Comcast extends data caps

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

data caps for home internet are still a thing over there? get good USA. get good. 

[Windows7ge]

16 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Like I said, there is Gigabit Pro. $299 for Metro Ethernet is not a bad price. Even with the potential for $1000 for install. 

Meanwhile I'm constantly hearing about Gigabit being available in other countries for like 40€/month.

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Meanwhile I'm constantly hearing about Gigabit being available in other countries for like 40€/month.

Its not Gigabit dude. Gigabit Pro is 2 Gbps Symmetrical Metro Ethernet. Its not the same as Gigabit Fiber thats offered by other providers which is why it costs more. Its basically enterprise grade internet at a steep discount. 

[Windows7ge]

1 minute ago, Donut417 said:

Its not Gigabit dude. Gigabit Pro is 2 Gbps Symmetrical Metro Ethernet. Its not the same as Gigabit Fiber thats offered by other providers which is why it costs more. Its basically enterprise grade internet at a steep discount. 

As amazing as that sounds I don't have the income to spare $299/month solely for my internet. That's like a car payment or almost half my rent for a month.

[Zodiark1593]

Comcast still appears to have a pretty firm stranglehold on wired internet in my area. Some shady practices a few years ago had me swear off of them though. 
 

Still on cellular for my primary internet. 15 GB/month in tethered data is a tad more generous though that what I had before with my old carrier. Though GoG (and emulation) is my go-to for playing games on PC due to not having any DRM that requires any sort of internet connection, which is partially why I’m undecided on upgrading my GPU actually. I don’t play any new games, but those I do play I’d like to run better in 4K. 

[bcredeur97]

My biggest problem with these caps is $10/50GB is crazy. Like if the customer is going over they will prob go way over... why is it so expensive? Lol

 

does cox have some sort of deal with Comcast? Or do they use their infrastructure? Because their stuff sounds identical to cox.

 

even the “power boost” thing they used to advertise allotted you faster speeds than your plan offered temporarily for small/bursty downloads was the same across both companies. 

[bit]

13 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

My biggest problem with these caps is $10/50GB is crazy. Like if the customer is going over they will prob go way over... why is it so expensive? Lol

because free $$$

[Donut417]

10 minutes ago, bit said:

because free $$$

[AndreiArgeanu]

I still think it's ridiculous to pay for wired internet with data caps. That's like one of the big reasons to get wired internet over mobile. As 5G become more and more popular it might be a better choice getting a mobile plan instead and one of those routers that allow for sims. I'd hate to constantly worry about running out of data at home.

[Donut417]

2 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

I still think it's ridiculous to pay for wired internet with data caps. That's like one of the big reasons to get wired internet over mobile. As 5G become more and more popular it might be a better choice getting a mobile plan instead and one of those routers that allow for sims. I'd hate to constantly worry about running out of data at home.

I can get "Unlimited" 4G LTE home internet from T-Mobile. The issue however is they might deprioritize the connection. Also I live near a large major airport. So those cell towers are pretty much always hammered. Thats also my fear with 5G. That its going to be all the same. 

[AndreiArgeanu]

Just now, Donut417 said:

I can get "Unlimited" 4G LTE home internet from T-Mobile. The issue however is they might deprioritize the connection. Also I live near a large major airport. So those cell towers are pretty much always hammered. Thats also my fear with 5G. That its going to be all the same. 

I'd expect things to improve with 5G though as more cell towers are added/upgraded. Even so, if you get reasonable speeds and decent reliability it's going to be far more convenient, especially if you travel often. In a town center a few months ago I was able to easily get 90 to 115mbps on my phone and that's on 4G.

[Donut417]

3 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

if you travel often

Thats the thing. T Mobile's home internet you cant use it outside of your home. Which is how I expect most 5G home internet plans to do. There is a different between T Mobiles home internet and just a hotspot. Even on T Mobiles "Unlimited" data plans for phones you only get up to I think 20 Gigs of high speed data before your throttled to 3G speeds. While Home internet is "Unlimited' with deprioritization if the tower is getting hammered. Which I know in my area is pretty much all the time due to the airport.  

 

 

[Letgomyleghoe]

3 hours ago, wall03 said:

Wait! You only get the unlimited with Comcast's equipment?!

Why can't they be separate things?

(yeah, ik, i use Optimum. Still)

you can, you just have to pay the extra $30 a month

[pythonmegapixel]

2 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

you can, you just have to pay the extra $30 a month

Just to clarify, because I'm not sure how things work in the US...

 

If you buy a plan which is advertised with a Comcast provided router, is it locked down somehow so that you can't then just throw the Comcast device in a drawer somewhere and use your own equipment instead?

[Letgomyleghoe]

3 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

I'm starting to get the impression that people, overall, don't really like Comcast that much...

we don't im paying 130 a month for 100mbps unlimited, it's absolute bullshit, if my house was just around the corner I could get 1gbps for the same price from 

[Donut417]

Just now, pythonmegapixel said:

If you buy a plan which is advertised with a Comcast provided router, is it locked down somehow so that you can't then just throw the Comcast device in a drawer somewhere and use your own equipment instead?

Modems or gateways have to be registered with Comcast. They will need the MAC address as well as the serial number. 

[pythonmegapixel]

1 minute ago, Donut417 said:

Modems or gateways have to be registered with Comcast. They will need the MAC address as well as the serial number. 

So how does that work if you buy a provide-your-own-equipment plan? Do you have to separately buy a modem from a Comcast approved list, and have them send someone out to connect it to the network?

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, pythonmegapixel said:

So how does that work if you buy a provide-your-own-equipment plan? Do you have to separately buy a modem from a Comcast approved list, and have them send someone out to connect it to the network?

Comcast has a list of modems and gateways they will support. Then if you want unlimited your bill goes up by $30 a month. Comcast is not required to setup any customer owned modems. You either will register it thru the walled garden. Its basically a captive page you will get when using an unregistered modem and you follow the instructions. OR you call them and give a CSR the relevant info. 

 

Because keep in mind, they dont provide a free gateway. You either rent a gateway for a cheaper cost and have a data cap, You rent a gateway for a higher price and have unlimited or you can buy your down modem/gateway. Buying your own equipment saves quite a bit of money witch is why people do it. 

[Bombastinator]

That number isn’t small, but 95% of users is the same break point Apple used when it did its “cut in half” thing. 95% of its app developers made less than a million a year from the App Store, and by making such a move they cut their revenue less than 5%.  This feels like it has the earmarks of  “visualized data” on it to me. ISP services are a bit like garbage collection.  Garbage collectors charge by volume but pay by the pound. They make their money off high volume low weight waste.  They also have caps in the form of maximum weight allowances on their cans. ISPs charge by bandwidth, but pay by MB.  They want a cap much like the garbage collectors have.  A cap is one way to monitor abuse.  Not the only way but a fairly non invasive and low effort one. The question is what that cap should be? That a family of six with two people working working from home could flirt with the top of the cap implies the charge merits a closer look.  The big problem with this whole thing is in the areas they have an effective monopoly on services.  Sure going after abusers who run business services through residential systems is reasonable, but at the very least more data has to be made available. Given the limited amount of information offered the possibility that there is an odor absolutely exists. 
 

It makes me wonder what the graphs look like.  I’d want to see pre covid numbers vs recent numbers. 

[Nayr438]

3 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

I'm starting to get the impression that people, overall, don't really like Comcast that much...

They provide unreliable and expensive internet services, then randomly screw with your bill, I personally hate them.

 

4 hours ago, Donut417 said:

 

Before someone says that 1.2TB is a lot of data. I can tell you that my family could go over that at any time. Actually during the time that the cap was suspended we did. Also, we have had a few months were we can damn close to going over. 

 

For anyone who is just getting capped, you can keep track of your data usage by going to your account settings at My.Xfinity.com or using the My Account app on your favorite mobile device. Picture is below.

 

I can definitely say that is not a lot as we regularly go over 1.2TB. I guess I am part of that 5%.

Spoiler

 

[Brooksie359]

4 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

I wonder how this will end up impacting me (genuinely). I'm quite the power user and I can easily see myself exceeding that 1.2TB.

 

Why data caps? We have infrastructure multiple 100's of Gigabits even Terabits in bandwidth with fibre internet always expanding. I see no reason to impose data caps except for greed. Is Comcast that starved for bandwidth?

Honestly I thought I would go over my cap but I haven't at all mostly because even when watching videos and streaming it is really hard to hit 1.2 tb of data unless you add in 100s of gb of downloads. If I had a ton of game downloads in a month I could pass it but I try not to do that for the exact reason that I don't want to go over my data cap. Alternatively I could do unlimited for a bit more a month but I have only ever gone over my cap one month and by a small amount.

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, bcredeur97 said:

My biggest problem with these caps is $10/50GB is crazy. Like if the customer is going over they will prob go way over... why is it so expensive? Lol

 

does cox have some sort of deal with Comcast? Or do they use their infrastructure? Because their stuff sounds identical to cox.

 

even the “power boost” thing they used to advertise allotted you faster speeds than your plan offered temporarily for small/bursty downloads was the same across both companies. 

Honestly you would be surprised. If I have ever gone over the cap even when living with other people it was always over by a small amount and usually less than 100gb. Granted if you are going way over then it could make sense to do unlimited which is why they have this whole system in place anyways. Have the people who use the most data pay more by either paying for unlimited or by paying for however much they go over. 

[Windows7ge]

3 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly I thought I would go over my cap but I haven't at all mostly because even when watching videos and streaming it is really hard to hit 1.2 tb of data unless you add in 100s of gb of downloads. If I had a ton of game downloads in a month I could pass it but I try not to do that for the exact reason that I don't want to go over my data cap. Alternatively I could do unlimited for a bit more a month but I have only ever gone over my cap one month and by a small amount.

I don't know where this would put me. In the past 30 days I downloaded over 500GB worth of media and uploaded over 700GB of files since Nov 1st. That's not including absolutely everything else and other family member's usage. I'm looking at anywhere around 1.5TB~2TB of usage per month.

[Letgomyleghoe]

7 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly I thought I would go over my cap but I haven't at all mostly because even when watching videos and streaming it is really hard to hit 1.2 tb of data unless you add in 100s of gb of downloads. If I had a ton of game downloads in a month I could pass it but I try not to do that for the exact reason that I don't want to go over my data cap. Alternatively I could do unlimited for a bit more a month but I have only ever gone over my cap one month and by a small amount.

I broke 1 terabyte after accidentally wiping my whole drive then having to re-install everything, wasn't a fun month, and ended up paying the extra $30 for unlimited.

[Brooksie359]

Just now, Windows7ge said:

I don't know where this would put me. In the past 30 days I downloaded over 500GB worth of media and uploaded over 700GB of files since Nov 1st. That's not including absolutely everything else and other family member's usage. I'm looking at anywhere around 1.5TB~2TB of usage per month.

Yeah then you would definitely want to go unlimited in that case. That would get crazy expensive at 10/gb. Sucks that you would have to pay 30 dollars more but honestly better than ending up paying hundreds more for going 1 tb over.