So why did they back off? Cost too much in support calls with pissed people? Bad publicity? People can't meaningfully use the offered bandwidth these days? Something else?
Mike
Comcast still has data caps. My service is 1.2 TB per month. If we get close, we get a warning email. If we were to go over (hasn’t happened yet), we get billed per additional 500 MB.
However, I just looked at my account usage for the first time for a few months, and somehow have had zero usage since March of this year.
I went over often enough that it was easier (and cheaper) to just give them an extra $30/month for unlimited.
I also cancelled other Comcast services at the same time that were costing me more than $30/month, so for me,
It was a net gain and for Comcast, a net loss. I did this immediately when they started charging for overages
in the hopes it would send the correct message.
Owen
Is 1.2 TB enough for a typical cord cutter? I just looked at mine and it looks to be about 300GB/month, but we may not be typical for your average family with kids, say.
Mike
For residential services, the competition should easily outscore any provider that still delivers capped Internet.
It's 2023...
Mark.
Mark,
In my world I constantly see people with 0 fixed internet options. Many of these locations do not even have mobile coverage. Competition is fine in town, but for millions of people in the US (and I’m going to assume it’s worse or comparable in CA/MX) there is no service.
As a company primarily delivering to residents, competition is not a focus for us and for the urban market it’s tough to survive on a ~1/3 take rate.
I should have been clearer... the lack of competition in many markets is not unique to North America. I'd say all of the world suffers that, since there is only so much money and resources to go around.
What I was trying to say is that should a town or village have the opportunity to receive competition, where existing services are capped, uncapping that via an alternative provider would be low hanging fruit to gain local marketshare. Of course, the alternative provider would need to show up first, but that's a whole other thread.
Mark.
Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but even if they do they could compete with their caps.
Mike
Maybe. I really haven't paid any attention to Starlink, although there are credible reports of folk testing it here in South Africa's urban centres.
I have not heard of any mention of Starlink having caps as part of their service. Having said that, for services like this, things change as the number of customers using them rises.
Mark.
I've toyed with getting it which I think I can do here in rural California especially given that my ISP installed fiber and inexplicably didn't change the rate plans from DSL (given that it's an older population here, I doubt that any new over subscription would be much problem). But the fact of the matter is that we don't seem to ever be in the situation that our 25Mbs service is an actual problem.
Mike
Not everyone can afford $1000 to start up Starlink and then pay $130+ per month. That may be an option for some, but certainly not the majority.
If 100% of a town was covered by a single company with data caps, those that are crying from hitting 1.2 TB/month will not be enough for a competitor to come in and build on top. A TB/mo now is extremely high - In May 2023 we had 4 customers that exceeded that (all 4 of these customers mentioned are subscribed to <25 mbps plans; we offer gig ftth).
Not everyone can afford $1000 to start up Starlink and then pay $130+ per month. That may be an option for some, but certainly not the majority.
Partly why I don't pay any attention to Starlink. It's a niche product for folk who either have the ability to live off-grid, or be in a position to have someone else wealthier cover the cost for them. That won't be the majority.
In Africa, most people will connect to the Internet via mobile. Even with mobile coverage being relatively poor in the deepest part of the village, penetration via mobile is far more likely than Starlink, et al.
If 100% of a town was covered by a single company with data caps, those that are crying from hitting 1.2 TB/month will not be enough for a competitor to come in and build on top. A TB/mo now is extremely high - In May 2023 we had 4 customers that exceeded that (all 4 of these customers mentioned are subscribed to <25 mbps plans; we offer gig ftth).
The traditional business case is volume-based, i.e., as many customers as possible. If that is not the model for the competitor, they can be enough of a disruptor if something else drives them. Think what Jared has done in the bundus of Michigan.
Mark.
Not everyone can afford $1000 to start up Starlink and then pay $130+ per month. That may be an option for some, but certainly not the majority.
If 100% of a town was covered by a single company with data caps, those that are crying from hitting 1.2 TB/month will not be enough for a competitor to come in and build on top. A TB/mo now is extremely high - In May 2023 we had 4 customers that exceeded that (all 4 of these customers mentioned are subscribed to <25 mbps plans; we offer gig ftth).
I get the impression that they are still in a beta/early adopter situation so unaffordability might be feature not a bug to them to keep the system from a success disaster. At least for now. I get the impression that some/a lot of this is to bring the internet to the rest of the world as one of their goals.
I do wonder how they are numbering them though. Are the they using the same scheme that the mobile providers are using with ipv6? hmm.
Mike
I always looked at Comcast’s caps as pre-emptive fodder for future FCC bargaining. The next time they want to do something with the FCC’s approval and the commission wanted a concession, they would offer it up for the block.
-Steve
Cox also has a 1.2 TB cap.
If I can believe my graphs, the metered Cox connection (video streaming primarily for wife) is about 90 GB the month of April and the unmetered ATT fiber WFH for me is about 370 GB. Total LAN is about 450 GB. Napkin math but it’s pretty close.
Modulo P2P nodes, what drives high usage? I guess game downloads are getting gigantic these days, but that's not an every day event. Back in the bad old days it wasn't inconceivable to go over the lower caps but once it's big enough to support video what is left? I mean, how much 4k pr0n can randy teenagers watch in one month?
Mike
Competition… You’re hilarious…
Here’s my current choices:
Local WISP: Excellent service, great guy, tops out at 60MBPS.
AT&T: Awful service, but no worse than Comcast. Tops out at 768Kbps down (Yes, Kbps) and 384Kbps up. Ugh.
5G (various providers): Lousy service, no inbound connections allowed (they stateful firewall everything), many no longer give a public IPv4.
Not an option for my needs since GRE is an essential capability.
There is no REAL competition to Comcast in my area. I’m not in the sticks, I’m in the so called “capitol of Silicon Valley”, aka San Jose, CA.
If you get further out of the urban areas, the lack of competitors gets even worse.
Competition, indeed… Very few places in the US have actual competition.
Owen
Maybe, but ta the rate their prices have been going up and their reviews have been going down, it’s not at all promising. I’m in a wait and see mode with Starling. Every time I get just about frustrated enough with Comcast to shell out, I discover that Starling’s pricing has again moved above my threshold of frustration.
Owen
I have not heard of any mention of Starlink having caps as part of their
service. Having said that, for services like this, things change as the
number of customers using them rises.
They were proposing data caps to roll out this year, but they abandoned that in lieu of a 'priority tier. Pay extra and get throttled less essentially.
Won’t Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner
rather than later?
Unlikely. They will remain niche. The economics don’t make sense for those services to completely replace terrestrial only service.