Oh, competition, wouldn't it be nice to have you around.
Of course, given the massive up-front infrastructure investment, such competition is unlikely to materialize. What would be wonderful is if the government ran fiber to everyone's homes, and then let companies lease it from them. I wonder what the cost would be to last-mile a major city....
> What would be wonderful is if the government ran fiber to everyone's homes, and then let companies lease it from them.
http://www.utopianet.org/why-utopia -- sixteen cities in northern Utah have done exactly this. My dedicated fiber connection runs about $35 a month for 10 up/10 down, no caps that I'm aware of.
I remember reading somewhere that they are doing it, and releasing all the information about how they did it, as well as common pitfalls. The purpose of that was to give other cities the information they needed to successfully implement it.
This is where I lay my vote. The whole hybrid situation where private companies are given (often) exclusive rights to lay infrastructure on private right-of-ways and easements leads to natural monopolies. The infrastructure on public land ought to be public.
Or if the government actually used its regulatory power and mandated that companies need to lease last-mile to anybody who wants it at competitive rates.
Competitive rates means not at a loss to the provider - so the libertarian can please stop screaming. At the same time, last mile should be treated as a commons, simply because having everybody provide that doesn't make a lick of economical sense.
(And if it has to be, split ISPs and last-mile providers. You can't run both. That removes a giant conflict of interest)
Of course, given the massive up-front infrastructure investment, such competition is unlikely to materialize.
I thought it was more that cities (I think it's at that level, anyway) tend to sell exclusive rights to do that so wired competition beyond 1 cableco + 1 phoneco is largely illegal?
What competition?
Here in US AT&T has also started capping their DSL at 150GB for regular DSL and 250GB for their U-Verse.
Competition only helps if there is lots of it, unfortunately we're in a duopoly market where even though theoretically there is competition, to get around anti-trust laws, they just follow each other so consumers are just screwed.
Because infrastructure is a money pit. The up-front cost of building a last-mile fiber network is astounding (see also: Verizon FiOS) and carries with it a much longer payoff term than "next quarter." Most companies with a stock symbol have a board or shareholders that want very fast returns on investment.
(Please take the following without any hint of political bias.)
A government, on the other hand, builds infrastructure that isn't intended to have a return to it that's valued in money. Instead, that infrastructure benefits society in other ways. Arguably, building a network that functions as a "dumb pipe" where others can provide services on top of it--akin to a road--would allow greater competition in the business of moving bits because competitors would be freed from each of them expending and needlessly duplicating the others' infrastructure costs.
Kind of a tangent, but it frustrates me to see when a company makes its decisions based on the desires of its shareholders (by legal obligations or otherwise). The way I see it, this behavior only serves to weaken a company. Sure, the shareholders get their 5¢ dividends, but it's usually at the cost of a superior product offering.
How did this kinda of article make its way to the front page? This kind of math makes no sense whatsoever, and the fact that Chris has probably never seen 13.125 down his pipe should have been an indicator that this was flawed logic.
Love to hate on Comcast, but I try to be intelligent about it.
I'm really tired so I'm not 100% sure it's exactly linear, but if the bandwidth is around half then you get twice as much usage. So instead of 5 hours it would be 10 hours, which I'm guessing is around 1.4% of the month.
It's a consumer plan, they're always absurdly oversubscribed. It doesn't make any sense to charge consumers for a leased line because even if they're listening to Pandora and watching Netflix like crazy they won't hit the (currently) high data cap.
If you don't want caps (either explicit or defacto) get a business plan from Comcast; It's quite afordable relative to other options that businesses would pay for. Of course it isn't anything different than what you're paying for right now, but they won't shut it off after you've uploaded the contents of a 1TB hard drive to a backup service.
I had 3 roommates at one point, and all 4 of us were subscribe to Netflix. It was VERY easy for us to hit the cap with everyone watching Netflix alone, let alone playing games or streaming music in the common areas.
After I moved out and got married, my wife and kid routinely have Netflix playing in the background as they sit at home during the day while I'm at work. When I go home, I usually have work to do at home as well, which only adds to the usage.
Using numbers found in the article, if you use Netflix on a daily basis for 3 hours a day watching HD content purely, it would park you at about 210GB of the 250GB cap according to Netflix themselves:
So yes, using Netflix and Pandora can easily put you over the cap.
EDIT (for clarity): This article talks about the quality settings in the account settings area, but if you adjust the settings to allow for highest resolution, it would still apply.
With which point? I think you're trying to say that most consumers WILL hit the cap based on your experience - but how typical is your experience? You're an HN reader with 3 roommates, some of whom are probably HN readers too. And how many other people leave Netflix on all day, instead of just leaving the TV on a cable channel?
There will come a time - really fucking soon, too - when your story is representative of the average broadband user - but we're not there yet.
The problem comes when you read between the lines. ISPs like Comcast aren't giving a massive push to strengthen and expand their networks, instead they are punishing the (according to Comcast and other's) %1 of users that do hit that cap.
I've had a 250 GB softcap on my ISP's account for 7 years. 7 years ago, it wasn't all that possible to actually hit the 250GB cap unless I tried _really_ hard, but right now with 720p or higher quality movies available instantly, and without hours and hours of buffering required, it is easy for a heavy use family to hit those limits, possibly in a single day. I've actually hit 300GB in a single weekend before.
Comcast and others are cutting the consumers off that are the ones that they should be aiming to please, as those are the ones that dictate how everyone else is going to use the service the day after tomorrow, whether they like it or not.
I was disagreeing with the general argument being made about Netflix/Pandora not being able to consume the entire bandwidth allotment for the month. My first scenario (the one with 3 roommates) is not common, I'll agree to that, but the second scenario (wife and a kid) is much more likely to happen. We also do not subscribe to cable because of multiple reasons (advertisements, we consume seasons at a time, etc.).
This is one of the reasons I migrated to a Business Class account. Netflix helped put our bandwidth usage way over the cap.
Something I learned about Comcast is that they don't pursue every case over 250GB. There was a period of about 3-4 months where the roommates and I consistantly used more than 500GB/month. It wasn't until we hit 1.541 TB in one month that they called. This leads me to believe that they only pursue cases where there are a lot of high-consumption users in a small area and the top X% get the call.
Your point is quite valid. If you treat Netflix like cable TV, and you watch TV the way many consumers do you'll likely get close to the current cap Comcast has. However most people that are Netflix customers that use their streaming service don't use Netflix in this way.
Today most people that are going to watch that much TV already have cable or satellite tv service, or are happy with over the air tv. If this changes either Comcast will need to increase the cap, or make a deal with Netflix and other video providers to get part of the subscription fee and not count the data against people's data caps.
The most important thing to recognize here is that most consumers don't want to think about bandwidth, setting up a box, anything particularly geeky (even watching something in a browser is too much). We're likely to have the most hours viewed (and dollars paid) in front of TVs that take care of everything automagically; all you have to do is keep paying your bill every month.
The long tail of content will likely be cheap (around what you pay for Netflix streaming today), but the cost of Netflix is likely to balloon once people start watching mass market content en masse, leaving their "TV"s on all day, etc. These people will pay for service. They already do. They aren't cutting the cord because they can get somewhat obscure documentaries on Netflix while the local cable provider sticks with reality TV and sports.
The end game that I see here is that most consumers are going to pay around $30-$50 a month for "TV" that covers the costs of bandwidth and a lot of popular content, while movies in theaters and sporting events are "on-demand" or something similar. The only question is who controls it.
One of the biggest reasons that we got Netflix over a standard cable service is because the wife and I like to watch seasons at a time (I might burn through a season of House over the course of one weekend, for example). Regular cable/satellite does not allow for this type of usage. And neither one of us particularly enjoy commercials. We don't watch sports, and except for True Blood, neither one of us really cares about the latest shows.
That's nothing. I've been pumping myself full of amphetamines so I can watch all the seasons of Star Trek: TNG within an 8 day period without sleeping, or even blinking.
Deceptive marketing? Yes. Inflated prices? Yes. Lack of competition? Totally.
But using law to impose your "moral perspective" on a pricing structure is not a solution.
The problem is that there exists no plan with reasonably-priced, reasonably-fast non-capped internet access, while there is a demand for it.
This is a market failure caused by a lack of competition in the market.
We should seek out and advocate for solutions which increase competition in the consumer broadband marketplace and ignore foolish non-solutions like this.
"The problem is that there exists no plan with reasonably-priced,
reasonably-fast non-capped internet access, while there is a demand for it."
I believed the same thing until recently. HN User Aloisius let me know about Web Pass, which is unfortunately available only in buildings with 100 or more residence units, in this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2711784
"symmetric 100 Mbps uncapped service in San Francisco for $33/month"
Having done this same calculation myself, this was part of the reason I moved to Business Class. That and that I actually wanted to start a business eventually.
I think the ratio should be something much higher, such as 80%, not 0.69%. That would give you 7.56 TB of available bandwidth of the maximum possible 9.45 TB, based on the 105Mbps speed listed. And that's only downstream.
I'm not sure what residential costs these days, but I have Comcast Business 12/2 for $60/mo. I managed to get the installation fee waived when I set up the service a couple years ago. I also negotiated away the contract; well, I had to sign a 2-year contract, but got them to drop the cancellation fee. A contract with no termination penalty isn't a particularly big deal (and I've already had the service for 2 years, anyway). They even moved the service to my new apartment when I moved for no cost.
The installation fee kind of sucks, especially given that I already have residential service. Did you use an argument along those lines to get it waved, or another line of negotiation? Likewise, if you don't mind sharing, how'd you convince them to set a $0 cancellation fee?
I guess I can find my own way, but a little perspective couldn't hurt.
That sucks that you had to pay for installation; yeah, I pointed out I already had residential service, so they wouldn't need to come out and they could just send me the modem, and that worked (I was actually surprised).
The $0 cancellation... I just asked for it, and got it. I never thought stuff like that worked, but apparently it's true: it never hurts to ask.
It may have helped that I directly contacted an account rep who a former IT-dept colleague had worked with and recommended to me. It's possible that the "so-and-so gave me your name and said you were very helpful" bit gave me better/more personalized service. Hard to say.
I figure I must be missing something in my off the cuff "analysis", but with the way they've been jacking up the price of my residential service, it appears to me it would be only a small bump in price to switch to business class.
Maybe I'd lose the basic cable TV service that's baked into the residential pricing, but as to that I should really be saying "good riddance".
So, I've been stewing on this. I should check whether business class includes a phone line. I'd come out ahead and be able to wave good bye to AT&T. (If there's a company that's worse than the proverbial "cable company"...)
Mine is about $60 more, but some of that is for some static IPs. Also nice being able to call Friday night for Saturday tech appointments when modems die...
Not sure whether it's sensitive to location; I did not enter a phone number.
$95 for a "triple play" package. 12/2, phone line, and what looks like "basic" cable. Plus some set of taxes and fees I'm sure I'm not seeing.
(The page doesn't say this is an introductory price -- however, I'm finding it difficult to believe it's not. Doesn't this undercut residential triple play pricing -- albeit probably with less cable TV channels?)
Since the latter part of last year, Comcast has jacked my residential service rate (where the price comes out the same whether one has just internet or with discounted internet packaged with basic cable) from about $64 to $80 (24-25%). Just ridiculous.
I hate to "reward" them for this behavior, but price and feature wise, given where I'm at, it's tempting to switch to business class. Especially if I can avoid that ridiculous installation fee and a multi-year contract with exit penalty.
Of course, I'd rather have a Kansas City type deal with Google, or Sonic's wonderful 1 GB trial in Sebastopol. Or a nice, cozy cooperative investment with my neighbors.
But no, this area belongs to a particularly slimy class of suits. (Another reason I might make the switch; the phone company's even worse, based on extensive personal experience -- including DSL, back in the day.)
Yes I did. From what I understand the contract length is negotiable, but the installation fee is not because they have to come and give you entirely different equipment.
The customer service is MUCH better with a business class account.
The author's premise is wrong. I don't get faster connections because I want to download more data than I could on a slower connection. I get faster connections so that I don't have to wait as long for my downloads to complete.
To expound upon that, being able to receive more bits through the pipe will likely result in being more willing to download/stream will likely result in more downloads/streams, so just by being able to get things faster will you be more likely to get more things.
Your Internet usage is probably bursty, so you want bursty service; a 1% share of 100 Mbps is dramatically faster in practice than a T1. Someone is about to suggest that ISPs advertise minimum speeds instead of burst speed, but that doesn't serve the interest of most customers since perceived performance does correlate strongly with burst speed.
If you want to sue based on immoral business plans consider that T-Mobile recently doubled the cost of incoming text messages for prepaid customers. These are texts you can't control getting, yet when you do they charge you anyway. Incidentally, their highest mobile data plan includes 10Gb for $89.99. At the same rate as they charge for texts, that plan would cost $6.4Million. I honestly don't understand why congress hasn't demanded cell phone carriers include texts in the cost of plans.
Comcast's primary goal right now is to prevent a raising of the debt ceiling. Once this is done it will be much easier for the FCC to be eviscerated and destroyed -- or at the very least, maimed. With that pesky FCC out of the way, Comcast will then be free to take a deep breath and expand its belly, unrolling that flab of inefficiency even further, stifling and suffocating as many sources of potential innovation and competition as possible.
With no viable threats (as Comcast will be both the Gatekeeper and the traffic police), its ability to dictate who can drive in the fast lane and the slow lane and who is even allowed to drive on the road at all will spill over from the highways to the suburbs to the rural country roads.
I have no doubt that Comcast's lobbyists take every opportunity to push for "starve the beast"-style cuts to the FCC. But I sincerely doubt they think it remotely in their interest to see the US actually default.
Being able to squeeze more profit per subscriber loses its luster if another economic calamity causes home internet access to become a luxury again. They already see the danger that they may become a dumb pipe that only provides backhaul access for wireless cells. (see their wireless deals and partnerships)
If another economic snap forces people to choose between their home internet and their smartphones, guess who wins and guess who hemorrhages subscribers like a POTS provider? And they'll have a hell of a time convincing people to pick those plans back up, years later, if/as things recover. Even though home phone service has become dirt cheap with VoIP offerings, that hasn't brought back customers. If people cut Comcast and start to go wireless-data only, it'll be terribly hard to reverse.
To say nothing of Comcast's investments and stock price, which would tank (along with most everything else) in the crisis that would follow an actual default.
Good points, but default is not the automatic consequence of failing to raise the debt ceiling.
The issue is just creating more noise and static that distracts from the core issues that the GOP doesn't want people to notice: that the GOP wants to cut funding to the FCC, and without the FCC and more stringent net neutrality regulations, companies like Comcast can exercise whatever kind of monopolistic behaviors they want.
I live in Pasadena, CA, in the middle of LA county, one of the most populous in the USA and I have the following choices for maximal bandwidth:
AT&T DSL at 6Mbps/1.5Mbps for $40/mo
Charter Cable at 60Mbps/?Mbps for $100/mo
I think both plans have caps, though I've never hit them. Charter wouldn't tell me their upload speeds and demanded I give them my SSN so I went with ATT.
The United States does not care about its economic future. It cares about keeping the next quarter's profits up for the corrupt telecom cartel that's turned bribing local governments into a science.
Of course, given the massive up-front infrastructure investment, such competition is unlikely to materialize. What would be wonderful is if the government ran fiber to everyone's homes, and then let companies lease it from them. I wonder what the cost would be to last-mile a major city....