I wonder how my day-to-day activities would change if I knew I was constantly eating away at my monthly limit. I'd hate to have to do it, especially because I don't really see the connection between my consumption and "waste" like I do with my energy bill. It would feel like going backwards in time, in a way.
Canada actively fights competition too and won't allow other telcos to invest because they "aren't Canadian". It's this lame thinking from little countries in the stupid idea of pride. Kinda thing you expect from some Bananaland place.
I've been spending the past 2 weeks at my parent's house in Australia, they live an hour from the nearest village and 2 hours from the nearest city. The only internet options are dialup, satellite or 3G. The 3G is surprisingly fast (6 MBps), but it's $60 for 4 GB.
I've been watching my usage, installed Little Snitch to disable all kinds of background activity like auto-updating. Most of my online time has been browsing HN, Reddit, IMing,, Facebook, Twitter, email, a couple Skype calls. Have watched a grand total of 2 YouTube videos.
I've still burned through 5 GB in 2.5 weeks. I don't even know how, aside from things when OS X spent 100 MB attempting to download the certificate revocation list, and Mail.app continually redownloading all my spam from Gmail.
Switch to Optus prepaid. It's $2 per day for 0.5 GB per day. $2 more for 0.5 GB if you run out of you daily 0.5 GB.
That takes me back to my days with dial up with the best plan available being "100 hours of surfing for 100 bucks"
That was before a flat rate was ever available and it beat the other plans where you paid literally by the minute and it came out to much more than 100 bucks for 100 hours of online time.
Oh, how I remember setting an egg timer during the week so I don't surf longer than the time I allowed myself just so I had like 8 hours on Saturdays and Sundays to surf uninterrupted.
It's murky and the cost per bit is indeed very small, but every bit you requests costs electricity. Have you ever read the bits about "The Environmental Cost of Spam"?
And if there are other paths to get the bits there cheaper – wireless (including mesh, free space optical, or new bandwidths) or new wires – these prices motivate the new entrants who can do it.
Comcast maximizing their profits is not the last step, but one move in an iterated, endless game. Comcast's move – if people choose to pay and Comcast makes money – incents the next round of competition.
And these are still better options than my family in the Midwest and New York have available to them. You just can't claim with a straight face that there's competition in this market.
I have 5Mbps DSL in San Francisco. It's plenty for HD Netflix and Hulu, VOIP, and video-calling.
I suspect you also have 3+ wireless options, some of which likely offer 20Mbps+ in bursts. Yes, it costs more. Yes, you'd like to pay less. Everyone would! But your desire for more modern luxury goods (massive HD bandwidth), cheaper, is not a public policy crisis.
Someone has to invest more to give you more, and market-floating prices for the existing paths are exactly what draws in more investment – or sends you a signal that you should 'self-help' to the nearest source of plentiful bandwidth.
Minneapolis is a beacon of hope, here. $40 for 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps in much of the city, from a local fiber provider.
That's what kills me. Comcast's audacity is just so much more galling when you've actually experienced what happens with competition. And not that competition is a panacea, necessarily. I don't have a say in my water, gas, or electricity providers, but in exchange for that monopoly, they're subject to pretty serious regulation.
That's much better than nationally locking-in a pipes-and-sewers-like regulatory structure that freezes incumbents into a safe but slow-moving regulated approach, for decades.
The decades of Title-II-regulated AT&T telecom monopoly were not good for consumers or innovation. They were safe and slow.
I understand he is an exception, but it is not nearly as uncommon as you are implying.
http://www.broadbandmap.gov/blog/
So yes, your father's property is an unfortunate outlier. His main beef should be with the local authorities who granted Comcast a monopoly without a prompt requirement-to-service.
(And in places where Comcast is truly the only provider, local regulation until other options arrive makes sense. Just not nationally, when almost everywhere has 2+ wired options and 3+ wireless options, and could also incrementally add new wires and towers far more easily than outlying/non-urban places.)
PS: And a little idea that might blow your mind, Comcast effectively pays nothing for bandwidth to the internet. Like SMS it's so cheap they would have trouble actually finding out how much it costs them and would need to add up the cost of patch cables in the data-center as a significant 'cost'.
Retail, to a particular fixed location, and for households where bandwidth is a tiny part of their overall budget, is naturally going to be 2-10X more expensive.
AWS wholesale transfer out (not subsidized/forgiven to make their service 'sticky') is still $0.12/GB. Comcast's retail price is less than 2X that. No biggie.
But again, that's bulk wholesale which is often 2-10X cheaper in any industry. Compare like to like.
First 1 GB / month $0.000 per GB
Up to 10 TB / month $0.120 per GB
Next 40 TB / month $0.090 per GB
Next 100 TB / month $0.070 per GB
Next 350 TB / month $0.050 per GB
Any way you slice it AWS charges rediculusly high bandwidth costs and Comcast still charges way more than that.
What you probably meant to say was that wholesale bandwith is usually puchased by the Mbps on a 95th percentile billing, although you can alternatively buy by the TB from some providers.