflogBueller? Bueller?Premium,MVM
join:2001-09-01
El Dorado Hills, CA
kudos:3 | reply to serpterion
Re: [Caps] Data Download Cap BS So we could generalize and say for a household with N people for the various scenarios:
* Hulu: 1250/N shows
- For 4 people: 312.5 shows or 10 shows per day by all 4 household members
- this seems pretty unlikely. what household has time to watch 6-7 hour long shows EVERY day, let alone all 4 household members doing so?
* Netflix standard (2 hour movies): 185/N movies
- For 4 people: 46 movies each per month or ~11-12 movies per week for each person.
- This seems a bit unlikely (though certainly not impossible), too. That's a lot of movies to watch.
* Netflix medium (2 hour movies): 93/N movies
- For 4 people: 23 movies each per month or ~6 movies each per week
- That's still quite a bit, but not implausible I guess.
* Netflix HD (2 hour movies): 56/N movies
- For 4 people: 14 movies each per month or ~2 movies each per week
- This seems highly likely. Each person watching 1 movie every 2 days doesn't seem all that unlikely.
So while some scenarios seem farfetched, certainly with a lot of family members watching different things, it could add up quickly. I don't really have an issue with the 250GB cap, but I'm a family of 4 with 2 small kids so it's really only my wife and I watching netflix/hulu, so we don't get anywhere near the cap. But it's easy to see that a larger family could easily go over the cap with legitimate usage.
Let's just take a random scenario:
- 4 family members (2 teenagers)
- It's the summer months
- Mom and Dad both work
- The 2 teenagers stream music ~6 hours a day each
- The 2 teenagers each watch 1 HD movie each day
- The Mom/Dad watch two 1-hour hulu TV shows each day
Not counting any web browsing, email, etc.. this amounts to roughly:
- music streaming: ~ 1 GB/day (for both kids)
- HD movies: ~ 9 GB/day (for both kids' movies)
- Hulu shows: ~.4 GB/day (for 2 hulu shows)
That's a total of: 30*1 + 30*9 + .4*30 = 312 GB
Granted this is a pretty contrived scenario, but even if the kids aren't streaming music, it's still 282 GB.
I think Comcast should offer an add-on service where they pay additional cost for each 50 GB over 250 GB they want, and have the cost of each 50GB increase. For people that need a higher cap, they just pay a premium for additional cap space. Then they could do what other ISPs do and just throttle the connection to like 10 KB/s once they hit this cap, versus just disconnecting people. Then if they feel the pain, they can call comcast and ask to be put on the 300 G cap since their usage hit the 250 G wall. This would:
a. avoid punishing bandwidth intensive users by banning them from what could possibly be their only internet service
b. increase revenue for Comcast for customers requiring a higher cap
Pricing could go any number of possible ways, but it could just be a simple linear scale where users can pay for a higher cap in 50 GB (just an example) increments:
$60 - base service (250 G cap, $0.24 per GB)
$72 - 300 G cap
$84 - 350 G cap
...
So if you have a less expensive service that costs say $40, since the price per GB is less, the higher caps would also be proportionally less:
$40 - base service (250G cap, $0.16 per GB)
$48 - 300 G cap
$56 - 350 G cap
...
There are a ton of possibly ways to bill this, but using this linear approach, for a 500 G cap, it'd cost $120 which is exactly how much two separate services would cost combined. Comcast could either have the cost per GB increase with higher and higher caps or choose to slightly discount it for higher caps to encourage people to get the higher cap service instead of just buying two distinct connections. Also, a tiered cap approach like this would allow someone to go from the $60 plan with a 250G cap to the $56 slower tier with the higher 350 G or 400 G if they needed a higher cap and were willing to trade off raw bandwidth for the higher cap.
Anyway, I think there are certainly use cases which are hitting the cap, but I also recognize that the vast majority of users probably don't have issues with the cap. Rather than use my usage model to say "no one will every use 250 GB" or take the other side and say "I can use 1 TB easily with 'normal' usage", I think since it depends entirely on what the customer is doing, it only makes sense to allow people to get more cap space, as long as they are willing to pay for it. I don't know if this would be seen by comcast as cannibalizing their business class tiers, so the pricing structure would have to be tweaked and set to avoid too much overlap between higher cap residential connections and business class.
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"Women. Can't live with 'em, pass the beer nuts." -Norm |
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 JohnInSJPremium
join:2003-09-22
San Jose, CA
 ·PHONE POWER
 ·Comcast
| reply to clarknova156
said by clarknova156:Except 50 meg with Business class is $120 more a month so a little over $200 (my current bill for 50 meg is $79.95.
So I'm going to disagree with you there.
Business class Deluxe (50/10) is $189.95.
Residential unbundled non-promo 50/10 is 116.95
I make that an additional $74/mo. For that you get access to terabytes of usage, vs 250GB. Seems reasonable to me.
The problem here is people want terabytes of data, at rates that reflect 250GB of use.
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My place : »www.schettino.us |
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| reply to slick1ru23
in the Memphis market....
Residential Plans
==================
1.5/384 - Economy - 41.95
6/1 - Perf. Starter - 49.95
12/2 - Performance - 59.95
15/2 - Performance 6 month promo [new subs only] - 29.99 / 44.99 thereafter
16/2 - Blast - 69.95
105/10 - Extreme - 199.95
Business Plans
===================
12/2 - Starter - 59.95
22/5 - Premium - 99.95
50/10 - Deluxe - 189.95
100/10 - Deluxe 100 - 369.95
would you choose 12/2 from residential or 12/2 from business?
said by JohnInSJ:For that you get access to terabytes of usage, vs 250GB. Seems reasonable to me.
The problem here is people want terabytes of data, at rates that reflect 250GB of use.
like JohnInSJ said....seems reasonable...to me also... |
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 GooberPremium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL
kudos:5
 ·Dish Network
| reply to JohnInSJ
said by JohnInSJ:said by clarknova156:Except 50 meg with Business class is $120 more a month so a little over $200 (my current bill for 50 meg is $79.95.
So I'm going to disagree with you there.
Business class Deluxe (50/10) is $189.95. Residential unbundled non-promo 50/10 is 116.95 I make that an additional $74/mo. For that you get access to terabytes of usage, vs 250GB. Seems reasonable to me. The problem here is people want terabytes of data, at rates that reflect 250GB of use. It's really only an additional $74 if you ignore the bundling discount as you did. I have the home 50/10 and I about croaked when I priced the business service. At $110 more, it's not worth it. At least not to me, since I rarely get dangerously close to the caps (although it's happened a couple of times and will happen this month since I'm uploading a bunch of stuff to on-line storage). |
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JohnInSJPremium
join:2003-09-22
San Jose, CA Reviews:
·PHONE POWER
·Comcast
| said by Goober:It's really only an additional $74 if you ignore the bundling discount as you did.
I am comparing apples to apples. If you want to compare apples to pears, go ahead.
If you go with some OTHER provider to "get uncapped" then this is EXACTLY the same scenario you will face, cost wise.
What's the point of comparing a promo or discount rate on residential to the flat, fixed, contract rate on business class?
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My place : »www.schettino.us |
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| Some providers have reasonable uncapped service.
Verizon, Cablevision, Sonic.net, and Cox all offer residential uncapped connections for a reasonable price. I'm sure I am missing a few.
( COX only offers the 50+ package uncapped in areas competing with fiber, or at least in LUS territory ) |
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GooberPremium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL
kudos:5 Reviews:
·Dish Network
| reply to JohnInSJ
Because instead of working with theoreticals, I'm trying to work with reality. And the reality is that most people have bundled services and therefore a discount on their internet.
But hey, you go right ahead and do unrealistic comparisons. Whatever it takes to support your position I suppose . . . |
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| reply to slick1ru23
There are a lot more "legitimate" uses for massively high bandwidth than some people on here seem to realize. Say you download that 5 MB mp3 from Amazon/iTunes, then a backup program re-uploads it to your cloud storage, then 2 other computers in the house download it to their linked folders. So one 5 MB file has become 20 MB total. Granted, I only download a few mp3s a month, but all my files are backed up like that.
Some other scenarios that come up for me:
-my Android phone and tablet do nightly Titanium backups, about 1-2 GB each, and then upload those backups to the cloud. The NAS then downloads that data for a local backup. That's say conservatively 1 GB x 2 devices x 2 transfers (upload + download) x 30 days = 120 GB. And that's with only 1 GB per device. Could I backup less frequently? Sure, but that's not the point.
-I release podcasts once a week. That means maybe 500-750 MB weekly of raw audio files, which like everything else, gets uploaded to the cloud and downloaded to my other computers for availability.
-*insert typical "I use Netflix HD/Zediva/Vudu" for a hundred or two GB a month" rant here, on this forum that level of usage shouldn't be unjustifiable*
-I play a lot of online games, as does the other person in my family. Download 2-3 games a month for 2-15 GB apiece, that adds up.
And let's not forget that a lot of these activities can happen simultaneously! It is not uncommon for us to be both playing a game or something else online (YouTube, whatever), and say one of us is streaming music from Amazon (which streams at 320 kbps for most music), the other one is streaming Netflix HD, backups are happening in the background on one computer or another.
Here's a picture of my recent usage. I got my call this morning from the Comcast CSA. What am I gonna do? Well, tomorrow I'm calling business class sales, and will see what all that entails, though I'm fairly certain I know what I need to know.
Thing is, could I reduce my usage to under 250 GB? Ennnnh, maybe (the April usage is slanted because that was a partial month). I could do less frequent backups, reduce the quality of streamed movies, use Redbox/Netflix by mail, and play fewer online games. But I don't want to. I want to use the internet as freely as I want, and I am willing to pay for it. I understand the whole "most customers only use 5-10 GB a month" line from Comcast, and I think that those customers are one of the biggest hiderances from getting higher caps (oh, to live in Canada where that one ISP started offering certain unlimited cap tiers...). I even used to work for Comcast for a couple years (just phone IP support, nothing exciting) and remember all the customers who called in and you could tell never did anything but check email, surf Yahoo news, and look at pictures from relatives. Those people need to be convinced to use more internet. Make Netflix easier to use, make renting online movies (Vudu, Amazon VOD, etc) easier and built-in to more devices.
Anyway, sorry for the rant. Just signed up, but had to get this off my chest. There are legitimate uses for high bandwidth. I don't torrent and I don't use Limewire or whatnot, yet I easily surpass their cap most months. However, I understand that to do that, I may have to pay. Thus why I'm calling business class in the morning.
(and for the love of all that is digital, Comcast please give me D3 access here! I am tired of my 8/2 crap) |
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| reply to Goober
said by Goober: And the reality is that most people have bundled services and therefore a discount on their internet.
But hey, you go right ahead and do unrealistic comparisons. Whatever it takes to support your position I suppose . . .
I don't have bundled services so don't count me into your "most people".
REALITY is, some people have bundles, some don't. period. |
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GooberPremium
join:2000-12-17
Naperville, IL
kudos:5 Reviews:
·Dish Network
| I'm not sure if you understand written English very well, but "most" doesn't mean all. Most means a majority of subscribers in this case. It's sweet of you to so gallantly and vehemently defend John's honor, but the fact remains that over 50% of cable subscribers are on bundled services. In 2006, Cox bundlers were 57% of total subscribers. That counts as most.
The fact that you--one person--does not bundle, is absolutely immaterial.
REALITY is that most people have bundled services. Oh, but I've already said that. |
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AVonGaussPremium
join:2007-11-01
Boynton Beach, FL | reply to anglaispod
said by anglaispod:Anyway, sorry for the rant. Just signed up, but had to get this off my chest. There are legitimate uses for high bandwidth. I don't torrent and I don't use Limewire or whatnot, yet I easily surpass their cap most months. However, I understand that to do that, I may have to pay. Thus why I'm calling business class in the morning. Alright, I'll bite...  It's the 8th of the month, 546 GB roughly already used, would you like to give us a real life example and tell us how you've been using your connection this month? |
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JohnInSJPremium
join:2003-09-22
San Jose, CA Reviews:
·PHONE POWER
·Comcast
| reply to Goober
said by Goober:Because instead of working with theoreticals, I'm trying to work with reality. And the reality is that most people have bundled services and therefore a discount on their internet.
But hey, you go right ahead and do unrealistic comparisons. Whatever it takes to support your position I suppose . . .
The point is, you're comparing Business class with any OTHER non-comcast provider.
You might as well be accurate in the cost impact. In either case you lose the bundle.
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My place : »www.schettino.us |
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1 edit | said by JohnInSJ:said by Goober:Because instead of working with theoreticals, I'm trying to work with reality. And the reality is that most people have bundled services and therefore a discount on their internet.
But hey, you go right ahead and do unrealistic comparisons. Whatever it takes to support your position I suppose . . .
The point is, you're comparing Business class with any OTHER non-comcast provider. You might as well be accurate in the cost impact. In either case you lose the bundle. here he goes again....We're talking only about Comcast here and he cites NON-Comcast providers...
said by Goober: In 2006, Cox bundlers were 57% of total subscribers. That counts as most.
The fact that you--one person--does not bundle, is absolutely immaterial.
REALITY is that most people have bundled services. Oh, but I've already said that.
You keep on citing NON-Comcast providers as it they had the same statistics of subscribers with bundled services from Comcast.
They may be cable but NOT Comcast therefore, it's not APPLES TO APPLES. |
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JohnInSJPremium
join:2003-09-22
San Jose, CA Reviews:
·PHONE POWER
·Comcast
| said by medbuyer:said by JohnInSJ:said by Goober:Because instead of working with theoreticals, I'm trying to work with reality. And the reality is that most people have bundled services and therefore a discount on their internet.
But hey, you go right ahead and do unrealistic comparisons. Whatever it takes to support your position I suppose . . .
The point is, you're comparing Business class with any OTHER non-comcast provider. You might as well be accurate in the cost impact. In either case you lose the bundle. here he goes again....We're talking only about Comcast here and he cites NON-Comcast providers... Yes, because we're talking about "what are your options to leave Comcast and avoid the cap..." Which implies that you'll first leave comcast for your internet. Which will end your bundle. So, then you compare prices... unbundled.
This really isn't a hard concept.
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My place : »www.schettino.us |
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| The whole concept of a cap is counter-intuitive when it comes to the future of the Internet. In 10 years we have gone from mostly dial-up, to DSL, to cable and fiber. We now stream tons of content if we want to. It's only going to get bigger.
If providers have bandwidth problems and need to institute a cap then they are really shooting themselves in the foot. Yes, this is 2011, but by 2015 there will be multiple providers and wireless providing service easily at 20Mb/s. Time for the wire based companies and look toward the future. If you make the speed available, people will develop products and applications to use it - and that means more bandwidth. They need to get used to that.
I suggest that wired providers minimally add fees for bandwidth usage - i.e. - $xx up to 250Gb per months - then $5 or $10 for another 250Gb after that. It will pay for the infrastructure to increase bandwidth and they will not have lots of angry customers. Face it, you watch Netflix a lot and you have to ration your data usage. That is plain wrong, and Netflix-type streaming is the tip of the iceberg. This reminds me of water rationing we have here in California. Much of it is manufactured rationing and not a real lack of resource. With bandwidth if you charge more you can provide more. When you will eventually have a choice of Sprint, AT&T, or Verizon - you will have lots of price and volume wars. That is the future.
Wireless has competition, cable generally does not - at least until wireless starts taking off with 4G. Then Comcast will regret its cap policy. Wireless will wipe it off the map. We all thought 10 years ago that modems and telco lines were the controlling factor. Now, that is not true. They need to wake up and see the writing on the wall - or they will be broke like all the phone companies. Things do change that fast. |
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 NOCManMacChatterPremium
join:2004-09-30
Colorado Springs, CO | reply to slick1ru23
My grandparents have the middle service and get a 250GB Cap, I pay for the 30/5 package, and I get 250GB a month.
That's what irks me.
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Mac Chatter www.MacChatter.com |
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| said by NOCMan:My grandparents have the middle service and get a 250GB Cap, I pay for the 30/5 package, and I get 250GB a month.
That's what irks me.
Same here.
I wouldn't be so vocal if the cap was 400 GB's or more for higher tiers of service.
The 105 tier should be at least 1 TB. |
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JohnInSJPremium
join:2003-09-22
San Jose, CA Reviews:
·PHONE POWER
·Comcast
| reply to jonquiljo5
said by jonquiljo5:I suggest that wired providers minimally add fees for bandwidth usage - i.e. - $xx up to 250Gb per months - then $5 or $10 for another 250Gb after that.
Metered billing... you'll love it. This is exactly what AT&T did for wireless data (order of magnitude smaller units, of course) and people screamed bloody murder.
I'm in complete agreement, however. There should be a way, on residential, to simply pay more for more data consumption. The fact that you cant means it really isn't a problem for the vast majority of users. Like 3-4 nines worth. Otherwise it would represent a significant revenue stream Comcast was missing... and honestly, does that sound like Comcast?
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My place : »www.schettino.us |
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| said by JohnInSJ:Otherwise it would represent a significant revenue stream Comcast was missing... and honestly, does that sound like Comcast?
I'm not so sure about that. Verizon Wireless is about to start "metered billing" on all wireless data services. I think they are finding all the iPhone users are using a ton of bandwidth and they want to tap into that as a revenue stream. The problem is how to deal with it retroactively. For instance, I just got (Verizon) iPhones for my wife and myself and we got unlimited data (in it's apparent final days). I don't think they can do much about us until our contract runs out.
Personally I suspect Comcast has hordes of people working on a way to enact enforceable metering of accounts. They will have to be a whole lot more precise than their stupid bandwidth meter to get regulatory approval to use it for actual billing.
But face it - when wireless gets good enough (4G or better) to connect and provide good bandwidth - the cable and copper companies are going to scramble to compete. They will ultimately lose, because in most areas of the country - there is lots of competition with wireless providers. They just don't have the speed or the infrastructure yet. When they do .. well, lets say I wouldn't go out buying Comcast stock as a long-term investment.
These companies get big and bulky and screw up. Data caps are rapidly becoming a "sticking point" with lots of consumers. It's just a matter of time before data caps come back to bit these people on their butts. If there is such a minority of users going over caps, then why do they make such a big deal about it? |
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JohnInSJPremium
join:2003-09-22
San Jose, CA Reviews:
·PHONE POWER
·Comcast
| said by jonquiljo5:said by JohnInSJ:Otherwise it would represent a significant revenue stream Comcast was missing... and honestly, does that sound like Comcast?
I'm not so sure about that. Verizon Wireless is about to start "metered billing" on all wireless data services. Note... METERED BILLING is what we're talking about. Comcast DOES NOT have metered billing, they have a hard cap.
If there was money to be made by adding metered billing, they'd add it.
Instead, they just want to have the option to choke off people if they're outliers.
In other words, you agree with me that Comcast would have introduced metered billing by now, if there was money in it.
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My place : »www.schettino.us |
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