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Medicine AT&T Network The Internet Verizon

Coronavirus Could Force ISPs To Abandon Data Caps Forever (techcrunch.com) 129

Posted by BeauHD from the things-that-shouldn't-exist-in-the-first-place dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The coronavirus threat and official policies of "social distancing" are leading millions to stay home, doing meetings via video chat and probably watching Netflix and YouTube the rest of the time. That means a big uptick in bytes going through the tubes, both simultaneously and cumulatively. ISPs, leery of repeating Verizon's memorable gaffe of cutting off service during an emergency, are proposing a variety of user-friendly changes to their policies. Comcast is boosting the bandwidth of its low-income Internet Essentials customers to levels that actually qualify as broadband under FCC rules. AT&T is suspending data caps for all its customers until further notice. Verizon has added $500 million to its 5G rollout plans. Wait, how does that help? Unclear, but the company "stands ready" for increases in traffic. Elsewhere in the world ISPs are taking similar actions, either voluntarily or at the request of the state. In India, for instance, ACT Fibernet has bumped everyone up to 300 Mbps for no cost.

There are two simple truths at play here. The first is that any company that sends its subscriber a $150 overage fee because they had to work from home for a month and ran over their data cap is going to be radioactive. The optics on that are so bad that my guess is most companies are quietly setting forgiveness policies in place to prevent it from happening -- though of course it probably will anyway. The second is that these caps are completely unnecessary, existing only as a way to squeeze more money from subscribers. Data caps just don't matter any more. As I pointed out during the whole zero-rating debacle, the very fact that the limits can be lifted at will or certain high-traffic categories (such as a broadband company's own streaming TV channels) can be exempted fundamentally beggars the concept of these caps.

Think about it: If the internet provider can even temporarily lift the data caps, then there is definitively enough capacity for the network to be used without those caps. If there's enough capacity, then why did the caps exist in the first place? Answer: Because they make money.
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Coronavirus Could Force ISPs To Abandon Data Caps Forever More

Coronavirus Could Force ISPs To Abandon Data Caps Forever

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  • Tables turn. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Friday March 13, 2020 @05:57PM (#59828120) Homepage

    The dialogue with your users changes significantly when you can no longer shame them into not using the service they're paying you for.

    Down with data caps and metered billing. That shit is pure evil and the current global crisis underscores it clearly.

    • Does anyone else remember the Mentor's last words? "...making use of a service that could be free if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons..."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      The idea that the ISPs will do anything but reap maximum profit from data cap overruns is laughable. Wouldn't surprise me if they lowered data caps for maximum profiteering. We are talking about ISPs after all.

  • There have to be some limits (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you let a bunch of hipsters watch 4K TV 24/7 while running a game server farm, there won't be anything left for the poor sods trying to work from home and stream a few hours of reasonable entertainment. Do the math.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If you let a bunch of hipsters watch 4K TV 24/7 while running a game server farm, there won't be anything left for the poor sods trying to work from home and stream a few hours of reasonable entertainment. Do the math.

      Bullshit.

      There's more than enough capacity. And if there isn't, use the $Billions$ that you make every year to build more.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        There's more than enough capacity. And if there isn't, use the $Billions$ that you make every year to build more.

        Brilliant, plow all your profits back into you products for the benefit of customers who will pay no more for any increased service your re-invested profits offer.

        Do you simply not understand that the purpose of AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc. is not to operate as a non-profit, catering to your ever-increasing bandwidth demands without any profit incentive?

        • Bandwidth is more and more becoming like the air we breathe. Something like data/bandwidth should be essential services with only razer thin margins allowed, once future RnD cost out. Centralize the R&D effort with the R&D cost taken from every provider & allow only razer-thin margins.
        • Oh okay. How about I buy up your local water utility, and jack up the rates 1000% and see how you feel about it. Or better yet, impose a limit on how much water you can use every month, and charge you 1000% the normal rate for every gallon over that limit? After all, the purpose of water companies is not to operate as a non-profit, catering to your ever-increasing water demands without any profit incentive.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Megane ( 129182 )
        There won't be enough capacity if this is happening over wireless. It's a lot harder to "build more" to upgrade bandwidth when you have a small concentration of excessive wireless consumers. But then again, that's an argument for temporary throttling, not absolute data caps. It's also only with regards to the final wireless hop. Back-hauls are almost exclusively fiber, and it's almost always possible to add more bandwidth to fiber by switching out the equipment at both ends.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Why have limits on a consumer product? The network is on 24/7
      The speed of the plan is the limit.
      The support and service quality is the limit.
      The time for repair work to the network is the limit AC.
      • This is exactly what my cable ISP does.

        No data caps, but your max speed is throttled. A much superior solution to data caps, at least on wired infrastructure.

        Want a higher speed cap? Upgrade your plan.

        Most people are perfectly happy with a moderate speed cap. Nobody cares if your 2 hour movie downloads in 30 minutes or 3. As long as it's fast enough to not skip.
    • If we build out everything with fiber, why not?

    • Re:There have to be some limits (Score:5, Insightful)

      by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Friday March 13, 2020 @08:36PM (#59828692)

      ...there won't be anything left for the poor sods trying to work from home....

      Then the ISP's need to either upgrade their networks to keep up with their marketing claims, or they need to stop claiming they support those speeds. In other words, stop allowing them to lie their asses off.

    • Re:There have to be some limits (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Friday March 13, 2020 @09:55PM (#59828888)

      If you let a bunch of hipsters watch 4K TV 24/7 while running a game server farm, there won't be anything left for the poor sods trying to work from home and stream a few hours of reasonable entertainment. Do the math.

      This is what queue management is for.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by catprog ( 849688 )

      If you let everyone watch a few hours of reasonable entertainment at the same time the network won't handle it by the same token.

      During the night the 4k tv bandwidth will not saturate the network.

  • Well, duh. (Score:3)

    by ezdiy ( 2717051 ) on Friday March 13, 2020 @06:05PM (#59828158)

    Answer: Because they make money.

    US is the exception here, as rest of the western world abandoned data caps long ago. So no "greed" is not technically the cause. It's simply matter of dysfunctional market - where last miles remain monopolized to such an extent predatory practices are commonplace. "Net neutrality" and "there's enough capacity" discussions are bollocks, as they deal with the symptom, not the underlying issue. When you position an ISP to a place that they can easily abuse you, and you then rationalize bogus reasons for doing so?

    But then again, this is TC, who would expect argument rooted in basic economics in there?

    • Re:Well, duh. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Friday March 13, 2020 @06:14PM (#59828190)

      Data caps and net neutrality issues all stem from the same problem: lack of competition. If there was legitimate competition, data caps and net neutrality issues would not exist -- could not exist -- because customers would switch to someone else for their service.

      • I disagree. People don't give a crap about nn. They would not move unless they were seriously gouged

      • The bandwidth is as unlimited as your money (Score:4, Interesting)

        by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Friday March 13, 2020 @06:53PM (#59828336) Journal

        The fact is, the reason the ISPs spend billions every year building more network, more bandwidth, is that there does not in fact exist any way to produce unlimited bandwidth.

        You want more bandwidth, you have to run more fiber all over the city. You need more switches, more routers, more UPS systems, more cooling - more money. Building networks costs money. That's why you don't have your own personal 100Gbps nationwide network - because that would cost you a trillion dollars to build.

        You want stream 3 4K shows at once all day? That has a certain cost. So you have two options:

        1. EVERYBODY pays the $190/month that costs.
        2. The people who use that much pay their share of the cost.

        Since I choose not to wastefully stream 4K video all day when I'm not even in the room, I prefer option #2 - I get all the bandwidth I want to use for $75. If I wanted to, I could use twice as much ans pay twice as much, but I don't want to.

        • Re:The bandwidth is as unlimited as your money (Score:5, Informative)

          by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Friday March 13, 2020 @07:11PM (#59828378) Journal
          Funny thing: we went for option #1 and it turns out it only costs €40 a month or so. Almost all ISPs here have been running with a "fair use" policy for ages, which basically means that there is no cap, but they have the right to impose one if they ever run out of bandwidth. That hasn't happened, ever. Price tiers here affect bandwidth only, the lowest typically being 20Mb/s or so. I pay around €60/month which gets me 500Mb/s up/down, with a basic cable package and 2 (VOIP) land lines, no cap. We get deals like that because of competition, and if you think the ISPs here are just selling their services at below cost to grab customers while they are neglecting their network, think again. Most of them are investing heavily in their backbone capacity while still reporting healthy profits.
          • Most people will not utilize a 500 meg connection. They may have short bursts... very short bursts, but it's rare to see them sustain for more than a few minutes at a time. Which means you can normally share a 1gig pipe between 100 people and they'll all feel like they are getting a 500 meg connection. And from a viewpoint of instantaneous bandwidth they usually are. Until two of them start seeding torrents with software that doesn't adhere to protocol standards and refuses to back off during contention pe

            • Yeah, my house is on a GPON network with around 20 other homes. In theory we share 2.4Gbps down and 1.2Gbps up, but it pretty much always feels like i've got a gigabit connection. My upload speed very rarely drops beyond 900Mbps when I've tested it, because most of the time people aren't significantly using their connection.

              I haven't tracked it well, but i doubt i use massively more total data transfer these days than I did when i only had a 50Mbps connection.

              • Especially for the higher speeds (more than 300mbps) you actually have to put some effort to saturate the connection, even with torrents. Most people don't.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Calydor ( 739835 )

              I know non-optimized websites and programs trying to change that ...

          • I live in the third most populous state in the US yet I can not get a wired Internet connection. I use Hughesnet satellite Internet and have a 50 GB per month limit at 25 Mb/s. I do not get an overage charge, my connection just gets very slow. Millions of Americans are like me, unable to get a wired connection, specially those in the large rural states. With schools closed those children will be trying to get online during the day. Satellite connections do not have extra capacity, everyone will experience

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          Re "is that there does not in fact exist any way to produce unlimited bandwidth."
          That would be the speed limit on the unlimited ISP plan.
          25 Mbps, 60 Mbps, 200 Mbps.... thats the data limit per day due to the plan speed...

          Use the 25 Mbps all day and night... thats not a "personal 100Gbps nationwide network"... thats 25 Mbps.

          • When you look at usage for your house only, you can usefully distinguish between how much you used in the last 10 seconds vs average the last 30 days and it's useful to have two different names for those things. You BURST at 50 Mbps or whatever while you're in the middle of a download, you AVERAGE much less over a month because (hopefully) you're not downloading 24/7. Typically you download a web page for one second, read it for ten seconds, download foe one second, read for ten seconds. Your home connect

            • Personally, when not actually using my bandwidth, I have my router QOS into a Pi that just streams full max bandwith right into /dev/null 24/7

            • They aren't two different measurements and at the ISP level there is little point in trying to distinguish.

              They kinda are. The network has to be designed to deal with the peaks - when everybody watches a game on IPTV or some movie on Netflix. During the other times it is not at 100%. So, it follows that I should be able to saturate my home connection at night when other people are not watching Netflix and it would be the same for the ISP. If you limit the amount of data per month, you will most likely not reduce the peaks - people will still watch Netflix at the same time, just that the off-peak use will be low

              • If people changee their data usage based on different rates at peak hours vs non-peak you could have different rates.

                80%-90% of the data transfer is Netflix and other streaming services. People don't change what time they watch their shows based on their internet plan. They either stream 4K over their mobile connection or they don't. They turn the TV off when they are watching it or they don't. They don't switch to watching at off-peak hours.

                So you end up with "may be slower during peak hours after you'

        • You are half right. To serve NEW customers they have to do all of that.

          To improve service for existing customers they just need new Central Office equipment. And even then only switches. The equipment manufacturers are constantly squeezing more performance out of the same power draw. (A 48 port 1Gb switch uses about the same power and cooling as a 48 port 10Gb switch).

          The rest of the infrastructure (wiring between the CO and the customer is already there).

          For example, the home I live in was built in 1996 an

          • I'm curious what, exactly, you think is connected to the upstream port on those switches. Magic?

            I'm also curious if you think every home in America has single-mode fiber installed, and every street has fiber switches within 100 meters of each house.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Megane ( 129182 )

              and every street has fiber switches within 100 meters of each house

              Rural areas, of course not. But suburban areas, maybe 500 meters. The problem is that telcos have been dragging their feet for decades about upgrading that last 500 meters to everyone, and being 100 meters wouldn't make a difference.

              But that's not actually related to data caps. Once you have fiber links, the only real limit is a box on each end of the fiber. Even when that equipment costs thousands of dollars, it's still cheaper than digging the last mile to upgrade an entire neighborhood from copper to fi

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Upgrading bandwidth usually doesn't require laying new fibre at all, just upgrading the equipment connected to it.

          For example Japan is getting 10,000Mb/sec fibre from next month in the three biggest cities and the only change is to the equipment, not the fibre. That's up from 2,000Mb/sec previously, which itself was upgraded from 1,000Mb/sec and 100Mb/sec before that.

          For reference the average in the UK is 22Mb/sec, and our new fibre to the premises is mostly limited to 160/30 for some reason.

      • But now that the major ISPs in the USA all opened the flood gates, what's going to happen when they try to close them? Which one will try first and will the others follow? That's going to be interesting.

      • How can you meaningfully have competition for the cables that actually run into your home? There's only so many cables that can be run through cities, and out in the country, the cost goes way up such that it is hard for a second provider to break in. I don't know what kind of legitimate competition you're hoping for. We got lucky in the historical accident that both the cable companies AND the phone companies ended up being able to supply Internet -- that's two networks reaching into the home, and that's t
    • Agree - another example of the US living in the middle ages of the internet.

      Last time I heard about any data limiits around here, was when we had eeyore-modems ;)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      When I first got on the Internet I was envious of you Americans and your free local calls, here in Norway dial-up was pay-per-minute and being on the Internet was like sitting in a taxi with the meter running. The huge selling point of broadband was always on, one price. Some ISPs tried with caps, they were cheaper but it was almost an allergic reaction to worrying about usage and overages. Even when they had all sorts of rational data that we were heavily cross-subsidizing heavy users it was like we didn't

  • Ya, Verizon may have "gaffed", but their response now is to automatically roll you over to the next higher plan. People have been getting stuck with overages since the invention of the subscription service. I remember when the Iphone first came out it was only available on the AT&T network. Someone took theirs one a cruise and had their phone turned off. The "iphone" continued to phone-home even when "off" and the customer got huge out of country bill (like in the $1000's) they were stuck paying.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Unclear how "out of network charges" stories from 10 years ago relates to data overage story in the present time...

      So customer took their iPhone off the AT&T network, consumed third-party data resources on a cruise ship, and incurred a huge bill. The only thing surprising is that you were surprised by that outcome. (Reminder, all those "foreign" data charges were likely pass-thru costs from either the cruise line provider or the local foreign providers in the ports the boat docked in, not AT&T.

      Surpr

  • Answer: Because they make money.

    Oh, the horror!!

  • Think about it: If the internet provider can even temporarily lift the data caps, then there is definitively enough capacity for the network to be used without those caps. If there's enough capacity, then why did the caps exist in the first place? Answer: Because they make money.

    Unless, of course, the network planners built their networks to handle the higher data volume based on additional revenue generated by overage fees!

    Network infrastructure costs money

    • it's a good thing they didn't take any federal money to build out those networks though. That would be swindling Uncle Sam, and immoral.

      Heavens me, they'd never do that, would they?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        it's a good thing they didn't take any federal money to build out those networks though.

        They did, in some areas, not all.

        That would be swindling Uncle Sam, and immoral.

        Why? Because they were given money to subsidize infrastructure investments in under-served, low-density areas they aren't allowed to charge for their usage? The money provided was to offer service to the previously under-served, without the money, there would be no service, and BTW, the money was raised by collecting fees from everyone with multiple land lines of service to one address, for the express purpose of funding rural service.

        It wasn't taken from the general funds o

    • Network infrastructure costs money

      Then the ISP's need to either upgrade their networks to keep up with their marketing claims, or they need to stop claiming they support those speeds. In other words, stop allowing them to lie their asses off.

  • Why do these companies have data caps on their services? The answer is "because they can", not "because bandwidth is limited". So the second of his "two simple truths" is a non-sequitir.

    And the idea that charging overage fees "is going to be radioactive" is laughable. Most customers don't have an actual choice - if they want high speed internet, their list of available options is exactly one item long. And there goes "simple truth" number one.

    • Indeed the author has no case. Even assuming the "going to be radioactive" is a thing an industry that has 3 very profitable members constantly in the top 20 most hated companies by consumers in America cares about, the radioactive part will disappear along with the COVID-19 virus.

      There is no case not to go back to business as usual.

  • I pay about $280/mo on my "$75/mo" data plan with Comcast due to overages.

  • It happened with dialup, it can happen with broadband too. There have been enough tech advances. Next is mobile.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Look I don't like caps, nobody does, but I also know how fricking HUGE this country is as I've traveled many times cross country and the simple fact is we just don't have the infrastructure to let everybody stream ultra HD while gaming and listening to tunes and all the other stuff, we just don't.

      I've been hearing the same thing for the past 20 years (VoIP, torrents, Netflix..etc) What seems to be happening is similar to moore's law capacity keeps doubling every couple years as cost of high bandwidth PHYs and routing hardware keep falling.

      The main argument I can make against caps is it de-emphasis demand for new capabilities. If ISPs keep having to upgrade to keep up with demand this lights all kinds of fires throughout the industry to continuously deliver higher bandwidth routing and interfaces.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      I would feel bad for the ISPs if they weren't paying out $50mil/year in salary/bonuses to their CEOs.

      And how many people do you know with 1, let alone multiple, 4k monitors? I do not believe anyone in my circle of family/friends has upgraded. My 1080p projection on my 135" screen looks really good.
  • No. [duckduckgo.com]

    We have a duopoly and a pro corporate administration that is likely to win a second term (Incumbents usually win and there's plenty of time for this virus thing to blow over, plus they're blowing all their post recession wad pre-recession, which is going to be a disaster but none of that will matter to the Administration in 2021).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • I really don't understand why Socialists think that the corruption and greed surrounding private corporations will magically disappear when the government becomes the only choice. The corruption and greed will move to the government and unlike a private company, the government has to give you permission to sue it, and when the greed and corruption get too big and the whole thing fails, you get Venezuela instead of industry bailouts. I hate industry bailouts, but at least we didn't have to start eating our

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Obama wasn't a socialist, he was centre-right.

        And actually social democracies have some of the best broadband networks in the world. For example in Denmark most of the last mile infrastructure is owned by the state telecoms company and consumers get good speeds with many enjoying 1Gb/sec.

        Finland enjoys 1Gb/sec for about 50 Euro/month. France is well known for being cheap and fast. In Iceland 75% of homes can get FTTP 1Gb/sec, with the government aiming for 99% by 2022. Latvia, an ex-communist state, is a br

    • Coronavirus 100% guarantees Trumpâ(TM)s re-election, because by November this thing would have gone away (effective treatments and rapid diagnostics are in the pipeline) and the economy will be in resurgence mode allowing him to look great like he personally is conquered Coronavirus and brought the economy back.

  • What a stupid fucking article.

  • The problem with the data cap is ridiculously simple... If the ISP is able to provide 24/7 for each of its subscribers a 10mbps connection (for example), then that ISP should not sell "100mbps" connections hoping that all its subscribers will not will use all that bandwidth that they bought.

    For those who don't understand: It is common practice for ISPs to sell connections with much greater bandwidth than they would be able to provide if all their subscribers use the service at the same time. They have 10

  • Even when it was Time Warner, there were never caps.

    • My bandwidth went up and the price went down when Spectrum took over. Their pricing has remained very reasonable, though it helps I'm also in a Fios area so they can't get too complacent.

  • Throttling and data caps are part of basic network optimization.

    So you are a small ISP with 10 customers sharing a gigabit line, and realized 99% of the time no more than 3 customers use their service. With this information you can choose:

    A) Don't do anything, and let 70% of the capacity (paid by customers) go to waste
    B) Upgrade all users to 300mbit, and throttling when there is peak demand (1% of the time)
    C) Keep the same speed, but add 3x users, passing the saving to users (who am I kidding, earning extra

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      In ideal world where companies are ran by engineers, that's how it would be.

      Unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world, and companies are ran by marketing people. Those people see engineers and those elements as just one input into decision making process, and secondary one at best. Primary factor is "how do we maximize monetization of our existing capacity".

      Couple this with lack of regulation limiting inherent monopolization process of telecommunications infrastructure, and you get to data caps in US an

    • How it should be:

      So you are a small ISP with 10 customers sharing a gigabit line, and realized 99% of the time no more than 3 customers use their service. With this information you can choose:

      C) Keep the same speed, but add 3x users, passing the saving to users (who am I kidding, earning extra profits)

      Then you realize 90% of the time, there is no more than 1.5 person of load. Then:

      Get even more users, and potentially offer higher speeds. If you see that your uplink gets close to 100% during peak times, upgrade it with the additional money you get for the higher speed plans and the additional users from previously.

      This is kind-of how my ISP does things. I had my connection upgraded multiple times over the years, from 80/80 to 1000/600 with the same price (act

  • Or 90 days, whichever comes first.

  • Seriously, I have not had a data-cap on wired Internet in like a decade here. This is Europe, of course, not the ever-greedy corporate wasteland that the US has. A lot of backbone traffic here is via direct peering (very cheap) and long haul has stopped to be metered a long time ago. Instead the ISPs buy bandwidth, but because a lot of people (especially the railway companies next to their tracks) have buried a lot of dark fiber, that is pretty cheap as well. So I have 1Gb symmetrical unmetered at home just

  • A toast for our fallen friends that have died of Coronavirus. Your sacrifice has not been in vain; we have won the war on data caps.

  • If corn grows on the ground for zero dollars, why isnâ(TM)t food free?

    Itâ(TM)s because nobody wants to do stuff for your lazy ass for free!

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