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Ole Anderson
02-01-2018, 9:04 AM
Digging into my account this morning, I see Comcast allots me 1024 GB of data per month (a terabyte). December and January usage was about 200 GB. I stream a lot of Netflix, Amazon and YouTube on my TV, some of it at 4k with no buffering hiccups. Pretty impressed with the internet service provided. I have their "Blast" 100 mbps service and my package, excluding equipment and "other" charges is $120/mo, including home security, HD TV and internet, no phone. My 100 mbps service has tested at 122 mbps over WiFi, pretty good for the price. http://www.speedtest.net/result/7020029122.png

Matt Meiser
02-01-2018, 8:45 PM
I have the 150 plan and mine tests closer to 170. Been quite happy with the service. Even with a teenager who consistently burns through her cellular data we still stay around 300 gig. LOML and I have been watching a good bit of Netflix too.

Bruce Wrenn
02-04-2018, 8:15 PM
We live in one of the most affluent counties in North Carolina, but have "third world internet" It's either dial up, or DSL, both from AT&T. Less than a mile from us, Spectrum is offering speeds of 200MBS. I wish we could get 1 MBS, which would be twice as fast as what we get now from AT&T. If our internet was any slower, you tube videos would be on flash cards.

Matt Meiser
02-04-2018, 8:55 PM
And nothing will change there until we consider the internet to be an essential utility like electricity and telephone service. There has been talk for years about something like the Universal Service Charge for internet which I would support. Its become an essential service and we need to find some way to get it to areas which aren't "profitable" locations.

Curt Harms
02-06-2018, 5:20 PM
And nothing will change there until we consider the internet to be an essential utility like electricity and telephone service. There has been talk for years about something like the Universal Service Charge for internet which I would support. Its become an essential service and we need to find some way to get it to areas which aren't "profitable" locations.

It seems like a transport medium other than coax or fiber are going to be required for low population density areas. Didn't you, Matt have a negative experience with a fixed wireless ISP? But I wonder if something like that or some sort of mesh network will be an answer.

Jim Becker
02-06-2018, 5:51 PM
Fixed wireless for the "last leg" will become more and more common in the future, especially as "5G" gets to be finally defined and starts to deploy. That said, and at least in the US, consumers are still likely to suffer financially from bandwidth caps that are painful and IMHO, punitive, especially as more and more folks move to streaming. They escape the continual escalating "cable" TV bill, but get hammered by higher and higher bandwidth costs as they transition to other content sources via IP.

Matt Meiser
02-06-2018, 10:06 PM
It seems like a transport medium other than coax or fiber are going to be required for low population density areas. Didn't you, Matt have a negative experience with a fixed wireless ISP? But I wonder if something like that or some sort of mesh network will be an answer.

I did, several years ago. That was 2.4Ghz 802.11 technology though implemented by an incompetent single-employee provider.

Curt Harms
02-07-2018, 7:37 AM
Fixed wireless for the "last leg" will become more and more common in the future, especially as "5G" gets to be finally defined and starts to deploy. That said, and at least in the US, consumers are still likely to suffer financially from bandwidth caps that are painful and IMHO, punitive, especially as more and more folks move to streaming. They escape the continual escalating "cable" TV bill, but get hammered by higher and higher bandwidth costs as they transition to other content sources via IP.

It's "handy" that the same companies often provide both wired and wireless data services. They're competing against themselves in the wired vs. wireless market. At least you and I have a duopoly (Verizon & Comcast). Many don't even have that. I'm not smart enough to have an answer. Some sort of regulation forcing incumbent wire plant owners to allow competing ISPs to use their wire/fiber in return for a "reasonable" (who gets to decide what's reasonable) rental fee? That's sort of in place now in the wireless business. Small cell phone providers like Straight Talk or Boost don't own their own cell towers, they're using AT&T, Verizon or Sprint.

I've thought about the U.S. road system compared to the data "road" system. The roads being owned by governmental bodies and used by anyone who wants to use them has worked out pretty well. Can you imagine what it would cost to drive if all the roads were owned by a handful of unregulated companies?

Jim Becker
02-07-2018, 9:54 AM
With the legacy copper infrastructure, the "Bell" providers indeed did have to offer other companies access to last mile connections...predicated by the fact that a healthy chunk of the cost to install that copper infrastructure came from government funds "back in the day" when it was a regulated monopoly. That actually still happens in some DSL areas, but the number of competitive ILECs is tiny compared to over a decade ago. Those sharing rules don't apply to infrastructure that Comcast, Verizon (FiOS fiber), ATT (FTTN UVerse) and others subsequently installed with their own money and it would be a "tough row to hoe" for that to change, especially in today's business and political climate. The government still does have control over wireless spectrum, but as we've seen, there is little effort to insure that ISPs and carriers do things fairly and don't place onerous caps on bandwidth. I can only make this a very general statement as I did because we do not permit political discussion here at SMC which would be required to dive deeper on the subject.

Ole Anderson
02-08-2018, 9:54 AM
Interesting that fiber was to be the big thing that was going to catapult everybody into the high speed internet age, but the old copper coax providers are outdoing the neighborhood FIOS providers. It seems they keep figuring out how to squeeze more data down that hunk of copper. The trunks are fiber, but local distribution, with few exceptions, is still old coax. And when I say old, the overhead stuff in our neighborhood has been in since 1985, 33 years now. The telecons could never figure out how to get any speed with the old 600 pair telephone copper.

The civil engineering firm I worked for was in an old home security building and had a 600 pair (I think) coming in directly from Ma Bell's local building 2 miles away. Best they could do was about 1.5 mbps unless we wanted to pay an exorbitant price for a T3 line. They had installed a new termination for FIOS just across the street, but finally after two years of promises, we just had Comcast extend a line about 300 feet so we could get 100 mbps. We kept the DSL for a few years as back up using a dual band router, but it seldom got used.

Jim Becker
02-08-2018, 10:16 AM
Ole, I assure you with the expertise of a recently retired multi-decade member of the telecom industry, that Comcast's network can't support what Verizon's FiOS can from a pure network standpoint. Yes, Comcast is getting higher download speeds at this point than they used to because of conversion to Docsys 3.1 for their cable network, but they can't support symmetrical upload speeds with that technology. The level of bandwidth sharing in the neighborhood is also relatively high. Further, Verizon just started to roll the initial trial footprint for NG-PON (next generation passive optical network) which they will be moving to from the current G-PON, skipping a step. That move will be able to provide significant multi-gigabit level connections to end-customers and NG-PON also is software upgradable to reduce obsolescence of termination equipment at both the central office and the customer premises. (BTW, only Verizon has "FiOS"...but there certainly are other providers who have FTTP (fiber to the premises), albeit in significantly smaller footprints.) Comcast does retain a lead on the "entertainment" side of things but even that isn't keeping folks from cord cutting relative to content in favor of targeted streaming.

Fiber actually is the "big thing" still that can provide virtually unlimited bandwidth on the light side...within the capabilities of the hardware/software standards that are being supported at the source and the end-customer...but the telecom industry is heavily influenced by "Wall Street" and the heavy investment required for deploying FTTP has been stifled by the investor community that much prefers short term gains over long term, customer-focused communications technology. And at some point, wireless will likely get to be "good enough" from a speed standpoint that investing in FTTP will have higher hurdles to jump...at the expense to the consumer of punitive monthly bandwidth caps unless regulation intervenes. (unlikely in the near term for sure)

Ole Anderson
02-08-2018, 12:44 PM
Your average user is concerned mainly with download speeds. Even at church where we stream our services, we have 12/60 speeds and we only need about 4 mbps of that upstream speed to to live stream 720p video. The point I was trying to make is that the speed that fiber makes available has not migrated widely to the average end user. At least not around here. Of course it gets down to the cost for running a parallel system in places the existing provider has a lock on existing subscribers who are satisfied with the service and won't switch until speed, cost and customer service match or exceed the existing franchise. Then there is the whole issue of local governmental units "franchising" one provider.

Matt Meiser
02-09-2018, 6:37 AM
Might not be symmetrical, but they aren't doing to bad on upload either. This is pretty consistent day or night.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/7043499330.png (http://www.speedtest.net/result/7043499330)

Curt Harms
02-12-2018, 7:28 AM
Ole, I assure you with the expertise of a recently retired multi-decade member of the telecom industry, that Comcast's network can't support what Verizon's FiOS can from a pure network standpoint. Yes, Comcast is getting higher download speeds at this point than they used to because of conversion to Docsys 3.1 for their cable network, but they can't support symmetrical upload speeds with that technology. The level of bandwidth sharing in the neighborhood is also relatively high. Further, Verizon just started to roll the initial trial footprint for NG-PON (next generation passive optical network) which they will be moving to from the current G-PON, skipping a step. That move will be able to provide significant multi-gigabit level connections to end-customers and NG-PON also is software upgradable to reduce obsolescence of termination equipment at both the central office and the customer premises. (BTW, only Verizon has "FiOS"...but there certainly are other providers who have FTTP (fiber to the premises), albeit in significantly smaller footprints.) Comcast does retain a lead on the "entertainment" side of things but even that isn't keeping folks from cord cutting relative to content in favor of targeted streaming.

Fiber actually is the "big thing" still that can provide virtually unlimited bandwidth on the light side...within the capabilities of the hardware/software standards that are being supported at the source and the end-customer...but the telecom industry is heavily influenced by "Wall Street" and the heavy investment required for deploying FTTP has been stifled by the investor community that much prefers short term gains over long term, customer-focused communications technology. And at some point, wireless will likely get to be "good enough" from a speed standpoint that investing in FTTP will have higher hurdles to jump...at the expense to the consumer of punitive monthly bandwidth caps unless regulation intervenes. (unlikely in the near term for sure)

Political pendulums do swing though and the more greedy they are the greater the backlash.