> I had gone over the cap a few times ($30-70 in overages), so I switched to unlimited for an additional $50/month.

> Sure as shit, the previous caps are never reached, once I pay the extra. No major usage changes in the household either.

Also, they make it hard to check how much bandwidth you've used by making that data hard to reach and half the time be simply unreachable.

Comcast has a website where you can check your internet data usage. They are now saying it is going to be disabled and only can use their app.

Last year in the app, it would dump you in a chat when you looked for your data usage. Most of the time, it just said something went wrong and check back later. They have changed it but still a lot of time its unreachable and simply

> Utterly embarrassing that Comcast's highest cable plan is 1.2gb/s down with a 1.2TB/mo cap. If you actually max out that download bandwidth, you blow through the cap in less than two and a half hours. You could download 388.8TB/mo with that speed, and the cap is less than 0.3% of that.

Data caps exist for one reason and one reason only -- to make more money. Just to show how ridiculously low these caps are, back in 2017 I was downloading everything I could find from various Usenet binaries groups. For 3 months in a row I used over 4TB a month, and this was on a 25mb/s DSL line. (fortunately, no data cap).

I had to look up what happens when you go over the cap on Comcast, since I have Spectrum. I assumed you'd just be throttled until your next billing cycle, but nope, it's a nasty cash grab. According to their FAQ:

> Will I be alerted when I approach, reach, or exceed my data usage plan?

> Yes. You'll get email, text message, and Xfinity X1 on-screen notifications if you reach 75% (email only), 90%, and 100% of 1.2 TB of data usage. If you use more than 1.2 TB you will also receive an email and X1 on-screen notification for each 50 gigabyte (GB) block incurring an additional charge of $10+ tax up to the maximum data overage charge of $100.

> You'll receive an SMS text message for each 50 GB you use over 1.2 TB up to the maximum overage charge of $100 and if you've opted in, you'll also get push notifications on your phone through the Xfinity My Account app.

$10 per 50GB [1]is more expensive per GB than a damn USB flash drive. [bestbuy.com] This isn't just something the FCC should be investigating, it should be straight up illegal.

[1] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sandisk-cruzer-glide-128gb-usb-2-0-flash-drive-black/5597768.p?skuId=5597768

I just checked my area. For 3 years the cost is $85/month for 1200 Mbps and it says unlimited data and Peacock included.

Apparently your area is different.

> Because telcos are cheap bastards that want to charge the most for the minimum possible service, nor do they want to build out their infrastructure to support the data rates that they advertise.

Min Max.

That is the goal of every company and every human.

Can't blame companies for that.

Competition is the antidote to that. Unfortunately, I only have a single option where I live. Comcast or nothing.

except for the basic stuff that says you can't just tear up my property to drop your cables in. Now, there are plenty of non-compete agreements floating around, but fixing that requires anti-trust law enforcement, and for some reason everyone's on board with that until it's time to vote for politicians who'll actually do it. Then it's woke this and PC that and they lose their election.

There's no magic regulations you can get rid of for cheaper prices. Regulations are written in blood. The problem here i

The catch is that you need competitors that can actually offer service which truly competes on both price and performance. In my area, Spectrum (which thankfully, does not have data caps) is the only realistic choice. The other options are:

Starlink, which offers significantly worse performance for a much higher price ($120/mo).

T-Mobile, a 5G wireless service which is somewhat cost competitive but the service has some caveats due to being behind CGNAT and the provided combo router being absolute garbage.

> Get rid of all the laws, rules, regulations and agreements that artificially constrain competition and things will get better.

So you're a fan of the social media landscape? Comcast? How about the job Google is doing? You must be a huge fan of MS and Outlook. What about Oracle's RDBMS product? You like Apple's iPad prices? How about those lightning cables? The tech sector has virtually no regulation. Why is it not your business nirvana? Why isn't Meta the most loved company in history? They've operated with largely no regulation during their entire existence.

It's frustrating listening to libertarian tech bros oversimpl

> Anywhere where you have increased competition in broadband and new players have entered the market, outcomes have almost always been better for consumers in terms of lower prices/better value as the legacy ISPs are forced to compete.

> Get rid of all the laws, rules, regulations and agreements that artificially constrain competition and things will get better.

Actually, experience has shown the opposite. When my home town decided to change the law and allow a second cable company to compete, things were way better for about two years. The incumbent provider cut their rates massively. But they undercut the newcomer, and priced them out of business. Two years later, the incumbent bought the wiring from the newcomer, and upgraded the infrastructure for pennies on the dollar, then raised their rates again.

You can't fix ISP monopolies through deregulation, because

> Get rid of all the laws, rules, regulations and agreements that artificially constrain competition and things will get better.

The problem is you can't start a broadband company unless you're already a billion dollar company.

That and bullshit like this. [1]https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/02/gop-plan-for-broadband-competition-would-ban-city-run-networks-across-us/

It is neither cheap, nor fast nor abundant. Well compared to dial up it might be but not by any modern standards.

> For example, on my phone I pay AT&T a few bucks for a 16 GB/month subscription but they don't cut me off or charge me extra if I hit the cap. I can still use data but I get slowed down dramatically.

That's still mostly a punitive action to motivate you to upgrade to a higher plan. Most wireless carriers have actually implemented network management policies where the heaviest users will be deprioritized only when a tower is heavily loaded, provided you're on a plan which allows that. During times when there's bandwidth to spare, you're still able to fully utilize it. It's simply more profitable to make people believe they've "used up" their data bucket and they'll have to cough up more money for a la

> The problem is Comcast would lose money charging you $110 (or whatever) if you and everyone else downloaded anywhere near that much.

They wouldn't have the capacity on the shared nodes for that, sure. But if your neighborhood maxed out what bandwidth is there, it's not costing them much. This is artificial scarcity to drive higher profits when it's based on just 1TB. They already saturated the market. It's the only way they're going to increase profits.

The problem is Comcast would lose money charging you $110 (or whatever) if you and everyone else downloaded anywhere near that much. Years ago, even Comcast admitted that their data caps are solely for revenue purposes. You and your neighbors could leave that tap on constantly and their network would still be running just fine.

You're a little out of date. Doesn't take much re-downloading of games on the latest generation consoles to blow through at 1.2TB cap. No piracy needed at all to hit that limit.

> It always seemed to me the real reason was to prevent/discourage peer to peer file sharing. The government especially now is obsessed with centralization and control over content, I can't see how this will pan out in any way beneficial to the consumer, or decentralized protocols and content distribution. A free and open internet is in direct contradiction to controlling speech/disinformation and preventing those evil foreigners, didn't you know?

Just as with water services, internet should be something that is controlled locally and possibly by the city or a small local company. Not by national companies like Comcast.

No matter what, peer to peer at least in the same city, same state should be always there. But, we're so fractured now and dependent on central servers and data center for everything.

> I pay $120 a month for broadband internet

Screw that. I'd just point a cantenna at the local Walmart and mooch their WiFi if Spectrum ever got that greedy. Lucky for me, they're still letting customers churn in order to get back on a discounted plan. So, I cancelled, did my two months on a rather mediocre 5G provider (Straight Talk) and then signed back up at the promotional rate of $30/mo.

If it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid.