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Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

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Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#251

Post by billswift »

megaman821 wrote: post #27
naner wrote: post #6

I listened to him read his canned warning that if I exceeded their cap again I'd be cut off again. Ok. Sure, the data cap sucks, but this guy broke a Comcast policy, got a warning, and then broke the policy again. I'm not surprised he got cut off. I do not recall details on how long the cut off would be, likely because I spent the next few minutes working with the service agent to add notes to my record about my deta…

Comcast has a geographic monopoly in his area and like every other monopoly should be under some sort of government regulation. What Comcast should do if they are actually under bandwidth constraints is lower his 15Mb connection to 1Mb after he passed the 250GB cap. What they actually did was drop a customer because their profit margins weren't as high as the wanted them to be.

>What they actually did was drop a customer because their profit margins weren't as high as the wanted them to be.

So what else is new. Greyhound fucked over a lot of small cities 5 to 6 years ago by cutting service to them. I'm now a $80 cab ride to any public transport except Amtrack; and Amtrack is really limited both in times and where it goes.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#252

Post by cshesse »

gst wrote: post #114

Is Comcast really a monopoly in some parts of the US? Aren't there any other viable options?

In San Francisco, where I live, they have basically a monopoly on high speed internet. Here are the options and speeds I have tested:

1) DSL (through ATT or Sonic.net, I got Sonic's ADSL2 service) ~$60 a month, 3.4/0.86 Mbps

2) Monkeybrains local wireless rooftop ISP: $35 a month, ~10/10Mbps, depending on location (large building to the north blocks service to my building)

3) Webpass, same as Monkeybrains, but only handles buildings with like 10+ apartment units, $45 a month, 100/100 or 45/45 Mbps, basically has to already be available where you live, so not me

4) Comcast residential service, ~$60 a month, 22.3/4.34 Mbps, this is what I went with

5) Find someone with a fast internet connection and set up some sort of wireless directional antenna or free space optics to use their connection from the roof - expensive and I don't know anyone with a connection that fast within sight of my building.

Nobody can run fiber because of ATT and Comcast having basically monopolies on running cables anywhere. I mean, the city isn't too proactive anyway in that area, but ATT and Comcast are clearly slowing it down a lot

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#253

Post by JamieEi »

bradleyland wrote: post #24

The author had me up until the moment he claimed that internet access is a "right". Ok, so let's say internet access is a "right". Rights often come within a framework. You have many rights that are yours for the losing. Your freedom to come and go freely, for example. If you break a law, you lose your freedom by being put in jail. To say something is a "right" is to say that it ought to be available, or that the gov…

Sorry, Comcast has been handed a monopoly franchise for broadband in many parts of the US, including Seattle. With their obscene profits comes an obligation to provide acceptable service in all reasonable cases. This is not an equal bargain between two independent parties -- the OP has ZERO alternative broadband providers and the real battle Comcast is fighting is against Netflix.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#254

Post by koenigdavidmj »

JamieEi wrote: post #253
bradleyland wrote: post #24

The author had me up until the moment he claimed that internet access is a "right". Ok, so let's say internet access is a "right". Rights often come within a framework. You have many rights that are yours for the losing. Your freedom to come and go freely, for example. If you break a law, you lose your freedom by being put in jail. To say something is a "right" is to say that it ought to be available, or that the gov…

Sorry, Comcast has been handed a monopoly franchise for broadband in many parts of the US, including Seattle. With their obscene profits comes an obligation to provide acceptable service in all reasonable cases. This is not an equal bargain between two independent parties -- the OP has ZERO alternative broadband providers and the real battle Comcast is fighting is against Netflix.

Sorry, but Qwest and Clearwire both cover nearly all of Seattle as well. You can argue about how broad you have to be to be called broadband, but they are both going to be suitable for a home user.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#255

Post by eru »

matwood wrote: post #75
megaman821 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your water and electricity utilities most likely also have caps on how much water or electricity you can use before they cut you off. Except if you go over a few times they won't ban you from their service for a year. They just want you to curb your use, which is exactly what this guy was willing to do.

Your water and electricity utilities most likely also have caps on how much water or electricity you can use before they cut you off. Most utilities cannot just shut you off. Many states have laws that determine when and how. The biggest thing about a utility though is that you pay for usage. If you want to leave your lights on all day, they really don't care as long as you continue to pay your bill. Personally, I do…

> It's the most fair way to support the system and will naturally prevent people from doing something similar to leaving their lights on all day.

Depends on what constraints the resource.

If the network's bandwidth isn't used at the moment, not using it won't save any money. (Apart from saving power.)

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#256

Post by JamieEi »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #254
JamieEi wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, Comcast has been handed a monopoly franchise for broadband in many parts of the US, including Seattle. With their obscene profits comes an obligation to provide acceptable service in all reasonable cases. This is not an equal bargain between two independent parties -- the OP has ZERO alternative broadband providers and the real battle Comcast is fighting is against Netflix.

Sorry, but Qwest and Clearwire both cover nearly all of Seattle as well. You can argue about how broad you have to be to be called broadband, but they are both going to be suitable for a home user.

I have Qwest because Comcast can't provide reliable service to my 1920s apartment building, and I only get 2.6 Mbps down. I wouldn't think I'd have to explain on HN why that's not a viable alternative. It's certainly not for the OP's use case of streaming video.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#257

Post by bradleyland »

wtallis wrote: post #238
bradleyland wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, if you're going to bury my comment, point out what I've misstated. If you're sitting there in your chair, disagreeing with me, but you can't figure out why, you're just lying to yourself. If I've made a mathematical error, or misstated a fact, I'm happy to concede the point.

You say that metered, per-byte billing will impose a significant overhead. For ISPs that already have caps, they are already counting the bytes, so the only overhead would be in the variable billing. Half of the ISPs already do that for their non-IP services. You also haven't said how much it costs a company like Comcast to pay for transit of their customers' data. You haven't given anyone reason to believe that tran…

You make a good point about already counting the bytes. That fact flew right past me when I was considering the overhead.

I can't answer the second question because I can't see Comcast's peering agreements. I do know that they're not always comfortable (see last year's Comcast/Level 3 dispute), but as the FCC pointed out, peering agreements are a private matter.

I'm playing devil's advocate here to some degree. I get that everyone wants to see an improvement in the availability and cost of broadband in the states. No question about it, but this article is about a person who used 250 GB of data in a month on a residential connection. I'd love too see a histogram that shows the distribution of data transfer usage per customer, but Comcast doesn't publish that information, so I'm left to assume that the fact that very few people encounter that limit is proof that it's pretty far above the norm. Feeding the sense of entitlement that this type of usage should be allowed is not how we'll make progress here.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#258

Post by knowtheory »

reduxredacted wrote: post #74
megaman821 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your water and electricity utilities most likely also have caps on how much water or electricity you can use before they cut you off. Except if you go over a few times they won't ban you from their service for a year. They just want you to curb your use, which is exactly what this guy was willing to do.

To be clear, though: Water and Electric utilities in the US (and I believe this is true of Canada) are also heavily regulated, including the requirement of a government approved meter that measures in a consistent and accurate manner. In addition, one pays based on what one consumes at rates that are at least partially controlled by another regulatory body. In our area, this is the case because there we have no choic…

One should add that it's ridiculous that Comcast counts 250gb transferred up or down, since almost all of their customer related information refers to down speeds.

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#259

Post by bradleyland »

nitrogen wrote: post #184
bradleyland wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing the last mile transmission capability with the cost of transferring the data in and out of the network. Let's say you and I go in to business together and build a microwave wireless internet service. There is commodity equipment available that can push 100 mbps pretty easily. We buy a microwave transmission tower and central office from a company that is going out of business at a rate that cannot be…

We have to pay for every single bit our customers transmit. What about all the bits your customers receive? You sound like you're at least somewhat familiar with peering agreements, so I'd like to know how that part works. If your customers are mostly receiving instead of sending, wouldn't those bits be paid for by the ones sending the bits? For that matter, why can I get 200GB/mo at 50mbit/s plus a server for $20 fr…

You're definitely making the best counter points in this discussion. Unfortunately, I'm only familiar with peering agreements in so much that I can read about them on Wikepedia and follow links. The peering agreements are private, so we don't know who pays who.

Your questions regarding the fees for bandwidth are especially relevant. More things I can't address, because I don't know Comcast's costs for transport or last mile.

When I say that consumers won't/don't want a metered internet plan, I'm basing this on what's in the market and basic consumer tendencies toward simplicity. Metered services have a tendency to make customers feel "nickel & dime'd". Put plainly, consumers will choose a flat rate service over a metered service, even if the metered service would result in a lower bill [1]. It's basic risk aversion.

I'm of the opinion that "free market" ISP solutions aren't working out all that well. The necessity of public land-use rights in order to reach the last mile severely limits competition in the ISP space. I think that a good first step toward fixing the problem would be forcing some more transparency on ISPs. I'd love to know what's going on behind closed doors. I'd love to know who pays who. I'd love to know just how Comcast's transport costs break down.

Until we know some of these details, it's mostly speculation (yes, especially on my part), but I think there are some reasonable assumptions to be made.

1 - http://www.canavents.com/its2008/abstracts/109.pdf

Re: Comcast cuts off customer for going over 250GB of legitimate use

#260

Post by odlogan »

forensic wrote: post #161
younata wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to downvote you, but that's an incredibly stupid reason to downvote someone. "Oh, I don't like your word choice, so I'm going to downvote you regardless of the content."

The issue isn't "word choice" it is tone and writing style. Writing in leetspeek is equally objectionable, for instance, and people do downvote those who write that way on HN. Explaining yourself and adding an original thought is contributing, but saying "This." is not contributing and degrades the quality of the post and HN in general.

How does "Combined with the power of local carrier monopolies, it's exactly the reason we need net neutrality." not qualify as explanation/original thought?
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