{"id":32614,"date":"2014-05-20T01:01:08","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T01:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/comcast-says-its-going-to-slap-all-of-its\/"},"modified":"2014-05-20T01:01:08","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T01:01:08","slug":"comcast-says-its-going-to-slap-all-of-its","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/comcast-says-its-going-to-slap-all-of-its\/","title":{"rendered":"Comcast Says It’s Going To Slap All Of Its Customers With Data Caps, Makes Half-Hearted Attempt To Walk Back Earlier Statements When Backlash Kicks In | Techdirt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comcast Says It’s Going To Slap All Of Its Customers With Data Caps, Makes Half-Hearted Attempt To Walk Back Earlier Statements When Backlash Kicks In | Techdirt<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

wilwheaton<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

wilwheaton<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

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 \u201coffered\u201d it in certain areas on a \u201ctrial\u2026<\/p>\n

Surely the contingent that declares \u201cvote with your wallet\u201d during these sorts of announcements has dwindled to near zero at this point. For most of the country\u2019s population, the choice is that or DSL, the offering AT&T and others can\u2019t wait to rid themselves of<\/a>. And it\u2019s not like other companies won\u2019t 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 \u201cif everyone\u2019s special\u2026\u201d argument, the cable companies will operate under the \u201cif everyone\u2019s a crappy service provider, then no one\u2019s a crappy service provider\u201d motto. <\/p>\n

With this in place \u2014 along with the pay-for-play internet<\/a> \u2014 Comcast can collect on its customers\u2019 Netflix addiction on both ends<\/a>. The easy money will now be even easier, and no expense will be spared to ensure infrastructure upgrades and better customer service<\/strike> 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 \u201conly game in town\u201d structuring means never having to talk someone into a shitty plan. <\/p>\n

Even if Comcast isn\u2019t 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<\/a> of \u201cnetwork congestion.\u201d After all, Netflix chews up a ton of bandwidth, and Comcast has just bumped the speed at which this gets \u201cused up\u201d 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 \u201cUse more internet!\u201d \u2014 just as long as it gets a larger cut of the action. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s zero benefit for the consumer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m really glad I\u2019m not forced to be a Comcast or Time Warner customer, but if these companies get their way, there isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t the whole point of regulation to prevent these things from happening? No wonder an entire generation is cynical about pretty much everything.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comcast Says It’s Going To Slap All Of Its Customers With Data Caps, Makes Half-Hearted Attempt To Walk Back Earlier Statements When Backlash Kicks In | Techdirt 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[1539],"class_list":["post-32614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","tag-emergent-digital-practices","post_format-post-format-link"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-8u2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}