Comcast 1TB Internet Cap Is Becoming A Reality

They'll never cut you off, just jack up your internet bill up to $200 higher than you're already paying per month.

Will be a fun surprise when you get a $400 comcast bill in the mail.

More expensive things are exclusive and are therefore of higher quality. In a world where internet is rare, it's good to be a member of the elite few who can afford exclusive internet packages.

Exclusive internet: It just works.
 
It's all about the cord cutters. This is their way of fighting back.
 
Median traffic is 75 MB, WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF are they smoking.
 
Median traffic is 75 MB, WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF are they smoking.

Most likely a typo. It's probably 75GB. They have already reported averages MUCH higher than 75MB in the past and the average usage has obviously not gone down.
 
Anyone thinking this is reasonable is utterly failing to look at the larger picture here. We are at a point where online services are consuming more and more data on average. Comcast isn't being generous with the data cap, they are thinking not too many years down the line where that average will go up and people will regularly hit it. They have no incentive to raise the cap in the future as the overage charges market is simply too lucrative. Their response to those hitting it won't be to offer more data, but to tell them to get cable and lower their data usage that way. This is a direct attack on those of us who have dropped cable subs due to exorbitant pricing instead of an attempt at being competitive. They have technical monopoly on the market and are going to abuse that any way they can.
 
No data cap on my Gigabit Pro being insalled later this month!!! Total of 3 gig synchronus (one 2 gig line one 1 gig line) for same price I am paying for 100 meg and NO install/activation fees and they paid to pull fiber to my house and will run fiber from demarc to my home office . . . #WINNING


XFINITY Data Usage Center — FAQ

As a reminder, data usage plans do not apply to Comcast Business Internet customers, customers on Bulk Internet agreements, and customers with Prepaid Internet, or to XFINITY Internet customers on our Gigabit Pro tier of service.
 
I just rejoined up with comcast again in August. I use one DVR Main, 1 Satelite DVR, and 1 regular Hd box for daughter's room. So far each month on my Bill I have had a NEW DVR Box for 19.95 with a 11.35 discount added to my bill. Talk to them yesterday, I really have 3 boxes, they added another one this month for October. So I now have 3 real Boxes and was getting charged for 5 as of October. Nice stuffing program! "Lets add a box a month to see if he notices!!" All's good though, rep was really cool and credited it all back. Just WATCH YOUR BILL every single month. This is why I don't AUTO-PAY anything. My poor elderly parents had a modem charge for 2 years+ even after I bought them the modem from Best Buy and were using it. Comcast , we screw everyone! And we're trying!
 
Just got this e-mail myself after years of being cap-free in Denver. I've never gotten close to that before, but that doesn't mean it won't happen going forward. Games are getting bigger and bigger and movies are, too.

games are getting bigger but i mean i'm in an alpha testing project right now where i litterally download a 22GB game 1-2 times a week every time they make a change along with 2 people in my house basically watching netflix and amazon prime movies 10+ hours a day along with other stuff and even i don't get anywhere near the 1TB cap.. but the 1TB cap has always been there for comcast, they've just finally made it official.


I don't like this because I have several terabytes of data I want to back up to the cloud between all of our devices at home(I shoot a lot of raw pictures and video). I guess I will have to fork over for their "unlimited" plan

if you're backing up that much data you should be on the business plan anyways.


I just rejoined up with comcast again in August. I use one DVR Main, 1 Satelite DVR, and 1 regular Hd box for daughter's room. So far each month on my Bill I have had a NEW DVR Box for 19.95 with a 11.35 discount added to my bill. Talk to them yesterday, I really have 3 boxes, they added another one this month for October. So I now have 3 real Boxes and was getting charged for 5 as of October. Nice stuffing program! "Lets add a box a month to see if he notices!!" All's good though, rep was really cool and credited it all back. Just WATCH YOUR BILL every single month. This is why I don't AUTO-PAY anything. My poor elderly parents had a modem charge for 2 years+ even after I bought them the modem from Best Buy and were using it. Comcast , we screw everyone! And we're trying!

had that happen with the modem as well, they sent me a new one because they had discontinued the original one i was using 3 years prior to that, rep said i didn't have to return it but i didn't realize i had been charged the 10 bucks a month for almost 5 years anyways.. it wasn't showing up in the bill even though it was charging me and i had no clue myself but when i cancelled the account the rep noticed it and credited me back all the money i had paid for the modem for the last 5 years.
 
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games are getting bigger but i mean i'm in an alpha testing project right now where i litterally download a 22GB game 1-2 times a week every time they make a change along with 2 people in my house basically watching netflix and amazon prime movies 10+ hours a day along with other stuff and even i don't get anywhere near the 1TB cap.. but the 1TB cap has always been there for comcast, they've just finally made it official.




if you're backing up that much data you should be on the business plan anyways.




had that happen with the modem as well, they sent me a new one because they had discontinued the original one i was using 3 years prior to that, rep said i didn't have to return it but i didn't realize i had been charged the 10 bucks a month for almost 5 years anyways.. it wasn't showing up in the bill even though it was charging me and i had no clue myself but when i cancelled the account the rep noticed it and credited me back all the money i had paid for the modem for the last 5 years.


Never thought I'd see a defense force post in favor of Comcast.

streaming and gaming in my house of 4 on 105Mbps plan it's easy to go over 1TB with high quality and 4K stream and gaming it's easy.

but hey that extra 50 bucks comcast now gets out of me allows people to get free internet now while the rest of us who work hard pay more.

I fucking hate comcast i rent no equipment from them at all if i had a better option for service i'd be there but in my area they have zero competition!
 
Meh, if I was an ISP and had an accurate way to measure data I would simply charge all of my customers some flat fee and then some dollar amount per GB.
 
Wrong.

If you were accurately charged by usage, the first thing they would do is make the bill amount SMALLER for those that use the least amount of data. Thus, that isn't what they are after. They simply saw their current revenue and said "How can we make this number bigger while trying to justify it to all the customers?"

in which case you then do like I said and charge everyone per MB transferred or per Mbps utilized, and not a flat service rate. which nobody here is going to like.

Let's get one thing straight since there seems to be a few people here who claim to .... 'understand' .... no, no you don't.

Data caps exist for one purpose and one purpose only. To bring in additional revenue. There is literally no additional network strain or cost to these companies.

I feel absolutely horrible for you guys that have data caps because all you are are pawns right in the middle of greed.

My GF and I moved to Kansas City for Google Fiber 4 years ago. We had to wait 10 or 11 months to get it installed. It's amazing. There are days we download 200 or 300GB, sometimes more. My GF has a web dev business and she often backups web content for clients. We stream a lot. Download games, demo's, etc.

Before any of you buy a house or move into an apartment. Do your research and take it very very serious when it comes to your internet.

To a degree yes, but not 100%. Now to clarify I do work for an ISP. However we do not have a data cap and think they are bullshit. With that out of the way. I wouldn't call it strain but higher utilization. Which is what is paid for by ISPs connection to other ISPs. They all pay for data going back and forth. There is also the possible need for improving the backbone of your network as usage increases. Now when it comes time to pay for more data there are 3 choices. Eat the cost as part of doing business meaning you make less profits, raise prices for everyone which isn't really fair since not everyone is using equally using their service, or lastly charge a small fee to the small number that are costing you a little more to offer everyone service. Now the size of the company can easily change what the impact of each of these happens to be. For somebody like Comcast, a 50 cent increase on everyone's bill could be equal in $$ for them compared to just charging a few extra dollars to that 1% for every 50GB they go over. Or they could already have enough overhead in their network that they don't notice any real issues (yet) from these people at a financial level. I can promise you that if all my customers started transmitting 1TB of data a month I would be having swap out optics and cards to supply my equipment with more bandwidth as that would mean that more people would be using the internet at the same time and there goes my assumption of what is good enough for normal usage with over subscribing. However in my case we already have that worked into our budget as shit that happens as part of being an ISP. Just means that we need more customers to offset the loss of buying new stuff.

All I have to say is, municipal fiber can't come soon enough. Then I can finally ditch these greedy assholes.

1 TB should be okay for now (I average around 500 GB supposedly, and that's not even using 4K content...) but my guess is it won't take long to hit this as content gets bigger. He'll, even with Steam downloads some games are hitting 50-60 GB apiece.

Municipal fiber doesn't mean what you think it does. You can get fucked over worse by that. Case in point, city near me that is going live with municipal fiber in 2 months. It will cost you $1400 a month to rent fiber, then you have to pay to get it transported to some carrier. So by the time you pay to connect through somebody else, and then pay for service, you will be paying about $4000 - $10,000 a month. But if you think that is a better deal then you should move there as they are really hurting tryin to find people to pay for fiber.
 
At this point, wouldn't sneakernet be more efficient? The latency would be super high.

fedex_delivery.png
 
It's an increase for me... They've had us on 300GB (Louisiana) for quite a while. I only came close to it one time and they injected ads into my Chrome session and called me repeatedly. I don't like being capped, but I'm happier with this one than the previous one.
 
we Dodged a bullet here in philly this time around, but im sure the goons who make the decisions at comcast are salivating at the mouth to make this a quarterly thing, a la "this quarter the cap service will be introduced in..." plus " all in an effort to provide our customers with the best service..."
 
we Dodged a bullet here in philly this time around, but im sure the goons who make the decisions at comcast are salivating at the mouth to make this a quarterly thing, a la "this quarter the cap service will be introduced in..." plus " all in an effort to provide our customers with the best service..."
Its just a matter of time.

First, make a completely unreasonable demand, but immediately back off of it. Then make the demand you originally wanted, and it will seem very reasonable by comparison ("Hey, better than 250gb at least"), as you've now already sold the idea of the cap, have moved beyond that, and now are only negotiating cap size in the public's mind.

But its also important to segment the userbase, and not change everyone at once. That way only a portion of the userbase at a time can complain, and you can put off the markets where you're at greatest risk until last. So if there are any big protest movements for political change, they come in small chunks over a long period of time which gives it less political weight to affect change.

Then just send a few hundred million to Hillary and her cronies to ensure there's no political pushback and voila, you're now reducing your costs, encouraging customers to consume streaming video by ordering TV/movie service from you which doesn't count towards your data cap, and charging delicious overages to your "whales".
 
Highest data usage I've hit so far is 600GB and that is with a ton of 4K streaming through Netflix, watching Twitch streams, watching Youtube videos, streaming music, downloading 3-4 games per month, etc. I'm not worried.
 
Not defending Comcast, but a year a go the cap was 250 GB (or was it 300), so 1TB seems like a pretty dramatic improvement. Nevertheless, I dislike this, given that in most cases these companies have monopolies. I'm glad I have TWC (or whatever the new company is called).
 
All I have to say is, municipal fiber can't come soon enough. Then I can finally ditch these greedy assholes.

1 TB should be okay for now (I average around 500 GB supposedly, and that's not even using 4K content...) but my guess is it won't take long to hit this as content gets bigger. He'll, even with Steam downloads some games are hitting 50-60 GB apiece.

and how will that happen? Most municipal fiber jobs end up getting killed off by companies like Comcast.
 
I'm an ISP and am against caps because they don't make sense from the technical standpoint that scum like Comcast try to make. Supposedly the reason for caps is to "prevent network congestion", but when a user hits a cap, do they cut that user off to preserve the health of their network? No, they then charge that user a premium for what is supposed to be a degraded network. It doesn't make sense. If a user is abusing your network, talk to them and work something out. If multiple users are hurting your network, maybe you should stop selling services that you can't provide, or throw some money into upgrades.
 
It's all about the cord cutters. This is their way of fighting back.

This is it exactly. My bill was $200+ for years until I finally cut the tv and brought it to $70 (plus hbo go & netflix). Their plan is to get everyone back up to a $200 level, where it it will be cheaper to buy their service than go fulll ala carte streaming.
 
The FCC commissioner is a former Comcast lobbyist who has been actively going after Comcast’s competitors. Expect no action on this before his term expires and a new commissioner is appointed.

This type of incest is really sketchy and it happens in a lot of sectors.
 
Highest data usage I've hit so far is 600GB and that is with a ton of 4K streaming through Netflix, watching Twitch streams, watching Youtube videos, streaming music, downloading 3-4 games per month, etc. I'm not worried.
Yeah, but I remember when SSDs were coming out, and I bought a 60gig, and thought to myself there's no way I'd ever really need more for the OS and most common apps/games... and these days I'm running out of space on my 750gig.

You better hope your masters riding by occasionally throw more bread from the wagon into the crowd of the peasantry for you, as your monthly allowance of bread may not prove enough in the future.
 
This is it exactly. My bill was $200+ for years until I finally cut the tv and brought it to $70 (plus hbo go & netflix). Their plan is to get everyone back up to a $200 level, where it it will be cheaper to buy their service than go fulll ala carte streaming.

That is exactly where I am for phone, 150/150 FIOS and Ultimate TV. It pains me to see the $69 for 100/100, TV and Phone ad's on TV right now. Yes, it's for 2 years and they will ram them good when that period is over, but still...

The one thing I have going for me is I am wired for both Cox and FIOS. I can beat one over the head with the other. Now, believe me, the last thing I would ever want to do is go back to Cox (though I think their phone service is better), but I make that decision each 2yr renewal time. I'm on my second year of my FIOS agreement so most of the discounts expired after year one. I think I still get $25-$35 or so.

Just got my Verizon Bill in fact:

Statement Snapshot

Account number ending in: ***-******
Total Amount Due: $191.04*
Payment Due Date: October 25, 2016
*Balance does not reflect payments received after September 30, 2016

The real pain is the email addresses :( I may move all my bill pay and other important stuff to my outlook.com account.
 
My cable provider, CableOne, just rolled out a 1 gigabit service. Their data cap for that plan? 500GB, the same as their 200mbps service. Hahahahaha!

Except the 200mbps plan costs $105, and the 1gbps service costs $175. HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You get the privilege of blowing through your data cap 5X faster for $70 more a month!

Their 150mbps service has a 400GB cap, and their low end 100mbps tier has a 300GB cap.

It's ducking retarded.


EDIT: And CenturyLink DSL out here rolled out fiber recently. I can get a whopping 7mbps service for $35! Yeah, just 7mbps - nothing higher.
 
Yeah, but I remember when SSDs were coming out, and I bought a 60gig, and thought to myself there's no way I'd ever really need more for the OS and most common apps/games... and these days I'm running out of space on my 750gig.

You better hope your masters riding by occasionally throw more bread from the wagon into the crowd of the peasantry for you, as your monthly allowance of bread may not prove enough in the future.

Comcast has upgraded my speeds for free for years; I imagine they'll do the same with the data caps as average bandwidth usage increases across the board.

I think the data caps they have put in place are more to limit the people that use extreme amounts of bandwidth. I thought I was utilizing a ton of bandwidth and I'm only at 60% of their data cap on my most active months.
 
Yup got the email myself the other day too. Can't say I'm shocked on my comcast page it said I had a limit of like 300GB or something. That said, also in the email was the option to go to an unlimited plan, for $50/month more so those crying about paying $200 in overage are just crying that they might have to pay $50 more and don't want to, so they'll risk it and hopefully not hit the 2 TB mark.
 
and how will that happen? Most municipal fiber jobs end up getting killed off by companies like Comcast.

The plans are already in place, supposed to be $30/mo 100mb symmetric or $70/mo gigabit symmetric by 2017-2018. I think the city already approved it, we'll see.

Supposed to be similar to what they did in Sandy, OR.
 
A TB? What the hell are you people downloading? The Mrs and I are HD streaming mofos and I don't think I hit 250GB. I mean unless I want to delete and re-download Titanfall 50 times a month just for fun?

Although... I guess a ton of 4K video might not help.
 
You know, I think it would actually make more sense for ISPs to charge per byte downloaded. I remember paying long distance by the minute. Cell phone plans were by the minute (and still are for a lot of people). I pay by the gallon for gas. I pay per movie that I want to watch.

Then they would be highly incentivized to give you the fastest speeds possible with high uptime. I bet there would be no more of this "Your internet is slow because it requires service, we can have a tech out there in 3-5 weeks, please be home between the hours of 5am and 8pm"

Sure, that might add up if your streaming a lot of 4k (or torrents) - but you know what, as a person who has long suffered through very slow and/or congested ISPs, I don't see much wrong with that. No one is telling you that you can't do that, they are just saying you should pay for the privilege, and I do believe that high-bandwidth users should pay more.

I honestly think my ISP bill would go way down if I paid per byte, right now I'm paying $150 a month for radio 3M service because I live in the sticks, and very rarely do I get half of that bandwidth - but since it's "connected" I don't get any sort of discount because of poor speeds. There are times that I can't even stream audio, let alone anything better than SD video. I do believe the FCC-regulated telecom utility rules should apply to ISPs (including cellular data service), that a utility should be obligated to provide service to all persons in their area of business.
 
If data congestion is such a problem, why does my cellphone get faster speeds and no cap or throttling than Comcast offers in my area? I mean the cell networks must be more congested than the high speed links Comcast uses? Also I pay half of what Comcast charges for cellular. What an I missing?

Comcast: 100mbps ~100$ 1TB cap
T-MOBILE: LTE (~600mbps) 50$ 9999.9TB cap without throttling.

These are actual prices and plans from my accounts.
 
You know, I think it would actually make more sense for ISPs to charge per byte downloaded.
We have no megabyte shortage... its just data.

That type of system would encourage data frugality, and would probably kill 4K video since people wouldn't want to pay so much extra when 720p gets then by fine.

We live in the information age, and to put in place incentives to restrict that flow of information is to go backwards in progress.

Instead, we should focus on increasing speeds and data sharing exponentially, as it will act in society as neurons in a human brain.

Considering that the United States is not even close to being in the top 10 countries in the world for internet connections as it is, we have a long way to go in that department and should be focusing on that accordingly and finding new ways to share information at high speed in every home. I have 9 high definition cameras that stream to a local server but also to my work so I can monitor my home for peace of mind, and that should not be considered a bad thing.

We used to be world leaders, let us not regress!

Make America's Internet Greatest Again!
 
Do they have a reliable and accurate way to measure data usage? I would assume your states weights and measures office should be calibrating those ISPs to make sure you're not being ripped off, just like they do for gallons of gas, lbs of deli meat and when selling precious metals to jewelry and pawn shops.

their tool was only 5 mb off of what DDWRT came up with last month so id say its fairly accurate but its including overhead and signaling. it *shouldnt*... but its like... 3-10mb/month for that? so... no biggie?
 
We have no megabyte shortage... its just data. !

Well, it is just data. But there is a limit on the backbone to carry that data. A fiber trunk can only carry so much bandwidth. And installing that backbone is expensive.

If you want to keep paying for a theoretical speed, and keep getting crappy service, fine by me.

Cable isn't a utility, telephone is, and power is. When a storm comes through - my phone is out for maybe ... 15 minutes. The power may flicker. Phone and power companies have trucks rolling in the middle of the storm to get it back up. Cable... maybe they will get to it in 3-5 weeks, and probably they won't cut me a break on the bill while I'm without service either.

Economics seems to me, if you pay per byte - the ISPs will automatically get you the fastest speeds they possibly can. And they will keep it running. And if it becomes FCC regulated, they will not only have the financial incentive, they will have a legal obligation to do so. You won't have to opt into more expensive packages to get faster speeds, they will just keep improving the speed as they can roll it out, because they would want you to be able to use more data.

Right now, they just want suckers to pay for higher bandwidth - everyone gets the same cable run to their house, they just throttle you if you don't pay more. And they want you to use as little of it as possible, so they can pack more subscribers onto the same trunk - so they are trying to have it both ways: get people to pay for faster speed, ~AND~ institute caps, so they can't actually utilize that speed.

I totally agree, the ISPs shouldn't be able to have it both ways. But I don't necessarily think that a per-byte plan is necessarily a bad thing - I think it would drive an overall better business model for the consumer.
 
Yeah I got my email from them about this.. According to their records we average 201G a month... I'm not too worried.
 
1TB is a ton, but if you have Gigabit network speed, not so much. They seem to want to cap it based on max speed. Back when it was 300GB aand 30MB donwload speed, same limit, extra money. idiots.

um... what?

if i download a 12gb game through steam, its still 12gb regardless if im pulling 5mb/sec or 25mb/sec... its still 12gb. the modem is still the bottleneck even if you have 305 down service ya?
 
Peering agreements aren't as cut and dry as they once were either, and you have to take in consideration the transit and peering costs to the last mile in competing network regions. Interconnection costs (transit mostly) suck in those black hole areas, and also come into play with this. Upgrade and maintenance prices for them every year are also astronomical, and they're just functioning as a business normally does -- for profit. I've never seen a true "all you can leech" Internet provider, there is always a hidden cap somewhere where they'll boot you for excessive usage. 1 TB isn't excessive, but at least it's not a hidden "You have to upgrade to business class" surprise anymore.
 
If you want to keep paying for a theoretical speed, and keep getting crappy service, fine by me.
You seem to think that the problem is that Comcast has no money, that the executives are driving high mileage VW Bugs, because there just isn't enough money to invest in more infrastructure. The opposite is the case, and the problem is simply a lack of competition. Koreans have a lower per capita GDP than us, and yet blow us away in speeds and have no data caps in place.
Cable isn't a utility, telephone is, and power is.
Not yet, but that is what Comcast is afraid of, and the only thing holding back their pricing and data caps. If there's enough consumer backlash, legislation may be put in to effect that alters the status quo.
Economics seems to me, if you pay per byte - the ISPs will automatically get you the fastest speeds they possibly can.
Why? At gigabit speed, you would hit Comcast's 1TB monthly data limit in 2 hours, or 1/730th of a month. Since Comcast has a virtual monopoly in most of the country, why wouldn't they just charge a high dollar amount per byte, and have you paying out the nose for scraps? The ISPs already aren't really competing with one another, so what would change? Are they going to charge you less because they LIKE you? They want to be NICE to you?
get people to pay for faster speed, ~AND~ institute caps, so they can't actually utilize that speed.
Exactly, but paying per byte sure as heck only plays into that system even more, and discourages people from sharing data.

We need to be moving to a cloud infrastructure, but that isn't going to happen if we start capping people's data or encouraging data frugality.
 
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