Please ban data caps, Internet users tell FCC

I cannot control how much data I consume. Especially now with more and more websites being so big. And no, not every device supports uBlock Origin. Pi-Hole / Adguard only does so much these days.

iOS / Mac updates are humongous. 100+MB per webview-wrapper app. And they aren't sharable. iOS 18.1 today was 8GB. How many Apple devices do you have?

Every website these days starts to automatically play videos, with no way of disabling that (looking at you Fandom, and until recently, Ars Technica).

All video is consumed in a streaming manner. At least when you watched a movie over cable it didn't consume bandwidth. But when you watch the same movie on YouTube TV it is counting towards your 'limits'.

And you cannot set proper limits, as they calculate your usage once per day. Go over, $10 per 50GB on Cox. And your limit is 1280GB, even on their 2Gbit connection.

So unlike with your car where you have a pretty decent view on when it's empty, and you can fill up at almost the same price as the previous tank, here you're screwed twice, once because you can't measure, and second, because the price is outrageous.

For a 2Gbit connection, you can actually go through your limit in ...

2Gbit = 250MB / sec. 1280GB = 1310720MB. 1310720 / 250 = 5242.88 seconds, or 1 hour, 27 minutes and 22.88 seconds.

Insane. We need more competition.

If the FCC cannot regulate the caps out of existence, they could at least enforce consistency in how they are advertised. For example, a theoretical offering of 1gpbs internet with a 120GB cap might need to include prominent language that at 100% utilisation, you might only have 4 seconds of internet per day.

Suddenly there (in a functional market) be a reason for caps to be lifted as consumers can readily compare worst case usage.

All that said, the caps are a terrible mechanism and should be entirely removed as thankfully Australia mostly did a decade ago.

It would feel less hostile if I had the option to choose my service provider. With no competition, data caps are essentially a form of extortion. Not to mention, these companies are often the ones lobbying municipalities to block other providers from entering the market.

I know that this is in the context of the US. But for once lets do the other way around. At tue beginning of 2024 i went to stay a couple of months with my family in Egypt. The internet plans there is caped by default, you can't get unlimited bandwidth (forget speed) no matter what plan do you have. It is cheaper if you compare with US dollars (forget PPP) but this assume that you usage is limited. I had to renew the plan one month 6 times (making it more expensive that what I pay in the US with less speed). I did not explore the idea of getting business plan (probably could not anyway because I had to be a registered business).

And I am not talking about wireless plans or mobile data. I am talking about the home internet (VDHL mainly but with some fibre in some areas).

And as another commentator said, people consume a lot of data to ads (media or text) with the average page reload of some websites of ~10 MB. I introduced ublock origin, alternative YouTube frontend to many people and they were happy with their overall experience.

* I have a friend who usually renew a plan each time a couple of steam games needs an update

I'm happy to pay for caps, but they should at least roll over more than just a month.

If I pay for 100GB internet a month, that should equal a quota of 1.2TB a year.

That, or you reduce the amount I pay if I don't use my quota, and you reduce it further if your download speed is not what was advertised. Fuck these guys!

"usage-based pricing provides more options for consumers than flat-rate pricing and can generate additional revenue to fund network improvements and expansion."

i don't mind usage based pricing if they show you how much you've used and ideally where you've used it. then i can simply cut out all the services that suck up all that data. For example, I refuse to install Facebook because it's hundreds of MB.

While you’re at it, can you please ban “hotspot speed limits”? The annoying thing in US is that if I have a cell phone plan with “unlimited” internet I can use it on my phone, but if I occasionally need to share that connection with my laptop it is limited to some totally unusable speed, like 500 kb/s

As much as Canada isn’t a model of reasonable telecom, I really like the cable access agreements that are required.

The company that owns the cable that goes into my house is required to provide access to any other ISP at a set rate. As a result, I can choose between quite a few different providers. I’m able to buy gigabit internet from a small local provider for $75CAD with no contract, no cap, and really good customer support.