Why Data Caps Suck

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Brian Boyko, long time friend of the [H], has put together a rather entertaining video explaining "Why Data Caps Suck." While you and I may know most of this stuff, we all know people that don't, so feel free to share.
 
Well, I learned that the flag of the internet features a kitten rampant weilding an automatic pistol riding a firebreathing unicorn over a rainbow.
 
Should have just made a video about how cable companies are losing customers to internet activities. There's so much missing in this one sided video. Just ignore everything he says when it comes to the mobile data and spectrum crunch.
 
I see no positive end-result from this debate since it's just about semantics and PR at this point. Ultimately, if prodded enough, the ISPs are just going to drop the PR and say "You're right, we're doing this for profit, which is what corporations do, and if you don't like it, leave or purchase an unlimited cap." Nobody is going to dump their Internet connection. Nobody is going to dump their smartphone. Everyone will just pay up.
 
aldamon said:
I see no positive end-result from this debate since it's just about semantics and PR at this point. Ultimately, if prodded enough, the ISPs are just going to drop the PR and say "You're right, we're doing this for profit, which is what corporations do, and if you don't like it, leave or purchase an unlimited cap." Nobody is going to dump their Internet connection. Nobody is going to dump their smartphone. Everyone will just pay up.
Click to expand...



comcast tried the "don't like it, leave or purchase an unlimited cap" bullshit with me....so i left...for a better service, higher speeds and no caps. and get this...for 20 bucks LESS a month.(fiber to the home too :D ) the reality is, none of the carriers(wireless or otherwise) will learn until enough folks vote with their wallet, because that's all corporations care about anyway - their money.
 
Well, not totally moot aldamon...

We are at a time when conglomerates are growing due to the continuing downturn in the economy, and ISPs are no exception. The only remedy to this data cap issue is the diversification of ISPs, an opposite of what is happening in the general marketplace. What discussions such as this achieve in our climate is for us to evaluate new ways to circumvent those revenue streams from the conglomerates and create new business opportunities, since there is very, very high customer desire to not have such arbitrary limits on Internet consumption.
 
Good vid, I learned something. However, as simple as it was it is still way over the head of most of my friends and relatives.
 
Nobody is going to dump their smartphone. Everyone will just pay up.
Click to expand...
Absolutely wrong. I recently dumped 3 smartphones and went back to a basic phone for text and calls. Left Verizon and went to pay as you go. Put a home phone in. Kids were not happy but the monthly cost for data plans is asinine. Also dropped ATT DSL the minute they came out with data caps and went to the local cable company here and have had no issues with any caps and that's with 5 TVs mostly streaming Netflix from 2 separate accounts. Getting ready to drop Directv as soon as the contract is up and go to Over The Air antenna and Netflix. Companies cannot continue to gouge customers for more and more money while providing less and less services at the same time that the average pay rate in the country pretty much stagnates.

I am currently in the minority in doing these things but I read and hear about more and more people moving towards this trend.
 
I think they just suck, in a time when everything is pretty much online based, game downloads, media streaming, although I have failed to even use half of my monthly limit, even with the STEAM sale.
 
I couldn't watch the entire vid... I ran out of data and hit my cap.
 
Although I never thought I would defend them, Comcast and Verizon Fios either have no caps or right now a halt on monitoring/enforcing them.

The mobile data caps are just atrocious though. I thought it was pretty cool how cell phones replaced a need for land lines, but if downloading a single game from steam is 10-25GB I really don't see that happening with the internet...
 
You guys have it better in the US then we do here in Canada, all the major ISP's have caps, I am with the only DSL provider who truly has no caps at all. What is crazy is that with Rogers, our biggest cable provider, you can get crazy speeds now like up to 250MB but with a 500GB cap, what good is that? CAPS suck and really are just a money grab, plain and simple.
 
This is what they charge for overage:

Will I be charged if I go beyond my monthly usage allowance?
Yes. If you exceed your monthly usage allowance, you will be charged as follows:
Ultra Lite – $5.00/GB to a maximum of $100.00
Lite – $4.00/GB to a maximum of $100.00 *
Express – $2.00/GB to a maximum of $100.00
Extreme – $1.50/GB to a maximum of $100.00
Extreme Plus – $1.25/GB to a maximum of $100.00
Ultimate – $0.50/GB to a maximum of $100.00
*Note for Lite customers: If you signed up for Lite before July 21st, 2010, your additional usage charges remains at $2.50/GB. Additionally, if you are a Lite customer living in the Atlantic, your additional usage charges remains at $2.50/GB
 
Data caps are just part of their strategy. With net neutrality being killed off with lobbying and lawsuits they'll eventually charge you based on the type of data sent too. Attempts to bypass this (like using encryption) will result in you getting charged the highest rate for 'unspecified data'. They'll be charging Google, Facebook and other sites to get access to their customers and charging you a premium for faster access to sites.
 
I'd have less of a problem with caps if they'd roll over the unused MB/GB to the next month.

I have a 2GB plan on my phone, but some months I only use 200-300 MB, since I'm normally on WiFi at home & in the office. However, if I take a vacation/travel my data usage goes up, since I'm no longer on WiFi most the time. If they'd roll over the data or average the amount used over the past 6 months, a single month's spike wouldn't push you over the cap.

Cox (at least where I live) is capped, but they don't seem to enforce it unless you are significantly over the cap for multiple months in a row. I know I've been over some months, but normally I'm way below the cap, and they have never sent me a notice for being over.
 
Hooksalot said:
Absolutely wrong. I recently dumped 3 smartphones and went back to a basic phone for text and calls. Left Verizon and went to pay as you go. Put a home phone in. Kids were not happy but the monthly cost for data plans is asinine. Also dropped ATT DSL the minute they came out with data caps and went to the local cable company here and have had no issues with any caps and that's with 5 TVs mostly streaming Netflix from 2 separate accounts. Getting ready to drop Directv as soon as the contract is up and go to Over The Air antenna and Netflix. Companies cannot continue to gouge customers for more and more money while providing less and less services at the same time that the average pay rate in the country pretty much stagnates.

I am currently in the minority in doing these things but I read and hear about more and more people moving towards this trend.
Click to expand...

I apologize for using absolutes. When I said nobody, I meant the majority of users. The majority of people do not have a choice of cheaper AND faster/better ISPs in their area and a ton of folks are hooked on mobile broadband packages and toys like smartphones. These choices and market conditions are not going to change in most areas. Also, please understand as I say this, I'm on your side. I've been receiving OTA and streaming video only for several years now and I'm also a prepaid Virgin Mobile customer. I also have Earthlink Cable (rebranded Road Runner over the TWC network) to avoid the additional cost of having a Road Runner connection without a TV package. I had Netflix streaming but only use Amazon now because it's cheaper. So I hear you, but we're a much smaller minority than you are suggesting. Also, when I started with VM, my plan was $25/mo and now it's $35/mo because I had to have an Android phone. This is much cheaper than the Sprint alternative, but I'm also two gens behind with my phone (a compromise many people will not accept). I feel low-cost alternatives are going to slowly start creeping up in price until we are out of escape routes. Loopholes like Earthlink might also disappear someday. I enjoy these things while they last.

Just to play devil's advocate even more here, I find it interesting that for a very long time people (including myself) paid for things like cable TV, unlimited dial-up, PPV, and expensive long distance phone calls (anyone remember phone calls in college in the 90s, holy shit). Maybe we did so begrudgingly but we did it and those bills combined, adjusted for inflation, were much higher than what we would spend today on those combined services. Now that people's, and my, activities have shifted almost entirely online, and most of those previous activities are incredibly cheap and/or a la carte, I find it odd that any suggested of an Internet price increase, which makes all of these modern activities possible, is unacceptable. So much so that the ISPs have to play a semantics game with caps to preserve revenue or grow. Clearly these companies have played this all wrong on multiple levels. They've lost us but we're hooked at the same time. Unhealthy situation.
 
Metrocall said:
Although I never thought I would defend them, Comcast and Verizon Fios either have no caps or right now a halt on monitoring/enforcing them.

The mobile data caps are just atrocious though. I thought it was pretty cool how cell phones replaced a need for land lines, but if downloading a single game from steam is 10-25GB I really don't see that happening with the internet...
Click to expand...

This is completely false, stop spreading lies.

I had a 240GB cap monthy. (With Comcast)

When three people in my household all built new PC's then proceeded to re-download their entire steam libraries we received a written warning on our bill and had our connection speed throttle down the following month.

We were then placed on a 'list of offenders' and told that if we hit the cap again we would lose service temporarily or be severely throttled.

Switched to FIOS as a result.

In short, Fuck Comcast.
 
Fuck Comcast indeed. I had to constantly watch my usage every month and they kept trying to increase my rate. I had FIOS hooked up on Sunday and it's awesome.

Very informative video.
 
WinSomeLoseNone said:
This is completely false, stop spreading lies.

I had a 240GB cap monthy. (With Comcast)

When three people in my household all built new PC's then proceeded to re-download their entire steam libraries we received a written warning on our bill and had our connection speed throttle down the following month.

We were then placed on a 'list of offenders' and told that if we hit the cap again we would lose service temporarily or be severely throttled.

Switched to FIOS as a result.

In short, Fuck Comcast.
Click to expand...

http://corporate.comcast.com/comcas...ith-improved-data-usage-management-approaches
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/comcast-data-caps-hit-test-cities-range-from-300gb-to-600gb/

So unless you live in Nashville or Tuscon, what I said was true with "halted" for every other Comcast user. Perhaps maybe do some research before just mashing the keyboard with your face?

I'd also like to point out that I hate Comcast with a deep, fiery passion but it's them or dial-up where I live.
 
My ISP (Eastlink Cable in eastern Canada) does caps more like the video suggested. Any plan up to and including 20 Mbps has no cap at all. All higher speed plans (40 Mbps and up) get a 250 GB cap.

It's a bit of a disincentive to get the faster plans.

The good thing is I actually get the 20 Mbps that I pay for, I rarely see a slowdown. I have no idea if the caps help this, or if my town is so small that there aren't enough people to clog the system.

The telco broadband option in the province has no cap for the fibreop service, but fibreop hasn't come to my town. Their DSL is terrible, I regularly see people with 1.5 Mbps for a similar price as my 20 Mbps plan.
 
Let me point out what's wrong with the video;

The big issue is that he is not factoring in the cost of internet drains that the ISP's must incur to provide service.

Having redundant connections with teir-1 peers like Level3, XO, etc.. etc.. is not cheap.
A friend of mine that used to work where I am now, had done a report on the amount of daily traffic Facebook generated across our network. it was over 2TB a day. That is just for Facebook.

All that being said, while I do agree with the premise of being against data caps, many content providers like Facebook, and other SaaS offerings rely on the provider network, and do not compensate the provider for the added demand their product produces.

Until companies like Facebook, Apple, Netflix and others start working on CDN solutions that exist in the ISP core, ISP's will be forced to do something to recoup the costs that incur with the upstream peers.
 
Kr1ll1n said:
Let me point out what's wrong with the video;

The big issue is that he is not factoring in the cost of internet drains that the ISP's must incur to provide service.

Having redundant connections with teir-1 peers like Level3, XO, etc.. etc.. is not cheap.
A friend of mine that used to work where I am now, had done a report on the amount of daily traffic Facebook generated across our network. it was over 2TB a day. That is just for Facebook.

All that being said, while I do agree with the premise of being against data caps, many content providers like Facebook, and other SaaS offerings rely on the provider network, and do not compensate the provider for the added demand their product produces.

Until companies like Facebook, Apple, Netflix and others start working on CDN solutions that exist in the ISP core, ISP's will be forced to do something to recoup the costs that incur with the upstream peers.
Click to expand...

Also it overlooks very simple truths to try and prove a point A perfect example is when he's going on about "spectrum crunch" and that it's not how much data a person uses, it's how many people are using that tower at the same time. What he says is true, but he overlooks that if someone is using 20GB of data a month they will be using a tower for a much longer time then someone using 200MB of data in a month.
 
WinSomeLoseNone said:
I had a 240GB cap monthy. (With Comcast)

When three people in my household all built new PC's then proceeded to re-download their entire steam libraries we received a written warning on our bill and had our connection speed throttle down the following month.
Click to expand...

Which is why they shouldn't be so anal over a single monthly overage.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Also it overlooks very simple truths to try and prove a point A perfect example is when he's going on about "spectrum crunch" and that it's not how much data a person uses, it's how many people are using that tower at the same time. What he says is true, but he overlooks that if someone is using 20GB of data a month they will be using a tower for a much longer time then someone using 200MB of data in a month.
Click to expand...

Isn't that irrelevant? If someone is paying for 10 Mb/s service and uses it 100% of the time, they've paid for it. If the broadband companies can't afford to hook everyone up at 10 Mb/s at the same time let them stop offering those speeds at that price.
 
The data caps here in Canada are fucking retarded.

I was paying $140 month for 250GB/month. 75MB down, 5up throttled so bad it was mind numbing.
 
Kr1ll1n said:
Let me point out what's wrong with the video;

The big issue is that he is not factoring in the cost of internet drains that the ISP's must incur to provide service.

Having redundant connections with teir-1 peers like Level3, XO, etc.. etc.. is not cheap.
A friend of mine that used to work where I am now, had done a report on the amount of daily traffic Facebook generated across our network. it was over 2TB a day. That is just for Facebook.

All that being said, while I do agree with the premise of being against data caps, many content providers like Facebook, and other SaaS offerings rely on the provider network, and do not compensate the provider for the added demand their product produces.

Until companies like Facebook, Apple, Netflix and others start working on CDN solutions that exist in the ISP core, ISP's will be forced to do something to recoup the costs that incur with the upstream peers.
Click to expand...
Tell that to Google Fiber. Unlimited data at super speeds, at a reasonable cost. Get them to every corner of USA and see how quickly those data caps disappear.
 
Droc said:
The data caps here in Canada are fucking retarded.

I was paying $140 month for 250GB/month. 75MB down, 5up throttled so bad it was mind numbing.
Click to expand...

You should check out teksavvy, pretty sure they use the rogers backbone and have unlimited bandwith.
 
The problem isn't the network speed, infrastructure etc.

Its that people are moving to on deman solutions for their content like netflix. Live sports is the LAST straw for the cable companies to sell their bloated TV packages, hell it is the only reason I use it now.

Cable TV has gone full circle to back to only needing the over the air major networks. Everything else should be an IPTV channel delieved over the internet.

I don't want to buy your megan family fun pack of 150 channels because it is the only way for me to get the 10 channels I want.

/rant
 
master noran said:
You should check out teksavvy, pretty sure they use the rogers backbone and have unlimited bandwith.
Click to expand...

I have been with Teksavvy for years, they use the bell backbone and do offer unlimited plans, I pay $59 a month for 12MB unlimited, but compared to some of the speeds you guys get, 12MB is nothing.
 
Metrocall said:
http://corporate.comcast.com/comcas...ith-improved-data-usage-management-approaches
http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/comcast-data-caps-hit-test-cities-range-from-300gb-to-600gb/

So unless you live in Nashville or Tuscon, what I said was true with "halted" for every other Comcast user. Perhaps maybe do some research before just mashing the keyboard with your face?

I'd also like to point out that I hate Comcast with a deep, fiery passion but it's them or dial-up where I live.
Click to expand...

Almost this for me... Hate it, Its either comcast or verizon dsl which is 75% the price for 1.5mbps/.25 vs 25mbps/2. I hated the latency on Verizon DSL and the DL speed and tried to find ANYTHING faster and all I have is comcast. Luckily downtime is about 2-3 days a year and speeds have been as advertised, I also never hit the cap. But for a lot of us we have really very limited choice. I live in houston and in my area its Verizon or Comcast thats why verizon can charge $45 a month for what I consider basic telephone and get away with it. I said screw them and I am using ooma for like $4 a month and its actually very good. Caps are retarded and at least comcast reversed it.
 
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