Re:The FCC wants to regulate broadband data caps again
by seanp2k2 on Wednesday June 21, 2023 @11:08PM
(#36427576)
An even simpler explanation for why they don't do this is because they don't need to. The vast majority of consumers likely don't know any better anyway, and even if they did, it's not like they have other viable options to switch to.
Re:The FCC wants to regulate broadband data caps again
by AnthonyMouse on Thursday June 22, 2023 @03:04AM
(#36428891)
Doing that would make them money. They would charge the same amount they do now for what they provide now, but remove the data caps. This might cause some people to use the network more and increase congestion, creating a market for a higher-priced plan that puts all your traffic at the front of the line.
It would also both drive and pay for network upgrades, because the people paying the higher price would expect to get the full speed they were sold, so the ISP would have to keep the network at least fast enough to handle all of that traffic. And could afford to because they have more revenue.
Then the better network is faster even for the people paying the lower price at times outside of peak hours.
If you do backups at night and send 50TB/month but only at times when the network would otherwise be idle, why should your connection be slower than anyone else's during the day? Likewise, even if you did send a lot of data during peak hours, what would be the point of throttling you at night when the network has capacity to spare?
It only make sense to throttle people during peak hours who send a lot of traffic during peak hours. But that's what already happens if you don't do anything, because the links get saturated during peak hours and people have to share them so the people who are using the network when it's saturated have slower speeds.
What they could do is sell a more expensive plan where you get prioritization during congestion. Then if you don't use the network during peak hours or don't care about it being slow at those times you can save money, and if you want your connection to be fast all the time you can pay more.
AFAICT the reason they don't do this is it requires admitting that their network is heavily oversubscribed and they're too cheap to upgrade it, which is kind of a PR fail.