"It's time the FCC take a fresh look at how data caps impact consumers and competition."
- that would require competition to actually exist in the US
- that would require competition to actually exist in the US
The FCC wants to know why data caps are still a thing in 2023
- Thread starter Jimmy2x
- Start date
Sorry to say this, but it is indeed very naive. Data caps are just pure greed at this point. It has been proven time and time again.
edit: to be more specific, data caps as they are now. these just don't reflect modern day internet usage, nor do they reflect the network's capability.
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hahahanoobs
Posts: 5,584 +3,372
The US def gets screwed on caps. My first ISP was one of the big 3 in Canada (Rogers) and they had caps that they didn't enforce. I went way over during my torrent days. This was 15 years ago. For the last 10 years I've been on one of the smaller ISP's using infrastructure of a big 3 with NO cap. No throttling ever.
Americans need to be louder on this issue. Internet is incredibly important as you know.
Americans need to be louder on this issue. Internet is incredibly important as you know.
PEnnn
Posts: 1,285 +1,854
Why?? Because it's a Goldmine!! Remember when the same cretins were charging for ....text messages!!
Ah yes, the center of the "free market system" has amazing monopolies who can charge for anything, courtesy of the same FCC!!
And there are gullible people who don't shop around willingly and pay for it. And then you have industry harlots like that imbecile Ajit Pai who ran this FCC charade a couple of years ago!
I pay T-mobile $45 and EVERTHING is unlimited, plus it includes free Netxflix and Paramount for the duration of the contract.
A few counties north of me (the teclos are Spectrum and Frontier) offer unlimited EVERYTHING for $29 for 2 lines! And no contract either.
Ah yes, the center of the "free market system" has amazing monopolies who can charge for anything, courtesy of the same FCC!!
And there are gullible people who don't shop around willingly and pay for it. And then you have industry harlots like that imbecile Ajit Pai who ran this FCC charade a couple of years ago!
I pay T-mobile $45 and EVERTHING is unlimited, plus it includes free Netxflix and Paramount for the duration of the contract.
A few counties north of me (the teclos are Spectrum and Frontier) offer unlimited EVERYTHING for $29 for 2 lines! And no contract either.
I've got true competition in my area. Spectrum offering cable, Frontier offering FTTH, at least one other player offering FTTH (my choice after dropping Spectrum because of no contracts and no data caps. Frontier wants a contract for their FTTH - I've even finally dropped POTS from Fontier because of sh!t service for a much better VOIP service)."It's time the FCC take a fresh look at how data caps impact consumers and competition."
- that would require competition to actually exist in the US
A couple of years ago the only viable choice for me was Spectrum - though I dropped them for a while to go with a 4G MVNO that was, arguably, better than Spectrum.
With real competition in my area, Spectrum (scum bags that they are) has been forced to offer much higher speeds at no extra cost. Amazingly enough, two days after I dropped Spectrum for the small FTTH provider (which Spectrum tried to scare me into keeping them by saying "you have to watch out for providers - they require contracts" when I knew damn well that there was NO CONTRACT with my new provider) I got a letter in the mail from Spectrum saying "we're doubling your speed at no extra cost". I laughed because I had five times the speed at LESS cost.
The thing is, there are places in the US that have exacerbated the situation by passing laws that say that municipalities cannot offer broadband. https://www.techspot.com/news/68941-residents-rural-chattanooga-almost-had-10-gbps-internet.html As I see it, its only political dolts like this that stand in the way of competition, and I am sure there are other anti-competitive laws on the books, too, furthered by the party of Big Business.
Fortunately, my state is not controlled by the red clowns that say that they want government out of our lives yet feel no shame at wanting it everywhere including our bedrooms and maternity wards.
Mark Fuller
Posts: 735 +156
Just like paying for unwanted channels in cable and satellite lineups, its them having the controls and making us pay for whatever they the want us to have just so they can make money. FCC listen, this is not a government of the people and for the people, its for whoever is in control of the technology to get what they want.
I disagree.
Back in the day, when voice mail first came to POTS service, they wanted to charge extra for extra message storage. Yet another cash grab for capacity they already had in place.
If you think that companies are not out to maximize their profits by nickle and dimeing everyone, think again.
I'm off Spectrum because of their customer service. When they slammed my elderly parent onto their phone service and I called to complain about it, the representative had the gall to ask me if I wanted to buy even more service after I was complaining about their service FFS. Then when I called her out on it, she had the gall to say "can't blame us for trying." Spectrum, and others notable for customer service, are only out to line their pockets, give customer service and expect their customers to love it.
Yeah, that's what they all say.
BS - I've got a 500Mbps symmetric fiber line for $50/mo. There have been no price increases, and there is no data cap.
BS. Maybe they have the right to control their networks, but placing a limit on everyone for a few bad actors is just pure BS - and is, whether you believe it or not, an excuse to rake in the cash.
Back in the day, when voice mail first came to POTS service, they wanted to charge extra for extra message storage. Yet another cash grab for capacity they already had in place.
If you think that companies are not out to maximize their profits by nickle and dimeing everyone, think again.
I'm off Spectrum because of their
customer service. When they slammed my elderly parent onto their phone service and I called to complain about it, the representative had the gall to ask me if I wanted to buy even more service after I was complaining about their service FFS. Then when I called her out on it, she had the gall to say "can't blame us for trying." Spectrum, and others notable for customer service, are only out to line their pockets, give customer service and expect their customers to love it. Mark Fuller
Posts: 735 +156
I am sure according to the strictest application of accounting principles, they could make the reforms and still make a decent profit from their business enterprise. Thing about it is, they take what they make and spend it on Hollywood soirees, *****houses and casinos to satisfy their lavish lifestyles and then they need some more. Meanwhile the rest of the world has to struggle just to get by. It's all about greed.
I would like to know why they are allowed to treat my information like their own and then sell that to 3rd parties including the government. That's a much more important issue than data caps.
Even if they aren't, they been caught doing it multiple times. It won't stop anytime soon
tipstir
Posts: 2,873 +206
They need to go after Comcast/Xfinity with they're 1.2TB which is awful for them to impose on certain states. I myself had peaked over the 1.4TB was told first time was free. I do a lot uploading can exceed that if I do 4K to YouTube. I have to pay additional $30 a month which they just raised to $33 (junk fees) I hope that FCC can force them to drop data caps on both ISP and CSP services. Crazy..
DEMinSoCal
Posts: 18 +21
That's an unfair response. In most markets (cable), there most definitely IS a huge upcharge for a DEDICATED circuit. You may have symmetric fiber, but is it a DEDICATED FIBER line? If so, you're lucky, The problem elsewhere is, there either is little to no competition or no decent service.
San Diego, for example, is practically a monopoly on internet service. The county is divided by a highway that (for the most part) is serviced by one cable provider on the north (Spectrum) and a different cable provider south (COX). Rarely are the two available to choose from. COX is a complete ripoff ($170/mo for unlimited Gigablast) whereas Spectrum is something like $99 unlimited (or less). To make matters worse, COX limits the UP speed to 10Mbps on all plans except Gigablast. Yes, 10 UP. On Gigablast, I'm "blessed" to have 35.
I'd love some regulation because these ISP's just take, take, take and keep raising prices and we have YET to get fiber from COX (despite the bright orange lines having been put in the street last year).
hwertz
Posts: 644 +343
Luckily, where my parents live in New Orleans, they were able to order a Verizon 5G Home Internet box (they're near the edge of the service area so they are getting about 80/20 service or so, but NO CAP). Lucky for them, because their only two wired choices BOTH have caps! They can get Comcast with plenty of speed but a "Comcastic" 1.25TB data cap, or AT&T.. 18mbps DSL (not sure what the upstream speed is), with a 750GB data cap. Gross!
1.25TB seems like it "could" be enough, but my parents now stream baseball games almost daily through MLB.tv since Cardinals games are not available on cable or dish anywhere as far as I know; and my sister, her husband, and 2 kids somehow manage to suck through 5-10GB an hour on their Ipads, and they're living down there too.
I think AT&T's cap is particularly egregious... in areas where they run fiber in New Orleans, it's $50 a month for 1000/1000 service with no cap... but if they decide your neighborhood is not worth it, the SAME $50 for whatever DSL speed WITH the 750GB cap. I mean, OK, the speed is the speed.. but the cap, what a kick in the nuts to the customers in those neighborhoods!
1.25TB seems like it "could" be enough, but my parents now stream baseball games almost daily through MLB.tv since Cardinals games are not available on cable or dish anywhere as far as I know; and my sister, her husband, and 2 kids somehow manage to suck through 5-10GB an hour on their Ipads, and they're living down there too.
I think AT&T's cap is particularly egregious... in areas where they run fiber in New Orleans, it's $50 a month for 1000/1000 service with no cap... but if they decide your neighborhood is not worth it, the SAME $50 for whatever DSL speed WITH the 750GB cap. I mean, OK, the speed is the speed.. but the cap, what a kick in the nuts to the customers in those neighborhoods!
someOtherGuy
Posts: 129 +88
That's nice, but in my area the best AT&T has to offer is Internet 100 over DSL (100/20) for $55/mo on a contract ($70/mo otherwise) against Xfinity's 400/25 for $50/mo on a contract+promo first year ($92/mo otherwise). Of course, AT&T's 100/20 is dedicated speed (assuming that you have a good pair) and Xfinity's 400/25 is a best effort situation with their data cap.
I'm not arguing that they're not making "more" money with this, I'm just saying that it's not because of greed. Maybe you just need to try and manage a shared resource and come back with your findings. You could also try the theory route with some online course; last time I checked the trick were some probabilities and assumptions: you overcommit your network 20% up to 80%, depending on the network. It has rain a lot since I heard that, maybe there are new theories out there.
Yes, that's an added value service. Not sure why you assume that you should get "more stuff" for less money (or for no money). The question is not how much it costs them, it's how much the people in X area are willing to pay. If that willingness minus the cost leaves some room for gains then the provider might be interested in providing such service (including the hidden costs, like legal exposure with the associated budget). That's market economy 101 right there, and the only incentive to bring prices down is open competition.
Again, like I already explained, AT&T vs Spectrum/Comcast is just a duopoly (and 5G is a joke), that's why is really hard to find someone actually "happy" with the state of the Internet service and they're able to provide sub-par service and abusive terms without too much fears. (btw, AT&T is the poster child of a huge bureaucratic beast, unless you like that environment I hope you never have to deal with them on the phone or otherwise)
And since you brought a good example to the discussion with the POTS service, even when the last mile was a dedicated resource (you had a pair from the central to your place) after that it was a shared resource (trunks here and there). Do you remember what was the effect of such configuration? Didn't you ever hit an "unable to communicate" situation (maybe on new year's or mother's day)? That was basically the pattern there: first come first server, and after X users (capacity) just deny service to everyone else (no time caps there, ever, right?).
hwertz
Posts: 644 +343
I'd say it's due to greed. Throttle cap, or "deprioritizaton" as Verizon etc. now do on some cell phone plans? That's network management. Cap with cash overages? That's greed.
Even satellite internet has changed to using throttle caps instead of cash overages, so I think cable and DSL providers could manage this if it was really not about greed. (I agree with you, BTW, on the point that SOME kind of network management is reasonable -- having someone pay like $50 and then just peg out that internet connection* 24/7 is not fair to the company or other customers on that segment of the network.)
*Well if they had like a 1mbps DSL line or something it might be pegged out for longer lengths of the time, but you know what I mean, pegging out a 100mbps or 1gbps line or the like.
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someOtherGuy
Posts: 129 +88
Can you shed some light on how DOCSIS networks are planned by Comcast/Spectrum/Cox or are you assuming that "the technology exists"? There's also the good 'ol dichotomy: speed vs capacity.
- If you keep the speeds "low" you can service more clients with the same infrastructure, since you're able to split the bandwidth into smaller pieces (this is a time division multiplexed network, afaik)
- You might want to increase those speeds though, we'll want to advertise those multigig speeds to appear competitive and edgy BUT you're then limiting the amount of users that you can split your service on, unless you keep splitting it like crazy and somehow "encourage" your users to "not abuse the available speed", aka data caps (you get multigig speed but try to use it sparingly, or else...).
When this is not done "right" (including the caps abuse) then you get a crappy service, sometimes 1/10 of your contracted speed.
This is painfully obvious in GSM, where the caps are really low (for "regular Internet" standards) and is the same reasoning: LTE, 5G, more speed! and even more clients! something has to give (usually your cap). If you think that you have "unlimited data" on your "basic unlimited" plan, you might want to read the fine print again: last time I checked T-mobile had a throttling ladder (first to be throttled would be the basic plan, then the mid plan, then the premium) and AT&T has "traffic classification" (you get nGB of "high speed data" then "unlimited" regular data). Not sure about Verizon's idea, but it's probably safe to assume it's something along those lines.
hwertz
Posts: 644 +343
Spot on. Verizon gives you a certain amount of "premium data" (not deprioritized), then it's deprioritized after that; and for hotspot a certain amount full speed than throttled to 600kbps after that. For instance the plan I'm on now has 22GB premium data and 15GB full-speed hotspot.
Surprisingly, the 5G Home Internet plan my parents is on has no caps whatsoever though -- they seem to be picking out neighborhoods where they only have a choice of providers with caps to roll out their cap-free service, good way to scoop up plenty of customers.
someOtherGuy
Posts: 129 +88
You can "potentially" buy dedicated services, like DSL or FTTH. Some networks, like CTV and GSM are shared networks, by design. If you implement an Internet service over a shared network it will be exposed to the same problems. Having the speed commitment would be a nice thing to have, for sure, since you can plan ahead of time how to split the time or the frequency to accommodate X amount of clients, and those alone. The problem that I see with such solution would be to force EVERYONE on certain area to commit to this, forever, since you completely remove the current flexibility to add and remove clients (there's a plan from the get go, remember?). If you allow people to drop, then you would be paying higher prices, which is what the ISP would use to cover the potentially "wasted/unused" capacity.
You could make this thing something periodic: every year the plan would be revisited and the clients would have to commit for the next year, which would allow for upgrades and op-outs at that specific point, which might be a good solution for many people. This sounds like a lot of work, but maybe something like a HOA can make a deal like this work.
Personally I think the best course of action would be to make the Internet service a utility, and manage it like one (using the local government, city or county) which could then subcontract companies to maintain the infrastructure. Creating whole departments inside the government for this, which is usually the default response, would probably be a subpar result, though.
Your data cap question is EXACTLY why I usually ignore speed upgrades: the thing that I hear when they advertise those higher speeds is "now you can hit your data limit faster!"
Data caps for wireless data is to reduce signal noise and dropping everyones connection in an area. This does not happen for wired data. When sending data over a fiberoptic cable(whether you have cable or fiber optic, they're all all the "hubs" are linked with fiberoptic cables). I understand why data caps exist for wireless data, there is zero reason for data caps to exist for wired or fiberoptic connections.
someOtherGuy
Posts: 129 +88
There are usually two possible scenarios for this situation:
- They have some secret, they found out that "certain thing works magically" without too much control
- They're eating the losses in order to promote a service, which is probably the case. Most of the time when the "allotted time" for the promotion runs out (assuming nothing goes awry) the prices go into "market mode" or they just retire the service (because it failed to get enough clients). It's a good wave to ride though, since you get a lot of value for "little" money.
someOtherGuy
Posts: 129 +88
Not really, GSM's problem is contention, you have "too many clients" competing for the same time slots, which is the same problem in DOCSIS (cable internet). Noise is usually related to specific sources, not the clients, which are usually design to NOT emit noise, at least not in the frequencies that you plan on using. Like, for example, a faulty or poor microwave could be a source of noise, some electric motors, and many wireless devices, depending on the device tech and the frequencies in question (wireless mics and speakers, wireless keys, etc.)
Data caps for fiber are rare, afaik, that's probably related to a poor infrastructure: it's not enough that the fiber from your home to the "base" is good and fast, you need trunks upstream able to handle all that "fast traffic". If the ISP didn't invest in those trunks and the backbone in general, then it doesn't matter how fast the last mile is, you'll still have a "slow" or "low capacity" network, hence data caps
someOtherGuy
Posts: 129 +88
I'm not saying that I like it, or that I support any of this, I'm just saying that is not greed, and it's usually "the users fault":
1 - you want a fast and cheap internet service? it will have data caps
2 - you could have a "cheap" internet service without caps. It will be slow (DSL)
3 - you can have a fast internet service without data caps. It will be "expensive"
I would prefer #3, if any, but not everyone has the same priorities: most people would pick #1 (if the ISPs really did their homework) although those people don't comment in TechSpot. There's also the problem that most of the time there's nothing really to choose: there's one good option and everything else sucks, or there are two options with a similar smell, or even a single option and that's it.
Mark Fuller
Posts: 735 +156
Managing traffic flow across the internet is a tricky business. It's like traffic slowing to a crawl on a crowded freeway, which I guess is the reason or excuse for the existence of data caps. That doesn't mean the problem cannot be alleviated however, (one of the reasons for the advent of IPv6). There ought to be a way providers can give the customer what they need for a reasonable price. I think the technology is there to do so. It's awful frustrating to lose out when you are doing something really important. There is a balance between giving the customer what they demand and what is takes to get it to them and make a decent profit for the providers. If they a holding the means to do so and still don't do it then something else is up. In a system where you have to pay for extras whether you want them or not (cable and satellite subscriptions with no custom lineup) and on the other hand when you can't get the services you want when you need them without paying excessively for them, then something is rotten in Denmark.
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