Netflix Wants Annoying Data Caps To Be Illegal

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There are no two ways about it, data caps suck. I hate data caps, even though I never come close to hitting my 2TB data cap and my ISP doesn't even enforce its data caps. I'm with Netflix on this, just get rid of data caps already and the world will be a better place.

In a letter sent to the Federal Communications Commission last week, Netflix said that the commission should consider banning data caps on wired internet connections and banning "low" data caps on mobile connections. "Data caps (especially low data caps) and usage based pricing discourage a consumer’s consumption of broadband and may impede the ability of some households to watch internet television in a manner and amount that they would like," Netflix writes.
 
If an ISP sells you a speed tier, there should be no caps. You're being delivered a speed to utilize as you see fit. The inherent cap should be the inability to exceed that speed 24/7 for that month.

Otherwise they're just double dipping for fees, charging you by the speed rate AND bucket size.
 
If you want to give a cap, then give us infinite speed and charge us by a usage block basis.

If you selling us internet @ a certain speed, then we expect to hit that speed 24/7. Essentially the "cap" of say a 100mbps connection would be 100megabits * 60 seconds in a min * 60 min in an hour * 24 hours in a day * days in a month.
 
I have no problems with data caps. BUT, there needs to be standards, perhaps similar to the nutrition labels on food that allow customers to quickly find out what the max speed might be, the minimum guaranteed speed, what caps apply(if any), if caps engage what is the result(loss of service, throttling, extra charges, etc), and the total prices the customer will pay after all fees and taxes are added in.

In no case should a plan with caps be allowed to use words similar to "unlimited, no limits, use all you want, etc."

Not everyone needs or wants to pay for unlimited data, but they should know what they are buying before they make the decision.
 
My personal video and picture collection is approaching 1TB (783GB), this does not include camera phone data, which would be almost nothing, nor edited works I've posted.
Now I don't need to transfer this up at one time but I do back it up in the cloud as well as sync to other places. However if I were to loos it and need to download it again that would blow most limits places set.

P.S. My steam collection is on the same drive as this folder!
 
Steve said:
There are no two ways about it, data caps suck. I hate data caps, even though I never come close to hitting my 2TB data cap and my ISP doesn't even enforce its data caps. I'm with Netflix on this, just get rid of data caps already and the world will be a better place.
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You mean the states. Data caps for non cell data has been gone for many and many years now in other countries.
Here its just a huge feet draging retarded slowpoke when it comes to IT infrastructure.
 
I find it amusing that ISPs claim that caps are necessary for network management but enforce them haphazardly or not at all and none of them have totally accurate ways of measuring usage (Comcast, for example, measures usage by tracking MAC addresses in cable modems as if they've never heard of MAC spoofing). And my particular ISP, Centurylink, imposes 250GB caps in the area where I live on their DSL customers who are running at speeds of 40mbps and slower but for those of us lucky enough to be able to sign up for their 1 gig fiber service there are no official caps (though I'm sure there are unwritten ones somewhere). How does that make any sense from a network management standpoint? I can pull down data at a rate 25 times faster than their fastest DSL customers but they're the ones who are capped!
 
Good news. I just wish the others jumped on board with this letter- Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.
 
Dwango said:
I find it amusing that ISPs claim that caps are necessary for network management but enforce them haphazardly or not at all and none of them have totally accurate ways of measuring usage (Comcast, for example, measures usage by tracking MAC addresses in cable modems as if they've never heard of MAC spoofing). And my particular ISP, Centurylink, imposes 250GB caps in the area where I live on their DSL customers who are running at speeds of 40mbps and slower but for those of us lucky enough to be able to sign up for their 1 gig fiber service there are no official caps (though I'm sure there are unwritten ones somewhere). How does that make any sense from a network management standpoint? I can pull down data at a rate 25 times faster than their fastest DSL customers but they're the ones who are capped!
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You are absolutely right. If they have the backend and peering agreements to handle gigabit fiber, then they can use that same infrastructure for their crappy DSL.
 
I have TWC and 50mbit and so far no data caps. I did get an email as a FYI you used several TB already for this month. But no penalty.
 
Having a data cap is the same thing is being charged by the minute to talk on the phone. Companies realized how dumb that was and most have gone to unlimited minutes.
 
For mobile, I would rather have my $30/month plan with a data cap, than a $70/month plan for unlimited. I'm never going to use my data cap anyway, so why pay for unlimited that I don't need. I also don't need unlimited minutes, because I use maybe 10 minutes a month, so only having 100 minutes in my plan is great. I'm also happy to pay per minute to use my voip home phone, even though I'm paying for incoming calls, it's still less than $3/month because I barely use it (having the number and e911 is $2.35/month).
 
I don't have any data caps on my FiOS, but I know Verizon is keeping track of my data usage as I keep getting promotional popups from them when I got to pay my bills on their website telling me that I'm among the top data users and I might benefit from a faster tier internet, and to upgrade today :p

Hopefully they will never stoop to the level of adding actual caps.

I also recently have started suspecting that they might be throttling. They never used to. I could saturate both upstream and downstream all day every day in the past if I wanted to, but lately if I start downloading something large that can saturate my bandwidth, like a steam game for instance, it starts out maxing my 150Mbit line, but after 10 or so minutes, drops down to a lower speed.

I have no firm evidence yet, just circumstantial suspicions.
 
Cell phone companies are doing everything they can to make people believe that 10GB per month is a lot of data, and that they are being Santa-style generous if they up that to ~12GB. More and more people every day just use their phone as their main internet connection. People's ideas about what constitutes "a lot of data" is changing, and wired ISPs have taken note. I'd expect average caps to go down first before or if they ever go away. We will probably also see many more "economy" plans where you get like 6Mbps and 5GB per month, but if you go past that you are charged $20 for each extra gigabyte.
 
I agree their shouldn't be data caps! I am fortunate enough to have an isp that does not do that, yet anyway.
 
My ISP is Cableone and I am stuck with 300GB monthly caps on my 100Mbs connection for about $60. They are also rolling out gigabit service with a 500GB monthly cap for $200/month...In response to a recent complaint to the FCC, they insisted their data caps were necessary or people would leave them for their "competition" which in my area is Windstream DSL 6 down/384k up which works half of the time. Fun times out here in the sticks.
 
I had this ISP years ago that had a data cap of a measly 10GB per month. When I complained about it they claimed that was a "generous" amount. Douchebags!
 
data is speech, these ISP's are denying my right to free speech!
 
Totally agree on land line ISP and totally disagree on mobile. There's not much of a bandwidth constraint on landlines, but there are technological constraints on mobile and the only way, AFAIK, to overcome them is to install a lot more cell towers. That's expensive to do and it's often hard to get clearance to install them (people may want great cell coverage, but they don't want a within site of their home.
 
Dead Parrot said:
I have no problems with data caps. BUT, there needs to be standards, perhaps similar to the nutrition labels on food that allow customers to quickly find out what the max speed might be, the minimum guaranteed speed, what caps apply(if any), if caps engage what is the result(loss of service, throttling, extra charges, etc), and the total prices the customer will pay after all fees and taxes are added in.

In no case should a plan with caps be allowed to use words similar to "unlimited, no limits, use all you want, etc."

Not everyone needs or wants to pay for unlimited data, but they should know what they are buying before they make the decision.
Click to expand...

I agree and also think bandwidth in the non-peak hours should basically be "free" and not counted. The whole argument for these caps in the first place is that it causes network "congestion" but that shouldn't be an issue during off-peak hours. Of course the real reason for caps is to try to charge people with more sneaky fees and the total lack of competition in most of the US means they can do whatever they want.
 
rat said:
If an ISP sells you a speed tier, there should be no caps. You're being delivered a speed to utilize as you see fit. The inherent cap should be the inability to exceed that speed 24/7 for that month.

Otherwise they're just double dipping for fees, charging you by the speed rate AND bucket size.
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agree there shouldn't be caps. Although at the same time you are priced on average usage. For the ISP if you have to upgrade your backbone because 3 people are using 30% of your network. Do you charge just the 3 or do you raise the price of all customers. Or do you go the third route and just eat the cost of upgrading as part of doing business.

Scizyr said:
data is speech, these ISP's are denying my right to free speech!
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I know this is supposed to be a joke, however it is a poor one as you don't understand what your right to free speech means. Please do some research to actually understand what your rights are.
 
Exavior said:
I know this is supposed to be a joke, however it is a poor one as you don't understand what your right to free speech means. Please do some research to actually understand what your rights are.
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Actually I understand them perfectly well, the joke was simply lost on you. It's ok. :)
 
Data caps for wired ISP are either a money grab or are due to an over saturated network that they have knowingly oversold and are not willing to spend the money to upgrade it. Both are bullshit reasons and it is simply a fact that bandwidth is not a finite resource for wired networks. The problem is capacity and that is not solved by bandwidth caps. That is fixed by building your network to handle over the max current tenet capacity and leave room for future growth and upgrades.

Wireless ISP's are a different monster altogether and though again it isn't really a bandwidth limitation on why there are data caps for wireless. It is more of a technology/wireless spectrum limitation which again data caps are not the fix. Just a cheap, money grab band-aid.

Unfortunately no one has had the balls (or money) to start a court battle to call bandwidth caps out for what they are. Hopefully Netflix is stepping up to the plate because it would only take a mildly smart network engineer to show that bandwidth caps solve nothing in modern networks other than make more money for the ISP's.
 
Exavior said:
agree there shouldn't be caps. Although at the same time you are priced on average usage. For the ISP if you have to upgrade your backbone because 3 people are using 30% of your network. Do you charge just the 3 or do you raise the price of all customers. Or do you go the third route and just eat the cost of upgrading as part of doing business.
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If 3 can use 30%, that points to a failure in their setup. They should provision for the amount of customers they have and the speed that they all paid for.
 
rat said:
If 3 can use 30%, that points to a failure in their setup. They should provision for the amount of customers they have and the speed that they all paid for.
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Yeah, a computationally cheap CODEL based QoS queue ought to take care of that problem.
 
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It's all about the money. Their argument is that the cell proviers do it. Of courae they dont talk about limited bandwidth and the different cost of the underlying infrastructure. Damm monopolies...
 
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ISP dinosaurs here have caps simply to nickle and dime customers under the BS guise of network management.

It also lets them abuse their position to kill off competitors such as Netflix to prop up their prehistoric cable TV service and the relatively poor internet alternatives.

Many European and smaller local ISPs simply offer unlimited high speed service but throttle only during times of high congestion for the purpose of network balancing . They also don't oversell BS speeds they cannot guarantee. That's all they need to do to keep things running.

It's not a complex system and does what the ISP dinosaurs claim they're trying to do for pure self gain.
 
SGTGimpy said:
Wireless ISP's are a different monster altogether and though again it isn't really a bandwidth limitation on why there are data caps for wireless. It is more of a technology/wireless spectrum limitation which again data caps are not the fix. Just a cheap, money grab band-aid.
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Until there is a technology that dramatically increases bandwidth at the cell towers, it is the only fix other than more towers. And as I said earlier, Cell Towers are a lot like prisons. Nobody wants one in their backyard (and with good reason they're ugly and noisy).

Data caps are absolutely the solution. They could offer unlimited pre-iphone, because unlimited was sustainable. But I know when we added android devices, we saw data usage go through the roof (we didn't have the iPhone at that time...cuz we weren't AT&T) and it crimps data usage for everyone else if you've got bandwidth hogs.

One need do no more than take their phone to a festival or (almost any concert) and watch how data usage drops. It's a finite resource in the wireless world and the only way it makes sense is to charge people for what they use and then if there's enough heavy users you'll take money to build out more towers (if possible). I am assuing that in all cases the company has already upgraded the back haul, but presumably they did that around the time they rolled out LTE.
 
nilepez said:
Totally agree on land line ISP and totally disagree on mobile. There's not much of a bandwidth constraint on landlines, but there are technological constraints on mobile and the only way, AFAIK, to overcome them is to install a lot more cell towers. That's expensive to do and it's often hard to get clearance to install them (people may want great cell coverage, but they don't want a within site of their home.
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I don't know that you'd have the same feeling if you'd ever seen a wireless switch facility (I actually have). It's insane how much capacity they've got. I'm convinced it's just excessive greed.
 
Shotglass01 said:
I don't know that you'd have the same feeling if you'd ever seen a wireless switch facility (I actually have). It's insane how much capacity they've got. I'm convinced it's just excessive greed.
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Sounds like you're talking about the back haul where they've got tons of fiber. There's not the capacity coming into the tower. Trust me, I can do a speedtest in the same location during periods of use and in the middle of the night and speeds drop dramatically (like from 30-40mb down to 5-10mb during peak times (mostly in the day)) and our network is solid within our footprint.

I don't like the model, but I understand it. OTOH, I think prices for base coverage (including limited data buckets) are outrageously overpriced. most plans have 10-15 bucks in them for SMS, and the most expensive thing about SMS is s/w and H/w related to billing. They could charge 5 bucks and it'd be almost pure profit.
 
nilepez said:
Until there is a technology that dramatically increases bandwidth at the cell towers, it is the only fix other than more towers. And as I said earlier, Cell Towers are a lot like prisons. Nobody wants one in their backyard (and with good reason they're ugly and noisy).

Data caps are absolutely the solution. They could offer unlimited pre-iphone, because unlimited was sustainable. But I know when we added android devices, we saw data usage go through the roof (we didn't have the iPhone at that time...cuz we weren't AT&T) and it crimps data usage for everyone else if you've got bandwidth hogs.

One need do no more than take their phone to a festival or (almost any concert) and watch how data usage drops. It's a finite resource in the wireless world and the only way it makes sense is to charge people for what they use and then if there's enough heavy users you'll take money to build out more towers (if possible). I am assuing that in all cases the company has already upgraded the back haul, but presumably they did that around the time they rolled out LTE.
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You are confusing network bandwidth with wireless spectrum capacity. They are two totally different things. Though you are correct about it being a technology constraint, it has nothing to do with network bandwidth. The network doesn’t have a limited amount of data it can provide in a given time frame and if that limit has hit it the network will stop working. This is what data caps imply by limiting how much data you can use per a timeframe.

The correct fix is network throttling and use of advance QoS which would allow for unlimited data use. But the ISP's don't want to spend the time or money implementing it and would rather charge you for it their own laziness.

T-Mobile is now doing this with their new unlimited data plans which is the correct way to handle capacity problems.
 
SGTGimpy said:
You are confusing network bandwidth with wireless spectrum capacity. They are two totally different things. Though you are correct about it being a technology constraint, it has nothing to do with network bandwidth. The network doesn’t have a limited amount of data it can provide in a given time frame and if that limit has hit it the network will stop working. This is what data caps imply by limiting how much data you can use per a timeframe.

The correct fix is network throttling and use of advance QoS which would allow for unlimited data use. But the ISP's don't want to spend the time or money implementing it and would rather charge you for it their own laziness.

T-Mobile is now doing this with their new unlimited data plans which is the correct way to handle capacity problems.
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Unless something has changed, network neutrality prevents a lot of QoS. While I'm all for Net Neut, I think allowing some services to have priority (e.g. VoIP > email and web browsing > streaming audio > streaming video). It may not be technically correct, but to me Cell Tower = Data coming into site and whatever limitations are there. Backhaul = getting that data from the tower to the switch. And I'm pretty sure I said the limitation is generally not the back haul.

As for throttling, they already do that. Most data buckets are for LTE (and probably 3G) speeds. After you use up that bucket, you're throttled to 1x. At least that's how we work and that's also how Cricket works, so I assume that's how AT&T works as well.
 
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