After years of Cox penalizing me with their data caps, Google Fiber finally came to my area with cheaper prices, faster speeds and no data caps. I immediately cancelled the Cox service. You know what their response was? "We can offer you 5 years of no data caps". Absolutely clueless. 😂
Same thing. Had one provider that had a monopoly so they kept their prices on an ever rising escalator and a data cap. A fiber provider came to town, we and tons of others dumped them for fiber and suddenly started seeing ads for cheaper internet with no data caps. Amazing how competition works.
5:00 '"People have more choice with data caps" that is only an illusion of choice. Most markets only have a few choices for internet providers, and having a tiered service from a crappy service provider is not really a choice at all.
I literally have 2 choices, a very fast cable connection or a super slow dsl connection for a similar price. I wonder if the lawmakers assigned to this are idiots or they are so good at maintaining the pretense that the telecoms are fair actors.
@tim3172 it's becoming increasingly common for neighborhoods to have multiple internet providers across the US where just 5 years ago there was only one option. I and a bunch of neighbors also paid some $28k each for utilities to be brought out here. Worth every penny. No more septic tanks, or 100+ gallon propane tanks, or worrying about water wells running dry. Hello tap water, sewer line, natural gas, and fiber internet!
If the data cap is reasonable and they provide you with the tools to keep track of it you should go over the limit, but this IS NOT the case. My biggest problem with data capping is they have a disclaimer saying you data measurement may vary from theirs, but don't provide you with a way to monitor it in real time using their measurement. Their website is always hours if not days behind if you check there.
The dirty secret they also want to keep quiet is there are a ton of hacked cable modems out there using cloned MAC addresses of legit subscribers, who end up getting whacked for usage that wasn't theirs.
I live in central Florida and initially Comcast was the only provider and they of course have data caps. Last year Spectrum came into the area and they have no data cap. I switched to spectrum from comcast mostly due to their caps which I was paying an additional $30 a month to have removed. I was paying Comcast $100 a month for the 1gbit plan, I now pay spectrum $40 a month for the same 1gbit plan for two years and we will see after that.
Really, 1gbit for only $40 a month? That's a very good deal. I'm in Central Alabama and Spectrum charges me $120 a month for 500 Gig. A month ago they claimed they increased it to 600 Gig. I guess they did so because AT&T is installing Fiber to the home in and around my community.
@@wojtek-33 Call and say you want to cancel and reference some sort of competition that offers the same for less. I mentioned ATT fiber for $62, and they locked me in for $50 a month for gigabit for a year. Will try the same thing again next year.
- I pay $70USD/m for 1Gigabit Fiber, they give all plans 2 free WiFi 6E 'Nest' Wifi Pro access point / routers(Yes I know fiber doesn't technically have routers anymore), -and these things mesh so easily, -The only downside to these things are the same reasons they give you two; distance isn't great, especially on the added frequency spectrum(through 2 doors but iffy w/more, two walls is iffy it depends on the kind of walls, if your house is relatively new 2 walls is almost certainly fine Anyway: -$100USD/m would double that to 2Gbit, -5 Gig=$125USD/mo, -8 Gig=$150USD/mo. - All plans are symmetrical (same upload as download and simultaneously too; I've only tested the simultaneous thing with uploading and downloading from Google Drive(that you get a free terabyte of). - I am in Austin, Texas [ATX, per my name], Google Fiber is available everywhere within the strict city limits[as far as I'm aware]; any neighborhood on the west side or south side that decides to form outside the city limits might not have Google Fiber but you're not going to *easily* find one building downtown or within the technical actual city limits line that doesn't have it. (The 5Gbit & 8Gbit are more and more downtown but the 1 & 2 plans are are everywhere; 5 is available to me; and I'm super far south.) If you're on Google Fiber and you didn't know about the free Wi-Fi 6E Nest 'Routers'(Access Points) let me know. They were originally only if you upgraded to the 2 gigabit plan, but I imagine they just made too many and started giving them out as an incentive. (They were also explicit about when you cancel your plan you can keep them or sell them or use them with your new ISP or whatever.)
Sigh here in Canada we went through this regarding data caps at least 7 years ago. CRTC grilled the then CEO who admitted that the data caps were artificial and used a means of generating revenue. Lots of areas have a monopoly wrt ISPs and there is no competition. That is something the politicians avoid.
2024...data caps with modern IT tech should be eliminated at all. It's a thing of the past - everybody has enough of traffic and every provider is able to provide decent speeds for everybody
In Georgia a lot of people are running AT&T fiber now which is unlimited and Comcast still has their 1.2TB cap in place. Even EPON connected customers down here have it. I was blown away.
Comcast's unlimited plan requires taking their hardware. Which gives them more control and likely additional monitoring. You can use your own modem when not on the unlimited plan.
Just put their modem in bridge mode and get your own router. What little they can see in bridge mode, they would have been able to see anyway, so who cares.
@SaxyOne You can use 100% your own hardware when not on their unlimited plan. Which means, I get to better control it all. If you don't mind, take it all. I choose to disagree. Have a good night.
The current chairwoman has been extremely busy fixing the mess Ajit Paj left the United States communications protections in [from the moment she officially became chairwoman]. I am genuinely impressed by what she's been able to get done up to this point; I'm not sure that I would agree that the work she's done should have been prioritized over this, but she has done incredible work from the moment she got appointed.
@@JimmyRussle - Well, if you mean your in the burgeoning definition of 'our collective thing will happen to the average majority of us' - (semantics, sure but I genuinely like semantics) -Then yeah, I agree; internet service providers within this country are going to increase prices, yes for certain. But I really doubt my personal internet's going to get more expensive, since first of all I don't pay for it, nor do I work for it in any capacity even in the most indirect sense you can imagine, but the person who does pay for my internet; - Well, it's Google Fiber and Google Fiber's been running commercials extremely frequently about how their price has been, "1 Gbit $70 a month" since 2012 when they first started with no price increases; - perhaps they're showing all these commercials because they're right about to increase the price. - though there is it a little old lady in one being asked; -"How much do you pay for Google Fiber?" -"70 dollars" -"but how much more is that since when you started?" -"$0" "..." → scene change → " Google Fiber, while else's prices go up ours are staying the same". They also just gave us Two free 'Nest' Wifi Pro 6E "routers" (Access Points) completely for free, - and they made very clear that: -if we only use one we can sell it give away the other one, -we can return our current equipment or do whatever we want with that, -if we stop paying for Google Fiber, -we can keep them & bring everything with us and use it there, or sell everything let the new ISP provide equipment, -we can keep using our current equipment and sell both right now while still having Google Fiber. __________________________ - Previously you needed to upgrade to get the $100 a month (2Gbit), plan to get the 6E "routers" but I'm guessing that they vastly overestimated who was willing to do that, So they're just handing him out if you ask for 'em now.
@@JimmyRussle Also because the FCC currently requires "Nutrition Facts' - esque labels that ISP's currently need to have information which is *currently* correct at that exact time, Until the inauguration those labels will be up to date, and their information will be up to date for a little while after that. Unless every ISP is literally gearing up to remove the labels and change their prices and make everything all hidden and confusing again immediately upon inauguration. Which to be clear I wouldn't put past them, but it seems a little too much for them to think of considering how dumb their decisions have been. Like Will it make money Yes then do it, but WW3..., I said do it, Will it make money, no, but WW3... 🥲
Data caps with Xfinity/Comcast was a main reason I opted for their unlimited plan for $30 per month. But then a local fiber company installed fiber to my neighborhood with no data caps and unlimited data an increased speed and a Seniors discount. It was can they twist my wrist a little harder to switch. Also they do the right thing by letting me know via email if their is a planned outage for upgrades to the system and it is performed well into the middle of the night. So no noticeable down time.
I dropped Comcast because of multiple fiber options finally, but as I was dropping them, they hit me with a data cap. I was with them for over 15 years. Over that time, I never was fined anything. Mind you, I regularly went over 1.2TB, but the month I unsubscribed, they decided to charge me and claimed they gave me a courtesy waiver. I am fighting it and did a chargeback on my cc as they are not consistent. If this is a new thing, they have yet to prove this outside of a bill, as I can also prove they were inconsistent. We all know how hard it is to enforce something you only enforce once in a while. I have lawyered up and like to see if anyone had this come up as well. If so, let’s lawyer up together. If the new administration will not take it on citizens, just need to fight against it as well as fight against arbitration clauses.
We had data caps in the early days of the internet here in Australia. Now that we have the National Broadband Network, the caps disappeared. Instead we have bandwidth bands, so we pay more or less for higher speeds. We lived with the caps but they added stress and usually hit families with kids who downloaded without parents knowing.
it's so sad in rural Northern New Mexico they have literally 1 to 5 megabytes per second and they charged like $100 mo. and service is bad due to low competition so there should be regulation but StarLink is getting chepter so that maybe can help them... IDK
Regional ISP here has a hard monopoly on the entire city. 250GB data caps on all of the plans, all the way up to their fastest 600 Mbps option. Absolute extortion, but the family that owns the ISP also owns all of the local news outlets and has deep ties to the city government, so…
I think this missed the major issue with the way some data caps are implemented (Comcast/Xfinity). The 1.2TB is regardless of your internet speed. If you have 300Mbps you have the same cap as 1000Mbps. some other providers like Wow increase the cap as your speed increases. Who could imagine that someone paying for faster speeds might use more bandwidth.
My brother is moving to a small town (pop of 4k) and has Mediacom and 2 fiber providers available at his new house. Mediacom has a 400 GB limit, then 10 dollars per 50 GB chunks. The two fiber providers are both unlimited for all plans and reasonably priced.
I agree with you on the data caps. I have cox in my area out west. The overage ain’t too bad. I’ve only gone over a couple times. They charged me an additional $10 for another TB of data. I can only imagine what it is in more high income areas.
My ISP (SECV) removed data caps once Comcast, and Windstream came into my area (Southeastern PA). Even though i can't get either not having a data cap of 2TB is so nice.
I live in the San Francisco bay area. Comcast has data caps in this area. You can get unlimited but they charge 30 bucks more depending on your plan. I we finally have multiple fiber providers in the area now and they all offer unlimited on all their plans. I am using Sonic which offers 10 Gigabits for 49.99 a month. AT&T now also offers fiber but it's $255.00 for the 10 gig speed.
You let Comcast off the hook, alittle. There is no data caps on XFinity as long as you rent there modem for $30. If you do not rent their modem, you have a have data cap automatically put into place. To get rid of the data cap, you must pay $30 a month. I cannot wait to get rid of them as fiber is currently being installed in our area. And I already checked with the Fiber company, there is no data caps.
I had WOW, which got bought by RCN, and then immediately changed their name to Astound. No datacap, but Comcast in my area still has one. My parents a few miles away have the same options, with the addition of ATT fiber, and their Comcast still has the data cap.
The fcc is corrupted if they dont remove data caps. Someone needs to boycott the fcc entirely and replace it. If this isnt done then we need more options.
Tangential question: has video compression gotten a lot better recently? A couple of years ago I would often get close to the 1.2TB cap here in MN on Comcast. I just looked at my usage and I haven’t gone much above 700GB in the last year. I think my family’s video consumption has remained similar if not increased over that timeframe. Though I still hate the idea of caps, for me at least the cap seems to be a non-issue at this point even though I used to run into it regularly in the past.
Living out in the country, I have two choices for internet Satellite or Verizon, now that starlink is available I have unlimited data, but both verizon and the other satellite providers used caps on data which ended up costing me way more than what I pay for starlink per month. All the caps are good for is costing the consumer more money for information that should be free in the first place!!!
Great info, Lon! Thanks for keeping us updated. I hope you get offered another trip to Washington from the new administration sometime soon. Wouldn't that be a hoot!
Was with Cox for 6 years, when I signed up I asked him if they had a data cap they said no and then they went and change the terms and I hit the data cap, they said oh we're not going to charge you it's your first offense, I said well there won't be a second time I switched to gonetspeed now I have gigabit for lower price and no data cap, when I called to cancel they wanted to give me gigabit for $6 more with no data cab I said oh that's very nice, you should've treated me better no thanks, turn it off!
I'm in an area where only Comcast exists and I feel like I'm being held hostage. I'm seriously considering selling my house and moving to another part of my city where there's more competition. AT&T Fiber exists for $55/mo and I was paying comcast almost double that for shitty cable speeds until I had to call them in curse them out to reduce it to $75/mo.
Brother, is it safe retrobat for your device? I have a Steam account on my device full of games, and for this reason I am hesitant to install Retrobat on my device for fear of my device being hacked.
We have a 1.2 TB data cap from Comcast here in Minnesota and it is enforce. Luckily I haven't gone over twice in a calendar year. Comcast is our only option at my address
No data caps here in the Los Angeles area that I know of, but (per a Cord Cutter News segment) we have some of the highest internet connection costs in the nation. Lots of places around the USA were in the $50-$60 range, California (metro areas) were $90-$95 range, and that's with plenty of competition (5G wireless, cable, fiber, all with multiple vendors).
Cox in the area that has data caps with plenty of competition. They seem to not care about the data caps. Gfiber, CenturyLink, and some small fiber companies coming in the whole area and all have no data caps.
Data caps are ridiculous at this point for the 99%. That being said, I do have a friend that lives in BFE, and the only internet available is satellite/4G LTE. I could see those types of plans keeping data caps (just like phone plans). Tbh his internet is so slow I don't think he could download 1.3TB a month if he tried.
I'm not concerned about people who choose to borderline live off the grid. I'm concerned about normal people who are stuck in an apartment with an abusive contract with the building owner.
No data caps (per Charter merger conditions) here in some towns in the California Central Coast, but we have virtually zero competition with Spectrum. Some neighborhoods are able to receive ATT fiber, but it's not that many. Spectrum is at "1G" (934 Mbps) down, 32-40 Mbps up; WISPS top out at 100/100, but they are more pricey; after that there is mobile 5G home service, but it's kind of flakey at times; lastly would be Starlink.
Cable network has the monopoly here. There is no data cap, but they can get away with advertising phenomenal speeds and not have the speeds be consistent because the bandwidth is regionally shared. So what happens is everyone gets bursts of high speed but overall the performance is poor with no way to prove their claims are false on average. In general, people are very unhappy with the cable network here, both their TV and internet plans (which are separate). There are the bandwidth limiting data caps on cell phone plans, but I suspect that this is the norm where there isn't a fee for going over the limit.
Data caps are antiquated and should have gone the way of dial up modems. They simply don't work in today's world where most content is watched via the internet, even "cable." Cloud based computing, data backups, and app and game downloads and updates. That said, I do have some compassion on the wireless companies because they are using the same bandwidth on their towers for phone calls as well as internet, so some restrictions make sense. Although "Unlimited" should probably be removed from its name given how bad throttling is. I'm on Spectrum which I think is now Charter. They haven't changed the name yet. Essentially, caps are coming for the lower plans at some point. That said, given Trump and the Republicans basically won the way they did via new media they may want to think long and hard about allowing data caps to remain.
IMHO in areas the a company has a geographical Monopoly, should be regulated as they have chokehold on their customers. to incentivize competition the government could get out subsidies to “new” companies for the build out as the up front costs are huge. IMHO
We have Cox in our state area and we just got Verizon in our area of the state, but I'm happy with Cox because they said there's a Data Cap of 1.2TB a month and we go over the Data Cap every month and they have never enforced it ever since Cox came into our state.
Cox enforces the cap if they say they do. In many areas, they outright state they don't enforce the cap due to competition. We have gigabit FIOS and Gigabit Cox. If I pretend to sign up for Cox it outright states "The 1.25 TB cap is not in effect in this area due to competitive Internet options provided." It's crazy that they're so bold to just flatly state it's artificial and only in place due to screw people with no other options. Not even a "not in effect because we have upgraded the infrastructure to enable unlimited..." It's just: "You have options, so we're not screwing you in particular."
I wonder if there's any correlation between data caps and local competition. I have ATT fiber and in my area there are a lot of other fiber options as well and none of the offers have data cap.
I have Comcast who operates under the name Xfinity to fool people since the Comcast name has such a bad stigma to it. I had a data cap that I went over and had to pay once or twice. I'm now on a $70 per month plan that features 1200mbps down and 40mbps up, no cap. I can't get 1200mbps down it only ever goes to 940 max though. With Google Fiber and Quantum Fiber coming in (super slowly I might add) with their fast speeds and no cap, I think Comcast might do away with their cap here.
"I can't get 1200 down" Are you using a computer with a 2.5Gb Ethernet port? "it only ever goes to 940 max" That's a no. Golly gee, I wonder why my Internet is limited to gigabit speeds on a gigabit NIC.
I hate to say it like this because I really hate data caps. I think the mobile carriers got this one right, and it was because of the limitations of wireless tech as well as advances of tech over time. Different price points for different caps, but deprioritized data after cap amount is reached.
what gets me is they state you have such n such speed, but really don't because there are so many others that share that same line. when you test it, it goes to a separate server that has no load on it. So of course it's going to show a higher speed rate. Those test servers that seem to be independent of your ISP always knows what your ISP is. So is there some under the table going on ?
Spectrum customer in the Charlotte metro area. No data caps ever, but I'm getting under 1 gigabit (500mb) download, and really poky upload. Still good for 4K, but frustrating. Verizon has been hitting the mailboxes with home 5G rollout / push. So maybe that's gonna keep Spectrum from doing caps. I just wish they'd up the speed a bit.
Nobody likes data caps and they should be banned except for mobile networks. But we have to be honest, if we look at the trace route, it's 76 ms before you reach a netflix node and you have been half across the country, it might be a VLAN but it's still shared internet capacity that comcast has to pay for. What we expected to see is Netflix content beiing served from a local CDN in your city or one big city over. That would make more sense and keeps the traffic cheap, that is the way they do it in Europe.
For my apartment community, in a medium sized town, we have two choices. AT&T xDSL via copper phone lines at 13mbps or Comcast Xfinity via coax. Both Verizon and T-Mobile said two years ago that they would be rolling out their wireless 5G internet service "soon" in our area, yet the service still isn't available. AT&T fiber service is widely available to nearby homes in my neighborhood. AT&T wanted the property owners to pay for installing fiber for our apartment community, and that was a hard pass. I pay 25.00/month for the Comcast xFi Complete unlimited internet data and modem rental. I cringe every month I pay my Comcast Xfinity bill.
Someone who uses 5 or 10 Gb of data a month probably should get a better price than someone who is using10+Tb a month, if all those "data hogs" are actually causing others to receive worse service. If there is no evidence the high usage people actually cause the rest of us a problem, however, I can't imagine why anyone would oppose dropping the caps (other than the the greedy company"s of course).
ComCrap with its lopsided data plan. 500/12 really bad when backing up files to the cloud.. Then they tried to double my cost... So happy when fios came to town.. 300/300 for $25/month
Google fiber is gigabyte (symmetrical) with no cap and $75/month. Magically Cox decided they would triple my speed (1 gig down, 100 meg up) and no cap, for $65/month if we signed a 2 year contract (previously $105 for 300 meg down, 30 meg up with a cap I never hit). They did this 3 months before all the signs went up telling everyone that Google fiber and another fiber were going to be laid. But we had competition, we could pay $55/month for 18 meg DSL Only one year left on my contract before I can switch.
@@supriyasou3722 It shows all the time me going over and they don't charge don't notify me nothing - I feel like every time I go into the app/site to check data usage I'm going to alert them 😅
Let's be clear. You maybe remove the cap but what companies do is then throttle. So I'm for caps but there needs to be a cap limit that is fair to all. Some really abuse the data stream and make it so those around them get screwed.
My Router data usage and Comcast data usage don't agree. Comcast is always 20% higher. I have called both my router manufacture and Comcast and both say their measurement is accurate I don't think there is a agency that determines the accuracy of the data measurement. If I had another choice I would take it.
Xfinity acts like it’s still a Monopoly. They didn’t care at all the I had fiber now as a real option. Fiber is cheaper and no CAPS. After trying to get onto a new deal with Xfinity and their offer sucked. Turned out it was just the regular price on a Monday, by Friday I has working fiber in my house. I canceled Xfinity that same day in person. Why do these cable companies have CAPS and insane prices? Much easier to hold onto customers than gaining a new customer. I just don’t get it. When I canceled service in person and returned their modem. They didn’t ask why I was canceling or offer me any deals. It was pretty strange. But I was in and out in only a couple minutes. Not a care in the world as they jack up prices and fiber is getting installed all over the place these days. The days of having a monopoly are shrinking.😂
How about this...base the internet packages on the speed someone wants but not data caps. That is what we have as the internet is a right in Finland. No such thing as data caps as they are illegal. You want a cheap plan then you pay for the speed, want a fast internet then pay more for a faster plan.
I am paying an extra $30.00 a month with Comcast for unlimited data. I truly dislike these cable companies. Cox and Comcast are so behind on the times. They need to move away from coax and run fiber lines across the USA. DOCSIS 4.0 is a joke Imo.
Mobile data providers should be penalized for saying 'UNLIMITED', while they support only like 60-80gb cap and then speed goes to 2G...good luck doing anything with those speeds besides besides SLOW messaging in Whatsapp and other similar apps..
Ajit Paj will & his holding the FCC in the 'Dark Ages', and now that they finally have a chair(wo)man who is willing to do what is necessary, Chevron has been overturned by the supreme Court. [Resulting in courts getting to decide whether regulatory bodies have any say over how to interpret the law, meaning anything the FCC does can be challenged by anybody government or otherwise.]
Data caps are so stupid. If they want data caps to exist then they should enforce competition in the market instead of just letting ISPs divvy up land. Besides all that, the whole concept of data caps - *especially* for broadband - is just stupid. Data is not a utility like water or electricity. Whether I take 2 TB or 2 GB doesn't make much of a difference unlike 2 kwh vs 2 wh. The only limit on data should the limit based on the speeds that I pay.
why are data caps even a thing? especially today? if you are offered 1 Gbps or more , and you game and stream , pretty sure you can easily reach your cap . there is no point with caps.
Chevron being removed I might add is a perfect example of the Supreme Court "[should not be] undoing a previous decision without a great reason", something I may add a almost every single supreme Court Justice appointed before Trump and every legal scholar within the United States university system agrees is a bad idea.
ALL data caps need to be removed. Maybe slow people that are tethering on a smartphone but remove all caps. The size of patches and updates these days can put a pretty good hit on data plans depending on the number of tools (software) or if you are on two devices that you tether / hotspot over the course of a month. We have two laptops in our home that we travel with, for example. Who wants to get cutoff from VPN connection to your desktop or server when on the road because Microsoft threw you a patch two weeks ago, then your steam client updated or some other productivity tool updated and then, before the next billing cycle you hit 10GB and poof! There goes the connection / hotspot. For the companies that claim data caps are great because they give consumers the ability to choose cheaper plans with smaller caps - how about unlimited everything and then base plan pricing on the speed and prioritization instead?
Thankfully, while we have Comcast internet, they don't have data caps in our area. We did sign up to pay the additional monthly fee to remove the cap if they ever did decide to enforce this, but that was years ago and they haven't done it so far.
Data Caps don't do anything except to make us pay more for the Internet. What is the median data usage from everyone? My biggest complaint is that it you're in a city is that their plans prices are lower then when you live in a rural area.
*Obviously* rural Internet should cost more when you have fewer people to serve and more average wiring between customers. Google: then vs than You'll come off a lot less dumb when you figure that out.
I 100% have the comcast cheapest essentials plan and I 100% have a data cap. The T-bag regime will be the end of this inquiry and probably the end of democracy too but that's a topic for another day.
@@_-Karl-_ That sounds like the stupidest f---ing thing imaginable. Electricity, gas, and water are all metered because the primary cost of providing them is the substance itself. To use more electricity requires more fuel. More gas requires more gas. More water requires more purification of water. Internet is provided for fractions of pennies on the dollar, with the *VAST* majority of the cost being the lines that run. The lines are happy to provide *tons* and *tons* more Internet data than is currently provided. To go from serving someone 50 Mbps to 500Mbps is a pittance. That's why companies regularly double/triple/quadruple speeds at the same tier. Providing someone 5TB or 50TB of data per month is extremely trivial as well on terrestrial Internet. It's so trivial that companies magically go "poof, no more caps!" as soon as competition arrives. Comparing packet switching of electrons to a utility is outrageous. Such a setup would mean that you're charged by the amount you download. The reason you've never seen a cap on any of those is for that reason: you're limited by your wallet as to how much you consume. Conversely, you've never had a limit on how much gas/water/electricity you consume in a given timeframe and you're not provided upsized services for those *WITH THE EXPRESS INTEREST OF BEING ABLE TO CONSUME MORE OF THEM IN A GIVEN PERIOD*. If your water company said you could only run one shower at a time, they might have a case for offering many-shower upgrades... much like Scumcast limits how much data you can consume and then upcharges you to be able to consume more... then penalizes you for having the AUDACITY to use the higher-tier service that you pay for. You might be able to make the case if ISPs offered everyone gigabit connections at a "maintenance" cost like a water/electrical/gas company of $6/10/15 a month and charged per its usage, though.
Netflix having to pay an ISP for internet data that travels through that ISP is standard and 100% required legal law within - [South] Korea; (Twitch had to pull out of South Korea entirely for this reason IIRC, they just couldn't strike a deal where they wouldn't literally be losing money, especially since they already are(were)?). - any company that transmits any amount of data to a customer in SKorea over the internet must pay the ISP for that data, I bet small businesses with tiny websites dont get charged, But I'm not sure; I would bet the googwill from 'helping small business' outweighs the tiny money the small businesses would be able to afford to pay. - I am not sure whether it is only data sent to the user by the company(Downloads), or whether data users upload to the company is included(Uploads).
Thank goodness that we're not South Korea, then. I (me, Tim) pay my ISP. My ISP is expected to pay to deliver me content. Netflix pays for their content to travel through the Internet, through backbone providers, etc. I'm paying to receive the content. Netflix is paying to send the content. Any additional payment is extortion. It'd be like if UPS showed up, expecting payment for a package delivery from you or Amazon after Amazon already paid for delivery A) simply because they're Amazon and they send "too many packages" or B) because I "receive too many packages
We switched isp's because of the data cap. The fact that we were able to shows that we probably don't need regulations on it. With Starlink, expanding 5g, and other technologies being implemented; data caps will probably go the same way texting limits did
As a active network engineer, my opinion is I see no reason hardware or infrastructure wise there needs to be a data cap on broadband. In a nutshell, no matter how the carriers wish to spin it, there is no technical reason for establish data caps. The only exception is wireless as the airwaves do have limits, but for a terrestrial based service cable modem/fiber there are no such limits. Data caps are a profit making opportunity and that is it. One side note, back in the day, not as big of a deal, but data caps were put into place prevent folks from abusing their connection by hosting a download site or doing something a bit more nefarious like pirating software. Again, not as big of deal as there are improved methods to address this. Simply put, it's all Greed.
After years of Cox penalizing me with their data caps, Google Fiber finally came to my area with cheaper prices, faster speeds and no data caps. I immediately cancelled the Cox service. You know what their response was? "We can offer you 5 years of no data caps". Absolutely clueless. 😂
Did the samething 6 years ago with crap I mean Comcast when u switched to fios
@sinebar I would have, but I was too busy laughing!
Very nice! I really dislike all these cable companies, they raise the price every year and charge an extra $30.00 for unlimited data.
Same thing. Had one provider that had a monopoly so they kept their prices on an ever rising escalator and a data cap. A fiber provider came to town, we and tons of others dumped them for fiber and suddenly started seeing ads for cheaper internet with no data caps. Amazing how competition works.
@snaredude56 Exactly.
5:00 '"People have more choice with data caps" that is only an illusion of choice. Most markets only have a few choices for internet providers, and having a tiered service from a crappy service provider is not really a choice at all.
I literally have 2 choices, a very fast cable connection or a super slow dsl connection for a similar price. I wonder if the lawmakers assigned to this are idiots or they are so good at maintaining the pretense that the telecoms are fair actors.
@@AgentMoler I'm in rural Kansas and have 3 solid options, verizion 5g home internet, fiber internet, cox cable, att dsl (not a solid choice).
@@thedude5040 ... good for you? Sorry to hear that you live in Kansas?
"My experience is everyone's experience!"
@tim3172 it's becoming increasingly common for neighborhoods to have multiple internet providers across the US where just 5 years ago there was only one option. I and a bunch of neighbors also paid some $28k each for utilities to be brought out here. Worth every penny. No more septic tanks, or 100+ gallon propane tanks, or worrying about water wells running dry. Hello tap water, sewer line, natural gas, and fiber internet!
So glad that Connecticut has so much competition in terms of WiFi to the point where it forced Comcast to drop data caps here.
Corporations such as ncta make me sick to my stomach. ATSC 3 encryption, data caps, you name it.
If the data cap is reasonable and they provide you with the tools to keep track of it you should go over the limit, but this IS NOT the case. My biggest problem with data capping is they have a disclaimer saying you data measurement may vary from theirs, but don't provide you with a way to monitor it in real time using their measurement. Their website is always hours if not days behind if you check there.
The dirty secret they also want to keep quiet is there are a ton of hacked cable modems out there using cloned MAC addresses of legit subscribers, who end up getting whacked for usage that wasn't theirs.
Lon, Excellent ! Thank you for covering this and all the best.
I live in central Florida and initially Comcast was the only provider and they of course have data caps. Last year Spectrum came into the area and they have no data cap. I switched to spectrum from comcast mostly due to their caps which I was paying an additional $30 a month to have removed. I was paying Comcast $100 a month for the 1gbit plan, I now pay spectrum $40 a month for the same 1gbit plan for two years and we will see after that.
Really, 1gbit for only $40 a month? That's a very good deal. I'm in Central Alabama and Spectrum charges me $120 a month for 500 Gig. A month ago they claimed they increased it to 600 Gig. I guess they did so because AT&T is installing Fiber to the home in and around my community.
@@wojtek-33 Call and say you want to cancel and reference some sort of competition that offers the same for less. I mentioned ATT fiber for $62, and they locked me in for $50 a month for gigabit for a year. Will try the same thing again next year.
@wojtek-33 Could always just use those wireless Internet companies as an excuse (Verizon home internet / T-Mobile home internet)
- I pay $70USD/m for 1Gigabit Fiber, they give all plans 2 free WiFi 6E 'Nest' Wifi Pro access point / routers(Yes I know fiber doesn't technically have routers anymore),
-and these things mesh so easily,
-The only downside to these things are the same reasons they give you two; distance isn't great, especially on the added frequency spectrum(through 2 doors but iffy w/more, two walls is iffy it depends on the kind of walls, if your house is relatively new 2 walls is almost certainly fine
Anyway:
-$100USD/m would double that to 2Gbit,
-5 Gig=$125USD/mo,
-8 Gig=$150USD/mo.
- All plans are symmetrical (same upload as download and simultaneously too; I've only tested the simultaneous thing with uploading and downloading from Google Drive(that you get a free terabyte of).
- I am in Austin, Texas [ATX, per my name], Google Fiber is available everywhere within the strict city limits[as far as I'm aware]; any neighborhood on the west side or south side that decides to form outside the city limits might not have Google Fiber but you're not going to *easily* find one building downtown or within the technical actual city limits line that doesn't have it. (The 5Gbit & 8Gbit are more and more downtown but the 1 & 2 plans are are everywhere; 5 is available to me; and I'm super far south.)
If you're on Google Fiber and you didn't know about the free Wi-Fi 6E Nest 'Routers'(Access Points) let me know. They were originally only if you upgraded to the 2 gigabit plan, but I imagine they just made too many and started giving them out as an incentive. (They were also explicit about when you cancel your plan you can keep them or sell them or use them with your new ISP or whatever.)
@@wojtek-33 Definitely check out my "essay" immediately above this comment.
Sigh here in Canada we went through this regarding data caps at least 7 years ago. CRTC grilled the then CEO who admitted that the data caps were artificial and used a means of generating revenue. Lots of areas have a monopoly wrt ISPs and there is no competition. That is something the politicians avoid.
2024...data caps with modern IT tech should be eliminated at all. It's a thing of the past - everybody has enough of traffic and every provider is able to provide decent speeds for everybody
Yes, same here in Australia. Government own the distribution network and so the caps have gone. We still have to pay more or less for speed tiers.
In Georgia a lot of people are running AT&T fiber now which is unlimited and Comcast still has their 1.2TB cap in place. Even EPON connected customers down here have it. I was blown away.
Comcast's unlimited plan requires taking their hardware. Which gives them more control and likely additional monitoring. You can use your own modem when not on the unlimited plan.
Just put their modem in bridge mode and get your own router. What little they can see in bridge mode, they would have been able to see anyway, so who cares.
@SaxyOne You can use 100% your own hardware when not on their unlimited plan. Which means, I get to better control it all. If you don't mind, take it all. I choose to disagree. Have a good night.
@@SaxyOne This is the way
@@darnellmcgavocksr.5152 I have their Unlimited plan with my own hardware. You have to shell $30 instead of $25 with their own equipment.
@@SaxyOne Just use a VPN?
The FCC waited until now to *start* studying the issue.
IKR? How "convenient" . . .
The current chairwoman has been extremely busy fixing the mess Ajit Paj left the United States communications protections in [from the moment she officially became chairwoman].
I am genuinely impressed by what she's been able to get done up to this point; I'm not sure that I would agree that the work she's done should have been prioritized over this, but she has done incredible work from the moment she got appointed.
@@GeorgeN-ATX ...and its all going to be reversed by the Trump admin. Your internet is about to get a lot more expensive.
@@JimmyRussle - Well, if you mean your in the burgeoning definition of 'our collective thing will happen to the average majority of us'
- (semantics, sure but I genuinely like semantics)
-Then yeah, I agree;
internet service providers within this country are going to increase prices, yes for certain.
But I really doubt my personal internet's going to get more expensive, since first of all I don't pay for it, nor do I work for it in any capacity even in the most indirect sense you can imagine, but the person who does pay for my internet;
- Well, it's Google Fiber and
Google Fiber's been running commercials extremely frequently about how their price has been,
"1 Gbit $70 a month" since 2012 when they first started with no price increases;
- perhaps they're showing all these commercials because they're right about to increase the price.
- though there is it a little old lady in one being asked;
-"How much do you pay for Google Fiber?"
-"70 dollars"
-"but how much more is that since when you started?"
-"$0"
"..." → scene change →
" Google Fiber, while else's prices go up ours are staying the same".
They also just gave us Two free 'Nest' Wifi Pro 6E "routers" (Access Points) completely for free,
- and they made very clear that:
-if we only use one we can sell it give away the other one,
-we can return our current equipment or do whatever we want with that,
-if we stop paying for Google Fiber,
-we can keep them & bring everything with us and use it there, or sell everything let the new ISP provide equipment,
-we can keep using our current equipment and sell both right now while still having Google Fiber.
__________________________
- Previously you needed to upgrade to get the $100 a month (2Gbit), plan to get the 6E "routers" but I'm guessing that they vastly overestimated who was willing to do that, So they're just handing him out if you ask for 'em now.
@@JimmyRussle Also because the FCC currently requires "Nutrition Facts' - esque labels that ISP's currently need to have information which is *currently* correct at that exact time, Until the inauguration those labels will be up to date, and their information will be up to date for a little while after that.
Unless every ISP is literally gearing up to remove the labels and change their prices and make everything all hidden and confusing again immediately upon inauguration.
Which to be clear I wouldn't put past them, but it seems a little too much for them to think of considering how dumb their decisions have been. Like
Will it make money Yes then do it, but WW3..., I said do it,
Will it make money, no, but WW3...
🥲
Data caps with Xfinity/Comcast was a main reason I opted for their unlimited plan for $30 per month. But then a local fiber company installed fiber to my neighborhood with no data caps and unlimited data an increased speed and a Seniors discount. It was can they twist my wrist a little harder to switch. Also they do the right thing by letting me know via email if their is a planned outage for upgrades to the system and it is performed well into the middle of the night. So no noticeable down time.
I dropped Comcast because of multiple fiber options finally, but as I was dropping them, they hit me with a data cap. I was with them for over 15 years. Over that time, I never was fined anything. Mind you, I regularly went over 1.2TB, but the month I unsubscribed, they decided to charge me and claimed they gave me a courtesy waiver. I am fighting it and did a chargeback on my cc as they are not consistent. If this is a new thing, they have yet to prove this outside of a bill, as I can also prove they were inconsistent. We all know how hard it is to enforce something you only enforce once in a while. I have lawyered up and like to see if anyone had this come up as well. If so, let’s lawyer up together. If the new administration will not take it on citizens, just need to fight against it as well as fight against arbitration clauses.
We had data caps in the early days of the internet here in Australia. Now that we have the National Broadband Network, the caps disappeared. Instead we have bandwidth bands, so we pay more or less for higher speeds.
We lived with the caps but they added stress and usually hit families with kids who downloaded without parents knowing.
Wow, I use 1.2 TB weekly. Sometimes up to 10TB a month. With online backup, cloud hosted CCTV and streaming etc., it adds up quickly.
Lobbying is the crux of every anti-consumer issue.
No data caps here in Los Angeles county because we too have multiple options for internet
it's so sad in rural Northern New Mexico they have literally 1 to 5 megabytes per second and they charged like $100 mo. and service is bad due to low competition so there should be regulation but StarLink is getting chepter so that maybe can help them... IDK
Regional ISP here has a hard monopoly on the entire city. 250GB data caps on all of the plans, all the way up to their fastest 600 Mbps option. Absolute extortion, but the family that owns the ISP also owns all of the local news outlets and has deep ties to the city government, so…
I think this missed the major issue with the way some data caps are implemented (Comcast/Xfinity). The 1.2TB is regardless of your internet speed. If you have 300Mbps you have the same cap as 1000Mbps. some other providers like Wow increase the cap as your speed increases. Who could imagine that someone paying for faster speeds might use more bandwidth.
My brother is moving to a small town (pop of 4k) and has Mediacom and 2 fiber providers available at his new house. Mediacom has a 400 GB limit, then 10 dollars per 50 GB chunks. The two fiber providers are both unlimited for all plans and reasonably priced.
I agree with you on the data caps. I have cox in my area out west. The overage ain’t too bad. I’ve only gone over a couple times. They charged me an additional $10 for another TB of data. I can only imagine what it is in more high income areas.
My ISP (SECV) removed data caps once Comcast, and Windstream came into my area (Southeastern PA). Even though i can't get either not having a data cap of 2TB is so nice.
I live in the San Francisco bay area. Comcast has data caps in this area. You can get unlimited but they charge 30 bucks more depending on your plan. I we finally have multiple fiber providers in the area now and they all offer unlimited on all their plans. I am using Sonic which offers 10 Gigabits for 49.99 a month. AT&T now also offers fiber but it's $255.00 for the 10 gig speed.
You let Comcast off the hook, alittle. There is no data caps on XFinity as long as you rent there modem for $30. If you do not rent their modem, you have a have data cap automatically put into place. To get rid of the data cap, you must pay $30 a month. I cannot wait to get rid of them as fiber is currently being installed in our area. And I already checked with the Fiber company, there is no data caps.
I had WOW, which got bought by RCN, and then immediately changed their name to Astound. No datacap, but Comcast in my area still has one. My parents a few miles away have the same options, with the addition of ATT fiber, and their Comcast still has the data cap.
The fcc is corrupted if they dont remove data caps. Someone needs to boycott the fcc entirely and replace it.
If this isnt done then we need more options.
Tangential question: has video compression gotten a lot better recently? A couple of years ago I would often get close to the 1.2TB cap here in MN on Comcast. I just looked at my usage and I haven’t gone much above 700GB in the last year. I think my family’s video consumption has remained similar if not increased over that timeframe. Though I still hate the idea of caps, for me at least the cap seems to be a non-issue at this point even though I used to run into it regularly in the past.
AV1 is getting adopted more and it is probably 50% more efficient than h264
Everything as we know it, "NOW", is going to change.....
Living out in the country, I have two choices for internet Satellite or Verizon, now that starlink is available I have unlimited data, but both verizon and the other satellite providers used caps on data which ended up costing me way more than what I pay for starlink per month. All the caps are good for is costing the consumer more money for information that should be free in the first place!!!
Great info, Lon! Thanks for keeping us updated.
I hope you get offered another trip to Washington from the new administration sometime soon. Wouldn't that be a hoot!
Was with Cox for 6 years, when I signed up I asked him if they had a data cap they said no and then they went and change the terms and I hit the data cap, they said oh we're not going to charge you it's your first offense, I said well there won't be a second time I switched to gonetspeed now I have gigabit for lower price and no data cap, when I called to cancel they wanted to give me gigabit for $6 more with no data cab I said oh that's very nice, you should've treated me better no thanks, turn it off!
GCI in Alaska has a cheap way out of data caps since Starlink showed up. Competition is always good for the consumer.
Data caps from Cox in Chandler, AZ. I have to pay $50 a month to get unlimited.
Yet here in Mesa, Cox tripled the speed, halved the price, and uncapped their plans. Wonderful what Google fiber does for competition.
@ Been trying to bet Google Fiber here in Chandler but our Property Management hasn’t giving them the access. Not sure why.
@@TonyPadgett In my experience, the property management company wants a kickback for allowing them to sell service.
@@john_in_phoenix The downside of that is that you still have to deal with Cox's horrendous customer service.
I don't mind a data cap, but that implies that the data is being purchased, so any unused data should roll over to the next billing cycle.
I'm in an area where only Comcast exists and I feel like I'm being held hostage. I'm seriously considering selling my house and moving to another part of my city where there's more competition. AT&T Fiber exists for $55/mo and I was paying comcast almost double that for shitty cable speeds until I had to call them in curse them out to reduce it to $75/mo.
I live in Cincinnati, OH and I am not aware of any data caps. I have Altafiber but we also have Spectrum, Verizon and T-Mibile available.
Brother, is it safe retrobat for your device? I have a Steam account on my device full of games, and for this reason I am hesitant to install Retrobat on my device for fear of my device being hacked.
We have a 1.2 TB data cap from Comcast here in Minnesota and it is enforce. Luckily I haven't gone over twice in a calendar year. Comcast is our only option at my address
No data caps here in the Los Angeles area that I know of, but (per a Cord Cutter News segment) we have some of the highest internet connection costs in the nation. Lots of places around the USA were in the $50-$60 range, California (metro areas) were $90-$95 range, and that's with plenty of competition (5G wireless, cable, fiber, all with multiple vendors).
Cox in the area that has data caps with plenty of competition. They seem to not care about the data caps. Gfiber, CenturyLink, and some small fiber companies coming in the whole area and all have no data caps.
we have no caps here in EU/Bulgaria. 10gigs net costs something like 80$ per month and it is via fiber in dense area :)
Data caps are anti-competitive and anti-consumer. Also, great job at navigating the political angle of this story!
Data caps are ridiculous at this point for the 99%. That being said, I do have a friend that lives in BFE, and the only internet available is satellite/4G LTE. I could see those types of plans keeping data caps (just like phone plans). Tbh his internet is so slow I don't think he could download 1.3TB a month if he tried.
I'm not concerned about people who choose to borderline live off the grid. I'm concerned about normal people who are stuck in an apartment with an abusive contract with the building owner.
No data caps (per Charter merger conditions) here in some towns in the California Central Coast, but we have virtually zero competition with Spectrum. Some neighborhoods are able to receive ATT fiber, but it's not that many. Spectrum is at "1G" (934 Mbps) down, 32-40 Mbps up; WISPS top out at 100/100, but they are more pricey; after that there is mobile 5G home service, but it's kind of flakey at times; lastly would be Starlink.
Cable network has the monopoly here. There is no data cap, but they can get away with advertising phenomenal speeds and not have the speeds be consistent because the bandwidth is regionally shared. So what happens is everyone gets bursts of high speed but overall the performance is poor with no way to prove their claims are false on average. In general, people are very unhappy with the cable network here, both their TV and internet plans (which are separate). There are the bandwidth limiting data caps on cell phone plans, but I suspect that this is the norm where there isn't a fee for going over the limit.
It's amazing what competition can do.
Data caps are antiquated and should have gone the way of dial up modems. They simply don't work in today's world where most content is watched via the internet, even "cable." Cloud based computing, data backups, and app and game downloads and updates. That said, I do have some compassion on the wireless companies because they are using the same bandwidth on their towers for phone calls as well as internet, so some restrictions make sense. Although "Unlimited" should probably be removed from its name given how bad throttling is. I'm on Spectrum which I think is now Charter. They haven't changed the name yet. Essentially, caps are coming for the lower plans at some point. That said, given Trump and the Republicans basically won the way they did via new media they may want to think long and hard about allowing data caps to remain.
Anyone know how classifying internet as an utility like water and electric affect things?
Consumer hopes will be dead next January on a lot of issues.
IMHO in areas the a company has a geographical Monopoly, should be regulated as they have chokehold on their customers. to incentivize competition the government could get out subsidies to “new” companies for the build out as the up front costs are huge. IMHO
We have Cox in our state area and we just got Verizon in our area of the state, but I'm happy with Cox because they said there's a Data Cap of 1.2TB a month and we go over the Data Cap every month and they have never enforced it ever since Cox came into our state.
Cox is absolutely enforcing those caps here in Arizona.
Cox enforces the cap if they say they do.
In many areas, they outright state they don't enforce the cap due to competition.
We have gigabit FIOS and Gigabit Cox. If I pretend to sign up for Cox it outright states "The 1.25 TB cap is not in effect in this area due to competitive Internet options provided."
It's crazy that they're so bold to just flatly state it's artificial and only in place due to screw people with no other options.
Not even a "not in effect because we have upgraded the infrastructure to enable unlimited..." It's just: "You have options, so we're not screwing you in particular."
I wonder if there's any correlation between data caps and local competition. I have ATT fiber and in my area there are a lot of other fiber options as well and none of the offers have data cap.
So is Comcast technically double dipping off of Netflix traffic?
I have Comcast who operates under the name Xfinity to fool people since the Comcast name has such a bad stigma to it. I had a data cap that I went over and had to pay once or twice. I'm now on a $70 per month plan that features 1200mbps down and 40mbps up, no cap. I can't get 1200mbps down it only ever goes to 940 max though. With Google Fiber and Quantum Fiber coming in (super slowly I might add) with their fast speeds and no cap, I think Comcast might do away with their cap here.
"I can't get 1200 down"
Are you using a computer with a 2.5Gb Ethernet port?
"it only ever goes to 940 max"
That's a no.
Golly gee, I wonder why my Internet is limited to gigabit speeds on a gigabit NIC.
I hate to say it like this because I really hate data caps. I think the mobile carriers got this one right, and it was because of the limitations of wireless tech as well as advances of tech over time. Different price points for different caps, but deprioritized data after cap amount is reached.
what gets me is they state you have such n such speed, but really don't because there are so many others that share that same line.
when you test it, it goes to a separate server that has no load on it. So of course it's going to show a higher speed rate.
Those test servers that seem to be independent of your ISP always knows what your ISP is. So is there some under the table going on ?
Spectrum customer in the Charlotte metro area. No data caps ever, but I'm getting under 1 gigabit (500mb) download, and really poky upload. Still good for 4K, but frustrating. Verizon has been hitting the mailboxes with home 5G rollout / push. So maybe that's gonna keep Spectrum from doing caps. I just wish they'd up the speed a bit.
Look it up in regards to agencies making law vs congress, “Chevron deference”
That was overturned by the tilted, formerly-Supreme Court.
Its going to get worst when new admin comes in.
Yup
Hopefully, data caps will not return.
Nobody likes data caps and they should be banned except for mobile networks. But we have to be honest, if we look at the trace route, it's 76 ms before you reach a netflix node and you have been half across the country, it might be a VLAN but it's still shared internet capacity that comcast has to pay for. What we expected to see is Netflix content beiing served from a local CDN in your city or one big city over. That would make more sense and keeps the traffic cheap, that is the way they do it in Europe.
For my apartment community, in a medium sized town, we have two choices. AT&T xDSL via copper phone lines at 13mbps or Comcast Xfinity via coax. Both Verizon and T-Mobile said two years ago that they would be rolling out their wireless 5G internet service "soon" in our area, yet the service still isn't available. AT&T fiber service is widely available to nearby homes in my neighborhood. AT&T wanted the property owners to pay for installing fiber for our apartment community, and that was a hard pass. I pay 25.00/month for the Comcast xFi Complete unlimited internet data and modem rental. I cringe every month I pay my Comcast Xfinity bill.
Someone who uses 5 or 10 Gb of data a month probably should get a better price than someone who is using10+Tb a month, if all those "data hogs" are actually causing others to receive worse service. If there is no evidence the high usage people actually cause the rest of us a problem, however, I can't imagine why anyone would oppose dropping the caps (other than the the greedy company"s of course).
ComCrap with its lopsided data plan. 500/12 really bad when backing up files to the cloud.. Then they tried to double my cost... So happy when fios came to town.. 300/300 for $25/month
We don't have it good either way, Unlimited Data with high speed would mean paying 80 to 100 dollars monthly
Google fiber is gigabyte (symmetrical) with no cap and $75/month. Magically Cox decided they would triple my speed (1 gig down, 100 meg up) and no cap, for $65/month if we signed a 2 year contract (previously $105 for 300 meg down, 30 meg up with a cap I never hit). They did this 3 months before all the signs went up telling everyone that Google fiber and another fiber were going to be laid. But we had competition, we could pay $55/month for 18 meg DSL Only one year left on my contract before I can switch.
Xfinity thankfully ignores my 1.2TB data cap (I hit 4TB a month sometimes 😅)
Oh like it doesn’t show up in your account data usage dashboard or it shows and they don’t charge?
You get a few “courtesy” overages. Be careful they don’t get you after those!
@@supriyasou3722 It shows all the time me going over and they don't charge don't notify me nothing - I feel like every time I go into the app/site to check data usage I'm going to alert them 😅
@@attribute-4677 Been years and years now going over almost 98% of the time - we good (for now) 😁
Let's be clear. You maybe remove the cap but what companies do is then throttle. So I'm for caps but there needs to be a cap limit that is fair to all. Some really abuse the data stream and make it so those around them get screwed.
I've never seen any evidence of a data cap with Verizon Fios
Umm, no link to the FCC survey???
My Router data usage and Comcast data usage don't agree. Comcast is always 20% higher. I have called both my router manufacture and Comcast and both say their measurement is accurate I don't think there is a agency that determines the accuracy of the data measurement. If I had another choice I would take it.
Data caps on land line is hot air meter.
Xfinity acts like it’s still a Monopoly. They didn’t care at all the I had fiber now as a real option. Fiber is cheaper and no CAPS. After trying to get onto a new deal with Xfinity and their offer sucked. Turned out it was just the regular price on a Monday, by Friday I has working fiber in my house. I canceled Xfinity that same day in person.
Why do these cable companies have CAPS and insane prices? Much easier to hold onto customers than gaining a new customer. I just don’t get it. When I canceled service in person and returned their modem. They didn’t ask why I was canceling or offer me any deals. It was pretty strange. But I was in and out in only a couple minutes. Not a care in the world as they jack up prices and fiber is getting installed all over the place these days. The days of having a monopoly are shrinking.😂
How about this...base the internet packages on the speed someone wants but not data caps. That is what we have as the internet is a right in Finland. No such thing as data caps as they are illegal. You want a cheap plan then you pay for the speed, want a fast internet then pay more for a faster plan.
if there is only one or two providers data caps should not exist.
I am paying an extra $30.00 a month with Comcast for unlimited data. I truly dislike these cable companies. Cox and Comcast are so behind on the times. They need to move away from coax and run fiber lines across the USA. DOCSIS 4.0 is a joke Imo.
Data cap should go away....
T-Mobile drops it from 5 G to 3G for 100 GB unlimited.
Mobile data providers should be penalized for saying 'UNLIMITED', while they support only like 60-80gb cap and then speed goes to 2G...good luck doing anything with those speeds besides besides SLOW messaging in Whatsapp and other similar apps..
Ajit Paj will & his holding the FCC in the 'Dark Ages', and now that they finally have a chair(wo)man who is willing to do what is necessary, Chevron has been overturned by the supreme Court.
[Resulting in courts getting to decide whether regulatory bodies have any say over how to interpret the law, meaning anything the FCC does can be challenged by anybody government or otherwise.]
So I think the main issue here is choice, not every location has the choice or not.
Data caps are so stupid. If they want data caps to exist then they should enforce competition in the market instead of just letting ISPs divvy up land. Besides all that, the whole concept of data caps - *especially* for broadband - is just stupid. Data is not a utility like water or electricity. Whether I take 2 TB or 2 GB doesn't make much of a difference unlike 2 kwh vs 2 wh.
The only limit on data should the limit based on the speeds that I pay.
Thank you for having common sense. Some other knob was saying it should be a utility.
Like... what?
No regulation without representation!
🇺🇲 🇺🇲 🇺🇲 🇺🇲 🇺🇲
why are data caps even a thing? especially today? if you are offered 1 Gbps or more , and you game and stream , pretty sure you can easily reach your cap . there is no point with caps.
The point is to bilk people out of money who dare use the service that they pay for.
Chevron being removed I might add is a perfect example of the Supreme Court "[should not be] undoing a previous decision without a great reason", something I may add a almost every single supreme Court Justice appointed before Trump and every legal scholar within the United States university system agrees is a bad idea.
ALL data caps need to be removed.
Maybe slow people that are tethering on a smartphone but remove all caps.
The size of patches and updates these days can put a pretty good hit on data plans depending on the number of tools (software) or if you are on two devices that you tether / hotspot over the course of a month. We have two laptops in our home that we travel with, for example.
Who wants to get cutoff from VPN connection to your desktop or server when on the road because Microsoft threw you a patch two weeks ago, then your steam client updated or some other productivity tool updated and then, before the next billing cycle you hit 10GB and poof! There goes the connection / hotspot.
For the companies that claim data caps are great because they give consumers the ability to choose cheaper plans with smaller caps - how about unlimited everything and then base plan pricing on the speed and prioritization instead?
Elections have consequences. I will miss Ms Khan.
Evil data caps 😢
Thankfully, while we have Comcast internet, they don't have data caps in our area. We did sign up to pay the additional monthly fee to remove the cap if they ever did decide to enforce this, but that was years ago and they haven't done it so far.
Data Caps don't do anything except to make us pay more for the Internet. What is the median data usage from everyone? My biggest complaint is that it you're in a city is that their plans prices are lower then when you live in a rural area.
*Obviously* rural Internet should cost more when you have fewer people to serve and more average wiring between customers.
Google: then vs than
You'll come off a lot less dumb when you figure that out.
. 8:00
I 100% have the comcast cheapest essentials plan and I 100% have a data cap. The T-bag regime will be the end of this inquiry and probably the end of democracy too but that's a topic for another day.
Data Caps is a scam.
Sounds like they need to break up the ISPs
Sounds like they need to be regulated like a utility. I've never seen a cap on the amount of electricity, water or gas I can use per month.
@@_-Karl-_ That sounds like the stupidest f---ing thing imaginable.
Electricity, gas, and water are all metered because the primary cost of providing them is the substance itself.
To use more electricity requires more fuel. More gas requires more gas. More water requires more purification of water.
Internet is provided for fractions of pennies on the dollar, with the *VAST* majority of the cost being the lines that run.
The lines are happy to provide *tons* and *tons* more Internet data than is currently provided.
To go from serving someone 50 Mbps to 500Mbps is a pittance. That's why companies regularly double/triple/quadruple speeds at the same tier.
Providing someone 5TB or 50TB of data per month is extremely trivial as well on terrestrial Internet.
It's so trivial that companies magically go "poof, no more caps!" as soon as competition arrives.
Comparing packet switching of electrons to a utility is outrageous.
Such a setup would mean that you're charged by the amount you download.
The reason you've never seen a cap on any of those is for that reason: you're limited by your wallet as to how much you consume.
Conversely, you've never had a limit on how much gas/water/electricity you consume in a given timeframe and you're not provided upsized services for those *WITH THE EXPRESS INTEREST OF BEING ABLE TO CONSUME MORE OF THEM IN A GIVEN PERIOD*.
If your water company said you could only run one shower at a time, they might have a case for offering many-shower upgrades... much like Scumcast limits how much data you can consume and then upcharges you to be able to consume more... then penalizes you for having the AUDACITY to use the higher-tier service that you pay for.
You might be able to make the case if ISPs offered everyone gigabit connections at a "maintenance" cost like a water/electrical/gas company of $6/10/15 a month and charged per its usage, though.
Netflix having to pay an ISP for internet data that travels through that ISP is standard and 100% required legal law within
- [South] Korea; (Twitch had to pull out of South Korea entirely for this reason IIRC, they just couldn't strike a deal where they wouldn't literally be losing money, especially since they already are(were)?).
- any company that transmits any amount of data to a customer in SKorea over the internet must pay the ISP for that data, I bet small businesses with tiny websites dont get charged, But I'm not sure; I would bet the googwill from 'helping small business' outweighs the tiny money the small businesses would be able to afford to pay.
- I am not sure whether it is only data sent to the user by the company(Downloads), or whether data users upload to the company is included(Uploads).
Thank goodness that we're not South Korea, then.
I (me, Tim) pay my ISP. My ISP is expected to pay to deliver me content.
Netflix pays for their content to travel through the Internet, through backbone providers, etc.
I'm paying to receive the content.
Netflix is paying to send the content.
Any additional payment is extortion.
It'd be like if UPS showed up, expecting payment for a package delivery from you or Amazon after Amazon already paid for delivery
A) simply because they're Amazon and they send "too many packages"
or
B) because I "receive too many packages
We switched isp's because of the data cap. The fact that we were able to shows that we probably don't need regulations on it. With Starlink, expanding 5g, and other technologies being implemented; data caps will probably go the same way texting limits did
isp... is?
isp's what?
@tim3172 using an apostrophe to pluralize an acronym helps prevent confusion, usually.
How utterly convenient they START when there isn't enough time ot do anything.
The telecoms line the pockets of both parties. There won’t be any federal changes on this matter.
Data Caps in 2024 😂
As a active network engineer, my opinion is I see no reason hardware or infrastructure wise there needs to be a data cap on broadband. In a nutshell, no matter how the carriers wish to spin it, there is no technical reason for establish data caps. The only exception is wireless as the airwaves do have limits, but for a terrestrial based service cable modem/fiber there are no such limits. Data caps are a profit making opportunity and that is it. One side note, back in the day, not as big of a deal, but data caps were put into place prevent folks from abusing their connection by hosting a download site or doing something a bit more nefarious like pirating software. Again, not as big of deal as there are improved methods to address this. Simply put, it's all Greed.
The BILLIONAIRE class runs the show. Never mind these companies have monopolies in most areas
Why even pretend like anyone believes you when you lie saying it's to promote cheaper plans