Comcast Enters Wireless Business With $45-a-Month Service | Hacker News Reader

Comcast Enters Wireless Business With $45-a-Month Service

bloomberg.com

34 pointsgm-conspiracy59 comments

You can cut the irony with a knife. I left Comcast after they imposed data caps in my area which I struggled to stay under.

I have several roommates and we generally consume media via streaming services; primarily twitch and netflix. It seems to me that Comcast is using data caps as a 'streaming tax' for cord cutters.

None of the "unlimited" plans are actually unlimited. They just use soft caps where you're throttled to 2G speeds after you exceed your allotment, rather than charging you overages. Some carriers are starting to do this for all their plans, so "unlimited" is now just becoming a weird and misleading term for one particular data cap. At least on AT&T, the "unlimited" plan isn't even the one with the largest cap, so it's particularly bizarre.

No doubt Comcast's "unlimited" offering will be similar. You may not get charged overages, but good luck watching more than a few movies per month with it.

Be thankful you have that option. Comcast is the only real broadband provider in my area. My only option to avoid caps would be to switch to a Comcast Business account.

It's so ridiculously easy to start an MVNO now-a-days, someone here should start a Hacker News cell company that guarantees to be open and not do a bunch of bullshit with your data. You only need ~100k subs to be profitable, with all this privacy news lately I bet you can hit it with the privacy conscience consumer

How would an MVNO prevent its upstream provider from doing bullshit on the data? It seems like each provider in the path to the backbone has the opportunity, means, and motivation.

VPN? Sign a contract with one of the providers to not track the data? Start thinking like an entrepreneur! There is an unmet need, go meet the need and work through the problems.

...or point-to-point IP connection, so the device count not reach the general internet, just your white-listed endpoint?

I just want a pipe.

> I just want a pipe.

Mobile providers don't work like that though. Even when roaming international, there is a tunnel back to your home provider. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPRS_Tunnelling_Protocol

This is amusing because you can get unfiltered internet roaming in China if you bring a foreign sim, apparently

Depends on the type of MVNO. Branded resellers really can't do shit to stop their parent provider from doing bullshit, but Comcast is likely going to fall into the Full MVNO category and tunnel all the traffic into their network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operato...

As a MVNO, it'd still be on a network operated by one of the big 4.

MVNO = mobile virtual network operator. My biggest pet peeve when talking about technology is not referencing the full name of something you are going to abbreviate as if everyone knows it. The article makes no mention of MVNO so reading your comment I had to google search what exactly you were talking about. A lot of coding books and developers tend to do this and its always bothered the heck out of me.

edit: Can someone explain the dv? So people are in favor of random abbreviations?

Most of us are intelligent enough to google words we don't know. No reason to bring your personal pet peeves into an unrelated discussion.

I did google it, thats not the point. It wasn't a "word" I didn't know, it was an abbreviation of a topic that was the main source of the top comment (at the time).

You googled it and learned what it was, now you know what it means and probably a lot more. If you want to learn stuff yourself you should be prepared to research. You are on a technology website reading an article about telecom, if you want to participate in the comments a baseline level of understanding isn't a big ask.

if you want to participate in the comments a baseline level of understanding isn't a big ask.

Thats not fair. I came to the comments after reading the article to learn more about the article. I think its considered poor quality to make a comment like ADF is the worst. Without referecing what ADF is first, or without being referenced in the article.

WTF is ADF? Something to do with druids?

Knowing "MVNO" is almost tangential to the OP's main point.

Replacing "MVNO" with "cell service provider," and perhaps adding "that piggybacks off existing infrastructure," would've helped in keeping focus on the main point.

Having to take away your focus from the discussion is only an impediment in this situation.

It's a general technology website, not a telecom-only technology website. The baseline level of understanding should be of technology in general, not the baseline of a telecom specialist.

If the telecom discussion ventures into specialized territory, then it is fine if the non-telecom people have to do some research to follow along.

In this case, though, if the words "mobile virtual network operator" are written out I think most HN readers will be able to figure out what they mean in the context of the comment without needing an external reference. There wasn't really anything going on that a non-telecom person wouldn't be able to follow, except for the expansion of the acronym.

It doesn't require research to make the comment understandable in this case. It just required mindless expansion of an acronym. Making multiple readers all do the same mindless task to understand the comment is inefficient.

There is a widespread, long established, endorsed by many style guides convention for handling this in technical writing: write out the term in full the first time, followed by the acronym in parenthesis, and then use the acronym in subsequent uses. I can see no reason to ignore this long standing convention in this particular case.

(For purposes of that convention, I think it would be OK to consider replies to a comment to be part of the same document as the comment, so if the commentator write "mobile virtual network operator (MVNO)" once, replies could use a bare "MVNO").

> MVNO = mobile virtual network operator

I subscribe to the Elon Musk school on acronyms--avoid at all reasonable costs [1]. That said, expanding "MVNO" to "mobile virtual network operator" does nothing for the discussion. If you aren't familiar with the former, you won't be with the latter.

Repairing the original sin of calling such virtual networks MNVOs post hoc is simply more friction than going along with an agreed term.

[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/spacex-boss-elon-musk-threatened-dras...

I am not familiar with MVNO but I can read "mobile virtual network operator" and instantly understand what it means by knowing what the individual words mean and putting it together. Expanding MVNO at least once when originally introducing the term helps.

I am familiar with MVNO, and reading "mobile virtual network operator" would make me stop for a moment to figure out what they were talking about.

When an acronym is in common use, not using it will cause trouble for people who are used to it.

As long as it's something easily googleable, it really doesn't seem like a big deal either way. If you don't know what MVNO stands for, it'll take two seconds to find out. This does not apply for cases where there's lots of different meanings, or the acronym is spelled the same as a common word.

Hence the common syntax: "mobile virtual network operator (MVNO)"

I really don't see the downside of not expanding it once, unless you're trying to avoid educating people.

"mobile virtual network operator" was exactly what I thought it would be, but there's no way I could figure out what MVNO was without googling it. The name is not totally obfuscating but the acronym is.

At least "mobile virtual network operator" has some context clues (along with the subject matter) and is easy to guess.

"MVNO" has none such.

You mean AAARC

"Can someone explain the dv?"

Oh the irony! :D

I started an MVNO called Charge (https://charge.co). It's not as easy as you think to hit 100K subs.

This is awesome! I had no idea services like this existed. Thank you for sharing.

That looks great, I haven't seen a data only plan that works with phones - I thought Google and Apple banned that. Its kinda hard to compete with the tmobile $30 plan, I might use this though.

t-mobile's $30 walmart plan no longer exists (i.e. if you have it you have it, but no one new can get it)

This is fascinating! Are you willing to share some of the cost structure for buying Sprint bandwidth? Are there large fixed costs to cover, or is it more pay-as-you-go?

> You only need ~100k subs to be profitable

While providing unlimited data? MVNOs seem to generally charge $10/GB, and I assume there's a reason for that.

Nobody provides actual unlimited data. Lots of providers have stopped charging overages, but they still throttle you terribly once you pass their soft cap.

While that's true, the throttle mark is usually between 20GB and 30GB. That's a lot better than getting 4GB for the money.

Good point, even fake "unlimited" at this price seems like it wouldn't be feasible.

Elsewhere it's mentioned that they'll take advantage of their xfinitywifi hotspots. Maybe that's enough to bring their cellular traffic down to a level that this would pay for.

>It's so ridiculously easy to start an MVNO now-a-days

Reseller you mean.

Example: I have spoken to the Harbor Mobile founders and they figured out a loophole in signing up regular T-Mobile customers to the business plans. It allowed them to offer plans ~20% off typical postpaid rates, and all they had to handle was billing. They started things with a simple Wix site. T-Mobile has since blocked them from signing up anyone new to this type of plan, likely because the plans got quite popular on deal forums.

The chart says it all. TV fees per subscriber are still so lucrative that they will pay you to stay to the tune of $20/month. Not sure how sustainable that model is since you will not be able to charge more for that down the road, but maybe this works for shareholders in the short term.

As a general trend I only see this leading to greater consolidation in the market. Less providers means less churn which seems to be their target. Fingers crossed we get to the point where buried wires are no longer a limiting factor and more entrants can begin competing.

Comcast is late to the party as a "mobile content provider".

To "compete" in the US now, these companies must provide both content and mobile connectivity.

Reminds me of Douglas Rushkoff's "Exit Strategy" (vertical brand alliances), or some weird v2 of Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL.

Telecom offerings in the US is a sad state of affairs.

What is the catch on their "unlimited" marketing speak?

Also.. how are the towers going to handle this new "price war"? I've found them already overloaded in a number of places around the U.S.

They're hoping to offload most of the data to xfinitywifi access points that run off of the Comcast modem-router combos in people's homes and businesses.

Not unlike Google Fi, which also shifts between Wi-Fi and LTE for the "best" signal.

This kind of pricing is mediocre. The market research clearly shows them pricing support that is just below "gouged by incumbents".

Nothing to see here. Still waiting for a truly disruptive company to turn this oligopoly on its head.

Wont last. Comcast tends to offer half first year, then the full price later. And it raises most prices 10% every year.

>The Philadelphia-based company is using the new service, called Xfinity Mobile, to entice its 29 million subscribers to stick around as more options become available to watch shows and movies online.

This is interesting to me - Verizon's Fios service is the main competitor to Comcast in my area. If Comcast's goal is to keep people from switching away from cable and Internet, I wonder what Verizon has to gain by letting Comcast use their cell network.

> I wonder what Verizon has to gain

Wireless spectrum to run their LTE network. The MVNO agreement was part of a 2011 deal with a consortium of cable companies including Comcast to sell their wireless spectrum licenses.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/02/technology/verizon_spectrum/

Nice uncover!

Verizon Wireless and Verizon (hardwire) are separate companies, afaik.

Verizon (fios, phone, ..) does not exist in the west coast anymore.

"Now you can get our legendary Comcast customer service for your mobile phone too!"

I should offer to help them write ad copy.

Well, it is legendary I'll give them that.

I can't ever imagine using Comcast again after being forced to wait through their customer service.

What's the advantage of getting an AT&T unlimited plan at $90/mo when you can use an MVNO like cricket that uses AT&T's towers and pay $60/mo? Are people just locked into existing contracts?

Cricket has speeds throttled to 8Mb/s. VoLTE, Wifi calling, and some other features are only available to AT&T postpaid accounts (may be available now/soon?). Also postpaid account are allowed some domestic roaming, which can be important if you travel to rural areas that don't have native coverage.

Every MVNO has QOS working against them and caveats, like throttled speeds, no roaming, and basically always soft-caps. Most of the postpaid official carrier plans have soft caps too, but these are often MUCH lower(like 5gb instead of 25)

Cricket's unlimited plan doesn't offer mobile hotspot, which would make it a non-starter for me. A non-unlimited Cricket plan for my two phones would cost me more money than I currently pay AT&T for similar service.

Good fucking luck with that. Comcast has lots of customers for its wired services only because it exists as a monopoly or duopoly in the markets it serves. Wireless is way more competitive.

Is this a result of net neutrality rules being over? Or net privacy rules being over?

Also what are the implications of Comcast subscribers already using Xfinity hotspots for free?

>Is this a result of net neutrality rules being over? Or net privacy rules being over?

No, people have been speculating about cable providers jumping into the MVNO game long before the current administration. It was logical once there was a lot of hotspots deployed. You need to look at more recent developments, like LTE-U getting approved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum

> Also what are the implications of Comcast subscribers already using Xfinity hotspots for free?

Maybe/likely the voice traffic is QoS'd, maybe hotspot service gets a little slower when lots of subscribers are on the access point.

I used to be a Comcast wireless customer, but it cost much more than $45/mo, and was called Comcast Metrophone :)

Ha. No.

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