Will the FCC put a limit on internet data caps?

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.

  • bamboo@lemm.ee
    231·
    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
      1·
      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.