$80/month; 1 TB included, +$50 for unlimited
Would people be happy with
$130/month; $50 discount available if you stay within 1TB
or what about
$80/month†; †pricing includes $50 discount for staying within 1TB
They don't bother wording it nicer because they don't have to. There's no competition.
Because the pricing model isn't reflective of the real costs associated with the business its blatantly price gouging and exploitative and they can only get away with it because they have no competition because they bought out politicians to guarantee it so. Its a systemic disaster dumpster-fire mess than private citizens can't do jack about besides move to the ~2% of the country with competitive or public ISPs.
Unlimited internet has been a welcome respite from the inconsistent and unfair pricing of mobile data plans. Seeing that change without an explanation feels wrong.
I can imagine ISPs responding with "Here's your explanation: our infrastructure isn't built out to have everyone downloading 1TB/mo and if you want that you need to pay for it"
To whatever extent that's true, it's because of an ISP oligopoly and active lobbying measures that prevent creative solutions that might improve quality/decrease costs.
So I'm personally upset over this because it's a nickel-and-diming false choice between paying even more than our already-overpriced bills, or watching your quality of service decrease because a greedy company decided not to keep up with an eminently reasonable change in standards of quality.
So are you upset by the fact you can't get unlimited internet for a reasonable price, or that the ISP advertised $80 month and you had to pay $130? If it's the latter than it's purely a framing issue.
>To whatever extent that's true, it's because of an ISP oligopoly and active lobbying measures that prevent creative solutions that might improve quality/decrease costs.
That seems entirely orthogonal to having bandwidth caps. To the company and society as a whole, having crappy service and gouging 90% of the users for $100/month and 10% of your users for $150/month is the same as having crappy service and gouging all of your users for $105/month. If anything the first option is "fairer" because users that use the service less pay less.
You're right that bandwidth caps aren't my main complaint about ISPs, but overall displeasure with internet service is relevant to the bandwidth cap discussion because bandwidth caps are a feature that contributes to that displeasure.
Fairly or not, I blame ISPs for taking us from "A world where everyone pays $50/mo" to "A world where everyone pays $80/mo". Now they're trying to turn that world into a world where you have the choice between $100/mo and $150/mo. There's a fairness question to be discussed (I personally think it's not unreasonable to have society-wide, fast, affordable, unlimited internet be the default) but there's also a value decrease there that deserves just as much attention as the fairness question. That decrease (and not the fairness issue) is where my frustration is directed.
Basically every service provider in every industry uses the same "extra fees" model over "discount". From mobility networks to drycleaners to restaurants. Customers just aren't used to seeing things the other way around, and will immediately balk at the sight of higher initial prices.
Instead, you pay $80/month, plus a $200 penalty for each additional terabyte. You have to prepay $50/month to avoid the risk of a penalty. Comcast would rather make a bunch of money selling insurance, than put a fair price on data.