Canadians, living under a regime of three national wireless carriers (Bell, Rogers, and Telus) pay some of the highest wireless prices in the world. A new plan announced today from Rogers Communications is unlikely to change that.

“Introducing Rogers Infinite – Unlimited Data plans for Infinite Possibilities,” or so claims Rogers’ website.

Canadians’ initial enthusiasm and excitement for Rogers’ new “unlimited data plans” was quickly tempered by the accompanying fine print that makes it clear the plans may be free of overlimit fees, but very much limit their usability once the data allowance runs out. Customers can pool data with family and friends, but Rogers did not mention exactly how.

Rogers Infinite oddly offers three different price tiers, based on… usage, which is strange for an “unlimited” plan:

• Infinite +10 offers 10 GB of data at traditional 4G LTE speed, bundled with unlimited calling and texting for $75 a month.
• Infinite +20 offers 20 GB of data at traditional 4G LTE speed, bundled with unlimited calling and texting for $95 a month.
• Infinite +50 offers 50 GB of data at traditional 4G LTE speed, bundled with unlimited calling and texting for $125 a month.

Those prices are steep by American standards, but Rogers also incorporates fine print that few carriers south of the border would attempt. First, Mobile Syrup reports included calls and texts must be from a Canadian number to a Canadian number. Extra fees may apply if you contact your friends in America and beyond. The “infinite” runs out when your allowance does. After that, it may take an infinitely long time to use your device because Rogers will throttle upload and download speeds to a maximum of 256 kbps for the rest of the billing cycle. American carriers, in contrast, typically only throttle customers on busy cell towers after exceeding an average of 20-50 GB of usage, although some mandate a throttle based entirely on usage. If customers want more high-speed data, they can purchase a Rogers Speed Pass for $15 and receive an extra 3 GB of high-speed data. In contrast, T-Mobile offers U.S. customers an unlimited line for $60 with no speed throttle until usage exceeds 50 GB a month. That is less than half the cost of Rogers’ Infinite +50 plan for an equal amount of high-speed data.

More fine print:

Rogers Infinite data plans include 10 GB, 20 GB or 50 GB of data at max speed on the Rogers network, extended coverage areas within Canada, and Roam Like Home destinations (see rogers.com/roamlikehome). You will continue to have access to data services with no overage beyond the max speed allotment at a reduced speed of up to 256 kilobits per second (for both upload and download) until the end of your current billing cycle. Applications such as email, web browsing, apps, and audio/video streaming will continue to function at a reduced speed which will likely impact your experience. We will send you a text message notifying you when you have used 90% and 100% of the max speed allotment included in your plan with the option to purchase a Speed Pass to add more max speed data to your plan. In all cases, usage is subject to the Rogers Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy.

Online video-driven broadband usage has reached an all-time high, increasing 27% in just one year, with internet-only customers now consuming an average of 395.7 GB — almost double the average 209.5 GB consumed by households that still have traditional cable television.

The OpenVault Broadband Industry Report, issued quarterly, reports that significant differences in usage between households with a traditional cable TV package and those that have cord-cut make it clear online video is driving much of the increased usage. To maximize your usage of the internet, you may use web directories like 세상의모든링크 to easily find the websites that you need.

“Cord cutting behavior is impacting bundling and bandwidth consumption,” OpenVault explained. “Service providers rode a significant wave over the past ten years with triple and double-play bundling of services. There is evidence to suggest that wave has crested, as more consumers opt for internet-only packages.”

The results suggest the one effective tool providers still have to curtail heavy video streaming is mandatory data caps or consumption-based billing. An internet provider with a low data cap deters online video streaming, protecting traditional cable television revenue.

In the last year, the number of “power users” (those using 1 TB per month) doubled to 4.2% of all subscribers, with “power users of the future” (2+ TB of usage a month) more than doubling from 0.16% last year to 0.38% this year. “Power users” of 1 TB or more account for 6.5% of all internet-only households vs. 2.2% in homes still subscribing to a bundle of TV and internet service.

The clearest evidence of how data caps deter usage is found among “power users” that use 1 TB or more of data each month. With several large providers enforcing a 1 TB data allowance, OpenVault found dramatic differences in usage patterns between uncapped and capped customers. As customers become wary of exceeding their 1 TB cap, many “power users” ration usage out of fear of incurring overlimit fees, especially towards the end of a billing cycle.

Subscribers treat an assigned “data allowance” more like a hard data cap. OpenVault found that with flat-rate/unlimited plans, the percentage of power users is 32% greater than those with usage-based billing, and the percentage of subscribers using over 2 TB is 76% greater on unlimited plans where customers don’t have to fear using up their allowance.

Cable One has the highest average revenue per customer of any publicly traded cable company in the United States, with the average customer paying Cable One $70.80 a month, mostly for internet access.

The company’s first quarter earnings growth of 5.5% reflect the company’s recent price increases and regime of low-allowance data caps, which have pushed 10 percent of its customers to pay an extra $40 a month to bring back unlimited access. Others are upgrading to costlier, faster tiers with more generous usage allowances.

“During the first quarter, we saw roughly 50% of our new customers choose our 200 Mbps or higher speed service and nearly 10% of our new customers opted to purchase our unlimited data plan,” said Julia Laulis, Cable One CEO.

Laulis

Cable One’s 200 Mbps plan (with a 600 GB data cap) costs $65 a month after promotions expire. A DOCSIS 3.0 modem lease fee of $10.50 applies. A $2.75 monthly internet service surcharge may apply. If a customer wants unlimited access to avoid overlimit fees, there is an additional charge of $40 a month (a 5 TB cap applies to the “unlimited plan”). Customers choosing a 200 Mbps broadband-only package with unlimited data will pay up to $118.25 a month.

Cable One’s broadband customers are concerned about staying within the data caps to avoid overlimit fees. While Comcast and Charter Spectrum customers consume over 300-400 GB of data per month (Comcast has a 1 TB cap, Spectrum only sells unlimited service), Cable One customers use an average of 290 GB, with usage growing at a 30-35% annual rate. Many Cable One customers have little choice either. Laulis noted that Cable One’s DSL competition is not very relevant when customers want to watch streaming video. Speeds are often so slow, customers do not have a good experience streaming HD video over DSL.

Cable One is also shedding its video customers in record numbers, with just 305,000 of its cable TV customers left. More than 29,000 departed year over year, and that number continues to rise as consumers rebel against the company’s high prices and unwillingness to negotiate.

MoffettNathanson warned that Cable One’s high pricing may eventually price itself out of broadband growth, as consumers elect to sign up with telephone companies instead. But many of its service areas are still served by low-speed DSL, and despite Cable One’s high cost, the company added 10,600 new internet customers in the last quarter.

In addition to raising prices, the company also plans to spend between $9-11 million to change its name from Cable One to Sparklight over the next two years.

OpenVault’s technology can automatically slow down “abusers” who use too much internet service.

Cable companies looking for ways to raise prices for their broadband services without spending money on network upgrades may be interested in OpenVault’s “Revenue Accelerator” — a cloud based internet usage measurement system that can help push subscribers into higher priced tiers or warn them when they are about to face punitive overlimit fees for exceeding their monthly usage allowance.

OpenVault’s goal is to monetize customers’ internet usage, making cable operators certain each customer is paying as much as possible for internet service without facing customer-displeasing overlimit fees from exceeding their monthly usage allowance.

“All these solutions are designed really to do of a couple things,” said OpenVault CEO and founder Mark Trudeau, in an interview with FierceTelecom. “One is to drive incremental revenues, and two is to drive costs [for cable operators] down, all with the idea of increasing profit for cable operators.”

OpenVault will collect customers’ usage behaviors, reporting back every 15 minutes how much bandwidth each customer is using, as well as enforcing cable company policies to automatically slow down “abusers” who are sending and receiving more than their fair share of data. Enforced network management, built into the platform, can automatically punish customers based on violations of the ISP’s Acceptable Use Policies. Usage violators are then reported to the cable operator, targeted for future marketing campaigns to upgrade their service to a more expensive tier to avoid further time-outs on the internet slow lane.

The technology is cheap to deploy, relying on a set of command lines inserted into cable modem termination systems that collect Internet Protocol Detail Record data and send it on to OpenVault.

“We measure all that for the operators and then what our Revenue Accelerator product does is it helps them micro-target their upgrade candidates,” Trudeau said. “This can have just really massive impacts on their revenues, to be able to truly not just micro-target the upgrade candidates, but also provide their reps with the ammunition they need and the visibility they need into their customer’s behavior and into their homes so they can intelligently talk to a subscriber.”

OpenVault claims the implementation of usage based billing and data caps are immediate money-makers for operators, both from current customers forced to upgrade to avoid the cap and from overall usage billing that delivers an immediate payday to cable operators without having to invest in expensive upgrades or service improvements.

“In real-number terms, evidence shows an immediate return as some OpenVault customers have enjoyed as much as seven percent of subscribers upgrading their service within 90 days of usage based billing deployment,” the company wrote on its blog. “For some operators, this translates into increased ARPU (average revenue per unit) of over $5 per subscriber per month. OpenVault customers that have deployed usage based billing have experienced increased ARPU ranging from $1.50 up to $12 per subscriber per month.”

Usage caps for one and all.

Comcast, which insists on placing a 1 TB (1,000 GB) usage cap on most (but not all) of its broadband customers, is predicting explosive growth in broadband usage as customers connect more devices to their internet connections.

“[If] you look at in terms of just overall consumption, just at a high level, you look at the top 10% of our customers, just how much they use, they are using 20 or more connected devices,” said Comcast Cable president and CEO David N. Watson on a company conference call. “And it’s a tremendous amount of consumption that we have. And I think that’s where the market is going. There is going to be more consumption, more connected devices.”

Comcast’s growth forecasts suggest the company schedules regular network upgrades, although it has only adjusted usage allowances three times in the last decade:

• Comcast introduced a 250 GB usage cap in 2008 that carried no overlimit penalty but persistent violators lost their Comcast broadband service.
• Comcast raised the cap 300 GB in 2013 and implemented an overlimit fee.
• Comcast raised the cap to 1 TB in 2016 and began promoting its Unlimited Data Option as an insurance policy against bill shock from overlimit fees.

“It is important to know that more than 99 percent of our customers do not use a terabyte of data and are not likely to be impacted by this plan, so they can continue to stream, surf, and download without worry,” claims Comcast on its website. As of December, 2017, “Xfinity Internet customers’ median monthly data usage was 131 GB per month during the past six months.”

Such claims should make customers wonder why Comcast needs a usage allowance of any kind if these claims are true. A 2016 study suggests Comcast may have more heavy users than it is willing to admit. The research firm iGR found average broadband usage that year was already at 190 GB and rising. There is no third-party verification of providers’ usage statistics or usage measurement tools, but there are public statements from Comcast officials that suggest the company faces a predictable upgrade cycle to deal with rising usage.

“We increase the capacity every 18 to 24 months,” confirmed Watson.

Upgrading is also a crucial part of Comcast’s ability to charge premium prices for its internet service.

“Not all broadband networks are created equal,” Watson said. “If you are providing a better solution in broadband, your pricing can reflect that.”

For Comcast customers using a terabyte or more in a month, after two courtesy months of penalty fees being waived, Comcast will recommend signing up for its Unlimited Data Option, which costs $50 a month. If you do not enroll and exceed your allowance a third time, the company will bill you overlimit fees: $10 for each additional block of 50 GB of usage. The maximum overlimit penalty in any single month is a whopping $200.

Critics of Comcast’s data caps point out that Charter — the nation’s second largest cable operator, has no usage caps at all. Optimum (Altice) also does not impose data caps. Those that do often copy Comcast’s data allowances and overlimit fees exactly — all to deal with so-called “data hogs” that the companies themselves claim represent fewer than 1% of subscribers.