Leatherneck wrote:"TV" is definitely changing and companies like Comcast recognize and are changing with it. They aren't about to sit back and "hold on" to old technology until it's dead. That isn't where the future or money is. As far as dropping channels what do you mean? More channels than ever are available on Comcast lineups.
No one likes price increases understandably. My property tax is going up so fast here in Illinois and for what? State is deeper in debt than ever, the value of my home is greatly diminished and I am helpless to do much about it if I still want to live here. I'm free to move and do more than just complain.
Yeah, it's not a perfect scenario for everyone. Yeah, the average Jill & Joe don't need their own OC-3 connection but I bet someone with a tiny bit of intelligence considers balance and incredibly it might not be only about 100% money sucking. You simply cannot satisfy everyone as nothing ever has. There is no perfect buffet.
It's the never-ending discussion.
Bundling. To get certain channels, you have to subscribe to a certain level of "service" LOL. That's where they get you. I'd rather have a model that goes like this...for $29.99 you get 30 channels of your choice standard or HD. For every $10 more, you get 15 more channels. Give people the choice of paying for only what they need and I can guarantee you that Comcast would wipe up. It's about value in an on-demand society. The bottom line is this, people don't want to pay more than $75-100 a month for TV. Cell phones are so prominent nowadays that their use is now almost a necessity. That bill cuts into the budget of most Americans. I need a phone...I don't need access to TV as long as I have internet.
You should ask your co-workers why they think Comcast fears a-la-carte. I'd like to hear the answers from insiders.
Leatherneck wrote:Let me know when you find the perfect buffet and I will gladly sit at your table.
Comcast used to be perfect for me, then they started jacking prices up and not increasing services while also adding a cap to control usage they claim is out of control when it's only less than 1% of users mostly in the last few years
JawZ wrote:You should ask your co-workers why they think Comcast fears a-la-carte. I'd like to hear the answers from insiders.
LOSS of REVENUE - no secret. Every cable provider has to pay programming fees and those fees are based on subscriber count. More subscribers = lower fees for cable company. Example, lets say Disney networks charge an average of $2.11 per sub per channel (they have many and are huge) based on 60000 subs. Cable company offers a-la-carte channel selection and now only 25000 subs are watching a Disney network. The programming fee is now $3.10 per sub. No cable company on the planet is going to eat that difference so who pays? It's about volume and advertising. Down the road things will change and everything will be IP & on demand. Yes, cable is my livelihood but I still think that a person with a high end package of even $150 is getting a lot of service for $5 a day. My family cell phone bill is $146 a month and while the phones are obviously handy they generally do not provide the same level of entertainment as the cable package.
Sava700 wrote:Comcast used to be perfect for me, then they started jacking prices up and not increasing services while also adding a cap to control usage they claim is out of control when it's only less than 1% of users mostly in the last few years
We used to have equipment to single out abusers. I don't think it was very effective although you can flame out a modem and stop them in their tracks. That 1% can cause some havoc as some people are nuts about abusing our upstream. I just looked at my bandwidth usage and I am at 29GB of 250GB or 11%. 1/2 the month is gone and I have barely gone over 10%. I am on a lot! I'd like to know how many subscribers hit their 250GB consistently. I am going to find out. Maybe it's not enough but I have a feeling it's plenty for most. Can't do anything about pricing. The bean counters do what they have to to keep people buying stock. It's a public company and a big one.
Sava700 wrote:Only upgrades in my area from ISP's have been in how to bill people more. If I'm going to see my bill increase I should expect to see not only speeds increase but reliability in service and good customer service all of which I know Comcast has failed at in more than 3 years alone.
I'm going to say you can only say that for your neck of the woods. Vast experience with them over many years in a large area (multi state) up in my corner of the country, they're one of the best on all 3 points you complain about.
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Leatherneck wrote: I just looked at my bandwidth usage and I am at 29GB of 250GB or 11%. 1/2 the month is gone and I have barely gone over 10%. I am on a lot! I'd like to know how many subscribers hit their 250GB consistently. I am going to find out. Maybe it's not enough but I have a feeling it's plenty for most.
I'm on a lot and when my meter DID work I believe I was hitting between 80 -150 gigs a month... I'm streaming in tons of netflix stuff mostly cartoons for my 4 year old but I do a bunch of movies, seeding torrents, online gaming, random youtube and other video's from where ever, drivers and windows updates for 3-5 comps I work on a week just for friends and so on, email and web surfing. I've not come near the cap but the idea of it being there considering the amount of netflix I could do if I dropped TV service or some movie channels such as Starz from my Sat bill (which will happen in about 10months since starz play is now on netflix) then I'll be over 200gigs a month easy!!!! I want to see more HD stuff available on Netflix for better quality so the bandwidth will go higher in usage and the cap will then be unrealistic for those needs of not just me but thousands of others that prob do the same thing. Times are changing and ISP's need to increase capacity and allow bandwidth to be used unhampered for the prices they are charging.. if that 1% of users is really hammering it and I mean HAMMERING it then they can deal with them in a nice way and perhaps offer a different package but not a regular user such as myself.
Ohh and I type this my Meter is still not working, hasn't worked for over 6 months. I've complained a few times but it doesn't fix nothing and I'm not going to watch any usage if they can't fix their own junk. This is what I see today lol
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Ya reckon Google will give these two cities 1 gigabit per second internet for around $50/month with no bandwidth caps? It would very bad pr if they did so you can bet it will be wide open for a price that sounds reasonable for that speed...the same speeds many locations should already see from current ISP's for that price.
Sava700 wrote:Ya reckon Google will give these two cities 1 gigabit per second internet for around $50/month with no bandwidth caps? It would very bad pr if they did so you can bet it will be wide open for a price that sounds reasonable for that speed...the same speeds many locations should already see from current ISP's for that price.
Hopefully Google does something good with their nearly free offerings to punch things open. I've heard directly from other IT guys that have used Googles existing city wide offerings, and it was clearly still going through tons of growing pains. Was supposed to be fast but was so overstressed it was like dial up speeds with frequent timeouts.
Hopefully they do something though, for quite a few years now they've quietly been buying up tons and tons of "dark fiber".
That said..I just got done flipping an eye doctors office from a painfully slow 1500/128 dsl line that they were paying 60 something bucks per month for, plus Dish TV for 99/month, to Comcasts bundled package for a little less month. And their speeds jumped to a 12/2 package that actually benchmarked at 24/3.0. The install tech that does biz installs was fun to talk to, learned a lot of the upgrades happening in my corner of the state. Yup...upgrades.
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And here it is again.. Netflix for starters having issues with Canada about bandwidth caps. The same caps we are having to deal with here in the US but on a much stricter scale. If I was Netflix or other streaming companies I'd be fighting this tooth and nail. It only comes down to these ISP's wanting to restrict less and keep the prices the same thus making more money hand over fist.
Over 30% and rising.... we can't allow broadband caps to continue or this growth will suffer along with other services that need bandwidth!!
Move over, Web surfing. Netflix movies now take up more of the Internet pipes going into North American homes.
A study published Tuesday by Sandvine Inc. shows that Netflix movies and TV shows account for nearly 30 percent of traffic into homes during peak evening hours, compared with less than 17 percent for Web browsing.
Only about a quarter of homes with broadband subscribe to Netflix, but watching movies and TV shows online takes up a lot of bandwidth compared with Web surfing, email and practically every other Internet activity except file sharing and videoconferencing.
As late as last year, both Web surfing and peer-to-peer file sharing — mainly the illegal trading of copyrighted movies — were each larger than Netflix's traffic.
Sava700 wrote:I'm on a lot and when my meter DID work I believe I was hitting between 80 -150 gigs a month... I'm streaming in tons of netflix stuff mostly cartoons for my 4 year old but I do a bunch of movies, seeding torrents, online gaming, random youtube and other video's from where ever, drivers and windows updates for 3-5 comps I work on a week just for friends and so on, email and web surfing. I've not come near the cap but the idea of it being there considering the amount of netflix I could do if I dropped TV service or some movie channels such as Starz from my Sat bill (which will happen in about 10months since starz play is now on netflix) then I'll be over 200gigs a month easy!!!! I want to see more HD stuff available on Netflix for better quality so the bandwidth will go higher in usage and the cap will then be unrealistic for those needs of not just me but thousands of others that prob do the same thing. Times are changing and ISP's need to increase capacity and allow bandwidth to be used unhampered for the prices they are charging.. if that 1% of users is really hammering it and I mean HAMMERING it then they can deal with them in a nice way and perhaps offer a different package but not a regular user such as myself.
Ohh and I type this my Meter is still not working, hasn't worked for over 6 months. I've complained a few times but it doesn't fix nothing and I'm not going to watch any usage if they can't fix their own junk. This is what I see today lol
Sava you are more than just a residential user of course you are going to be pushing higher than a lot of people due to seeding torrents and uploads for your site, and downloads for customers PCs you work on. Your usage is a hybrid of residential and business.
YARDofSTUF wrote:Sava you are more than just a residential user of course you are going to be pushing higher than a lot of people due to seeding torrents and uploads for your site, and downloads for customers PCs you work on. Your usage is a hybrid of residential and business.
Yeah..I'm a very small fraction of a percent of users that in this area alone put any type of strain if any on their networks.. I'm still well below the cap but usage amounts are climbing because of future needs and requirements are going to use it. Miramax just gave Netflix the greenlight for their movies starting in June..so you know what, I'm going to be using it more - a lot more!! In about 9months or so I'm dropping Starz from my Dish bill cause Starz play on Netflix which plays everything on it in almost the same quality of HD so I can save money there with that bill. My usage will prob be over 150gigs easy at that point so on more "colder" "hotter" months when I'm inside more then I'll be using more. I'm trying to save money not spend more so even the thought of a business account is out of the question too as that is just insane priced for what you get.
Sava700 wrote: business account... is just insane priced for what you get.
54 bucks/month for a 12/2 business account...How is that insane? Or 99/mo for a 22/5, or 180/mo for a 50/10. 369/mo for 100/10.
Man I wish Comcast was in the area that my office is in.......because right now, for our cable part of our office connection (we run both cable and DSL, balanced), we pay 199/mo for a 15/2 package with our crummy local cable ISP. (actually a little more because we have some additional static IPs..but that's the starting price)
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Sava700 wrote:I'm trying to save money not spend more so even the thought of a business account is out of the question too as that is just insane priced for what you get.
Exactly what kind of money do you think you should have to spend for a business account?
New Netflix Data Shows: AT&T Caps Not That Generous After All
AT&T said that its average DSL subscriber only uses 18 GB of data per month when it announced its 125 GB cap earlier this year, and the company’s spokesperson Mark Siegel even called the caps “generous.” But new data published by network management specialist Sandvine this week might make one question the company’s rosy take on its bandwidth caps.
Sandvine said in a special report titled Netflix Rising (PDF) that the average Netflix user consumes about 40 GB of bandwidth per month. However, consumption seems to be much higher when Netflix is consumed with a connected device capable of receiving HD streams. The company singled out owners of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in particular: Users that stream Netflix through their Xbox 360 consume about 80 GB of data per month on average.
Unfortunately, we are not just talking about a few heavy gamers with Netflix co-dependencies: Around 25 percent of all Netflix traffic is consumed through the game console, according to Sandvine, with 33 percent of all Xbox 360 game consoles being used to stream Netflix content. One has to wonder how many of those Netflix-loving Xbox owners are poised to hit AT&T’s bandwidth cap with their next movie marathons.
Sandvine also compared Netflix traffic to other sources of bandwidth usage, pointing out that the video subscription service now uses close to 30 percent of North America’s peak bandwidth, surpassing BitTorrent as the largest source of data traffic in North America.
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Yeah there are so many MORE reasons to not have a cap on bandwidth than there are reasons to have it. It all comes down to greed and trying to make more money off of allowing less usage when it's not that much of a issue causing massive outages network wide.
Funny.. Verizon FIOS isn't about to toss a bandwidth cap on it's users...
Joseph Ambeault, director of media and entertainment services for Verizon, said today in an interview, “Our network is always engineered for big amounts of data and right now there are no plans [to implement caps], but of course you never want to say never because things could change.”
Granted this is now and not later on but I don't see Verizon following the ways of Comcast and AT&T since their networks are obviously in much better shape and more money that is from profits invested back into them.
However, in the same conversation he talked about how the FiOS service has gone from offering a maximum of 622 Mbps shared among 24 homes in the beginning to tests of 10-gigabit-per-second connections in individual homes that Ambeault mentioned. For now, Verizon is testing 10-gigabit-per-second-shared connections and offering up to 150 Mbps home connections. This kind of relish for massive bandwidth is not evident in conversations with folks at AT&T or even those cable firms deploying DOCSIS 3.0. Which is why when Ambeault added, “We don’t want to take the gleam off of FiOS,” as his final say on caps, I tend to believe that Verizon may be the last holdout as other ISPs such as AT&T, Charter and Comcast implement caps.
As a whole caps are bad for innovation, bad for consumers and bad for startups and big businesses trying to capitalize on the connected opportunity available today. Let’s hope that eventually, the Verizon excitement over big bandwidth prevails, and caps fall by the wayside. We should probably also hope that Verizon doesn’t try to implementing metered broadband.
Sure.. look at the current trend of smart phones, tablets and so on. ISP's need to keep up with the future and stop with this cap crap cause it's only going to hurt them and consumers in the long run.
"If you include peer-to-peer file sharing, including services like BitTorrent, then video actually will make up 90% of all Internet traffic in four years, Cisco predicts."
I don't get why they say "if you include peer to peer../torrent...."
However...for the purpose of this topic, gotta dig in deeper. Video will skyrocket as the majority of internet traffic, but not solely because of home networks....rather...because of mobile devices, cellular, 4G. Those are outside of your ISP and copper/fiber coming into the house.
