I'm no fan of Comcast but you do realize that usage-based pricing is totally consistent with common carrier status? AT&T charged based on usage for years while they were a regulated monopoly. Others may disagree but I'd argue that, to the degree that there's wide disparity in usage, there probably needs to be some way of segmenting that usage whether it's fees paid by the upstream (e.g. Netflix) or by the downstream consumer.
There's always a vitriolic reaction in geek communities to usage-based billing. I'm used to it by now. My personal conclusion (as much as people shout at me otherwise) is that geek communities quietly realize they are top-1% users and their usage patterns are subsidized by everybody else, so a switch to usage-based billing represents a greater costs to themselves. You see that kind of thing in politics all the time.
> My personal conclusion (as much as people shout at me otherwise) is that geek communities quietly realize they are top-1% users and their usage patterns are subsidized by everybody else
You are conflating two very separate issues and the statement is false. Being a top-1% user by volume does not mean that you are subsidized by everybody else.
Network costs are diven by peak usage, i.e. when there is a risk of congestion. Peak usage is during primetime and the majority of users are online then. Thus almost everybody uses the network at the same time and it makes sense to share the cost equally. Hence nobody is subsidizing anybody else.
Here's the data to back me up:
"In order to investigate these issues, we took real user data for all the broadband customers connected to a single aggregation link and analyzed the network statistics on data consumption in five-minute time increments over a whole day.The data was shared by an ISP in North America who wanted to understand its own network usage. Our analysis tracked both data consumption (i.e. total MB downloaded) and bandwidth usage (i.e. Mbps being used).
...
42% of all customers (and nearly 48% of active customers) are amongst the top 10% of bandwidth users at onepoint or another during peak hours."
I agree this is a major motivation for most of the people arguing against it. It is certainly mine. I switched to a business plan just to get away from caps.
At the same time, I do think they're a bad idea for everyone. If we had usage-based billing ten years ago, I don't think there would be a YouTube or a Netflix. Electronic distribution of games would probably not exist. Major image sharing sites like imgur would not be nearly as popular. Webapps would be less common. People would be much more likely to delay software updates or forgo them altogether.
I think that usage-based billing does represent a major impediment to the continued advancement of the Internet. This is certainly a major blow to any future where cloud-based backups or video sharing are more common or see new applications.
That was definitely true in the 90's and early 2000's. I don't think it's true anymore. Totally normal non-geeky people use absolutely enormous amounts of bandwidth on services like Youtube and Netflix these days. Unless you're some kind of torrent nut, your data usage patterns probably pale in comparison to that of the average joe watching sitcoms to wind down at night, and there are a lot more average joes than there are pirate hoarders.
First, I would assume services like Netflix are the largest consumers of bandwidth these days, and I know my wife generally watches more overall than I do. Unless you are specifically running some kind of server from home, or torrenting, I doubt most 'geeks' compete with video streaming on a usage basis.
Secondly, the problem isn't with 'usage-based billing' in general. The problem is that this isn't 'usage-based', because the only thing that has changed from the previous billing is a over-priced fee tacked on for people who go over the cap. True usage-based billing would allow for people to actually save money when they used little bandwidth a month, but this doesn't allow for that.
Yes, I could live with a flat per-GB charge. The caps and "overage" penalties are what is annoying. Why do companies set their customers up to feel like they are doing something "wrong" by using more of their services?
WAY back when cell phones were first getting popular I got one through my employer. It was a personal phone, but they allowed employees to get personal phones through their business plan. I paid a very modest monthly flat fee and then $0.10/minute for usage. No caps. $0.10/minute for voice sounds absurd today but then it was quite reasonable and the costs were completely predictable.
My personal conclusion (as much as people shout at me otherwise) is that geek communities quietly realize they are top-1% users and their usage patterns are subsidized by everybody else
It is true that many of the people reading this thread are top bandwidth users overall, but I question whether their peak-hour contribution to e.g. Netflix congestion is any more or less than the average Netflix subscriber. I also do not accept the claim that advanced users are "subsidized" by the other subscribers. If anything, the higher monthly fees paid for 50, 60, or 100mbit/s are helping to pay for the physical costs of the lower tiered users.
That said, usage-based billing is not a terrible idea, as long as the metering is 100% transparent, standardized, and as dirt cheap as it really should be. The second biggest argument I have against metered billing is that it's mentally taxing to have to think about every bit you send and receive. The first argument against it is that it's a technique to gouge customers.
Usage based billing would be great. As far as I can tell, I have to spring $80/month even if i don't use anything. I appear to be hovering around 100g. $20/month would be great.
I'd expect the base rates to settle around current mean--or probably median--usage. Not sure what that is although some data here https://gigaom.com/2012/07/19/america-show-me-your-broadband... Suggests that 100GB might not be a bad stab but likely influenced by the more technologically sophisticated.
Explain to me why this is wrong: the last mile is what costs a ton to ISPs (much less than what Comcast charges though) to build and maintain. So why would you make it more expensive for people to use their personal pipe, which just stands there anyway?
You know what, let's do that usage-based billing, the difference between 5GB and 300GB would be about 1%, because of the small cost of the shared pipe. This is just more bullshit from Comcast, unheard of anywhere else on this planet.
Maybe I'm biased, but I can't see where I went wrong.
> So why would you make it more expensive for people to use their personal pipe, which just stands there anyway?
It's not your personal pipe. The bandwidth on the segment connected to you is shared with your neighbours. Upgrading the bandwidth on your segment costs money, ergo we do not want you to use "too much" bandwidth. Pre-emptively curbing bandwidth usage with threats of and/or actual overage fees, ensures higher operating margins and puts off upgrade expenses, thus increasing profits.
Not perhaps the answer you were hoping for, but hey, corporations gotta make money, right?
Also, because they can, because what other choice do you have aside from paying their ransom? Personally, I'm super happy that they're doing this, since it's more ammunition to shut down the TWC merger. Really really hope that their penny pinching backfires on them.
Unless you're on satellite - and backhaul satellite costs are absolutely absurd, I would know - you're not costing the ISP a fortune because you FTP data at 4 AM.
The person being subsidized is the computer-illiterate person who uses no data except for during peak times and then requires several tech-support calls a month.
What is the additional cost to Comcast of the connection being used at, say 95% of capacity instead of 50%? Is it anything? I could understand if it were a simple supply and demand issue, but with no competition Comcast can simply charge whatever they want. At least if there were other providers they would have to keep prices in line with their costs or fear being undercut.
Usage based cost makes sense for electricity or water. If you use more, they have to send more to your house. It's not the same for bandwidth, unless the total amount is over the available bandwidth.
There is probably no additional cost for 90% of the day, but just like highways they need to design for the congested times. I wish they would just meter the peak hours -- this way more people would set their backups to run overnight or services would offer a way to cache episodes locally during the night so you can watch them after work.
I have a feeling they just have more people in the "peak users" category than the "over 300gb" category, so its easier to piss off the smaller group.
With more people cutting the cords, this is only going to get worse -- people come home and watch TV. I personally don't want to pay for a 10 lane highway with 5% utilization 90% of the day just to avoid 2 hours of traffic, so I definitely don't want to pay for internet that guarantees 50 mbps or whatever even during peak hours (if I wanted that I'd lease a line - I just want a cheap connection to the internet). I don't want to pay the ridiculous cost of over engineering. I'd rather see solutions that embrace the reality of that situation.
With their profits, I'd argue that -- in terms of the bill you're already paying -- you are already paying for that "10 lane highway". Only, Comcast (et al.) are not investing your payments in infrastructure. Instead, they are extracting them as profit (excessive profit, I would argue).
As to metering, that might work if there were competition. But, as has been repeatedly pointed out, there is little or no effective broadband competition in the U.S.
"No capacity" has a similar spectre in the last mile as to that which was recently demonstrating in the Netflix inter-connection choking scandal. Although last mile requires more outlay than "fixing" Netflix, the money is there (currently in outrageous profits).
The major ISP's have had years -- and very significant government subsidies and other favors -- to fix this. They haven't. We need the infrastructure to keep our economy competitive. Time to (re)regulate, and to open the field up to municipal development and competition.
> I wish they would just meter the peak hours -- this way more people would set their backups to run overnight
There are a few problems with this. Firstly, very few users are going to cut down peak usage, because it's during primetime that they have the free time and inclination to use the Internet.
Secondly most people don't even know what a GB is. Thirdly, you assume usage-based fees are meant to curb usage rather than drive profits.
> or services would offer a way to cache episodes locally during the night so you can watch them after work.
Since we are basically talking Netflix here, this is never going to fly with the DRM guys.
This is not a technical problem, as you can see, since the desided outcome can be reached, if you are willing to ignore some legal niceties...
But if Comcast gets its users in the habit of using less bandwidth/data, won't that mean Comcast can delay speeding up their connection and providing more bandwidth? I think from that perspective, there is a long-term cost for them if their customers continue to demand better connections. So, you're right, there isn't a cost for each individual bit that's sent across their network, but instead there's an eventual cost for their users demanding a connection that requires an upgrade to their infrastructure. And that's a cost that could be delayed if they change the behaviors and/or expectations of their customers.
(and fwiw, i have no interest in defending comcast. i bring this up mainly inform myself about the circumstances.)
> What is the additional cost to Comcast of the connection being used at, say 95% of capacity instead of 50%?
The marginal cost to Comcast is close to zero, the question is how to account for upgrades if everybodys usage goes up enough to exceed network design capacity.
Regular folk unexpectedly think that the cost of normal network upgrades are included in this so called "monthly subscription fee", but Comcast has real accountants with actual hard copy degrees on their walls that tell us that we need additional "bandwidth usage fees" and "overage fees" to pay for it in the US.
The North Shore of Boston had it based on EXCHANGE within an area code in the early 2000's. If I wanted to dial up to AOL, and the one for my city was busy, I would pay both AOL per minute and pay Verizon. If I wanted "free" email from Juno, I would have to call within my area code, but outside my exchange and pay per minute.
