I started to install a new game tonight when I realized I was getting close to my data cap again which triggered me to create a petition. I think it's non sense that companies like Comcast in America get away with charging an extra $50 a month to remove arbitrary data caps when in most countries they pay half the price we are and their speeds are double. These greedy folks need to be stopped so I thought I'd swing by here to see if I could get some support from you guys. I'm doing this to at the very lease raise awareness but to ultimately get the data cap removed. The likelihood of these greedy bastards changing their ways is unlikely but I think we should at least try. Thanks in advance for your support.
https://www.change.org/removedatacaps
Comcast is terrible. Thank all Gods that I am in an area with a choice and could switch to Verizon. Not that they are wonderful in all respects but certainly far better.
Let us assume for the sake of argument that the overall cost of internet access will remain the same. This, by definition, means that an elimination of surcharges for unlimited use of data will mean that the basic charge for everyone (including you) will go up. An unsympathetic person would argue, not without reason, that every person with normal usage will be subsidizing the outliers that have substantially more usage than the average person. This is, of course, the primary argument in favor of allowing companies like Comcast to have multi-tier pricing.
How would you support your petition against this argument? Why do you consider it greedier to have multi-tier pricing as distinct from a single higher price?
At this point I neither agree not disagree with you but as someone with a background in economics I do consider the issue a bit less straightforward than it might seem.
The argument has no legs to stand on because the payments received for said services to begin with are well over what's required to sustain the services and their employees. The data cap fee and policy is an arbitrary number introduced to find way to make Comcast more money. We're in a sad state of affairs when countries with half the money and capability that we have are offering internet speeds twice as fast and half the price and have been for 15 years.
Thank you for your responses.
Not sure if you are factoring this in with your international market comparison, but implementing Internet service in a small densely populated country is a lot cheaper than doing so in a huge country with a lower population density. When you talk about who is subsidizing whom, the customers in the big cities are usually subsidizing rural customers. If these services were entirely pay-for-your-own, huge chunks of the US and Canada would be entirely without Internet, phones or even electricity.
Don't be fooled into thinking that the $50 data cap fee is being used to cover rural customers. Comcast is using this money to stricly to line their executives pockets. This reminds me of the days when cellular carriers tried to convince everyone that they NEEDED to pay per minute for service and long distance companies were ripping people off to make a call outside of their area. It's all bullshit.
Celandor said:Not sure if you are factoring this in with your international market comparison, but implementing Internet service in a small densely populated country is a lot cheaper than doing so in a huge country with a lower population density. When you talk about who is subsidizing whom, the customers in the big cities are usually subsidizing rural customers. If these services were entirely pay-for-your-own, huge chunks of the US and Canada would be entirely without Internet, phones or even electricity.
No country is densely populated. Well except India.
The US has massive area's of un-populated lands. Most of the population, as with many places around the world, is located in major cities.
Any government subsidizing would not be passed on to private for-profit companies to manage.
It would be handled through taxation of services and regulation of internet companies.
If anything, rural subsidized accounts might be the ones getting data-caps, not full paying customers.
Data caps are mostly a back-handed corrupt practice that large communications conglomerates have paid many legislators and lobbyists boatloads of cash for. It allows ISP's to oversell their product. The main issue is there is not a true competitive market for ISPs. Most area's are dominated by one provider, thus no real competiton to drive down pricing. Thus the consumer gets gouged.