wilwheaton:

wilwheaton:

Comcast, perhaps feeling a bit too confident about its chances to swallow up Time Warner Cable, is talking about rolling out data caps to all of its subscribers. It had, up to this point, only “offered” it in certain areas on a “trial…

Surely the contingent that declares “vote with your wallet” during these sorts of announcements has dwindled to near zero at this point. For most of the country’s population, the choice is that or DSL, the offering AT&T and others can’t wait to rid themselves of. And it’s not like other companies won’t initiate their own caps once Comcast puts its limits in place. If one big player is doing it, then everyone can hop on the money train without shedding a ton of customers. In an inversion of the “if everyone’s special…” argument, the cable companies will operate under the “if everyone’s a crappy service provider, then no one’s a crappy service provider” motto.

With this in place — along with the pay-for-play internet — Comcast can collect on its customers’ Netflix addiction on both ends. The easy money will now be even easier, and no expense will be spared to ensure infrastructure upgrades and better customer service the lousy, pricy caps are advertised using only the shiniest junk mail and the cheeriest TV spots. Or, in fact, why even bother advertising? Incestuous duopolies and straight-up “only game in town” structuring means never having to talk someone into a shitty plan.

Even if Comcast isn’t granted its monopoly, its willingness to deploy unpopular usage caps will only encourage Time Warner to speed up its roll-out of the same terrible plans. At this point, the biggest players are hardly putting any energy into maintaining the farcical facade of “network congestion.” After all, Netflix chews up a ton of bandwidth, and Comcast has just bumped the speed at which this gets “used up” in exchange for an untold amount of money. If congestion was actually a problem, data hogs like streaming services would either be priced out of the market or more of the market would already be laboring under restrictive caps. But Comcast says “Use more internet!” — just as long as it gets a larger cut of the action.

There’s zero benefit for the consumer.

I’m really glad I’m not forced to be a Comcast or Time Warner customer, but if these companies get their way, there isn’t going to be much of a difference for any of us, as they lead the race to the bottom in customer service and user experience.

Isn’t the whole point of regulation to prevent these things from happening? No wonder an entire generation is cynical about pretty much everything.