For years, we as consumers have become accustomed to paying higher rates to accommodate for data caps set in place by our Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These data caps have been justified under the defense that without them, the ISPs would not be able to handle the greatly increased strain that would come from consumers not limiting their own usage. During this global pandemic, many ISPs including Comcast have removed their data caps to allow users to stay at home without having to worry about going over their allotted data usage.
Comcast has reported that this greater demand has increased their uploading traffic by 32% and their downloading traffic by 18%. With all this increased traffic, consumers would expect Comcast to be struggling to maintain service with all the new strain on their systems, but Comcast seems to be doing just fine. This raises the question that if they are able to survive without problems while removing their data caps, why do those caps need to exist in the first place.
It becomes obvious that there is no need to cap consumer data and that the only reason these caps are set in place is to increase revenue. Covid-19 has damaged the global economy greatly but as we start to rebuild after this pandemic, we need to question the necessity and ethical consequences of many previous business practices that only harm the consumer for increased profits.
Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200420/06583844328/fancy-that-comcasts-network-holding-up-fine-without-usage-caps.shtml
This is actually a surprising detail! I also would have thought that Comcast set a data cap in order to ensure that it doesn’t exceed its capacity limits, but if that is not the case then perhaps Comcast should have been more honest with its customers. After reading more into the matter, it appears that Comcast does allow you to exceed your data “cap” by paying more, which has to be where the unjustified profit is coming from, but in that case it doesn’t fit the real meaning of data cap. You can use more data but they will charge more for it, and that makes sense to me seeing as they are indeed a company and that’s how businesses work, but I don’t know why they bothered trying to hide their real reasoning. I think people would pay up regardless.
This is a very interesting point! As an Econ major, the idea of revenue grabs within this topic greatly interests me, and this is a great time to evaluate the legitimacy of ISP claims of delegating data streams. Although I believe that the argument regarding companies “handling increased strain” has been successfully disproven given the lack of struggles during the coronavirus, I think that companies have an inherent right to provide different service tiers to increase revenue. For example, we don’t consider it unethical for Apple to sell different qualities of cell phones at different prices. Additionally, the increased freedom ISPs have without net neutrality regulations has allowed them to tailor their services during this pandemic (https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-crisis-vindicates-the-fccs-net-neutrality-rollback-11586906742). That said, regarding ethical discussions, we might consider ISPs a bit differently as they regulate access to other sites and could potentially limit access to information. Perhaps the market is ripe for a disruptive innovation; a company could entice customers with efficient, high speed internet that is sold at a low cost. Overall, only time will tell.