How To Get Around Comcast's Data Cap

[Durvelle27]

To be specific, the overage is $10 per 50GB over, with a maximum of $200 per month overage. If you are pretty consistently going over 1274GB per month, it makes sense to just pay for the $50 unlimited data.

I regularly broke that data cap weekly

The unlimited option was much cheaper

 

[Totally]

Niche channels cost pennies or less per customer. Fuse is a rare indie channel and can be easily dropped due to the fact that JLo has no leverage to force them to keep it once the co tract expired, but makes no real financial impact anyway. Because of the archaic content delivery contract model, pretty much all of the "why am I forced to pay for this?" niche channels are basically forced on the provider by the owners of larger networks. It goes something like "If you want to be able to carry ESPN and Disney, you're also going to carry these 5 piece of shit channels that we would never be able to sell on their own for $0.10 each per subscriber." No video provider - even the behemoths - can afford to lose ESPN and Disney, so they cave. (Oh and ESPN is the single most expensive channel in BY FAR in every lineup (about $9.00 ber subscriber), Disney is second at a little over $2.00) and they are NOT allowed to be excluded from the basic package - which is why the base package is so expensive to begin with). All other popular channels (premiums excluded) are under $2.00, with many under $1.00. and as I said, niche channels are usually $0.50 or less.

$.50 even $.10 is not a small number as you are making it out be, times that by a subscriber base of say 50 million and that still is $60M annually. They can afford to axe the channels for the time being but body count is going to add up, in the eventuality they run out of these niche channels to cut? They're not gaining customers faster than they are losing and as you pointed out bigger networks aren't looking to budge or compromise. Only thing debatable is how long they can keep this up before things start to collapse.

 

[Jetster]

 

[Mussels]

Surely you could get a wifi client router (wifi repeater w/ ethernet output) and just skip a few steps?

 

[Space Lynx]

Easier to just pay for unlimited for sure, but I'm a huge cheap ass...

I live in Indiana too. You should look up a company called MetroNet. Fiber optics, 1 gig down 250 up, $69.99 a month and includes no data cap. I have had it for several years. Comcast and ATT are a joke in comparison.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Welp sadly where I live no one offers unlimited anymore without an extra charge.

Move to a decent city or vote for politicians that will actually do their jobs.

Comcast and ATT are a joke in comparison.

Yes, they are.

 

[taz420nj]

$.50 even $.10 is not a small number as you are making it out be, times that by a subscriber base of say 50 million and that still is $60M annually. They can afford to axe the channels for the time being but body count is going to add up, in the eventuality they run out of these niche channels to cut? They're not gaining customers faster than they are losing and as you pointed out bigger networks aren't looking to budge or compromise. Only thing debatable is how long they can keep this up before things start to collapse.

mi

I'm not saying it's a "small" number, but in the context of Comcast? Yeah it is. They have 20 million subs (Comcast, DirecTV, and Dish dont even have 50 million combined). So that's $24M. Ton of money for any of us. But Comcast's total revenue last year? Was $85 BILLION. Net - that's after contracts, employees, expenses, etc are paid - came in at about $25 Billion (up $4 billion YoY). Yeah they wipe their asses with $24 million. And they are able to do this magic of raising revenue while losing video subs by inventing ever more creative and arbitrary ways of fucking cord cutters.

 

[Xpect]

Comcast and most other "Cable" based ISP's come as close as they can to breaking the law without actually breaking it. They're effectively thieves.

Thank god that is only in the US. I pay for 30GB + 15GB + 1GB of mobile contracts (all with all-net-flat for phone and SMS of course) plus my 400MBit/s unlimitied cable Internet connection plus cable TV in Germany only 120€.

And prices in Germany for anything internet related are damn high. And connection speeds (or cellular network coverage) damn low. At least in the European comparison. We Germans are actually a bit envious of your US FTTH companies, nothing like that in Germany and seemingly no real plans for that. Our main ISP, Deutsche Telekom, who owns nearly all the phonecables and from which other ISPs have to rent the connections, is still milking the old weak copper.

 

[newtekie1]

I live in Indiana too. You should look up a company called MetroNet. Fiber optics, 1 gig down 250 up, $69.99 a month and includes no data cap. I have had it for several years. Comcast and ATT are a joke in comparison.

They aren't anywhere near where I live unfortunately.

Surely you could get a wifi client router (wifi repeater w/ ethernet output) and just skip a few steps?

I've tried that, and for some reason it doesn't work. I assume it has something to do with the initial sign up you have to do once you are connected to the hotspot. My theory is they read the MAC address of the connection for the computer when you are signing in, and if it doesn't match the MAC address connected to the Hotspot they block the connection.

 

[Easy Rhino]

How did they come up with the 1 TB cap? Why not 2 TB?

 

[hat]

How did they come up with the 1 TB cap? Why not 2 TB?

Because then they wouldn't be able to charge people who go over 1TB!

 

[newtekie1]

How did they come up with the 1 TB cap? Why not 2 TB?

They started putting the data cap in place in select areas I want to say about 5 years ago "as a test". I think they actually originally started with 250GB, but quickly found that was too low and raised it to 1TB. Then after about a year of select areas having the data cap, they changed it to all customers. So they picked that number 4 years ago, when 1TB probably was just fine for most people.

However, now I'm finding a lot of people I know hit the data cap every month. My neighbors have 3 teenage kids, all 5 people in the house stream netflix almost constantly when their home, and they are constantly going over the data cap. They were paying about $100 a month extra with overages until I told them about the option for unlimited.

I'd hope that Comcast realizes that 1TB isn't enough for a normal household these days and would raise it to 2TB, but I doubt that will happen. Comcast knows the only real alternative in our area is AT&T, and their service is both more expensive and worse. If you don't get the FTTH, the max speed you can get is 24Mbps. And if you do get the FTTH, it's expensive and unreliable and goes down constantly. So until there is a decent alternative to Comcast, their going to keep the data cap and rake in the cash from overages.

And Comcast uses the excuse that they have the data cap to stop the few people that use outrageous amounts of data. But there are much better ways to control that, so it is obvious they are just doing it for the extra money.

I just find it kind of funny how 10 years go, home internet was unlimited and mobile data was expensive as hell per GB. Now, they are practically giving away unlimited mobile data, every mobile plan with Verizon gives you unlimited data now for example, and most home ISPs are pushing for restrictive data caps...

 

[taz420nj]

They aren't anywhere near where I live unfortunately.



I've tried that, and for some reason it doesn't work. I assume it has something to do with the initial sign up you have to do once you are connected to the hotspot. My theory is they read the MAC address of the connection for the computer when you are signing in, and if it doesn't match the MAC address connected to the Hotspot they block the connection.

Assumin you use an old DD-WRT router to do this, try it in straight client (full WAN bandwidth but no LAN WiFi) or repeater (WAN&LAN WiFi BW/2) mode rather than repeater bridge or client bridge. That way the WiFi connection effectively becomes a WAN connection with NAT, and all traffic will share the same hotspot IP and MAC. This also means you only have to click through the captive portal once to allow access for all connected clients - even those not capable of logging into a captive portal like media streamers - to access through it. If you really want to be clever, you can set up a multi-WAN router like pfSense with CARP/Failover to automatically use your regular connection when the hotspot bridge goes down.

 

[Space Lynx]

Spoiler: meh

They started putting the data cap in place in select areas I want to say about 5 years ago "as a test". I think they actually originally started with 250GB, but quickly found that was too low and raised it to 1TB. Then after about a year of select areas having the data cap, they changed it to all customers. So they picked that number 4 years ago, when 1TB probably was just fine for most people.

However, now I'm finding a lot of people I know hit the data cap every month. My neighbors have 3 teenage kids, all 5 people in the house stream netflix almost constantly when their home, and they are constantly going over the data cap. They were paying about $100 a month extra with overages until I told them about the option for unlimited.

I'd hope that Comcast realizes that 1TB isn't enough for a normal household these days and would raise it to 2TB, but I doubt that will happen. Comcast knows the only real alternative in our area is AT&T, and their service is both more expensive and worse. If you don't get the FTTH, the max speed you can get is 24Mbps. And if you do get the FTTH, it's expensive and unreliable and goes down constantly. So until there is a decent alternative to Comcast, their going to keep the data cap and rake in the cash from overages.

And Comcast uses the excuse that they have the data cap to stop the few people that use outrageous amounts of data. But there are much better ways to control that, so it is obvious they are just doing it for the extra money.

I just find it kind of funny how 10 years go, home internet was unlimited and mobile data was expensive as hell per GB. Now, they are practically giving away unlimited mobile data, every mobile plan with Verizon gives you unlimited data now for example, and most home ISPs are pushing for restrictive data caps...

Capitalism states, I mean Comcast, excuse me, we do not care about their 3 teenage kids, spend less money on food and learn fasting twice a month, and pay us an extra $50 for unlimited internet, because we do not allow competition here.

In all seriousness though I hope MetroNet expands into your area someday, it was the best thing to happen to me. I haven't though about slow internet or data caps in 5 years, it does make life flow better, not sure the right words to say, but yeah it's dumb this is even a problem in 2019. Long live MetroNet! Don't sell out when Comcast offers to buy you up!

 

[taz420nj]

In all seriousness though I hope MetroNet expands into your area someday, it was the best thing to happen to me. I haven't though about slow internet or data caps in 5 years, it does make life flow better, not sure the right words to say, but yeah it's dumb this is even a problem in 2019. Long live MetroNet! Don't sell out when Comcast offers to buy you up![/QUOTE]
Municipal ISPs are where it's at. I forget where but it was just this month some little town basically told Comcast where to shove their offer to build infrastructure and decided to build their own. They'll be offering symmetrical gigabit to every resident for I think it was $80 a month, with low income households getting it free.

This monopoly/oligopoly stranglehold that the big companies have on us has to end.

 

[Space Lynx]

Municipal ISPs are where it's at. I forget where but it was just this month some little town basically told Comcast where to shove their offer to build infrastructure and decided to build their own. They'll be offering symmetrical gigabit to every resident for I think it was $80 a month, with low income households getting it free.

This monopoly/oligopoly stranglehold that the big companies have on us has to end.

or Comcast bribing congress with 'campaign donations' to not allow competition in certain areas by legal means - also has to end. one or the other. the only reason i hate republicans largely is because of this type of policy writing and letting corporations make the votes for you because they are worried about the money being pulled out from under them (and then they turn around and say yay for the free markets) lol. they have no backbone and it sickens me, little weasels.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Municipal ISPs are where it's at. I forget where but it was just this month some little town basically told Comcast where to shove their offer to build infrastructure and decided to build their own. They'll be offering symmetrical gigabit to every resident for I think it was $80 a month, with low income households getting it free.

This monopoly/oligopoly stranglehold that the big companies have on us has to end.

Municipalities control which ISPs are allowed because they control the poles unless there is a state rules that superceded it. So, if you only have 1 or 2 options in your area then start going to your town meetings. For instance, a small city close to where I live is limited to Comcast or some DSL company. The city has a rule in place that allows only 1 telco in the minicipality. The DSL company is the only telco and Comcast is technically a cable company so it is not exempt. Fios however is considered a telco because it is owned by Verizon which does internet but also is a telco company. So yea...

 

[95Viper]

Reminder... The topic is "How To Get Around Comcast's Data Cap" ; and, just to add, it should be of legal discussion.

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