Hacker News Reader

Comcast has hiked standalone broadband to $75 - http://stopthecap.com/2017/12/21/75-month-broadband-pricing-...

Interestingly, you can get a cheaper promotional rate if you bundle local TV channels (cheaper than $75/month for both internet + tv) so Comcast can inflate its video subscriber (to boost their stock price) amount and they hope you forget you're on a promotional rate your bill jumps $30-40 after you drop off promo. You're free to negotiate (most people do) to get back on the promo rate; many people have success with this, but it's just a cat/mouse game and a hassle.

And Comcast also has a 1TB monthly usage cap. When the era of 2160p + HDR arrives in the next few years, people will chew through that cap rather quickly.

Comcast will continue to jack up standalone broadband prices to hedge against fleeing video subscribers. Why? Because they can, and have very little competition in most markets.

> Comcast will continue to jack up standalone broadband prices to hedge against fleeing video subscribers. Why? Because they can, and have very little competition in most markets.

That's coming from the perspective of an HN reader, for whom wireless isn't "competition." (I get it, I've got two fiber lines to my house; 3 gigabits total. My daughter uses it to stream Magic Schoolbus.) But for the typical user, 5G wireless services (say 50-100 mbps with 100GB data cap) is going to be enough. We're already at 15% of households making $100k+ ditching wired Internet for 4G. That number is growing, and will explode when 5G service rolls out.

I'd argue that with more than two people in a household and everyone switching to streaming services, you'll need to offer at least 400-500GB data caps for fixed wireless 5G.

Several of my renters are single, and their streaming usage for an individual is ~450GB/month.

For comparison, in Sweden right now you can get a 500 GB cap 4G broadband plan for $50/mo.

You need 400-500GB to accommodate who? According to Comcast, median Xfinity data usage in 2H 2017 was 131 GB: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/data-usage-average-.... That's going to be squarely within the range of 5G (analysts are guessing around 200GB caps at first). Also, expect to see video content be zero-rated (it makes technical sense--watching Netflix from one of Netflix's co-located CDNs puts a lot less load on the network).

Remember, 5G doesn't need to be an alternative for everybody to wreck the ability to raise prices to compensate for lost TV revenue.

> According to Comcast, median Xfinity data usage in 2H 2017 was 131 GB

Given their recent push for data caps (and make money off of overages), I'm sceptical of their numbers. They have a pretty obvious incentive to misrepresent (if not understate outright) the value to make their caps appear generous.

Also, is median (same as 50th percentile, right?) really the right statistic to consider? I'm not sure any one number is sufficiently meaningful, as the shape of the graph can be particularly informative.

More importantly, how has that changed over time, as compared with the penetration of 4K TVs versus 1080p ones (or the availability of 4K content or some similar metric)?

Conversely, I think mobile data is also more likely to be significant as competition in multi-person households, even with the caps you mention, because those have a chance of being per person/handset (absent family/share plans), while Comcast is likely to be one cap per household no matter how many people/screens stream at one time.

Agreed, I think the histogram would be bimodal, split between people that solely watch cable TV and cord-cutters that solely stream.

My Comcast went down yesterday for about 18 hours (I have zero other options at my apartment for high speed Internet) and I tried tethering on Verizon LTE to play some games. Latency was between 60ms and ~900ms with some random disconnects. This is in TF2, which runs on the Source engine. Anything above about 400ms is pretty unplayable.

Bandwidth caps are yet another issue. 4G is NOT a suitable alternative for me today, and won’t be in the foreseeable future. Maybe if I had a dedicated antenna transceiver on the roof (also not allowed at most apartments) and they massively upgraded tower capacity had a 10-100x increase in bandwidth caps, but....I’m not holding my breath. If Verizon can keep getting >$100/mo ARPU providing 5GB of data with Comcast getting the same for providing 1TB and both have monopoly / duopoly conditions, they have no incentives to compete or upgrade their infrastructure.

There is aggregated data on this, based on millions of data points: https://opensignal.com/reports/2018/01/usa/state-of-the-mobi.... Average latency for all four carriers is under 70 ms.

As to bandwidth caps: for $100 including fees, you get unlimited on Verizon, which has a 22 GB soft cap per line (in practice, you can use way beyond that).

Your point about duopoly is completely divorced from facts. The cell carriers are in a market with four competitors, and invest massively in infrastructure (tens of billions of dollars a year). Cellular has improve way faster than many other areas of technology over the last decade. 10 years ago, I had a Core 2 polycarbonate Macbook and AT&T 3G service. The former is still a perfectly serviceable computer (the new Macbook is maybe twice as fast). But my Verizon LTE is probably 10-20 times faster than my 3G service.

What else do you use that is 10 times better than it was a decade ago? Google Search? Gmail? Facebook? iOS?

>> What else do you use that is 10 times better than it was a decade ago? Google Search? Gmail? Facebook? iOS?

Heh, ironically, the "wired" internet is surely 10X or more faster than a decade ago. Anecdotally, I have a 1 Gbps connection now; year or two ago I had a 250 Mbps connection, and 2-3 years prior to that it was 50Mbps. Ten years ago it was, what, 5Mbps or 2Mbps.

You (and I) are one of the lucky few who live in area with gigabit internet. The average speed is 55Mbps (https://broadbandnow.com/report/2018-fcc-international-data-...).

But the price of cellular data has come way down. For instance when the iPad was first introduced, it was only available in the US on AT&T and was $25 for 2Gb of data per month. Now I'm paying an extra $20 a month on T-mobile for unlimited data for my iPad.

The cellular iPad wasn't even worth it for me until I could get unlimited data for $20. For that amount the extra convenience of not having to tether and basically having a second phone is worth it since you can get and receive regular phone calls to your paired cell number from an iPad even if your phone is dead.

Nice. Myself, I did not see price drops -- I've been paying ~ $100/mo for cell phone plan (5GB data) for some years now -- 3 years at least maybe 5 years or more.

In the US?

I pay a total of $180 a month for 5 phone lines unlimited data on each + an iPad, unlimited 512Kbps tethering on each + 10Gb of high speed tethering on one for my son who uses his cell phone for his only internet. This is with T-mobile. They also throw in a family Netflix plan (4 simultaneous streams) with it.

Canada. Looks like unlimited cell data plans are not a thing here, at least not yet.

Wireless can't compete because if everyone is on wireless, it will be dead slow, unless you make the cell size incredibly small. Small cell sizes require far more radio towers (often a non-option anyway due to zoning restrictions). And even if you do get microcells setup on traffic lights every half mile, you will then need the last mile infrastructure that comcast has for backhaul, unless you want to build your own land network. So I don't see the competitive advantage over another company just coming in with landline.

The other idea for small cells is femtocells, but in that situation you are running traffic over home internet connections so it is definitely not a way to cut out comcast.

Even at 5G speeds and 100 GB data caps, home internet being run over wireless would completely overload most of our current wireless infrastructure. The cell sizes are just too large for that kind of capacity.

Small cells will be a critical part of 5G deployment. The FCC is projecting they’ll need to approve ten times as many cell sites for 5G as have been approved to date for all previous technologies. They’re working to reduce the regulatory barriers to doing that: https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/22/fcc-votes-to-streamline-5...

Small cells are still way cheaper than building land line. I had Comcast run fiber to my house recently, and it was very interesting to see the process play out. Aside feom waiting months for a permit, running fiber along the main street was quick. Running it down my weird little side street took just as long as running it half a mile down the main road. And running it through my yard took just as much time as that. Getting rid of the last 1,000 feet is a huge benefit.

I currently pay Comcast $35/month in suburban Chicago for 25/4 (down/up). This is without a contract. With 12-month contract is $25/month.

The idea that cable providers can raise prices to compensate for lost TV revenue is predicated on the assumption that there are no alternatives. That assumption ignores just how much bandwidth 5G gives you to play with.

All of the major cell carriers are already offering unlimited internet with SD video streaming. My older son doesn't have home internet service at all. He streams everything either from his phone or his PS4 and tethers from his phone. That's good enough for him.

Right now, people pay $150+ for a package with all the TV channels, while you can get the broadband for $50 or so

I pay $70 a month for AT&T's gigabit internet and on top of that I pay $35 for DirecTVNow and $12 a month for Hulu without commercials. I would be paying $13 a month for Netflix, but it is free with T-mobile.

The actual price of TV service is a wash. I won't go back to TV via the cable company because of the BS fees -- cable box rental (for us it would be $50), Broadcast Access, Sports Access, Regulatory fees (that aren't mandatory government fees) add up to another $80.

On top of that DirecTVNow+Hulu is a lot more flexible. We can watch from anywhere. That's a big deal for my wife. She has a split shift and when she isn't at the gym she can catch up on TV on her phone.

70 + 35 + 12 = 120/ month that's much cheaper than cable + internet. A 1 GB connection is also overkill for just about anyone.

Yes 1Gbps up and down is overkill. In the real world, (outside of speed tests) the best I was able to get was around 100Mbps u/d when connecting to my company's colo via VPN after business hours. Even Amazon limits my connection to my AWS resources to around 70Mbps.

WiFi the best I can get is around 400/400 when standing right by the router on either my phone or laptops.

Video needs at most 20Mbps and I don't know how much bandwidth that my son's PS4 or Xbox can't take advantage of.

Every bedroom in our house, the living room, the gym, and my office are wired. But my 3rd Gen AppleTVs only have 100Mbps connections, my Roku sticks/TVs are WiFi and only the game systems, my computers in the office and my one 4th Gen AppleTV actually have wired gig-e connections.

On the other hand, the gigabit plan is the only one that doesn't have a cap.

But if I had XFinity (thank God I don't) even thier gigabit Service is limited to 35Mbps upload.

A basic HD cable package on top of my old Comcast Internet subscription added MAYBE $20 to the cost of my Internet plan due to the bundle discount. Oh, and Comcast threw in HBO for free, which is worth about $15 a month.

To get the equivalent channel access as such a service, you've got to pay for YouTube TV or PlayStation Vue or the like, and you're looking at $40 a month there.

Obviously, prices vary by where you are, but in a lot of cases, cord cutting actually removes efficiency. And note that Netflix is rapidly abandoning the "buy all content" model in favor of just having it's own shows. So you'll need Netflix + Hulu + CBS All Access + Disney's new service, etc.

Is that a straight $20 or $20 + Broadcast fee, regulatory fee, cable box rental, "HD Technology Fee"....

Inclusive. It used to be cheaper to have TV than to not have TV because of the bundle discount (which is why I had initially gotten it, despite never watching TV on the actual box), particularly before I upgraded to HD. The broadcast and regional sports fees are really what brought it up to costing an extra $20 or so, they raised those fees a lot in the last couple years.

(Insert pet peeve about paying a regional sports fee if I don't watch sports here.)

True, Netflix had the first mover advantage, but that's about it. Netflix will not have most of the entertainment content that is available in the world. As long as people have diverse interests, they have to continue paying subscription costs in one way or the other; instead of cable subscriptions it will be streaming subscriptions.

> The idea that cable providers can raise prices to compensate for lost TV revenue is predicated on the assumption that there are no alternatives.

Which is increasingly correct, since the same entities that sre cable operators not only largely own the fixed consumer internet connections, they also largely own the mobile broadband providers and satellite broadband providers, and, even if they didn't own the pipes, they own a lot and are in the process of buying up more of the video content channels and the content itself.

No, it’s increasingly less correct. Right now, Verizon and AT&T don’t compete with each other, or with Comcast in most places. With 5G, you’ll have 3-4 entities offering broadband in almost every market.

I’ll believe it when I see it. I very much doubt that the incumbents will let that happen, be it through legal chicanery or otherwise.

The TV channels cost massive amounts to the cable company, too, though. Internet prices wouldn't have to change much. Comcast is a particularly special case because they own a bunch of channels (NBC Universal), though - others have much smaller footprints.

But agreed that the realistic threat isn't Netflix or Youtube or Sling or Hulu, it's wireless broadband. I'm not as optimistic as you, though, based on my experience with cell phone service in my apartments. :|

Really curious to see the technology that develops in response to the latency introduced by wireless internet.

I'm not familiar with domains that have a huge dependency on latency other than high frequency trading (who are already next door), but I imagine it's a problem we'll have to solve at some point.

Wireless latency is not bad at all. It’s already not noticeable on LTE (around 20 ms) and on 5G the air interface latency will be less than what’s added on the transit network.

Netflix 4K is "up to 7GB per hour", so likely 5-7GB on average. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/87