Bandwidth Keeps Getting Cheaper > The Bandwidth Cap Scam

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.

reply to 09129800
*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.

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.

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.

The problem is that they aren't just trying to make up for the lost fees from people ditching cable TV. They are trying to get that lost money back AND exponentially increase the cost of Internet access far beyond what Internet+TV used to be: ~$150/month.

Previously a 50 Mbps connection could push terabytes just fine before they brought the caps in. And it cost around $150 a month for that uncapped high speed connection + cable TV.

Now we're all supposed to be happy with paying thousands of dollars a month for the same amount of bandwidth we were allowed before for $100 a month?

I DON'T THINK SO BUDDY! It's one thing to double the price of your Internet access to recoup lost TV revenue, it's another thing entirely to multiply it by a factor of 30!

Bandwidth caps have severe implications on the quality of Internet content. We would never have 1080p and 4K YouTube videos if bandwidth caps were around at the start of the 2000s.

Now that they are being introduced in the 2010s Internet streaming of Super Hi-Vision/8K/Ultra High Definition TV will never be able to happen.

Even though we'll have the speed necessary to handle such high resolution video, we won't be allowed to transfer that high resolution video unless we want to be extorted out of thousands of dollars by our ISP.

reply to iansltx

reply to elefante72

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner.

reply to Ericthorn
You are close to the river. Is it flat where you live? If so, do you have a friend close to the city limits that has the 10/1 package? You could try high power 802.11 WiFi gear with directional antennas to see if you can get point-to-point link. If you can get a link that's faster than 10Mbps, you could pay them for a second cable modem. Maybe?

reply to 09129800
...and I would take Mediacom's tier structure, with 50M speeds and a 999GB cap for $100ish, over uncapped 3Mbit (or 5Mbit) service any day.

Unless you're streaming a live video feed 24/7, you won't only be able to use 1 Mbps on a Comcast connection without going over the cap. 'net traffic is bursty, online video aside (which only takes a few Mbps anyway, unless you're streaming 4K, which you shouldn't be unless your monitor is >1080p, which it probably isn't), and downloading or uploading a big file is a much better experience at 20 Mbps than 2 Mbps.

Never mind the fact that the price of using a Comcast 50M connection to its fullest potential (which they never would have allowed pre-cap either...it's a shared system and monopolizing 30% of the capacity of a node 24/7 would quickly make Comcast figure out a reason to boot you) is not $3000. It's $190, the price of a business-class connection. If you want to throw in the $300 install fee for no-contract service, fine. But even then the price is 75% more than the sticker price for 50M service (which I've transferred over 700GB on without paying extra or getting angry calls from Comcast), not a few thousand percent.

At least Comcast has reasonable business-class rates. Time Warner Cable...doesn't.

With taxes and fees Comcap's 50 Mbps business class is over $200 a month.

That is not reasonable at all when Google can roll out symmetrical 1 Gbps service with no caps for $70 a month. Even Verizon does better than that, offering uncapped 300 Mbps for $200 a month.

You can bet they won't be leaving business class uncapped forever either.

reply to brad
I know it's a blog but it gives the other half of the picture, nothing is black and white, give it a read.

»drpeering.net/AskDrPeering/blog/···rop.html

reply to 09129800

As long as Google doesn't form the Google police to come and arrest me for my disturbing activities on the Internet, I could give zero fucks whether or not there's some Google employee analyzing my traffic in order to subsidize symmetrical uncapped 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-home infrastructure.

Comcap could do the same thing and I wouldn't care either as long as they provided the same quality product.

People would be up in arms if Comcap tried monitoring peoples' traffic because they provide such a SHIT product.

reply to Ericthorn
30k? Sounds a little rural to me...

reply to 09129800
That's what YOU say, but their are alot more here and out in the real world a lot more worried about privacy then they are about saving a few buck on broadband if, as is most likely, google if they were intent on expanding,which is unknown, MIGHT instead subsidize not the full amount just enough to make it irresistable to many or most. which might be to offer googlefiber but match local ISP's (competition ?) pricing. Would you jump then? same price but NO privacy? Remember whatever they get is theirs in perpetuity and they do respond to court orders.

Look at how many freaked from google maps WiFi grab which to me seemed as legit as the pictures they take.

reply to jjeffeory

reply to Ericthorn
[BQUOTE=Ericthorn....If we lived outside the city limits, we could get a 10/1 package for about 75$.

[/BQUOTE
I curious if you know why the providers outside town won't serve those in the city.