FCC wants to hear about how internet data caps affect peoples lives.

lostinseganet

lostinseganet

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Largely, they don't. Because I don't need to download 1.2 TB per month... but with only one TV streaming and my "normal" usage, I guess youtube would be considered streaming, I do hit 800GB a month with some regularity so I can assume a family of more streaming would have more data usage.
 
They dont affect me anymore, household of 3 with 2 tvs streaming constantly and iv not come close to the soft cap of 1.5tb that my Isp has. I dont consume as much media as I used to since theres nothing new worth watching so i am sure that has lowered my monthly considerably.

That is with usually a few steam games a month.
 

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It seems like they mostly become a problem with families. I never hit mine when I had one (my GF and I have fiber now with no cap, yay!) but my coworkers with kids frequently have issues with theirs. Makes sense since kids like to watch media as much as adults, but often you don't want to watch the same thing so mom and dad might be streaming one thing and the kids something else, or even each kid their own thing.
 
I have never had a cap on my home internet connection. I had uncapped DSL (Slow but reliable) where I know there were months where I exceeded what the cap would have been with the local cable ISP. Now we have fiber also with no cap.

My family did go over the data cap on our phone once or twice, though that was almost always during a vacation and the only thing that could keep the youngest entertained was watching streamed videos.

If this goes the way the net neutrality one did I expect to see lots of comments about how data caps are good and people really liked running out of data.
 
Right now our average usage (upload and download combined) is usually in the 4-6TB per month range. I can't even remember the last time we used less than ~3TB, and there are months where we use upwards of 10TB or more.

When we got our current Cable internet connection, I made it a point to make sure that we got a plan with Unlimited data. In our case, that involved us getting a "Business" connection instead of a "Residential" connection. The end result is that we are paying over twice as much for 1/3rd the speed. Residential Gigabit is $99.99/month with a 1TB cap and we are paying $229.99/month for 300Mbps for a Business connection with Unlimited data. Overage charges on Residential plans are something like $20 for every 50GB over the cap, which in our case would add up so fast it would be laughable. Suffice it to say, given the price we are paying, I don't feel guilty in any way, shape, or form about our "excessive" data usage...

We've actually had our ISP call us once or twice over the years about our usage. Each time, I remind them about just how much we are paying, and that I'm fully aware of exactly how much we are using. They claim that they just wanted to make sure that we weren't "compromised by malware", which I guess is reasonable, if that's really why they called...

For me, it's the overall mentality of how I view my internet connection. I don't view my internet connection as being any different than a LAN connection. If I want to download an individual file that is 2TB; sure, why not? I wouldn't care about the burden that it places on my ISP any more than I would care about the burden that it places on my ethernet switch. A network connection is a network connection. I certainly wouldn't want to feel limited in terms of what services I could use and how often I can use them. I wouldn't want to own a car that I was only allowed to drive a small number of miles per month, even if it was a nice car.

While I am obviously the heaviest data user in my household, I'm still rather amazed at how much the data usage of my other family members has increased in recent years. After messing around with both DirecTV and Dish, we finally switched over to Hulu. I installed a Firestick on every TV on our property in order to provide a simple and standardized interface from which to access Hulu, because pretty much every TV is a different brand with a different style of controller; some of the TVs are newer, some are older, some have built-in apps, some don't, some have old apps that no longer update, etc. The result was a resounding success, but beyond just using the Firesticks to access Hulu, a lot of the free streaming apps on the firestick end up getting used now also. I think that at this point, we would have difficulty staying below 1TB/month even if I wasn't personally using any data at all.

Finally, I think that there are really two key variables at play here:
-Heavy data usage potentially putting a burden on the ISP that negatively impacts other users.
-An ISP trying to cash-in and make as much money as possible.

I have some degree of sympathy for the first, but none for the second. The first is becoming a harder and harder sell, in a large part because residential data caps in the 1TB range have been standard for a decade or more, while there have been significant technological improvements to networking during that time. 1TB really isn't that much data... especially when spread out across an entire month. It's pretty obvious that they are just trying to cash-in from those people who go over the cap and start racking-up overage charges, cell-phone-style, and receive a bill much larger than they expected. Fuck that.
 
I'm paying $30 extra a month because a 1.2tb limit is fucking ridiculous and if I played by comcasts rules i'd be spending $500+ a month because I can download 1.2 terabytes in 2-3 days of a 30 day billing period. They want to charge something dumb like $50 for every 50gb over the limit, which... Well, i'm at 4+TB used this month and there's still 11 days to go.
 
Id think its impossible for a family of four to stay under 1.2TB a month. Just think about 4k streaming devices, streaming on the TV/ipad/iphone, gaming and then of course just internet usage. What about all the people that also work from home?
 
Yeah the caps are arbitrary and silly at this point. I work for a major isp that doesn’t have a cap and they just seem like cash grabs to me. Heck a handful of new game downloads/installs can get up there pretty fast when you build a new pc or set up a new console.
 
I have a 1gig symmetrical fiber in southeast GA and we have no caps. When I lived in Atl with Comsuckasscast I had a data cap and they would hound me constantly about it. Even charged me for over use a few times. Data shouldn't cost money past the price of service. It's just electricity after all.

We have YouTube Premium and Disneyplusgrooming is our only streaming service. We get that free'ish through Vzw.

Herr is my data usage for last 30 days

Screenshot_20230621_093705.jpg
 
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I pay for Comcast lowest tier ($52 for 75 down but I get like 100 sometimes, most of the time 85 though, and just 10 up) with a 1.2TB cap and some months I'm at like 2-3TB and a few months just like 600GB. I just don't give a fuck, let them say something, I'll do it again. They haven't said anything yet after being here ~3 years.
 
GotNoRice said:
They claim that they just wanted to make sure that we weren't "compromised by malware", which I guess is reasonable, if that's really why they called...
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It's a plausible reason to call. If bandwidth makes a big shift (or they have a new tool to look at bandwidth by user), malware/botnet is an unfortunate possibility, and it's better for your privacy if they call to ask than if they snoop on your traffic to try to see (plus it's hard to tell from traffic analysis). I've been on the attack end of DDoS where they just were downloading our large file over and over (through WordPress trackback reflection, but they could have done it from botnet clients, too).

On data caps: it's pretty unreasonable when you can go from a 10m to a 300m connection, but they all come with the same cap. Caps should be less of a hit the cap, pay the overage, and more of a hit the cap and slow down to the capped rate, and the capped rate is advertised as bit as the uncapped rate. Burst up to 300m, sustained use at 100m is a reasonable offering; burst to 300m, sustained at 10m is kind of crap, but could be right for like my mother in law --- fast when she uses it, good enough for streaming if she forgets to turn off the tv for a week, etc.
 
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toast0 said:
It's a plausible reason to call. If bandwidth makes a big shift (or they have a new tool to look at bandwidth by user), malware/botnet is an unfortunate possibility, and it's better for your privacy if they call to ask than if they snoop on your traffic to try to see (plus it's hard to tell from traffic analysis). I've been on the attack end of DDoS where they just were downloading our large file over and over (through WordPress trackback reflection, but they could have done it from botnet clients, too).
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It does make sense they'd see what is going on because, despite how some geeks will act about it, 4TB really is on the outside of what you see from a normal house, less than 1% use that much. So, I could see why they might check on it. When you use a lot more than the average person of, well, anything really it makes sense to see if the use is legit.
 
Sycraft said:
4TB really is on the outside of what you see from a normal house, less than 1% use that much.
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Where are you getting this information from? You may very well be correct, but it's still a personal peeve of mine when people pull something out of their ass and then state it as fact. I'd like to see the source statistics.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when 1TB was an absolutely massive amount of data to transfer over an internet connection. Now a house-full of old ladies can do that just by watching the Game-Show channel all day. Why have most ISPs not increased their caps?
 
GotNoRice said:
Where are you getting this information from? You may very well be correct, but it's still a personal peeve of mine when people pull something out of their ass and then state it as fact. I'd like to see the source statistics.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when 1TB was an absolutely massive amount of data to transfer over an internet connection. Now a house-full of old ladies can do that just by watching the Game-Show channel all day. Why have most ISPs not increased their caps?
Click to expand...

Old infrastructure equipment might not be able to handle the load if it was 'everyone' with no caps and they don't wanna pay to upgrade/fix/then increased maintenance if I had to guess
 
GotNoRice said:
Where are you getting this information from? You may very well be correct, but it's still a personal peeve of mine when people pull something out of their ass and then state it as fact. I'd like to see the source statistics.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when 1TB was an absolutely massive amount of data to transfer over an internet connection. Now a house-full of old ladies can do that just by watching the Game-Show channel all day. Why have most ISPs not increased their caps?
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I will concede that it could be incorrect but I have three sources:

1) What the ISP says. They could be lying, but I don't think they are.

2) What I observe with our usage at work. No, that isn't the same as home usage, of course, but ya the average user doesn't use all that much bandwidth per day. 10-20GB maybe.

3) Coworkers. We are all IT people, we all know how to monitor this, none of us use that level, even the families who do use more than 1TB. They are usually in the 2TBish range.


I am not saying ISPs shouldn't increase their caps. In fact, I don't think they should have hard caps, just soft ones if anything. But I can understand why they might contact excess users to see what is going on and ya, 4-6TB is at the high end of usage. We'll do the same thing. If a system is really chatty, I'll check with the user to see why. It isn't a problem in and of itself, but it can be an indication of one.
 
I think those who are subject to data caps are helping make the cable companies point as they make sure they aren't getting hit with overage charges. They don't have to be IT experts to tell the kids to watch Youtube on their phone or tablet versus all their 4K tv's on max res, have one main console versus several consoles in every room and PC's downloading games and updates, etc.

Regardless, more devices, higher resolutions and faster download speeds all while data caps stay pretty much the same? It's not rocket science. You will pay $150-$200 a month and like it.
 
Household of 5 (wife, 2 girls and mother in law). 1 Gig symmetrical. $79.99/month no cap.

IMG_3819.PNG


I work for an ISP, let me see if I can pull some stats on average monthly usage. This thread made me curious. We offer residential speeds of 100MB, 200MB, 500MB, 1G, 2.5G and 5G.
 
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pclausen said:
Household of 5 (wife, 2 girls and mother in law). 1 Gig symmetrical. $79.99/month no cap.

View attachment 578558

I work for an ISP, let me see if I can pull some stats on average monthly usage. This thread made me curious. We offer residential speeds of 100MB, 200MB, 500MB, 1G, 2.5G and 5G.
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I'd be surprised if it was much. Family of 4 here with uncapped 1 gbps ($60/month)
usage.png
 
Anyone remember back in early-mid 2000's when a lot of the big ISP's claimed the internet exaflood was going to happen, that if they weren't allowed to have caps (very low caps) that the internet was doomed and would basically collapse? yea that was a load of horse$hit. they just didn't want to upgrade their networks and was using that as an excuse to implement low caps and charge higher prices. luckily they didn't get away with it.
 
Sycraft said:
I will concede that it could be incorrect but I have three sources:

1) What the ISP says. They could be lying, but I don't think they are.
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You mean the companies that actively try as hard as humanly possible to stifle competition?

Google had problems bringing fiber to areas, and there's been lawsuits to fight towns running their own.
 
socK said:
You mean the companies that actively try as hard as humanly possible to stifle competition?

Google had problems bringing fiber to areas, and there's been lawsuits to fight towns running their own.
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Establishing municipal broadband in Fort Collins was a ballot measure in 2017. It passed with 57% of the vote despite multiple telecom-funded groups spending about $1,000,000 to defeat it. (Advocates spent about $15,000 on its behalf.)

My Xfinity plan was 1GB down, 100MB up, 1.2TB monthly data cap which we routinely approached and would prompt me to go to the office a couple times per month when I needed to share big files with colleagues. That was $120/month. We switched over to the municipal broadband shortly after it was available. New plan is 1GB down, 1GB up, no data cap, for $70/month. All of the neighbors I speak with are now on Connexion.

Cartel capitalism and corporate greed are out of control in this country, thanks in part to culture war bullshit distracting the moron masses with pronouns while we all get fleeced by the 0.1%. /endrant
 
Gigantopithecus said:
Establishing municipal broadband in Fort Collins was a ballot measure in 2017. It passed with 57% of the vote despite multiple telecom-funded groups spending about $1,000,000 to defeat it. (Advocates spent about $15,000 on its behalf.)

My Xfinity plan was 1GB down, 100MB up, 1.2TB monthly data cap which we routinely approached and would prompt me to go to the office a couple times per month when I needed to share big files with colleagues. That was $120/month. We switched over to the municipal broadband shortly after it was available. New plan is 1GB down, 1GB up, no data cap, for $70/month. All of the neighbors I speak with are now on Connexion.

Cartel capitalism and corporate greed are out of control in this country, thanks in part to culture war bullshit distracting the moron masses with pronouns while we all get fleeced by the 0.1%. /endrant
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This is the way we should go.

How much will internet companies start charging when their studios and production companies go bust? It's bad enough with subscriber TV tanking.
 
I pay an extra $50 a month for unlimited data with cox. Can't wait to have something else in my area. I miss centurylink. 1GB up/down no data cap for flat $65 a month.
 
Gigantopithecus said:
Establishing municipal broadband in Fort Collins was a ballot measure in 2017. It passed with 57% of the vote despite multiple telecom-funded groups spending about $1,000,000 to defeat it. (Advocates spent about $15,000 on its behalf.)

My Xfinity plan was 1GB down, 100MB up, 1.2TB monthly data cap which we routinely approached and would prompt me to go to the office a couple times per month when I needed to share big files with colleagues. That was $120/month. We switched over to the municipal broadband shortly after it was available. New plan is 1GB down, 1GB up, no data cap, for $70/month. All of the neighbors I speak with are now on Connexion.

Cartel capitalism and corporate greed are out of control in this country, thanks in part to culture war bullshit distracting the moron masses with pronouns while we all get fleeced by the 0.1%. /endrant
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It's depressing that it just barely passed
Edgar said:
I pay an extra $50 a month for unlimited data with cox. Can't wait to have something else in my area. I miss centurylink. 1GB up/down no data cap for flat $65 a month.
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I loved when FIOS came into my area and was available literally across the street for several months before my house got availability

Amusingly, gigabit came about 2 weeks after a local cable company got bought out and promptly announced FTTH.
 
Gigantopithecus said:
Establishing municipal broadband in Fort Collins was a ballot measure in 2017. It passed with 57% of the vote despite multiple telecom-funded groups spending about $1,000,000 to defeat it. (Advocates spent about $15,000 on its behalf.)

My Xfinity plan was 1GB down, 100MB up, 1.2TB monthly data cap which we routinely approached and would prompt me to go to the office a couple times per month when I needed to share big files with colleagues. That was $120/month. We switched over to the municipal broadband shortly after it was available. New plan is 1GB down, 1GB up, no data cap, for $70/month. All of the neighbors I speak with are now on Connexion.

Cartel capitalism and corporate greed are out of control in this country, thanks in part to culture war bullshit distracting the moron masses with pronouns while we all get fleeced by the 0.1%. /endrant
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Was there any exit poll information on why people voted against the municipal broadband?
 
Armenius said:
Was there any exit poll information on why people voted against the municipal broadband?
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It cost money. The city raised about $140M in municipal bonds to fund it. Some people will never vote for any increased taxes even if they're getting hammered harder by a business.
 
GotNoRice said:
Where are you getting this information from? You may very well be correct, but it's still a personal peeve of mine when people pull something out of their ass and then state it as fact. I'd like to see the source statistics.
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Well a quick Google search shows the average usage per household is abouy 600GB a month, that said every source seemed to take that number from the same study, and averages have a funny way of being misleading as a granny who only emails/Facebook's family members is going to bring that average down to earth. I personally would like yo see the average usage only counting those who use more than 200GB a month, i.e. remove the bottom third just to see if that number skyrockets, that is to say there are in fact a lot of people barely using to bring down the average.

That said the study did say usage increased 3.5x in the past 5 years, probably a lot of pandemic binge streaming, but in the past 10 years the usage increased by nearly 40 times
 
I know with comcast’s new X1 package being IPtv based i wonder if thats inflating data usage numbers
 
I get my internet from the library across the street and I'm seeing speeds around 3MB. I have to login about every 12hrs, I can't download torrents, some games have troubles with the portal. I don't see any caps for user, but the past 2 weeks I seeing the access point saying the maximum connections have been reached and I can no longer connect between around midnight to 7-8am ish. :(

I currently have Mint with 5GB of data, 7 would get me by at minimum, but I'm thinking to get the 40GB "unlimited" plan.
 
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