Comcast extends 1.2TB monthly Xfinity data cap to nearly all customers

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 32
    davgregdavgreg Posts: 1,036member
    1.2 TB is a LOT of data.

    The plan announced here has been in place in the south for a long time and I think I have hit it maybe 2-3 times in the last couple of years. They give you 2 monthly overages at no cost under our setup.

    My home is full of connected devices and we stream 4K TV as well. When the Munchkins are over they bring iPads on top of what is already here , plus the Apple TV’s in the extra bedrooms. The list on the eero of all connected devices is crazy.

    As to price, the secret is competition. When AT&T launched fiber in our area Comcast quickly upgraded the services offered at every price point. Credible competition works to create a marketplace and many Americans do not live where they have a competitive market for landline residential internet. Because of the stingy data caps, wireless is not a viable alternative to landline in most places.
    JWSC
  • Reply 22 of 32
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,335member
    tedz98 said:
    Limited provider choices in any geographic area are primarily due to the high cost of installing infrastructure, especially problematic in low population density areas. Comcast and it’s ilk are successful because of the investment made installing coax cable into homes to support cable tv services over the past forty years. Their ability to leverage that infrastructure to provide internet service gave them an amazing financial advantage. New regulations won’t change the financial challenges faced installing new infrastructure. If there’s money to be made, providers will make the investment to build new services such as seen with fios and many new local fiber providers. Comcast deliberately sets their data caps at the 95th percentile because they know if they impact too many customers it will invite regulation. If you are a consumer in the 95th+ percentile you really have no basis to complain about being charged more. 1.2 trillion bytes is a huge amount of data. It doesn’t really matter that your games are 300 gigs.
    Absolutely agree with all the feedback regarding service availability. Many folks have very few choices and the choices they have are uninspiring. The only semi high-speed service I have available to me is Spectrum cable broadband and I'm thrilled to get about 120 Mbps (down). This is a significant improvement from my previous place where my fastest option was an AT&T Homebase with an LTE connection - for my whole house. It was actually faster than the DSL I had previously. I can pretty much assume that I will never see a fiber connection in my lifetime, but I'm hopeful that 5G or 6G or maybe 7G will eventually deliver while I'm still alive to take advantage of it.

    Everyone loves to talk about building out infrastructure, especially during election cycles, but nothing much ever seems to come from it. Yes, providing universal access to broadband connectivity is only one of the many infrastructure challenges we are faced with, but if we're really counting on the information economy, or gig economy, or whatever economies are enabled or enhanced by universal connectivity to producers and consumers of things that are accessed through cyberspace, we really need to make it happen instead of just talking about it.

    Frankly, worrying about surcharges for the 5 percenters who are exceeding terabyte thresholds isn't going to resonate with a lot of folks. It's like saying, "Woe is me, I have to pay extra to put premium grade gasoline in my new Ferrari." Sorry, I'm not heartbroken, but I'll pass along a 1-second ceremonial whimper to you if it makes you feel a little better and to show that I truly cared and felt your pain, at least for that 1-second.
    edited November 2020 JWSC
  • Reply 23 of 32
    focherfocher Posts: 687member
    The best day of my life - and I’m happily married with two wonderful kids - is the day I was able to call Comcast and cancel their “Gig” service for AT&T Fiber. He argued that they also offer fiber service and I just said “not without a quota”.  He said my cancellation was processed and then hung up. 

    ISPs should only allowed to set prices or quotas if there’s at least one other comparable provider in the market. Otherwise, regulate the shit out of them. 

    By the way. NN will be back by May. 
    ronn
  • Reply 24 of 32
    flydogflydog Posts: 1,123member
    I despise this company with a passion. Talk about monopolists, they just extort whatever the market will bear.
    All companies charge "whatever the market will bear," except for maybe state-owned entiites in North Korea and Cuba. 
    JWSC
  • Reply 25 of 32
    flydogflydog Posts: 1,123member

    jeromec said:
    50€/month for 2Gb/s down - 600Mb/s up, with unlimited calls to landlines and mobile phones in Europe, US and Canada, and 150 TV channels.
    No data cap.
    That's in France.
    And there are way cheaper alternatives.

    Telecom prices in the US are ridiculous.
    While the free market is very efficient for consumer goods, some form of regulation seems to help for infrastructure.
    That's awesome.  By the way, what are gas prices like these days in France? How about electricity?



    JWSCstudiomusic
  • Reply 26 of 32
    MplsPMplsP Posts: 3,911member
    georgie01 said:
    JWSC said:
    JWSC said:
    Everyone here is bitching about market economics that are ultimately self correcting.  One bitches about Comcast being a monopoly but, in SF Sonic is beating them on cost.  Another bitches about Comcast and then moves to AT&T.  What do you guys want - the Government to regulate everything and stifle infrastructure development?  Come on!

    You must acknowledge that a small percentage of households are extreme bandwidth users compared to the rest.  It’s not necessarily fair to the rest that this small percentage take advantage of everyone else’s bandwidth.

    We don’t necessarily have to like any of these companies.  But they do spend billions on infrastructure.  Do you want that to continue?  All I’m saying is, be careful what you wish for.  You may get it.
    Not everybody has the same options that you do in SF. I only have to go about 30 miles south or west of DC for there to be only one provider -- Comcast.
    That sucks.  But alternatives, some with OK service and some extremely bad service such as HughsNet are available now.  And Starlink is coming.  The market is not stagnant.
    I admire your tenacious commitment to libertarian market principles, but in this case they don't apply.  HughesNet and satellite services like it suck.  So in effect, in many markets across the country, there is really only one true high speed provider in the area.  You either get 100 Mbps to gigabit service from a Comcast that bends you over on price and data caps, or you get crappy HughesNet where you *might* 1/5 that if you're lucky.  And they also do the data cap thing, but instead they slow you down to about 1.5 Mbps the rest of the month unless you pay extra.  I've lived in both situations - monopoly cable/internet provider when I lived in Nashville, and now a city with multiple providers where I live now.  It's amazing what a difference some competition makes.
    The point isn’t ultimately what services are available, the point is that we all need to be wary of inviting government regulation. There is often a very unclear line between regulation and stifling investment. Like it or not, a free market, with all its negatives, produces a better end result overall. History has proven this over and over again.

    So if we’re wanting companies like Comcast to stop extorting their customers, the first thing we should do is invite and pursue real competition. We could also reach out and educate the population about what they’re doing. Etc. The last thing we should do is ask for government intervention, and if we have to the intervention should be aimed toward encouraging competition.

    That’s not a libertarian approach, that’s an approach based on common sense and history. 
    It's interesting that people cite government regulation as the problem, yet all the countries that have better, cheaper access than we do have more government regulation. The evidence would seem to suggest that the problem is not enough regulation.

    I live in a newer, upper middle class suburb of Minneapolis. I have a choice of Comcast. No Verizon. No AT&T. No google. No Centurylink. Technically I could go with Hughes net satellite. So yeah, the lack of competition is an issue. As is the lack of access in general - there are many areas that have no choices at all for broadband access, so I can't complaint too much.
    ronn
  • Reply 27 of 32
    Comcast is unquestionably the most disreputable company in the history of the universe. I have been screwed over and lied to so many times by these shysters (on four separate accounts at three different service addresses). When CenturyLink ran fiber in our neighborhood, I couldn't wait to switch. What cost $250 from Comcast (for a decent TV package, home phone, and 350/12mb Internet) now runs roughly half that for unmetered gigabit Internet, Hulu Live, and Ooma.

    1TB of data seems like a lot, but we were bumping up against that continuously and that was before we were streaming IPTV.

    I love that we're paying half as much money for much better service, but giving Comcast a gigantic middle finger was the best part of the deal. I'll go back to AOL dialup before those crooks ever get another penny from me.
    ronn
  • Reply 28 of 32
    Limited provider choices in any geographic area are primarily due to the high cost of installing infrastructure, especially problematic in low population density areas. Comcast and it’s ilk are successful because of the investment made installing coax cable into homes to support cable tv services over the past forty years. Their ability to leverage that infrastructure to provide internet service gave them an amazing financial advantage. New regulations won’t change the financial challenges faced installing new infrastructure. If there’s money to be made, providers will make the investment to build new services such as seen with fios and many new local fiber providers. Comcast deliberately sets their data caps at the 95th percentile because they know if they impact too many customers it will invite regulation. If you are a consumer in the 95th+ percentile you really have no basis to complain about being charged more. 1.2 trillion bytes is a huge amount of data. It doesn’t really matter that your games are 300 gigs.
  • Reply 29 of 32
    Thanks Ajit Pai for your wonderful policies
  • Reply 30 of 32
    tedz98 said:
    Limited provider choices in any geographic area are primarily due to the high cost of installing infrastructure, especially problematic in low population density areas. Comcast and it’s ilk are successful because of the investment made installing coax cable into homes to support cable tv services over the past forty years. Their ability to leverage that infrastructure to provide internet service gave them an amazing financial advantage. New regulations won’t change the financial challenges faced installing new infrastructure. If there’s money to be made, providers will make the investment to build new services such as seen with fios and many new local fiber providers. Comcast deliberately sets their data caps at the 95th percentile because they know if they impact too many customers it will invite regulation. If you are a consumer in the 95th+ percentile you really have no basis to complain about being charged more. 1.2 trillion bytes is a huge amount of data. It doesn’t really matter that your games are 300 gigs.
    I just couldn't agree less. It does matter if your games are 300 gigs. The world moves on and if the US doesn't keep up then it affects our world wide competitive stance. The problem is that big cable has no incentive to update their infrastructure unless there is real competition. Which, in most of the US, not just rural areas, there is not. If you live somewhere that has competition and don't read anything about the industry you might not realize this. Big Cable has done everything in it's power to stifle competition. Changes are needed in regulations and in law.
    ronn
  • Reply 31 of 32
    Comcast Xfinity whatever they will come up with next SUCKS!

    They have changed my channels so many times then tell me that those channels shouldn't have been in my "package". I've been screwed over by them for more than 2 decades now and they just screwed me over again with these caps.

    If we had ANY other choice, we would change in an instant. But they are a monopoly around here.


  • Reply 32 of 32
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    Well,  here's the problem on this whole cap argument. Total gigabytes consumed by the consumers are not finite. There is not a gigabyte tank that drains, and when it's empty, the carrier itself is shit out of luck. They aren't even arguing that this is about traffic management, and they've said that it isn't about speed maintaining many times over.

    You could, theoretically, argue that those 5% of consumers use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth versus their neighbor. However, on the aggregate, across the entire neighborhood a customer who exceeds 1.2TB costs the carrier $0.00 more in every regard, including network build-out, than one who uses 100MB per month, given how peering arrangements between ISPs work.

    So, what's the reasoning other than "let's make more money" on a service which is now, more than ever, a necessity of modern life?
    edited November 2020 ronnstudiomusic
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