FCC chair to investigate exactly how much everyone hates data caps - ISPs clearly have technical ability to offer unlimited data, chair's office says.

Felemuso@feddit.de to Technology@lemmy.ml – 7 points –
FCC chair to investigate exactly how much everyone hates data caps
arstechnica.com

tl;dr:

FCC chair to investigate exactly how much everyone hates data caps ISPs clearly have technical ability to offer unlimited data, chair's office says.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wants the FCC to open a formal inquiry into how data caps harm Internet users and why broadband providers still impose the caps.

The inquiry could eventually lead to the FCC regulating how Internet service providers such as Comcast impose limits on data usage.

"As we emerge from the pandemic, there are many lessons to learn about what worked and what didn't work, especially around what it takes to keep us all connected. When we need access to the Internet, we aren't thinking about how much data it takes to complete a task, we just know it needs to get done. It's time the FCC take a fresh look at how data caps impact consumers and competition."

13

Data caps are literally a scam. Most ISPs throttle your speeds anyways so your never reaching their "gigabyte speeds", but also throw in a data cap to get extra money out of you. It's not like their going to run out of bandwidth or anything...

Why even go through this crap? They already know that data caps provide no advantage to the customer so why would any sane person defend them? They are just providing room for fake responses.

Good! Fucking thieves took hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money to roll out nationwide fiber and pretty much did fuck all instead. Nice to see the FCC actually get off its ass and do something other than fellating corporations.

I live in an area with only 2 ISPs to choose from: AT&T or Comcast, and they both have data caps. The FCC has a publicly available Data Cap Experience Form on their site basically all you do is write a paragraph summarizing your experience with data caps.

If anyone wants help, fill out the form and let the FCC know much you hate data caps.

Look at you, mister fancy pants with your choice between TWO crappy ISPs. While us over here have one choice for a crappy ISP.

Can't believe you have datacaps on fiber still. For a long time no company has dared. They fiddle with bandwidth but in theory you could use you bandwidth for the 30days and that is the cap

Btw this is not a thing where I live, no one here would pay for a plan with a data cap.

So are they going to request comments from citizens, come to the conclusion that everyone loves data caps, and then later have it be revealed that most of the responses were fake?

From the form:

and any other information that describes the benefits or challenges that you have experienced due to data caps

There's no way anybody could POSSIBLY benefit from being artificially limited for no reason. Why even include that?

Companies benefit from being able to hobble their customer's experience.