Comcast Says No Plans for Usage-based Pricing
Comcast Says No Plans for Usage-based Pricing
Posted 12/07/2010 at 3:32pm
| by Ryan Whitwam
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In the wake of the Comcast dispute with Level 3, many have been wondering about the ISP's future bandwidth management plans. Some idea that's been floated often is the idea of usage-based pricing. Users would be charged based on the amount of data they use each month. According to Reuters, Comcast has denied that such a scheme is in the works.
"Right now we have no plan in place to activate usage-based pricing," said Comcast president Neil Smit. The FCC recently announce that ISPs would have some leeway in network management, provided they are transparent about their practices. Comcast currently has a single tier for residential customers with a 250GB data cap.
Comcast maintains almost all users never get near the monthly cap, although some have taken umbrage at having the cap at all. Would you welcome the opportunity to pay for a particular data cap, os is the one size fits all approach best?
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misha573
December 08, 2010 at 4:35am
No usage rate...yet.
But, further, this "data cap" is hooey. This effectively limits your bandwidth (data per unit time = bandwidth). I hope no one is paying for anything higher than 771Kbps, cause that's your always on always downloading at max rate bandwidth for 250GB per month (30 days) if my math is correct (very unlikely :).
If you're paying for anything over that you are essentially being screwed over...even if you're not using the bandwidth (you are paying for it). Sorry for the folks who stream high bandwidth stuff on multiple nodes...
Mighty BOB!
December 08, 2010 at 12:32am
You always have to carefully read the wording when it comes from a corporation.
"Right now we have no plan in place to activate usage-based pricing,"
Translation: We're not going to turn it on right now, but we'll probably test it in a few locations and then later decide that this is the way we want to go and then we'll put in a plan to activate it.
Theatre Booth Guy
December 07, 2010 at 11:07pm
This past week, I had the opportunity to speak to a Comcast rep about their caps and learned from the one person I spoke to that the cap is FCC mandated! Even "better", the FCC is suing anyone who goes over this legal limit. The rep said it had to be true as that's what Comcast had told him.....
IF they could get pay as you go priced right, that would not be bad but "unlimited" that really is unlimited would be my first choice.
BTW, could someone please moderate and delete the spam?
Biceps
December 08, 2010 at 9:54am
Did your Comcast rep have even a high-school education? Might it just be possible that he mis-understood the facts, or that perhaps the person who trained him was an idiot? This sounds more likely than a super-secret FCC-mandated bandwitch cap.
My question to your rep would have been, "Did the FCC mandate a different cap level for AT&T than for Comcast, because Comcast's cap is several times higher than AT&T's - if so, wouldn't that represent an unfair competitive advantage? And then, wouldn't this be all over the newspapers and wouldn't AT&T be suing the heck out of the FCC?
You might as well learn the lesson early, buddy. Comcast reps lie through their teeth (in my opinion), and will tell you anything to get you off the phone so they can 'resolve' their ticket in 2 minutes or less. Bet you 50 bucks he made the whole thing up on the spot.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, and point me to a link that shows the mandate.
themohawkadmin
December 07, 2010 at 8:54pm
In my opinion, there is a one-size-fits-all approach: UNLIMITED.
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