Cox Expands Home Broadband Data Caps and Overage Fees

Megalith

Megalith

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Here we go again. A number of new locations in the U.S. have fallen victim to Cox’s 1TB data cap, which include Arkansas; Connecticut; Kansas; Omaha, Nebraska; Iowa; and Sun Valley, Idaho. Like Comcast, Cox will be charging $10 for every 50GB used over the limit. Interestingly, the company is defending the data cap by claiming that only 1% of its customers exceed 1TB a month.

…customers of any Cox internet plan will be charged $10 for an additional chunk of 50GB of data after exceeding the standardized 1TB limit on all plans except its gigabit option. “This won’t impact 99 percent of our customers,” said company spokesperson Todd Smith in an email. “We have no additional locations to announce today. As decisions are made about any subsequent locations, we will announce these plans to our customers well in advance.” Cox internet plans have, prior to the first data cap trail period in Cleveland, outlined monthly data allowances in all markets. Yet the company didn’t charge overage fees for exceeding those caps until it began expanding the test beyond Cleveland. Instead, it used to simply suggest customers upgrade their plans.
 
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I think I would personally have to try very hard to reach a 1TB limit, and I have a full compliment of over 200 steam games and a netflix subscription. Even with all that, it would be difficult to reach that limit unless I just set my computer on a stream loop (why I would do that is anybodies guess).

I wish AT&T would have that high a limit, they are currently stuck at 250gb if I remember correctly, which is very easy to hit if you aren't careful.
 
So one in a hundred can be charged a tax others are not, a heavy tax at that. If you go over 1TB it's unlikely that you just go over by 50GB. If you don't notice the usage quickly enough, let's say with legal torrents, it can be a couple hundred GB.

And no matter how they sell it, I feel strongly that the amount of internet data consumption should simply not be my concern if I engage in non-commercial activity. I don't CARE what 99% of people do which by the way is a number Cox came up with.. I call that into doubt.

Data caps need to go away. They stifle the internet. People will block ads more because those generate traffic. Mom&Dad watch a lot of movies, too bad kid, your creative online work has to wait until the cap resets. Left Youtube on autoplay overnight? Oh well get in line until next month.
Windows 10 Insider Update pushing you over? That'll be $30.

There are so many scenarios where this is just a cancer. I hope people in Cleveland protest this.
 
Comcast started to implement the 1TB caps in my area.. I am over by 200GB so far this month.

One big frustration is Comcast gives you no detail on where your usage is going... If I wanted to know where I am seriously offending its up to my hardware etc. This is data they should be required to provide... if anything to prove you are actually using the data.

I do use usenet but that was 50% of my traffic based on my router.

We also have been using NVidia shield game streaming... going back to usage info no clue how much data that uses.

I work remotely and use VPN/RDP... no clue how much traffic this is. I would bet not much... but I still have 50% of my data unaccounted for.
 
dandirk said:
Comcast started to implement the 1TB caps in my area.. I am over by 200GB so far this month.

One big frustration is Comcast gives you no detail on where your usage is going... If I wanted to know where I am seriously offending its up to my hardware etc. This is data they should be required to provide... if anything to prove you are actually using the data.

I do use usenet but that was 50% of my traffic based on my router.

We also have been using NVidia shield game streaming... going back to usage info no clue how much data that uses.

I work remotely and use VPN/RDP... no clue how much traffic this is. I would bet not much... but I still have 50% of my data unaccounted for.
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Same here. Went over my cap in December with Comcast. What kind of upsets me when companies impose these caps, and then publish these info sheets showing how hard you have to try to hit your cap, they ignore many things that are a big concern, and will only continue to grow as time goes on. Nobody is talking about how much streaming you can do at 4k to hit your cap. How about the ever increasing popularity of digital video game downloads? It seems like now your average mainstream release is a 40-60GB download. That's sucking up 1/20th of your monthly internet in a single download. Never mind having a large library of games, game systems, computers, and other connected devices that these days seem like they are in a constant state of updating. Looking at my recent Steam download history, I'm sitting on roughly 5GB worth of recent updates there, with another 1GB+ in queue to be updated today. My phone seems like it's updating several things a day. And while thats on a much lesser scale, when there are four phones, two tablets, and two android set-top boxes in the house, you bet your ass over the course of a month they use an appreciable amount of data keeping things up-to-date.

Stuff like that is going to continue pushing me over every month, and I'm going to end up having to pay the extra $50 or whatever for unlimited. I hate it.
 
dandirk said:
Comcast started to implement the 1TB caps in my area.. I am over by 200GB so far this month.

One big frustration is Comcast gives you no detail on where your usage is going... If I wanted to know where I am seriously offending its up to my hardware etc. This is data they should be required to provide... if anything to prove you are actually using the data.

I do use usenet but that was 50% of my traffic based on my router.

We also have been using NVidia shield game streaming... going back to usage info no clue how much data that uses.

I work remotely and use VPN/RDP... no clue how much traffic this is. I would bet not much... but I still have 50% of my data unaccounted for.
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Why the hell should Comcast tell you? It is your network. If you can not figure out what is eating up your bandwidth on your network maybe you should switch back to dial up.
 
The Gonz said:
Then I can argue why bother with the caps?
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It's disingenuous. Some arguments in the past were "some subscribers abuse bandwidth" and "some subscribers unfairly consume bandwidth" which is meant to pit customers against each other by saying those who use a lot of bandwidth put others at a disadvantage and should incur financial punishment.

In the end it's about additional revenue from two groups: those who go over the cap and those who, in fear of caps, pay extra for "business class" or whatever Cox calls it. Once that migration has finished, Cox can re-adjust the cap at will either direction and try to capture more ad infinitum.

It's a money making scheme with no basis in reality.
 
necrosis said:
Why the hell should Comcast tell you? It is your network. If you can not figure out what is eating up your bandwidth on your network maybe you should switch back to dial up.
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Because they're charging extra for it?
 
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necrosis said:
Why the hell should Comcast tell you? It is your network. If you can not figure out what is eating up your bandwidth on your network maybe you should switch back to dial up.
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go fuck yourself, yup there it is, the honest truth. people like you are the reason they do these things. your content. "i use less than blah blah blah" go fuck yourself. you stay silent for years, then suddenly your going to hit the cap, and complain, and you know what, fuck you, pay up. hell why not pay up now? ill monitor your data for you, you owe me $500, why because I said so.

Fuck you
 
Doesn't this open up lawsuits against ISP's for forcing customers to view ads on the ISP's internet thereby using up their customers data without the customers permission? I would think these caps would open them up to a class action suit.
 
necrosis said:
Why the hell should Comcast tell you? It is your network. If you can not figure out what is eating up your bandwidth on your network maybe you should switch back to dial up.
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This is the stupidest thing I've heard all day. I guess you'd support the removal of fuel gauges from cars too?

Boggles the mind why people like you crawl out of the woodwork to defend the questionable anti-consumer business practices of multi-billion dollar corporations. You do know they pay people for this, right?

"I never use my headphone jack so good on Apple removing it"
"Pshhh, I never use more than 6GB mobile data a month so THANK GOD Verizon eliminating unlimited data plans"
 
When it's one of your only choices (usually you have 2 maybe 3, but sometimes only one) due to local politics then it does matter. By stifling competition ISPs can get away with this because you really don't have a choice.

How hard is it to go above 1TB downloaded a month? Easy.

You have cloud backup and your 2TB harddrive dies? How will you restore it? That's right, restore 2TB and get surcharged out the ass.

Then they all play games where they don't count their services against your cap.
 
What can you do with 1 TB of Internet data every month?
- Back up half of your system drive's image to the cloud.
- Recover half of your system drive image from the cloud if it crashes.
- Take three months to reinstall your games if your Steam drive crashes, as long as you're willing not to browse at all during those months.
- In other words, with 1 TB of Internet data every month, you can kill the entire notion of safeguarding data by using the cloud.
 
Hypergreatthing said:
Then they all play games where they don't count their services against your cap.
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This is basically a wet dream for ISPs. The second they do away with net neutrality every. single. ISP. is going to release a portfolio of streaming/cloud services that don't count towards your bandwidth cap. This, in turn, will eventually lead to the elimination of many non-ISP owned internet services.
 
NeoNemesis said:
This is basically a wet dream for ISPs. The second they do away with net neutrality every. single. ISP. is going to release a portfolio of streaming/cloud services that don't count towards your bandwidth cap. This, in turn, will eventually lead to the elimination of many non-ISP owned internet services.
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On top of that they will cut your bandwidth down to 100GB cause you don't need it anymore when using their services.
 
lironmiron said:
What can you do with 1 TB of Internet data every month?
- Back up half of your system drive's image to the cloud.
- Recover half of your system drive image from the cloud if it crashes.
- Take three months to reinstall your games if your Steam drive crashes, as long as you're willing not to browse at all during those months.
- In other words, with 1 TB of Internet data every month, you can kill the entire notion of safeguarding data by using the cloud.
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Not to mention the fact that in our house, a family of cord cutters, we've got Netflix going almost non-stop. Kids shows for the 3 year old when he wants them, gaming and Netflix for the 11 year old, Netflix for the inlaws, Netflix for my wife and I, and 2 Steam connected PC's downloading games and uninstalling old ones since SSD space is limited.

Some times we'll have 4 Netflix streams going at the same time, all to different shows and people. I don't even want to think what our monthly usage is with TWC.
 
NeoNemesis said:
This is basically a wet dream for ISPs. The second they do away with net neutrality every. single. ISP. is going to release a portfolio of streaming/cloud services that don't count towards your bandwidth cap. This, in turn, will eventually lead to the elimination of many non-ISP owned internet services.
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vegeta535 said:
On top of that they will cut your bandwidth down to 100GB cause you don't need it anymore when using their services.
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We're all screwed.
 
I'm on Cox in Arizona and either Arizona didn't make the cut or my wife and I just aren't that bad with our usage.

But we are very active with our phones and my gaming and such over the router. Maybe I should start tracking my usage just to see where I sit. It doesn't hurt to know and maybe if I do a few things like uninstall some steam games that are downloading updates even though I am not really playing the game actively, that might help. The same for phone Apps.
 
As far as I'm concerned, you are paying for bandwidth, not total data. Why? Because the ISP data costs are based on peak bandwidth usage, not the total amount of data that flows through their system (although there is obviously a relationship here). They have to add/upgrade equipment for two reasons: to keep up with peak demand, and to provide customers with faster and faster service (more bandwidth). So they should charge based on bandwidth only. The amount of data used is irrelevant.

The fact of the matter is, a user with 100mb/s service that uses 100gb of data a month costs them more than a user with 25mb/s service that uses 200gb of data a month.
 
lironmiron said:
What can you do with 1 TB of Internet data every month?
- Back up half of your system drive's image to the cloud.
- Recover half of your system drive image from the cloud if it crashes.
- Take three months to reinstall your games if your Steam drive crashes, as long as you're willing not to browse at all during those months.
- In other words, with 1 TB of Internet data every month, you can kill the entire notion of safeguarding data by using the cloud.
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This. I don't even archive Steam games locally. I download them when I want to play them (takes about 15-20 minutes) and remove them when I am done. No need to waste precious drive space when Valve is doing it for me.

I also have 12TB backed up on Crashplan. Though, given how slow Crashplan has been for me lately, I'm not even sure of what value the backup is. If I ever lost my pool and had to download all the data, it would take like 3 years...
 
PaulP said:
As far as I'm concerned, you are paying for bandwidth, not total data. Why? Because the ISP data costs are based on peak bandwidth usage, not the total amount of data that flows through their system (although there is obviously a relationship here). They have to add/upgrade equipment for two reasons: to keep up with peak demand, and to provide customers with faster and faster service (more bandwidth). So they should charge based on bandwidth only. The amount of data used is irrelevant.

The fact of the matter is, a user with 100mb/s service that uses 100gb of data a month costs them more than a user with 25mb/s service that uses 200gb of data a month.
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I suppose you'll always be happy then, as long as you can keep a provider who agrees with you.



You know, in comparison, my Verizon plan is a 6GB plan that my wife and I share the bandwidth on. I say share, if you saw how much of the data I use compared to what she uses, you would probably say I slip in and piggyback a little data a couple times a week. I use less then 10% of our data every month.

But still, the point being, we come in under 6 GB together every month on a plan where our line charges are $20 each, the phones are paid for, we are out of contract, the rest of the charges are really that $60 data plan which means we are paying $10 per GB every month. Big differencee between that and our home cable internet service where I pay less than $60 a month for a cap I have never reached despite fairly heavy usage. I can't complain about Cox here in AZ.
 
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PaulP said:
As far as I'm concerned, you are paying for bandwidth, not total data. Why? Because the ISP data costs are based on peak bandwidth usage, not the total amount of data that flows through their system (although there is obviously a relationship here). They have to add/upgrade equipment for two reasons: to keep up with peak demand, and to provide customers with faster and faster service (more bandwidth). So they should charge based on bandwidth only. The amount of data used is irrelevant.

The fact of the matter is, a user with 100mb/s service that uses 100gb of data a month costs them more than a user with 25mb/s service that uses 200gb of data a month.
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This will depend on what kind of agreement they have with their peering partners.

Usually - unless the ISP is a Tier1 and has enough leverage to come up with a neutral peering agreement, or even charge someone else for the bandwidth - the ISP pays for the total data in which ever direction is the greatest. For consumer ISP's this is overwhelmingly going to be downstream.

It never made any sense to me that they gimp upstream bandwidth (you know, 100Mbit down, 5Mbit up type of plans) to their users when this model essentially means that upstream is free to them.

I think Verizon finally realized this a few years back when they across the board made all of their FiOS plans have the same upstream as downstream.
 
Then I can argue why bother with the caps?
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Because this is a business and they want their money back from you, the excessive user.

When nodes start to get oversubscribed, you have to either (1) change the tech, which recently happened with the DOCSIS 3 upgrade, or (2) add more nodes, which isn't cheap. Run more cables, and add switching to the other nodes.

If you are using 5x more bandwidth than your average user, that's how many more users could be added to the node before they have to add a new one. That's 4 * $50/month.

Those overage fees are pretty fair, if you do the math. Typically charge around $50-60/month for internet, and that's the same price as 250-300GB of overage.

The tech upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1 is still way too expensive ($200 modems), so don't expect it to save you. So for now, you pay overages if you want to indulge in lots of 4k. For everyone else, the 1TB cap is not oppressive.

If you disagree with this logic, then you're just a cheapass. This is how every profitable business is run!
 
Not to make this political, but I fear that internet issues are only going to get worse over the next few years, with the new administration having come out against Net Neutrality, and the FCC talking about reversing it. There may not have been any regulations about data caps in the past, but the ISP's were probably concerned about pushing it TOO far in case they angered the people to the point where they petitioned the administration/FCC to do something about it. Now that seems much less likely, which is likely why this news is coming - as it does - post inauguration.

I'm still kind of surprised no one has filed a suit under monopoly laws about these caps, as they are a clear attempt by ISP's which are in many cases cable operators, and on demand operators as well, to harm their more modern streaming competition to protect their business from cord cutters.
 
whateverer said:
Because this is a business and they want a portion of their money back.

When nodes start to get oversubscribed, you have to either (1) change the tech, which recently happened with the DOCSIS 3 upgrade, or (2) add more nodes, which isn't cheap. Run more cables, and add switching to the other nodes.

If you are using 5x more bandwidth than your average user, that's how many more users could be added to the node before they have to add a new one. That's 5 * $50/month.

Those overage fees are pretty fair, if you do the math. Typically charge around $50-60/month for internet, and that's the same price as 250-300GB of overage.

The tech upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1 is still way too expensive ($200 modems), so don't expect it to save you. So for now, you pay overages if you want to indulge in lots of 4k. For everyone else, the 1TB cap is not oppressive.

If you disagree with this logic, then you're just a cheapass. This is how every profitable business is run!
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Or they could just QoS the traffic, such that during crunch times "heavy users" don't ruin the netflix experience for average users, while letting them run hog wild during times of low traffic. But they don't.

I highly doubt this has much to do with it at all. It's really more about trying to kill streaming services like Neflix and Amazon Prime in order to protect the status quo in Cable TV and On demand.
 
I agree it's not my favorite implementation, but I'm not sure how much work it would take tracking heavy users. You'd probably have a lot more FALSE POSITIVES in that camp than they already have with these people complaining about the cap counters being inaccurate, and that would add to support costs.

EDIT: I forgot, T-Mobile already implemented this for it's unlimited abusers. They were sued because it violates net neutrality. Caps are legal, because they just charge you more, but leave your access unhindered.

So, I guess now that Net Neutrality is off-the-books, we can implement smarter throttling? But it could also be abused in SO MANY WAYS.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/...mited-data-settlement-fine-discount-free-data
 
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Greedy $$$$$ moment.

*IF* this were true with the whole "but 1%..." argument, then why isn't the data fee simply the cost of another month of access for an extra 1 TB of data, instead of $10 for 50GB which translates to an extra $200 a month.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Greedy $$$$$ moment.

*IF* this were true with the whole "but 1%..." argument, then why isn't the data fee simply the cost of another month of access for an extra 1 TB of data, instead of $10 for 50GB which translates to an extra $200 a month.
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Because the average home uses WAY less than 1TB. That was made very clear by highlighting "just 1% exceed that cap."

They're charging you $50 for 250GB in overage, which is way more data than your average user actually utilities. So even if you exceed your cap, you're still getting GREAT value out of your plan, compared to some grandma who only checks Facebook, and uses maybe 10GB. Or a lightweight streamer and cabler watcher family, who maybe uses 100-200GB.

They just want some of that money back. But not all of it.
 
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Divide by 4 and each family member can watch 70 whole hours of anything a month if they dont nothing else.
 
Any data caps are so "early 2000's". LOL...Glad I don't have any from my ISP in Canada. I use over 1TB per month. Teenage boys, cord cutters, porn and hundreds of Steam Games.
 
Imagine if electricity had caps, if you went over a certain amount of kwh you'd get charged extra.
Lucky I been able to reduce my electric bill, but cant do that with internet and retain the same speeds.
 
bugleyman said:
Ah, yes. The inevitable "if it is profitable, it must be good" post. And how was Econ 101? :p
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Show me a wired internet-only company that's raking in the dough, and we can talk the "they already get too much of my money" talk.

Oh, that's right, wired internet makes smaller profits,. and the only massively profitable part of Comcast is the cable subscriptions. And that goes double, because Comcast is a content provider.

You people could do us all a favor, and stop confusing CELLULAR internet plans with WIRED. There's a big difference between the two in profitability.
 
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dandirk said:
Comcast started to implement the 1TB caps in my area.. I am over by 200GB so far this month.

One big frustration is Comcast gives you no detail on where your usage is going... If I wanted to know where I am seriously offending its up to my hardware etc. This is data they should be required to provide... if anything to prove you are actually using the data.

I do use usenet but that was 50% of my traffic based on my router.
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That does kinda suck. TWC (now spectrum) doesn't have a data cap, but they do give me a decent break out of the hours of the day and days of my data usage. So I can see at 1AM on Thursday, I used 60Gb of data, which tells me the son downloaded another game. So far Spectrum is still bragging no data caps, but I keep an eye on it anyways, just in case. So far, closest I've gotten to capping is 800Gb in a month, I mostly hover around 650ish.

I could be wrong, but I think D-link routers gives you a data usage break out. If it gave a break out by IP address it would be pretty nice.

Galvin said:
Imagine if electricity had caps, if you went over a certain amount of kwh you'd get charged extra.
Lucky I been able to reduce my electric bill, but cant do that with internet and retain the same speeds.
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Might get that someday anyways with all the Global warming counter measures.
 
Galvin said:
Imagine if electricity had caps, if you went over a certain amount of kwh you'd get charged extra.
Lucky I been able to reduce my electric bill, but cant do that with internet and retain the same speeds.
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They do :D

https://www.chooseenergy.com/blog/energy-101/electricity-rates-rise-in-the-summer/

Rates change by the season, and for most business customers, rates change over the course of the day. So if you use more at-peak, you pay more.

Then I've heard CONSUMERS from California complain about higher kwh rate brackets if they exceed the cap for a month. So yes, it's common on both the business and consumer side to pay higher rates for higher-than-average usage.

EDIT: ahh, found the rates page. That shows THREE LEVELS of usage-based pricing, for residential customers.

https://www.pge.com/en_US/residenti...ptions/tiered-base-plan/tiered-base-plan.page

Your kwh rates DOUBLE if you land in the third column.
 
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whateverer said:
They do :D

https://www.chooseenergy.com/blog/energy-101/electricity-rates-rise-in-the-summer/

Rates change by the season, and for most business customers, rates change over the course of the day. So if you use more at-peak, you pay more.

Then I've heard CONSUMERS from California complain about higher kwh rate brackets if they exceed the cap for a month. So yes, it's common on both the business and consumer side to pay higher rates for higher-than-average usage.

EDIT: ahh, found the rates page. That shows THREE LEVELS of usage-based pricing, for residential customers.

https://www.pge.com/en_US/residenti...ptions/tiered-base-plan/tiered-base-plan.page

Your kwh rates DOUBLE if you land in the third column.
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Yep. Here in Mass, the first 500 kWh (or is it 600? Can't remember) per month is at a lower rate, everything above that is billed at a much higher rate.

And this is for consumer/household consumption.

Either way, between electric ity, transmission and distribution charges we have some of the highest price per kWh in the country :(

It's to the point where there aren't even any cost savings from driving a Tesla. The "fuel" costs per mile are about the same as gas.

There's also no time of use billing unless you use a seriously huge amount of power per month. If you don't, you don't qualify.
 
2 Steam connected PC's downloading games and uninstalling old ones since SSD space is limited.
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Used to be able to make backups of Steam games. Might be worth looking into to speed things up and save some bandwidth if you have a network drive or even local to an external or something.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Yep. Here in Mass, the first 500 kWh (or is it 600? Can't remember) per month is at a lower rate, everything above that is billed at a much higher rate.

And this is for consumer/household consumption.

Either way, between electric ity, transmission and distribution charges we have some of the highest price per kWh in the country :(

It's to the point where there aren't even any cost savings from driving a Tesla. The "fuel" costs per mile are about the same as gas.

There's also no time of use billing unless you use a seriously huge amount of power per month. If you don't, you don't qualify.
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In Mass ?

I got to spend some time in Mass, at Fort Devens to be precise, Ayre. I enjoyed weekends when I could catch the train into Boston and spend time down in Chinatown. I had a couple of semesters of Mandarin Chinese in college before I joined, Chinatown gave me a chance to refine my ear watching Kung Fu flicks. It wasn't a perfect deal though cause most of those movies were in Cantonese and not Mandarin.
 
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