Mediacom, a cable company with approximately 1.4 million Internet customers in 22 countries, is calling for heavy uploaders to reduce their data usage – even if users are far below their monthly data packs.
Mediacom’s fastest internet plan offers gigabit download speeds and 50 Mbps upload speeds with a monthly data pack of 6 TB. But as Stop the Cap wrote in a detailed report on Wednesday, the ISP ‘has been reached[ing] out to a growing number of the heavy loaders and tell them to reduce usage or face a speed valve or the possible closure of their account. Mediacom has told Ars that it is “more often than not” in contact with heavy loaders “due to the increased use caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company said heavy loaders “are below their total bandwidth usage allowance but still have a negative impact on Mediacom’s network.”
Under Mediacom’s terms and conditions, the company charges $ 10 fees for each additional 50 GB block used by customers exceeding the data space. But users can be warned about their usage long before they risk too many fees. One user in East Moline, Illinois, who described the predicament in a DSLReports forum in early January, said they paid for the 6TB plan “to make sure we do not go down the drain” and never used more than 4 TB. The user wrote:
So, today called a call from the Mediacom division for fraud and abuse. The representative told me that they call customers who have ‘higher than average band consumption’ as they have network problems. I quickly checked my account and used just over 2.5 TB last month. He told me my upload was 450 GB higher than their average, and if I did not reduce my usage, they would speed me up or disconnect me. I argued that I used less than half of the total data allowed by my plan, but he said that my 1.2 TB upload was too much and that it was my warning.
Another gigabit user in Missouri, named Cory, told Stop the Cap that the 6TB monthly limit is’ much more than I’ll ever use, but I still got a warning letter claiming that I’m upload too much. I discovered that I have been using about 900 GB for the past two years. months, I make a cloud backup of my computer. I can send files at a maximum of about 50 Mbps, which they say infringes on other clients in my area. I do not understand it. ‘
Too much use according to “Mediacom’s ruling”
Letters sent by Mediacom to heavy loaders state: “Your account usage is greater than 99.5% of all Service Customers. Due to your excessive use, you are affecting the network of Mediacom and other users of the Service. “
The letter further states that it is a ‘violation’ of Mediacom’s acceptable usage policy to use ‘excessive bandwidth, either upstream or downstream, which, according to Mediacom’s ruling, places an unusually large load on the network or exceeds normal use. . the right to make excessive bandwidth consumption available to Mediacom in any way. “
Mediacom gave the Federal Communications Commission a little more detail in response to customer complaints. A letter from Mediacom to the FCC states that the company’s “network is built to use more downstream than upstream use.” Mediacom’s letter to the FCC also describes the data sheet as’ a large channel with a smaller channel in it … Due to historical trends, the smaller channel can be used upstream, while the rest of the channel is reserved for downstream. ‘ The use of heavy uploads may emphasize that ‘smaller channel’, which means that customers ‘may be under the total allowance for data consumption, but may still have a negative impact on the network.’
Mediacom blames the pandemic
Even without the overall data packages, Mediacom’s Internet plans have built-in limits for uploading. While the gigabit download plan limits the uploads to 50 Mbps, the 60 Mbps download plan limits uploads to just 5 Mbps and the 100 Mbps download plan limits the uploads to 10 Mbps. The 60 / 5Mbps plan has a monthly limit of 200 GB, and the 100 / 10Mbps plan has a 1TB cap.
We asked Mediacom why it did not upgrade its network sufficiently to fully support the upload speeds and data allocations that customers pay for, but we received no response. New versions of the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS), which has been heavily scrutinized by the cable industry, can support symmetrical 10 Gbps download and upload speeds. Even an earlier version of the DOCSIS 3.1 standard that is now widely used theoretically allows 10 Gbps and 1 Gbps upload speeds. But the cable industry has slowed down the upload speed.
In contact with Ars, Mediacom pointed to statistics on cable industry showing the growth of 31.8 percent in downstream traffic and 51.1 percent growth in upstream traffic since the March 2020 pandemic increased. Thomas Larsen, spokesperson for Mediacom, also told us:
Given the increase in traffic during the pandemic, we reached out more frequently than before to the customers who fall into the top 0.5 percent of power users. This is not the easiest topic to explain, as internet usage is growing rapidly in work from home / studying from home, so it is difficult to give an exact number that a customer in the category of 0, 5 percent instead, because the number changes from month to month.
Ideally, we can help the client identify the cause of the upstream overuse issue and help them take steps to manage it. We can offer business class services designed to support greater upload capacity, but that’s really not the point of this exercise.
Larsen also has contact with heavy download users as they negatively impact other consumers. “Because our network is designed to handle significantly more downstream traffic, it happens less frequently.”
On the question of whether customers who do not reduce their consumption will experience interruption or termination of account, Larsen said: ‘Use that has a negative impact on Mediacom’s network is prohibited and Mediacom may implement the necessary network programs to address such use. or terminate or terminate the service. . “
ISPs linking is ‘not an option’
Mediacom’s handling of uploaders is reminiscent of the steps Cox Communications took earlier in the pandemic. Cox has in some cases imposed delays in the environment and reduced the upload speed of the gigabit download plan from 35 Mbps to 10 Mbps. Mediacom doesn’t seem to have done anything so drastic, but it’s frustrating for customers to tell users to reduce their upload usage when they’re not even close.
“If there were any other internet options besides terribly slow AT&T DSL, with a small data pack, I would turn on a heartbeat,” writes the Mediacom customer in Illinois who posted on the DSLReports forum. “Unfortunately, it’s not an option to work with me and at home without usable internet.”