The FCC is still taking comments from the public about how much data you really use and what your experience with data caps is like.

The Federal Communications Commission is officially looking into broadband data caps and their impact on consumers. On Tuesday, the FCC approved a notice of inquiry to examine whether data caps harm consumers and competition, as well as why data caps persist “despite increased broadband needs” and the “technical ability to offer unlimited data plans,” as spotted earlier by Engadget.

Many internet plans come with a data cap that limits how much bandwidth you can use each month. If you go over the data cap, internet service providers will typically charge an extra fee or slow down your service. The FCC first started inviting consumers to comment on broadband data caps last June, hundreds of which you can now read on the agency’s website.

You can still share your experience with broadband data caps with the FCC through this form, which will ask for details about the name of your ISP, usage limits, and any challenges you’ve encountered due to the cap.

  • MyOpinion@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    They exist so that companies can extract additional dollars from each data line.

  • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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    1 month ago

    Biden’s FCC has been killing it, really nice to see them crack down on data caps with this and the standardized billing info

  • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Money.

    When something isn’t about money or power, then you can actually phrase it like it’s a surprise.

    • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 month ago

      Ah, so I can be surprised about the reason why I like pooping in the morning. At least until I get paid for doing it. Or elected.

  • Ech@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    and why they still exist

    Does that really require inquiry? It’s for more money, fucking obviously.

    • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 month ago

      “We spent six years investigating why a business would want to overcharge customers in order to make more money. What we found shocked us, because businesses were spending that money on finding way to make the world worse.”

  • solrize@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I want to know why upstream bandwidth is so limited too. I have about 300gb of data at home, not much at all by hoarder standards. But there is no decent way for me to back it up to a remote server, because of low upload speed.

    • bamboo@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      On cable it’s because they allocate significantly more bandwidth towards download than upload. They could allocate them equally but most customers that are mostly just streaming or playing games care only about the download since it means they can stream/download things faster.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        1 month ago

        This is a “if you build it, they will come” kind of thing. The Internet as we know it developed around the idea that the edge only consumes things. You don’t host content there. At most, you give it access to web 2.0 sites where people put their content and then it’s shared out from the central server.

        It wasn’t possible to build applications that were designed for the edge to spread the load around. It’s not just a bandwidth problem, either. The slow pace of IPv6 adoption plays a role, and from what I’ve gathered from using it with Charter, they’re only doing enough to make it work at the most basic level. The prefix they give doesn’t allow for subnetting, and it appears to be dynamically assigned and can change. Setup isn’t that hard, but it’s not as easy as it needs to be for mass adoption.

    • superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 month ago

      If you use something like borg backup the first upload will take you forever but after that all you have to upload is the data that changed. I had the same problem as you and that’s how I solved it.

      • solrize@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Yeah it would take multiple days and the connection usually doesn’t stay up that long. Any idea how well Borg deals with random disconnects and reconnects during a backup?

        I do use Borg and like it in general.

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          And only in the past couple years have we been hitting that limit. Maintaining backwards compliance has been more important for cable service. Anyone who had a real need would have used T-carrier service, fiber, or multiple bonded lines, depending on year and budget.

  • Dagnet@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Internet providers tried to implement data caps in my country but it got shot down, its sad you guys have to put up with that nonsense

    • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 month ago

      What’s more disgusting is that cell providers have data caps on tethering. Why the fuck it should matter if I’m using one device via another or how that’s even their business is beyond me. If I’m paying for data, just give me what I’m paying for. It shouldn’t matter how it’s distributed on my own private network/devices.

      AT&T and T-Mobile both lost hundreds/thousands of dollars from me because I canceled due to this nonsense.

      • Dagnet@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I remember experiencing that when I was in the US. Unlimited phone data is rare over here and I was having a blast with it in the US until I tethered my laptop with it to make videocalls to my ex. Two days later they send me a msg saying they will throttle my internet until next billing cycle, wth

      • IamSparticles@lemmy.zip
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        1 month ago

        If they let you use your phone for unlimited tethering, you have no incentive to also pay for their 5g home-wifi router.

    • sibachian@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      when i lived in Bangkok I had to pay for each local wifi IP from the standard router in my apartment which i had to buy from them in order to use a 4G internet subscription service.

      It’s even more ridiculous than the OP ridiculous greed shittification.

  • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    The caps don’t go up either, even though shit uses more data. Xfinity has been at ~1TB forever despite that fact that 4k video uses insane amounts of data now and that downloading 1 video game can easily take 300 GB.

    • GreyDawn@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I remember when the ISP said that we would never need 1TB, it’s like 1 million floppies. They knew we would be here needing that data when game downloads are now 150GB+

  • HorreC@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    this is being brought up from MSFS 2024, lot of nerds in planes were about to get hit with that limit and the FCC is like its time to shine!!