Routine Revelations

Comcast’s 1024 GB (1 TB) monthly data plan (data cap) does not provide enough data for an increasing number of people. The main reason is that an increasing number of services, like Netflix, are streaming video at 4K quality, and in the case of Netflix, it default is to stream at the highest quality. Comcast and I fundamentally disagree, in that Comcast says few people will actually be affected by the data cap.

Last week I was shocked when I received an email notice from Comcast that we had consumed 90% of our 1024 data for the month. Why does Comcast default the notification to 90% rather than 50%? The higher data consumption appears to coincide with an automatic and “free” increase of our bandwidth to 100 Mbps last month. Comcast says an increase in bandwidth does not automatically lead to increase data usage, but given that Netflix, and I assume other apps, default to the highest quality video I suspect we ended up viewing more 4K video this month than we have in the past.

Ever since receiving the email notification I have been closely monitoring our data usage, comparing network traffic stats to Comcast’s usage meter, and I think the usage meter is accurate, unlike an issue that occurred in October where the meter was wrongly indicating drastically higher consumption. In general, I think Comcast’s usage meter is insufficient in that it only shows a monthly total. If you have a cap and will automatically charge overages, I think you must at least provide daily stats. The worst part is that home owners don’t have a good or easy to use tools of their own to confirm Comcast’s data, leaving consumers at a disadvantage when trying to dispute Comcast’s data.

Comcast’s Usage Estimate calculator says a HD stream consumes 1.7 GB of data per hour, where as Netflix says that 1 hour of HD consumes 3 GB. Comcast and Netflix agree that one hour of 4K video consumes around 8 GB per hour. Using Netflix’s rate that HD consumes 3 GB per hour, Comcast’s claim that you can stream 21 GB per day of HD video is not correct. At 3 GB per hour, that’s 11 hours per day for 1024 GB per month.

Last night I watched 1 hour of CW Seed on my Apple TV that consumed 6 GB of data, suggesting to me that stream is UHD quality rather than HD and I don’t see a way to control the quality in the CW Seed app.

If you only have one video stream in a house, 11 hours is probably enough, but if you increase that to two streams, you are down to 5 hours per day per stream and that is not hard to exceed, particularly if you unknowingly watch some video in 4K. If you stream all video at 4K you can only watch a little over 4 hours per day, which is tight for one stream, and impossible for two.

You can control the quality of the video streams for some services, but you have to do so per application/service. For example, you can configure Netflix to only stream at Standard quality, but who wants to do that if they spent money on a HD TV? And, if you use more than one app, as many do with say Disney+ or Amazon Prime, you might not be able to change the video quality or you will have to spend a lot of time changing settings in indivdiual apps. And again… you spent good money on a high quality TV, you rightly expect to be able to see the best video!

Comcast does provide an unlimited plan for an additional $50 per month. The current cap appears intended to drive more, if not most, home owners to pay that $50 more per month. (I personally don’t do online gaming, but I bet that can consume a significant amount of data per month). In my case, Comcast kindly increased our bandwidth to 100 Mbps at no additional cost…. but that’s not entirely true since I now appear to be in the position of having to pay $50 more per month!

I continue to monitor my home Internet data usage closely since receiving notice from Comcast that we are near the 1024 GB monthly cap. I enabled Traffic Stats on my home router so that I can compare that to Comcast’s usage meter. Traffic stats is an approximation because it doesn’t only show traffic coming in from the Internet but also traffic within my home network, but I think it can give me an indication of whether Comcast’s usage meter is accurate. (If caps are going to be a thing, Home Routers need a feature that shows download and upload traffic to the Internet.)

After the first day, it seems the Comcast usage meter is accurate. If that is true, somehow we doubled our Internet data usage and the only thing I know changed is that our bandwidth jumped to 100 Mbps in the last month. The usage meter only shows data going back to June, so it looks to me like Comcast just started enforcing this data cap in our area, probably coinciding with the increase to 100 Mbps. Something doesn’t feel right, my usage as around 775 GB per month and with no other change other than the bandwidth increase I don’t know what we have been doing differently. It’s as if Netflix detected I have more bandwidth and decided on its own to use it and I don’t see an option to throttle it back to 1080 or 720.

The data cap is annoying, and frankly I think the lack in detail in Comcast’s reporting is a problem that needs to be addressed by regulation. If you have a cap you can’t just report a monthly total, I think you have to at least show daily usage. Given that increase in streaming providers supporting 4K video, 1024 GB (1 TB) per month is really not enough.

Comcast will be happy to remove the cap if I pay them $50 more per month. I will probably end up paying that for the benefit of not needing to constantly monitor data usage.

The campaign slogan for Donald Trump was Make America Great Again, iconized by red hats. We ought to have substantive conversation about what is America and how it might be great, but we don’t.

Here is a problem, greatness is not something one can self-declare. My constantly saying that I am great does not make me so, that makes me arrogant. Greatness is only determined by people other than oneself, and the same is true for countries. This is something Americans don’t seem to understand, but it is a truth.

Unfortunately, I think most people add the words “for me” to the end of MAGA, which ironically is the exact opposite to a quote from a Democrat President, John F. Kennedy. A quote that frankly conservatives should recognize as their own rather than a liberal’s. Please think about that when you complain about entitlement.

We ought to aspire to greatness, but that aspiration needs to be framed in the understanding of how greatness is truly determined.

Today I received an email from Comcast informing me that we have consumed 90% of our 1 TB data alotment for the month. While I had been vaguely aware that Comcast has data caps, I had not encountered an issue with it until today.

What I find odd is that we have been averaging about 650 GB of data per month, and now mid-month Comcast is saying we have already consumed about 900 GB? What changed? Frankly, it doesn’t make sense.

Coincidentally, I noticed that mid last month our Internet download speed increased from around 70 mbps to 100 mbps. There seems to be a relationship between the increase in our bandwidth and how much Comcast claims we are now using. I didn’t ask for the bandwidth increase. I am wondering whether now that our speed is faster the streaming services we use have flipped over to higher data rate video streaming than we’ve been using previously?

What is frustrating is that the data usage meter Comcast provides is just a total consumption per month, it doesn’t show me a per day or even per week breakdown. In fact, I don’t know how I have any way to confirm that what Comcast is claiming I am consuming is what I am actually using!

Comcast provides 2 months of “free” data overage before they will start charging me $10 for each 50 GB we go over the cap per month, so I don’t have to do anything drastic right now. Right now I don’t even know how to begin to fight this thing, I am going to have to study the topic and see if there is something that I can implement on my end to show how much data we actually do consume per month.