Broadband data caps are having their intended effect: punishing cord-cutters

[pstokely]

http://www.techspot.com/news/64554-broadband-data-caps-having-their-intended-effect-punishing.html

"ISPs, who once fed us lines about excessive bandwidth usage and network congestion in order to upsell people on higher-tier “business class” Internet packages, are now essentially using the same tactics to punish cord-cutters, many of which were likely former cable subscribers.
They can’t stop people from ditching cable subscriptions but they can make their streaming TV experience miserable enough that maybe they’ll come crawling back. Granted, none of them will come right out and say that to your face but that’s exactly what they’re doing. Trust me, rationing your home broadband service each month in order to avoid overage fees isn’t much fun.
Network congestion is no longer a valid excuse for bandwidth caps, either – if it was, they wouldn’t be offering unlimited options. Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell nailed the issue on the head more than three years ago when he said ISP data caps are about monetization, not network congestion."

[EL34x4]

1. Did anyone honestly think the cable companies were going to

go down without a fight? All these people proudly bragging about being "cord cutters" are now surprised to find data caps? LOL! I saw this coming years ago.

Eventually, service providers will offer tiered data limits with an unlimited option for a premium price. It's the obvious solution.

[whatthehey]

4. Still working wel for me, sorry

4k Netflix et. al on multiple devices (admittedly I'm not slavishly addicted to the gogglebox though; the supposed average of 5 hours daily would probably be my all time record). Heavy torrent downloading, youtube, audio streaming etc. Still have max month of 390GB usage and a 1TB cap with TWC. Even if they implemented the lowest cap mentioned (and abandoned) in this article a fairly minor adaptation would leave me getting all the benefits of cable TV for 1/3 at most the price. Oh sorry...LOL.

[EL34x4]

5. I use about 600GB each month.

Comcast has suspended my 250GB data cap. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I still pay for premium cable service.

[Orrex]

7. Out of curiosity (and feel free not to answer, of course)

How do you reach that 250GB figure? I'm swear that I'm not faulting you in the slightest.

My family usually runs about 230 per month, but we don't do high-intensity online gaming, nor do we stream hi def. Mostly it's NetFlix for an hour or two nightly and lots of YouTubing for my kids.

FWIW, Comcast has also suspended our data cap, even though we seldom if ever reached it.

[EL34x4]

15. Almost all the TV we watch is streamed.

My wife is a stay-at-home mom. She's Russian and we have a Russian TVoIP device that plugs into the HDMI port on our TV. This gives us 100+ Russian TV channels, hi-def over WiFi. She watches this exclusively. And if she isn't watching Russian TV, she's streaming Russian pop music. Add to this the fact that all the American TV programming we watch is streamed in hi-def, 4K if available. All music we listen to is streamed as well.

Roku in the bedroom, PS3 in the kids' rooms, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Pandora, Spotify, Youtube, etc. it all adds up fast.

[whatthehey]

16. As an aside looks like my capless status is safe for 7 yrs at least

http://www.democraticunderground.com/111677795

I suspect the gaming may be a big hog unless your wife is a non-stop TV always on type (some people are even if they aren't watching all the time) . I'm completely streaming too and my wife is at home also, but we rarely go above 300. It's not unusual for both of us to be streaming separate channels in the evening and have me downloading torrents at the same time, but we only have the two users.

[newthinking]

12. They have a right to charge excessive rates when one of their products fails?

It may be a solution they prefer but it should be squashed. If they cannot compete without colluding in a semi-monopoly environment then they need to be regulated more strictly.

[malthaussen]

2. Yep.

I had unlimited wireless for a good couple of years (Clear), then it got picked up by a telephone company and all of a sudden there was a data cap at a ridiculously small amount. I'm sure all that wireless bandwidth was very expensive.

But never fear! Didn't our President just tell us how wonderful our communications services were in this country, and how competition makes it all go 'round? A New Day is dawning!

-- Mal

[hobbit709]

3. That's one thing Google Fiber doesn't have-a data cap.

[LongTomH]

8. I would have gone over to Google Fiber long ago, if not for the fact that I have my email.....

....with Time Warner Road Runner! It would be a pain in the ass to build up a new address book and inform all my friends of the new Google address.

[hobbit709]

9. When I ditched AT&T, my email boxes stayed active.

[electricray]

13. It is a pain to break free but...

It is manageable if you make a long-term plan. There first thing I did was set up a Gmail account and began using it exclusively for all email communication. I made sure my auto-signature on the Gmail account told everyone to update their contact info for me.

Next, I exported my contacts from Comcast, imported then into Gmail and sent a blast email through Gmail to all of them announcing my switch.

Then I went into my Comcast email and set up email forwarding to my Gmail account and I also set up an auto-responder that told anyone who emailed my old address to update their contact info for me.

The key to this strategy was that I kept the Comcast account for a full year to be sure that anyone who communicates with me infrequently had a good long time to get the update info.

The last step was to painstakingly go through my saved emails and identified all of the companies, organizations, listservs, etc and sent them address change notifications directly since my auto-responder probably wouldn't register with their mail service.

Obviously this might be different for Time Warner but I imagine there are similar steps you could take.

[bhikkhu]

14. My old boss stuck with AOL for years, same reason

$26 a month for a mailbox. Of course, they didn't even provide an internet connection, just a "homepage" you could get to your mailbox from (if anyone even remembers how that worked in the dark ages). A few times they called him for one reason or other about the service, we used to joke that their last customer service guy just needed someone to talk to...

[Doctor_J]

6. Like our healthcare, our internet is among the worst in the developed world

And schools. That's what happens when you profitize everything and limit competition

[nolabels]

10. Everything else in these united states works the same way, you got the money, you can get it

The whole thing should be renamed in for it's true nature, United States of Capitalism.

Money they say is Myth, a subject that can't really be touched, but can be represented in everything we do. There has never been anything more powerful in human kind. Also, there hasn't yet a came into something in to being that is strong enough to take it down. To me that sounds more like a doomsday bomb than most any of the other things i have seen in the last fifty-seven years

[Waldorf]

11. I got this email from U-Verse about 3 weeks ago concerning data usage.

Beginning on May 23, 2016 we will be increasing the U-verse® Internet data allowance for many customers. After a grace period, and as our agreement provides, there's a $10 charge for each 50GB of data you use over the allowance amount. If you choose to bundle your U-verse Internet with DIRECTV® or U-verse TV you will be provided an unlimited Internet data allowance with a $30 value at no additional charge, as a benefit of bundling. Or if you choose, an unlimited allowance is available for purchase as an optional bolt-on to your Internet service.

[Odin2005]

17. Thank God for MidContinent here in Fargo.