Comcast starts throttling mobile video, will charge extra for HD streams

[ragemage]

Source: ArsTechnica

Comcast's Xfinity Mobile service is imposing new speed limits on video watching and personal hotspot usage, and the company will start charging extra for high-definition video over the cellular network.

The short version is that videos will be throttled to 480p (DVD quality) on all Comcast mobile plans unless you pay extra, while Comcast's "unlimited" plan will limit mobile hotspot speeds to 600kbps. Only customers who pay by the gigabyte will get full-speed tethering, but the cost would add up quickly as Comcast charges $12 for each gigabyte.

Comcast last year began selling mobile plans with data, voice, and texting. Comcast doesn't operate its own cellular network, so it resells Verizon Wireless service.

Read more: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/comcast-starts-throttling-mobile-video-will-charge-extra-for-hd-streams/

[NJCher]

1. who would go through Comcast

to buy Verizon?

[onenote]

11. If the bundled price with other Comcast service (cable, wireline phone, Internet) is lower,

who wouldn't.

Comcast has signed up over 1/2 million wireless customers in a year. Because they don't own the facilities etc., their costs actually are lower than Verizon. Verizon sells it at a wholesale rate below their own retail rates because they have excess capacity and they feel like they are picking up new customers that might otherwise take T-Mobile or Sprint.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

2. Frontier too.

Started July 1st.

[Archae]

3. Good friend of mine won't be surprised...

In Baltimore he set up and was home NINE TIMES to get Comcast installed, and all nine times they never showed up.

And their "customer service" was as bad as you've read about, all nine times all they did was make excuses or had no idea what they were doing.

(He finally went with a satellite service.)

[Ron Obvious]

6. Comcast here always outsources its installation and maintenance work

Then they disclaim any responsibility for the work (or the lack of it) and refuse to listen to complaints.

We have no choice here, sadly.

[RKP5637]

4. Capitalist Pigs, they are! n/t

[bucolic_frolic]

5. My backup plan is in place

Not sure if slowdowns are here yet for DSL, or if they're just rewiring the architecture

Adequate, light, and free public access is available. I can run my online self at reduced capacity, and after 22 years or so online I could use a break. It's not the same internet anymore anyway. Traffic at ecommerce is siphoned off to the largest etailers. Availability for most things is little better than in retail stores, price differentials are narrowing. IOW the advantages of living the online life are diminishing at this point.

[canetoad]

13. I agree

Parts of the web are almost unusable. Fortunately Tim Berners-Lee is on to it. Long read but worth it.

/snip..
The idea is simple: re-decentralize the Web. Working with a small team of developers, he spends most of his time now on Solid, a platform designed to give individuals, rather than corporations, control of their own data. “There are people working in the lab trying to imagine how the Web could be different. How society on the Web could look different. What could happen if we give people privacy and we give people control of their data,” Berners-Lee told me. “We are building a whole eco-system.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/the-man-who-created-the-world-wide-web-has-some-regrets

[bucolic_frolic]

14. Interesting but good luck with that

Decentralized is a fine goal. Fight the billionaires for it. We are also drowning in data. Some of it is obsolete, with no plan to delete it. Once in Google search, it remains forever. Linux is decentralized, but efforts to repair problems are ... well, not accessible to me. It's easier to just start over. On the web project, they have no such luxury.

Thanks for the posting!

[aggiesal]

7. And ... Let the fun begin! ...

Not like we didn't predict this was going to happen.

[riversedge]

8. And so it beginsthe in equality of the Internet now that @Netneutrality if history.

[BadGimp]

9. COMCAST is Satan's Nastier Evil Brother imo

we are nothing to these people but people they can extort money from.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

10. Weird! Who could've seen

this coming?

[mwooldri]

12. IIRC the Big Four already do this on their "unlimited" plans.

So for Comcast to do this doesn't surprise me.

We switched away from Sprint to Ting - can choose to run over T-Mobile or Sprint... but we pay for what we use. We get a better deal this way. Just pays to shop around and look at MNVOs as well as the actual cellphone companies.