Comcast to Cord Cutters...

[mcewinter]

...With that said, I don't fully disagree that metered pricing would be ideal but the implementation will not benefit YOU.

I suffer a lot with contention.
I pay for a 15Mbit pipe and during peak hours I get +/-5Mbit.
It will certainly benefit ME

Yeah that sucks. But you already benefit by paying low buck for a low speed tier. You get what you pay for, metered or not. At higher speeds you wouln't be (as) effected by your downloading neighbor.

I have a DOCSIS 2.0 modem and my speed would double if I upgraded but I'm cheap and have no bandwidth issues. The only issue I had was when Comcast did throttle Netflix, the PQ was noticably degraded. That has been resolved by Netflix paying a toll.

Also: Is your speed degraded because of local downloaders or because your ISP simply can't provide what they are advertising?

[barnabas1969]

The jist of it is, 15% of the users are taking 50% of the bandwidth. They should pay more.

OK, and the rest of the people who are using less than that should PAY LESS!

@STC: For many years, I had 7Mbps service ("business" service paid-for by my employer), and I never measured less than 7Mbps. Then, I upgraded to residential 15Mbps service... and again, I never measured less than 15Mbps. Now, I have 30Mbps service, and I never measure less than 32Mbps service.

Even during peak periods.

[RyC]

Lucky you! In some areas, the cable node is oversubscribed, so peak speeds plummet. That was the case here until a lot of people complained and they split off and created a new node.

[barnabas1969]

Lucky you! In some areas, the cable node is oversubscribed, so peak speeds plummet. That was the case here until a lot of people complained and they split off and created a new node.

Are you in a big city like NYC? I'm in a city with 100,000 residents. The whole county is approx 300,000 people.

[RyC]

Lucky you! In some areas, the cable node is oversubscribed, so peak speeds plummet. That was the case here until a lot of people complained and they split off and created a new node.

Are you in a big city like NYC? I'm in a city with 100,000 residents. The whole county is approx 300,000 people.

I'm in the Central Coast of California in San Luis Obispo. Only 45,000 people here. Node congestion is usually localized to the neighborhood though. If all the houses on the node are watching Netflix at the same time for example, there isn't enough bandwidth from the node back to the main network to handle it all, and speeds will plummet. That's why speeds are usually worse in the evening, everyone's back home and surfing the internet, causing congestion from the node to the CC network.

[barnabas1969]

OK, well, it's 9:45pm here on the east coast. I just did a speedtest (speedtest.bhn.net, so that the speed isn't reliant on the Internet and all data is travelling over BHN's proprietary network). The result is...

20.01Mbps down
2.35Mbps up

That's the lowest I've ever seen. Perhaps I never tested it at the right time of day. But still, 20Mbps is plenty for me to watch Netflix on 2 or 3 TV's in the house.

[barnabas1969]

Now this is odd... I just tested it on http://www.speedtest.net ... and it's higher than the on-net test with speedtest.bhn.net. Results:

33.11Mbps up
2.28Mbps down

[barnabas1969]

I repeated the on-net test, and got 19.91/2.27. Repeated the speedtest.net test, and got 33.54/2.25. Maybe BHN's speedtest servers are busy or something?

Either way... plenty of bandwidth for several HD streams on Netflix.

[epayson85]

I use over 1TB a month.... if they do this I will sell my tuners, cut cable, and get business internet and pirate everything. Screw you cable companies!

[Crash2009]

Another recruit for the Dark Side. I just might join ya. I'm getting tired of saying "you can't do that". I tossed HBO and all the protected channels. Having some fun for a change. I left Starz in the guide just to see what's on. Then I go get it somewhere else.

[adam1991]

...With that said, I don't fully disagree that metered pricing would be ideal but the implementation will not benefit YOU.

I suffer a lot with contention.
I pay for a 15Mbit pipe and during peak hours I get +/-5Mbit.
It will certainly benefit ME

You bring up a good point: the other side metered pricing is that they must GUARANTEE the delivery of their product. No more "well, sir, it is evening, and that's the heavy usage time, so of course you don't have the access you would at 3am".

But you can bet Comcast won't want to accommodate THAT side of the fence. "Holy crap, sir, they're taking us up on it--now we have to spend $X billion in upgrades to accomodate everyone!" Never happen. You'll get what you get, and they'll charge the base charge they want, and you'll suck it up or not have service from them.

Imagine the electric company doing that.

[STC]

Most of us do not live in large towns or cities.

If you imagine I am almost at the end of a very long fiber/COAX run from Headend, so naturally I have contention. It's unfeasible for my small cable co to invest masses amounts of cash they don't have into making sure I get 15Mbit 24/7. My bill would go up!

I pay $40+13% tax per month for web access (all combined services taken into consideration) and do not have a cap.
I think this is about right even though I have contention. Our use averages 30GB per month. This includes the odd Netflix show.

TBH I am very happy to be able to have 15/2 considering our location.

As long as they leave the baseline $40 service as-is but charge the leechers extra for hammering the system it would be a best case scenario for me.

[adam1991]

I'm just saying, be careful what you wish for. If they charge those who use a lot of bandwidth, those users will expect to get what they pay for.

And to do that, as you point out, would mean improving their infrastructure.

And that cost will be spread among every user, even you. The base charge for having service will go up, and then metering starts.

My water bill is like that. I compare our household of four vs my father by himself, and the bill isn't all that different. Investigation shows a carefully crafted system whereby a base charge is fairly high compared to the incremental usage charge (and yes, they hide it well inside their system--it's nothing so crude as a line item "base charge" on the bill). And when they need to improve the system--right now the feds are making them fix some sewer stuff, and it'll take a billion dollars and 20 years to do it--the costs are recovered inside that base charge.

Be careful what you wish for. Just because YOU'RE happy with contention, doesn't mean those who want more bandwidth and want to pay for it will be happy with not getting it during peak hours. If they're happy to pay the charge, they expect the service.

You don't go to McD's and buy a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese and accept a junior cheeseburger, do you? Even if they say "sorry, it's too hard for us to make that double quarter pounder right now, we're being pounded with orders for the simple cheap cheeseburger, so that's what you'll get no matter what you paid for. If you want that double quarter pounder, why don't you come back at 2am? We're usually not that busy then, and will probably have time to make it." You're happy with that, because you're the guy who wants a simple cheeseburger. So your needs are met when you want them. But the other guy is honked off.

So McD's invests in infrastructure so that never happens, but you don't think that comes out of their profits, do you? No. Your simple cheeseburger goes up in price. Now you're pissed.

Such will happen with your cable service if they offer a product for extra money. They'll have to provide the infrastructure to accommodate those willing to buy that product.

[STC]

^ I think you will find the high use metering proposal is for quota only, not service speed guarantee.
Most service providers don't guarantee throughput for residential (remote) subscribers. They can't.
Nothing would change as far as that goes....

I've actually been discussing this with my cable co for some years and they agree that metering the service would relieve some stress from the system, as most of the high use subscribers are family members using P2P et al services. Those members don't pay the bill (read: the younger generation).

..I don't know... maybe I'm just happy in my cocoon of billing/service levels but would like just a little more back at peak times.
Reducing full bandwidth torrents at those times would help the casual browser with snappier throughput.

[mcewinter]

Eventually it won't matter. The infrastructure will improve as it has already. Asking for more money to solve a problem today, will only result in paying more money tomorrow, after your complaint becomes moot. The infrastructure in my area has improved more than ten fold in the last eight years or so, but my bill hasn't increased accordingly.

As a consumer, asking to raise prices to solve a problem is just asenine to me.

[Crash2009]

I repeated the on-net test, and got 19.91/2.27. Repeated the speedtest.net test, and got 33.54/2.25. Maybe BHN's speedtest servers are busy or something?

Either way... plenty of bandwidth for several HD streams on Netflix.

Would http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... S.10).aspx be a good tool to use when you want to see where the problem is?

[STC]

...asking to raise prices to solve a problem is just asenine to me.

It's not really to solve a problem per se but rather would help reduce the load. Prices going up are the story of life I'm afraid and it applies to everything purchasable.

[adam1991]

Eventually it won't matter. The infrastructure will improve as it has already. Asking for more money to solve a problem today, will only result in paying more money tomorrow, after your complaint becomes moot. The infrastructure in my area has improved more than ten fold in the last eight years or so, but my bill hasn't increased accordingly.

As a consumer, asking to raise prices to solve a problem is just asenine to me.

Agreed 100%. And that was my whole point: if a low usage subscriber lobbies to charge high usage users more money, he's only slitting his own throat.

And yes, I do believe that if you're selling me something, you'd better sell it to me and not make excuses about how it's not available because you didn't feel like doing what's necessary to make it available.

[STC]

^ Do you expect me to pay for *your high usage?
(*example)

I'm certainly not lobbying, but would be accepting of the proposal to meter both my low and *your high internet usage.

Why not share all infrastructure costs so we'd all pay the same electricity, gas and water bill no matter what size our home or how much we use?
Throw all the meters away. Useless things...

[mcewinter]

It would be a harder sale to offer me faster service at a higher price if it only results in hitting the cap faster. ...if I was a heavy downloader. I guess they would have to restructure the tier system in units rather than speed, moving forward.

Internet usage is only increasing as more people adopt cloud services. After all, it's unavoidable these days including Netflix, Dropbox, Spotify, etc.. I'm paying for internet access, nobody should cry if I use it.