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The FCC wants to know why data caps are still a thing in 2023
(www.techspot.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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The infrastructure over which that data travels isn't free. If you have a resource and it has any kind of scarcity, you want to tie consumption to the cost of producing more of it.
You can reduce the transaction cost -- reduce hassle for users using Internet service -- by not having a cap for them to worry about, but then you decouple the costs of consumption.
Soft caps, like throttling, are one way to help reduce transaction costs while still having some connection between consumption and price.
But point is, if one user is using a lot more of the infrastructure than any other is, you probably want to have that reflected in some way, else you're dumping Heavy User's costs on Light User.
I want to know where the storage tanks of gigabytes are hiding
They're behind the series of tubes.
Like, what kind of costs exist? Lines, network hardware, putting up the tunnels and poles that hold up lines, the network admins who deal with issues on them. Your ISP can't just push a button and instantly provide 1Tbit bandwidth capacity at no cost to themselves to every subscriber.
Oh you mean like the $400 billion the industry has taken to adopt Fiber-optic high speeds, but somehow Fiber access has never materialized in most US cities? You mean like that infrastructure? That we've already fucking paid for through grants and other federal programs handing money to the ISPs?
Are you having a laugh or do you work for these fuckers?
I'm not disputing the costs, I'm disputing that they already have money to cover the costs (taxpayer money, I might add) and they're bilking the consumer on top of it.
EDIT: Also, let's not forget that they got this money during a period of media consolidation. Why was Comcast using its money to buy NBC in 2011 instead of spending that on (*audible gasp) infrastructure?
Federal subsidies to telcos were not intended to provide Internet service for free, but to reduce costs.
You could argue that a subsidy should reduce prices relative to what they should have been, had no subsidy existed.
But you cannot argue that pricing should be decoupled from consumption as a result of that.
And I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that it's clear that pricing has been decoupled from consumption, but in the other direction, where the ISP's are setting prices arbitrarily. That's been a choice on their part, and a big reason why people like me are distrustful of any data they claim shows their case. They have been caught lying so many times before. I'm old enough to remember Comcast paying homeless people^1 to stuff a courtroom to make it seem like more people supported them (once again if they don't have money to cover infrastructure costs, why are they instead spending their money on things like this?). There's also issues like when they bundle unnecessary services, essentially consumers paying for nothing, like when the AG of Washington State sued them in 2016.^2 I could go on for pages about shit like this going all the way back to illegally shaping traffic with Sandvine targeting BitTorrent traffic.^3 I honestly don't wish to and maybe you ought to do more research on how much money these companies ream the American consumer for before acting like there is any connection between pricing and consumption here.
It's funny that I have symetical LAN Gb all over my house and beyond the initial cost it costs pretty well $0 per month to operate and maintain. My ISP gives me a limited use Gb line outside the house (and a tiny fraction of that speed on the uplink side for arbitrary reasons) and somehow it costs upwards of $100/month. That has no rational correlation to reality in terms of cost to provide the service.
Massive enterprise systems are on a daily basis maintained by reletivlely small teams of specialists, most of who never have reason to physically touch a piece of gear. That happening in dynamic environment always looking for the next big step. An ISP has a comparativly simple task to direct traffic flows for the most part dictated by automated protocols.