Comment by magicalist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by magicalist | Hacker News Reader

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> Now, with the advent of 4k streaming and similar popular consumer services that actually do require significant bandwidth, it's not surprising to see this sort of activity as a means of avoiding the need to provision backhaul equal to the promises these companies have made.

This sounds like a cynical take on their motives but is actually just buying into the narrative the ISPs have pushed that these caps are because the bits are limited and caps introduce fairness.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/comcast-says-it-...

In actuality Comcast has outright said it's a business decision, not a technological one, and at&t said uverse had no need for caps unlike their old dsl network and then added them anyways.

It's rent seeking, plain and simple. The exact same way that the extra cable fees go up multiple times a year outside the advertised contract price and uncorrelated with inflation, government requirements or broadcast carriage fees.

And then they spin it as fairness for the heaviest users to pay more and justify it as only 1 in 20 people have to pay it anyways, so, hey, don't worry about it.

Notably, Comcast does not have bandwidth caps in markets where FIOS or other high speed providers have coverage. These caps are purely a way to capitalize on a monopoly position.

Unfortunately, there's still a time lag for this to take effect. I recently moved across town from somewhere where Comcast was my only option (and I had gigabit) to a neighborhood where I had the option between Comcast gigabit and another gigabit fiber provider. The latter had no data cap, free install, free gifted equipment, symmetric gigabit (as opposed to Comcast's 80 Mb/s upload), no contract, and was $25/month cheaper (with a lifetime price lock).

I called Comcast to complain and try and avoid paying the ETF (it was at $180 because I signed a 2 year contract) with some kind of benefit: remove my data cap, drop my rate, something. They wouldn't budge an inch. Told me I was already getting a promotional price from them and that the data cap (which I'd already hit 2 out of their 3 grace overages) was non-negotiable.

Switched to the alternative provider, and I can't be happier. Looking forward to Comcast dropping their rates and/or data cap, but I'm hoping that I never have to be their customer ever again.

I wish there was an alternate provider that I could switch to... without a massive reduction in throughput.

Isn't it incredible how just having one additional firm to compete makes so much difference in the customer experience?

Have you checked AT&T? I live in Santa Cruz (a small city) and was surprised to find that they wired my neighborhood for fiber last year. Price is competitive with Comcast and it’s been solid since I signed up a few months ago.

Just checked. Sadly, not available. I can have Comcast, Century Link (Century Link's maximum offering in my area is 1.5 Mbps), or satellite. I live 20 minutes outside of Minneapolis in the suburbs... If I lived 10 miles closer to the city I could have fiber. It's just a matter of time, but I hate having one choice.

Some years ago I used to drive regularly on new Hwy 10 to and from 35W (back then 610, I think) and I'd always see this massive Centurylink billboard advertising fiber, in maybe Mounds View, Fridley, Columbia Heights area. I had friends who lived around there with this awesome broadband connection. Meanwhile, best I could ever get from them a couple of miles away was maybe 25 (maaaaaybe 50) mbps DSL, and that would crap out constantly. For years and years. As far as I know, the area where I lived still isn't upgraded.

This is not true. Anecdotally, Comcast has caps in the Seattle area, where they have multiple competitors, including Frontier FIOS.

Here is their official list: https://dataplan.xfinity.com/faq/

Comcast doesn't consider local(ish) providers as competition, this really only applies to Verizon etc.

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