Comcast: Usage-Based Billing for All Customers Within 5 Years; 'We're Also Allowed to Do Fast Lanes'

[bananas]

http://stopthecap.com/2014/05/14/comcast-usage-based-billing-for-all-customers-within-5-years-were-also-allowed-to-do-fast-lanes/

Comcast: Usage-Based Billing for All Customers Within 5 Years; ‘We’re Also Allowed to Do Fast Lanes’
Phillip Dampier May 14, 2014

Comcast will introduce usage-based billing on all of its broadband customers nationwide within five years, whether they like it or not.

Comcast’s executive vice president David Cohen told Variety he predicts the new usage limit will likely be 350GB a month but could increase to 500GB in 2019. Cohen claims consumers in usage-capped test markets prefer a preset usage limit and an overlimit fee of $10 for each additional 50GB of usage.

But Stop the Cap! has learned at no time has Comcast surveyed customers about whether they want their Internet usage metered or capped. That question is evidently not an option.

If Time Warner Cable territories are merged under the Comcast brand, usage billing would likely immediately follow.

<snip>

[Jefferson23]

1. UGH. K&R for info.

[randys1]

2. The final nail in your coffin is restricted access to accurate information

It will happen, you cant stop it.

You voted for it or by not voting voted for it...

You means all of us, George Carlin was so right it is sick...

Your pension and social security are next.

[Swede Atlanta]

4. Absolutely.......

The internet was supposed to facilitate the free exchange of ideas and content.

Without true net neutrality the 1% will use their control over the internet to either completely restrict access to content they find objectionable such as progressive calls to action or at a minimum make access to the content so expensive or slow that no one will access it.

One model that might work but I don't see where the necessary start-up capital would come from would be ISP co-ops that service various regions of the country and collectively connect all of the regional ISP hubs together. Let the consumers own their own internet.

[Ed Suspicious]

5. That would be good.

[randys1]

6. Than an OCCUPY woman guilty of moving her arm is in prison and militia murderers are free to roam

is not an accident

america is way into a civil war and nobody knows it

YOU are being attacked viciously, think about this comparison, Occupy woman who was grabbed by a cop, she moved to react and accidentally hit the prick, prison

Armed hundreds of men with high powered weapons pointing at and threatening federales, still pointing weapons at federalies

[seabeckind]

8. Time to add a technology split

The physical layers, the infrastructure, should be part of the commons and treated like a utility.

Everything riding on it should be a value-added ala carte. Eg, why do I have to go thru HBO to see a movie?

The old rules which were written by the cable companies did nothing more than divide the herd based on geography.

Oh, and potential profit.

Which explains why in some locales you're lucky to see a cell tower. No wait...different herd. Sorry.

[Ed Suspicious]

3. How about a second , open source internet backbone built by the commons for the commons?

[mwooldri]

20. I don't think the backbone is the problem.

It's the "last mile" - the connection between your home and the ISP's equipment. Check out www.b4rn.org.UK ... This is totally community driven. Volunteers are digging in fibre lines...they work as a co-op....

I have no idea if this could be duplicated here but I'm sure with some seed money and an active volunteer base, the community can build out fibre to the home networks and get a decent connection with the existing backbone providers. Part of the problem is that Comcast wouldn't pay to upgrade the connection between itself and the backbones. This is what caused Netflix to not work as well on Comcast because Comcast didn't want to pay for a bigger pipe.

Someone new needs to step in... some organization that can build a new network from scratch... quickly and to many people... yes even the rural areas.

The commercial ISPs won't build it so it may well be us.

[Beartracks]

29. We need something like the Rural Electrification Program

When investor-owned electric utilities didn't want to expand their grids into rural America (since it wasn't economical to do so), the government did it instead, helping usher in the huge economic successes of the mid-20th century. Tons of jobs building lines, tons of new markets and manufacturing as more and more people got the electric.

Maybe now the government needs to once again step in and build out the "bigger pipes" so everyone can have access to high speed internet services and information.

[seabeckind]

7. Another modern dinosaur

Just like transportation dictated by personal vehicles, air travel, cell phones, education,

another paradigm which is in its death throes and reliant on a gov't mandate to continue to exist. A single thread internet is not workable when the streaming video is shoved onto it. There just isn't enought bandwidth for the current infrastructure. Changing to fiber bought a few years but it's obvious we're hitting that limit.

I've currently got Comcast in an urban environment so my bandwidth increased (tho the speed decreased) over my previous carrier. In that case I noticed my response time on the intertubes deteriorated on weekend evenings. I suspected it was because of all the ondemand videos pushed onto my cable leg.

Now we have all the video feeds riding on that same medium.

Maybe it's time for a dual feed, parallel system? One feed that is geared to downstream dumps and the other an interactive system.

So where's that FCC guy? Shouldn't he be working on this thing rather than enforcing the monopoly?

Oh, and while he's at it, maybe standardize the control language for remotes. I'm tired of trying to locate my real TV remote so I can get to the menu. No wait, that's the one for the receiver.

[SamKnause]

9. Fucking monopolies.

Our corrupt government is to blame !!!!

The U.S. HATES capitalism.

The U.S. LOVES crony capitalism.

The U.S. HATES fair trade.

The U.S. LOVES protected trade.

[Scuba]

10. Another good reason for a public internet service through the USPS.

[Ed Suspicious]

11. +

[Liberalynn]

14. I'd like this option

[groundloop]

21. GOPers would never allow that to happen .....

That might dampen the profits of their beloved monopolies.

[sulphurdunn]

12. I guess Comcast

has claimed the same right to own the internet that Cliven Bundy has to own Nevada.

[blackspade]

13. Cohen is a money grubbing asshole and a liar.

The FCC just has to change ISPs to common carriers. Problem solved.

[TBF]

15. Time to break the monopoly -

do we still do that in this country?

Yet another rhetorical question.

[Enthusiast]

26. Monopolies are no longer a priority.

That much is clear.

[AtheistCrusader]

16. This is Comcast's first move to protect their cable holdings.

This is a direct shot across the bow of 'cord-cutters'. QAM-broadcast signals don't count toward that limit. Devices that directly access IP streams like Netflix, Hulu, etc, all count toward that data limit.

The intended outcome is to keep people paying extra for that cable subscription, instead of going entirely data-only. And it is punitive, not innovative. Meaning, there's no incentive here at all, to entice a customer to go data-only. None. There is NOTHING useful or positive for the consumer in this plan. Nothing. You gain NOTHING. They gain everything.


Within the next two years, I'll be 'cutting the cord' anyway. Fuck 'em. I just won't watch tv at all.

[Orrex]

17. The last time I called Comcast to discuss rates...

I pointed out that their monthly rate was preposterously high relative to the service delivered. We don't have phone or cable, so we're internet-only.

They advised me that Comcast is a cable company and not an internet provider, apparently in spite of the fact that everything they've done for the past 4 years is entirely internet-centric.


Funny...

[santamargarita]

18. The consumer is the corporations enemy.

[Ed Suspicious]

19. Share traders are where the money is made, I guess.

[Worsel]

22. two different things

I don't conflate usage billing with net neutrality. Net neutrality should be maintained. Usage based billing is probably inevitable.

I retired from a phone company. Ten years ago I ran across a white paper discussing South Korean Internet provisioning and usage based billing. Their present was reflecting our future. Everybody already had broadband in South Korea back then. No more customers to get, only poaching from competitors; consumers demanding more and faster streaming driving costly provisioning expenses. With no new customers it's either having data brownouts or raising bills for everybody or going to tiered billing.

Streaming downloads 7x24 is the equivalent of permanently opening all of your water taps in your house. Why do we have water meters? Bandwidth isn't infinite. Power users should pay more after a certain point or everyone is going to pay more. Your neighbors can be affecting your response just like they could affect your water pressure if they all flushed their toilets at the same time.

And no, I don't love TWC cable. Just got my bill yesterday. It went up $16 a month with no warning after going up $8 three months ago. If we'd elect more progressives maybe we'd have PUCOs that would protect consumers again. But, tiered billing is inevitable even if we reign in the greed.

[phazed]

28. I must disagree.

With all due respect, I have to disagree somewhat with your water analogy. Why do we have water meters? Really?

No, bandwidth is not infinite, but it is virtually infinitely expandable. Simply because a company doesn't want to expand their infrastructure is not an excuse. Perhaps we should all revisit the infrastructure of the 90's and get back on phone modems and T1 trunks at the home office.. ridiculous. It's not the consumers fault that Comcast uses a "shared" over-copper antiquated technology that inherently causes bandwidth issues. Verizon FiOS fiber gives you a direct "pipe" to the internet so my usage really doesn't affect my neighbors. It may affect FiOS's main tap to the web if everyone is downloading, which again, would indicate that Verizon is due for an upgrade to handle their added customers and bandwidth. It certainly shouldn't lead to increased fees and caps on the users other than to pay for those upgrades and services in aggregate (Which would be very, very small when spread among all of their users).

Back to the water analogy. If a hypothetical town of 10,000 people had a water pump house and in 10 years the population grows to 30,000, I would certainly not expect the town to continue to use the same singular pump house to supply the now 30,000 users. Should the town now ration water and charge higher prices or upgrade their pumps? Hmm.

Let us also not conflate a finite resource (Water) with the phenomenon of electrons and photons of which are readily abundant and easily created. New technology is many times more electrically efficient now, too, than it was even 3-4 years ago. We are able to send/receive vastly more (1000's of times) information per Watt-Hour of electricity than in the early 2000's. The cost of ISP's doing business is going down, yet our prices are going up. Comcast had a 13.7% profit increase this last quarter alone and a 26% profit increase 4th quarter 2013. That's almost a 40% in 2 quarters - but hey! $1.91 Billion dollars in increased profit isn't enough, let's charge double that and rape our consumers even more. Bloomberg Comcast Earnings

I have no bleeding heart for these guys. We should be striving to be better than South Korea, respectfully.

[Skittles]

32. you two provide excellent reading

welcome to DU

[phazed]

23. Computer repair business... out of business.

I operate a computer repair business and use approx 3-4TB a month. I can only hope Verizon FiOS doesn't adopt this scheme. If they do I'm looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of $800! WTF.

This is horrible.

[workinclasszero]

24. Google Fiber

100 times faster than average broadband and NO data caps!

Comcast, Time Warner etc can F off and die

[Chan790]

30. That's not a solution.

Google has no intention or desire to take Fiber national. They're looking to identify markets where existing infrastructure and other considerations makes it advantageous for them. The rest of us are out in the cold at least in any near-term.

[daleanime]

25. Kick....

[mbuch64]

27. That day is already here

I have mediacom mid speed service and was informed (warned) online that I had used 86% of my monthly data cap of 250 Gbs and it is 10 dollars for each additional 50 Gbs. What a scam.

[BootinUp]

31. This should maybe be posted in the bad reads forum? nt