Comcast Targets Internet "Abusers" 628
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a great Associated Press story on Comcast's invisible caps. The company has been threatening and then cutting off customers who 'abuse' their so-called 'unlimited' service by downloading too much. But Comcast won't reveal what the limits are. DSL Reports has been tracking this for a while, and it's good to see the mainstream press catch on."
Re:Comca$t MyCrow$oft Connection (Score:3, Insightful)
My thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason ISP's use the word "unlimited" in their advertisements is because it sells more accounts than if they don't.
The fact that they are lying is really not a relevant point. Consumers will flock to the guy that says "unlimited" in his advertisements regardless if it's the truth or not. Consumers don't think that hard about the issue.
It should be obvious that you can't provide a dedicated "unlimited" 56K connection profitably at the $10-$15/mo market rate, but you will sell a lot more accounts if you say "unlimited".
This is also true in the web hosting business. I see advertisements for "Unlimited Bandwitdh" web hosting all the time. But we all know that this is neither physically possible nor economically possible. Still people sign up for these lies.
Guys like me that run businesses that want to be honest about things are punished for our truthfullness. Consumers demand to be lied to. So ISP's are forced to choose between significantly lower sales and being dishonest.
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't ISPs that try to be honest in their offerings. I could give you a list of honest ones that don't use the word unlimited unless they mean it. All I'm saying is that dialup consumers do not typicaly choose these honest guys when they see an "unlimited" offer for the same price.
*SLASHDOT* has been tracking this for a while... (Score:5, Insightful)
a) they took over from AT&T, raised prices, forced you to get CATV or pay even higher rates (42.95/45.95 with CATV or 60.95 or 63.95 without)
b) have little to no competition in the broadband market, especially at the speeds they offer (now 3mbs in most, if not all, areas)
c) now are able to control their userbase with "invisible" DOWNLOAD caps (not speed caps as some people are confused with) based on a "local average" whatever that is...
So, they get a bunch of customers becomming one of the largest ISPs and probably *the* largest broadband ISP. They don't like the fact that some users are actually USING their bandwith so they decide to make up near-random numbers so that they can cut you off when they want... Best of all, they can cut you off at any time because you don't have a "contract" with them that you can retaliate against. They can disconnect your service at any time for any reason leaving you with little options for broadband (nevermind reasonably priced connections).
Ummm. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DVD Newsgroup usage (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:My thoughts on the matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
otherwise, you'll be switching providers a lot...
Just to review... (Score:1, Insightful)
Attacking a different problem? (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe this is their indirect way of dealing with this?
Re:My thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
Caps arent exactly low (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:*SLASHDOT* has been tracking this for a while.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that they can't a) tell you how much you have downloaded, b) refuse to tell you what their # is, and c) don't think that they need to tell you is what makes it unfair.
If you are going to shut people off you need to give them a tool that tracks it, allow them to call up and ask a CSR for the current bandwith usage, and also know what the cap is.
Re:All we want is some accountability (Score:5, Insightful)
KFG
This plus a price spike?! (Score:3, Insightful)
C'mon, 60 bucks for an internet-only subscription?! You're out of your mind.
Re:My thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)
No, consumers actually *want* unlimited access and actually *believe* that's what they're getting. They don't want to worry about how much they download a month, if they get an unlimited account, that's it, they don't worry. It removes yet another potential stressful bill from ones life.
Companies who advertise unlimited access when it really is not are guity of false advertising and fraud.
Is this a TRUTH IN ADVERTISING issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Snip! Emphasis mine. Sounds like Comcasts legal team broke into the nitrous oxide again.
Re:My thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
What a great advertising technique! I'll have to start using it for my own product and service sales! We'll need a good name for it, though. How about "fraud"? Yes, that sounds about right.
Ummmm, no. Consumer seek out good deals and trust that they aren't being lied to. If someone advertises "Unlimited Internet, $10.00 per month" I'm going to assume that there is some sort of catch (spyware, for example), or that they've got some sort of unusual situation (Say, is the local phone company). But it wouldn't cross my mind that they were simply bald faced liars.
Re:My thoughts (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think that follows. Consumers are not asking or demanding to be lied to. Consumers are, to the contrary, believing the lies. They are thereby being induced to obtain services that are fraudulently described. Yes, this puts you at a competitive disadvantage if your truthfulness makes you appear less competitive. But if so, then your complaint is against the lying competitors, not against the believing consumers.
You cannot actually deliver a letter . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
People who send first class mail from NYC to LA are not "abusing the system."
The system takes such matters into account when it sets the postage price.
The phone company acts in similar ways when it sets its price for unlimited local calling. Some people talk more, some never seem to stop talking.
One can send certain kinds of mail at lower than first class rates if one wishes. Just as one can obtain limited calling at additional fees per call. You may assess your own usage and determine which might be the better deal for you, thus those whose usage is expected to be high naturally pay a premium for the premium service and such service can be expected to attract such users.
The populace understands this system and when they see "unlimited" assume this is the sort of averaged pricing structure they are dealing with, and they have every right to do so.
The ISPs know full well what the public thinks they are getting when they advertise their service as "unlimited," thus, if that is not actually what they intend to deliver they are, in the technical language that applies to such legal matters, "Lying Bastards" and should be treated as such.
KFG
I am worried (Score:4, Insightful)
If comcast said I can't play games, I am better off discontinuing the service. Why else would I need that much bandwidth.
Re:My thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason ISP's use the word "unlimited" in their advertisements is because it sells more accounts than if they don't.
I don't doubt that that is true. However, you go on to justify it by saying that "the consumers are demanding to be lied to", and that they must be lied to because it's not possible to provide what they were promised.
Ok. I want you to dig a T1 to my house, so I can really have the bandwidth that I want. In turn, I promise to pay you $1,000/month. Deal? Sign here, please.
Oh, what? Of course I'm not going to pay you $1,000/month. Where on Earth did you think I could come up with that amount of money? I was just lying to you to get you to do what I wanted; the alternative was to not lie to you, and not get what I wanted, which is not acceptable. You should have known this, so it's really your fault for having believed me. Instead, I'll pay you whatever is left out of my check each month after rent, pizza and beer. And I like a lot of beer.
Frankly, it's pretty unbelievable that you think this is acceptable--I predict that you won't stay in business long. And that the first time someone tries the same argument on you, you'll cry to a judge. Finally, it's noted that you posted as an AC. Chicken. A little afraid of what your customers would do to you if they knew your real policy?
Doing the math... (Score:3, Insightful)
In order to do this, the customer would have to max out a 3Mb/s connection, 24/7, for the entire month. Since the cable companies are only now 'doubling their top download speeds to 3 megabits, how is this possible?
Now my connection is ADSL, 512/256. I run BitTorrent downloads 24/7 on an old headless box. Theoretically, I could pull down 165GB/mo. I know I don't because i haven't started buying shares in Maxtor, Hitachi or Western Digital yet.
Re:My thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is probably why "unlimited" internet access means "unlimited time online," not "unlimited bandwidth usage." If you violate their (unspecified) bandwidth usage limits, they feel that they have the right to stop providing you that "unlimited time online." The problem with this is not that they are preventing users from using the advertised "unlimited" but that they are claiming users are in violation of terms that the users can't even find out.
Changes in usage patterns (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem that ISPs are now dealing with is that their calculations which made the "unlimited" label economically feasible in the late 90's are now way off. P2P has exploded; so has the net's general usefulness and the net-savviness of the average user; so has Internet publishing of every kind. That "unlimited" word started appearing before google became a verb, before blogging became popular, before people needed the term "file sharing".
The middle of the bandwidth bellcurve has moved up dramatically in those few years, and the company has to take into account the new median bandwidth usage, but they haven't. Ethical ways to do this would be:
1) Put pressure on upstream bandwidth infrastructure to lower their prices
2) Raise prices to consumers taking into account the new usage rates
3) Stop advertising unlimited service and charge the same rates
They of course chose (4), continue to do business the way we always have, and bill unsuspecting customers.
They'll get their comeuppance for this.
Re:First, (Score:2, Insightful)
i've had no problems with comcast so far (Score:3, Insightful)
in the article, it says they wouldnt tell this person how much they had downloadloaded, and how much was acceptable. so, based on that, how can they expect him to comply?
Forevermore hits it right on the head (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not doing false advertising, they're just not correcting misconceptions about it.
Re:ISP business model analysis (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup they sure did. You paid for it in the speed shown on your downloads... So why in the world would they up their download caps to DOUBLE what they had when they started enforcing the "local average limits"?
This is bullshit on Comcast's part, plain and simple. If they were having such a problem w/bandwith being a "hot commodity" they wouldn't have nearly doubled our speed caps from 1800/256 to 3000/256. I went from 220kB/s to 390kB/s.
All cable providers are not equal (Score:4, Insightful)
Cablevision's Optimum Online service, which I use in NJ, is outstanding. They do NOT cap their service (8Mb down, 1Mb up). While I consider myself to be a heavy user, I have NEVER had a problem with my usage (unchanged over the last 4 years).
One way that cable providers can make customers happy, and reduce their costs, is to make newsgroups available (and educate their customers about them). This is an alternative, safer way for customers to get the media files they would otherwise go to P2P applications for. Since the news server is "on net" the ISP does not have to pay anyone else for the bandwidth.
Comcast's actions aren't just customer hostile, they show a lack of business acumen and technical skill. If I were in their area, I'd opt for any other provider (even multiple dialip lines if it came to that).
You're not honest ENOUGH! (Score:5, Insightful)
Guys like me that run businesses that want to be honest about things are punished for our truthfullness. Consumers demand to be lied to. So ISP's are forced to choose between significantly lower sales and being dishonest.
Actually, I think the problem here really is that you are not BRUTUALLY honest. If you are serious about wanting to run an honest business, why don't you go all out? In your advertisements you should point out the blatant lies of your competitors. Point out that there is no such thing as 'unlimited' internet access right in your ads! Then go further and suggest that if your competitors don't respect the intelligence of the average joe before they get the money, how could you possibly trust them to respect the customer AFTER they already have the money?
You're in an uncomfortable position right now: you're in the half-way point. In tennis it is called "no man's land" -- the area between the baseline and the net. You haven't committed to one course of action or another and end up getting stranded in a position worse than either option. You need to decide whether you are going to be brutally honest or a deceiver like everyone else. Don't try to play a happy medium. You're not going to be very happy if you do that for very long.
Just make damn sure that everything you say in your ads is the truth otherwise their lawyers are going to come down on you like a ton of bricks. Be truthful and what are they going to do: sue you for telling the truth? If they take you to court you can countersue and make some dough.
GMD
Re:Hey, if it gets the job done... (Score:5, Insightful)
These machines have long since been compromised, and turned into spammer 'zombies.'
Is there an easy way for an ISP to prove if a PC has been compromised in one of the more common ways, and it working as a zombie relay?
If so there is a great opportunity here to help solve the govenment budget crisis. Amend the various "attractive nuisance" laws to allow the city or state to cite people for running a compromised system (similar to a traffic ticket). ISP's might be glad to turn in these customers to reduce the load on thier networks. Smart customers (the kind who fasten their seatbelt for a short trip to the corner landromat) will have firewalls and/or virus scanners installed, so this will mostly be a tax on stupidity. Anyone councilman/representative who trys to fight the passing of a law like this can be labeled as a spam supporter.
Re:Comca$t MyCrow$oft Connection (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Crap like this kept me off COmcast for years (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree, and I would also agree that it's the ISP's right to throttle bandwidth. However, it's absolutely imperative that the ISP be very upfront about this. They need to stop going around advertising "unlimited usage" when in fact that's not what they're offering. They need to advertise that there are caps, and what those caps are. They also should provide their users with a means to see what their usage for the month is.
ISPs have the right to regulate the use of their own equipment, but advertising unlimited usage when it's not is fraudulent.
Re:Forevermore hits it right on the head... No (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason for this is that, as the party drawing the contract, they can word it in the best possible way for themselves. That they did not, when they had the chance, is, as we used to say as kids, "tough nookies".
This is why you have your lawyer draw contracts that you propose.
what they need to do... (Score:2, Insightful)
If they want to offer tiered level of services, they should introduce a second data class on their line, requiring different hardware and operating at a symmetrical speed, like 1.5Mb up / 1.5Mb down, or even 3u/3d, and unlimited xfers. They should be wary of overpricing such an offering, but who am I kidding, they overprice everything.
The only reason I'm with comcast is because they were offering $20/mo for 6 months, and they only reason I stay is the new 3Mb down. If they send me a letter and disconnect me, I'll just get DSL and wait for the class action suit that will inevitably follow all this.
I wonder if the problem is more with having enough nodes in a given area, and the cost of adding nodes, or if the real problem is with the amount of upstream bandwidth that they have to buy.
If the problem is not enough nodes, it's their problem. They are responsible for maintaining the network and providing adequate room for growth, and for current users.
If the problem lies in purchasing upstream bandwidth, it's still their problem, but they just exposed themselves to potentially %100 more swing in their needs by doubling their speed limits.
I think they failed to plan for this 3Mb change and are ill prepared to deal with it. If they have to scale back to deal with it then I guess that's what they have to do.
False Advertising (Score:2, Insightful)
Doesn't saying "unlimited" when it's actually not smack of false advertising?
I could see the company's argument if, like, General Electric signed up and decided to use a single account for all their global operations (shut up, geeks--of which I am one--I know this doesn't make any sense), but it seems that there's a significant proportion (I consider it significant if the business had to develop a process for discouraging the accounts that exceed the "unlimit") of people hitting this arbitrary and secretly-determined-and-monitored cap.
I see advertisements all the time that say You too can be a millionaire using this program* (footnote: provided you started with $1M plus $1 more than the fees associated with this purchasing this program), Lose 10 pounds per day!* (footnote: with diet, exercise, liposuction, surgical removal of excess skin, and successful completion of Boston Marathon), and Learn to read 100 pages per minute!* (footnote: really big print, really tiny pages).
So I don't buy this marketing argument that they'd take a huge hit in subscriptions. I propose they say the following:
or how about:Saying it's unlimited when it simply isn't, and they have a business process they apply to customers on a regular basis proving this is so, is simply unnecessary and at the very least arguably wrong (and I think illegal, no?), so why do it?
sevAs usual, I had to step in and give the right answer on this topic, for once and for all.
--me
Re: Unlimited access, is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's all about access, then I'm sure when I go out for the evening tommorrow I'll be accessing hundreds of available women.
IP bandwidth economics AGAIN (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not going to repeat my explanation of IP bandwidth costs *AGAIN* - just go read my journal - it is one of the first posts.
The attitude on here just amazes me - I pay $85/mo for two public IPs, 256k of upstream that I can use like a wholesale pipe (ie 24x7 101% utilized) and I have 3 meg of downstream. If I were younger and more flexible I'd be turning backflips in celebration of this.
When you buy a T1 worth of IP in a the form of a T1 you spend $200+ just for the local loop and the bandwidth itself costs $800 from a quality carrier all the way down to $400 from a third tier. Lets break down my 'expensive' broadband connection.
Half the cost is inflow, half is outflow.
256k/1.544 = 1.6 - $1000 *
3meg/1.5meg = 2 - $1000 * 2 = $2,000/mo divide that by half - $1,000 mo cost for my inflow bandwidth.
Now, can anyone tell me how Cox Cable makes money selling me $1,160 worth of service for $85? Its simple - they have a whole lot of business class customers like me who use the network in a bursty fashion. The technical term here is aggregation.
The typical slashdot responder who coyly dodges specifying that he has a god given right to steal music and video owned (right or wrong) by someone else, and jumps into arguments about false advertising, facist ISPs, and the like.
I think given the horrible way all of you are being treated that the solution should be obvious - pool your funds, pick the most vocal opponent of these policies, and let him spend your hard earned money on building a 'proper' broadband ISP.
Re:Forevermore hits it right on the head (Score:2, Insightful)
Be a good neighbor. (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't fault the tech department for the management company - as far as I know, KaZaA is almost impossible to block at the router. If anyone knows differently, I'd love to know about it.
One more suggestion: if you find yourself in a similar situation (a clogged residential network), I've found that having a DNS server on my computer work as my primary DNS speeds up your web surfing.
Again, just be good neighbors and try to hold yourself back from hogging the entire residential pipe that you SHARE with your neighbors.
Only Unlimited with respect to... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is further argued (ibid) that full disclosure was provided since the claims were made in conjunction with statements related to being on the "real internet" as opposed to limited or local services (like Prodigy or Compuserve or the older AOL "mostly on my site" services).
Accordingly (ibid) the meaning was clear when the standard of understanding was set. Removing the word now is impractical and everybody "should understand" this context for unlimited because it was the only one that was ever used in this market.
Yes, I know, "bull" but business stole my internet and made it cheap TV... I foresee a return to much of the BBS culture in the comming years.
[ASIDE]
I mean consider it, how long until the Warz sites stop offering the "full image" of products and start offering an encrypted image fragment. That fragment would be 99.9% of the actual image but to get the last 0.1% you have to make the private BBS call over the more private and protected direct "voice" POTS. Without that last little chunk the image is just so much digital noise and to get the chunk the "content owners" would have to get off the internet and take tracable real-world actions in a much more well-defined legal scope.
Think of it as a "stolen product activation".
Or as a infrastructurally validatable automated authentication system.
Anyway, IMHO, as "the net" gets clogged with "Cable TV" the phone lines will make a comeback as a unifying agency.
[End ASIDE]
Re:My thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you sure about that?
fraud
1. A deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.
2. A piece of trickery; a trick.
False advertising IS a form of fraud. The state of NY has specific laws and penalties for false advertising [state.ny.us], I'm sure other states do also.
Re:Fuzzy math. (Score:1, Insightful)
"run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;"
http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp
Dang.. there goes my dream of downloading every damn song of the 5.2 million GIG available on Kazaa.
Re:My thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)
You're both right.
First of all, many ISP customers don't know what they want. Advertising is most effective on people when they're in this condition. So, you advertise "unlimited," and customers decide they want, no, *need* unlimited access. They are not in a position to know whether or not it's possible to provide it. They simply want to know what their bill is going to be from month to month.
So advertising unlimited service creates a demand for unlimited service. Folks 'round here know that it's not possible to provide "unlimited" bandwidth, but your typical user wouldn't stop to think about that. Therefore, there is a demand for something that is a lie.
In the end, it's the old problem of flat-rate vs. metered service. People like flat-rate because they know how much it will cost every month. But under a flat-rate system, the light users subsidize the heavy users, and a few extreme users can break the system. Furthermore, when people are not paying for what they are using, they are more inclined to overuse the system. Metered service is much more economically efficient, but not nearly as marketable.
Dubious claims... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is simply not possible with a standard cable-connection, of the type Comcast sells as far as I can see from their website. They say they sell "25 times modem connection", and specify that with modem they mean 56K, so, they sell 1400Kbps, upload is capped at 256Kbps.
Thing is, with that speed, even at *full* download around the clock, the entire month, you would end up with around 420 GB in a month. This is very much, but it is not "over a terabyte"
Why are we paying so much for so little? (Score:2, Insightful)
broadband reseller (Score:2, Insightful)
Access vs. bandwidth (Score:3, Insightful)
Information may want to be free, but fiber optic cable wants to be one million US dollars per mile.