Heavy Internet users unplugged by US cable company

reply to post by jstnumber73


To my knowledge, they never mention it. At least not overtly. It's always hidden in the fine print. Dirty fellas. They never even mention its megabits, not megabytes. All they do is proclaim "Mb", and bank-in on your confusion.

[edit on 10-9-2007 by Beachcoma]

Originally posted by stumason

Originally posted by tyranny22
OMG!

People pay for a service. Is it our fault other's don't take advantage of it as much as us? Provide more bandwidth. That's their JOB. Thats the service we pay for!

Its not that easy. Apart from putting more fibre in, which is expensive as hell, the only way is new technology which is only coming to frution now.

you bring up a GREAT point. All of the phone / cable services over the past decade were given HUGE tax breaks, because they promised they would take it upon themselves to upgrade all the networks to fiber optics and etc.

guess what.. that never happened. Here is a link and explanation:

www.niemanwatchdog.org...

The head of Teletruth, a consumer advocacy group, writes that in spite of huge payments and other financial incentives to the country’s monopolistic telecommunication giants, the United States is 16th in broadband Internet technology and falling. How did things go wrong in your state?

By 2006, according to telecommunication companies’ own documents, 86 million customers in the United States should have received 45 Mbps service. In fact, South Korea and Japan do even better: they routinely offer 100 Mbps connections in both directions, uploading and downloading, for around $40 per month. But in the United States, the best connections top out at 1/3 this speed and cost 400% more—and very few places even have access to the new fiber-optic services being offered. The United States once led the world in Web technology. What happened?

The answer is, the merger of the phone companies that control the phone networks decreased competition. Instead of deploying the high-speed fiber-optic lines they promised, they were content to collect profits, tinker with existing copper connections instead of rewiring, and roll out inferior DSL services. The FCC defines anything above 200 Kbps as broadband (1000 Kbps = 1 Mbps), allowing them to claim that Americans have broadband access. However, this definition is a politically-driven embarrassment for technologists, the equivalent of two tin-cans with string.

Phone companies have documented plans to wire 86 million homes with fiber optics by 2006 but the United States had only 38 million high-speeds line of any sort at the end 2004. And "high speed" in this case is defined as anything faster than 200 Kbps in one direction. The most common U.S. broadband access runs at 768 Kbps top speed in one direction, hundreds of times slower than the routine 100 Mbps, bi-directional service in other countries, even though consumers in those countries pay about the same price: an average of $40 a month.

so again, the problem is NOT with the consumers, but with the companies and the government that let them get by with these lies (that actually cost consumers LOTS of extra money).

I would LOVE to see someone argue this away...

if i were him i would sue them, this is one hundred per cent guaranted he'll win (if his activities were legal)

I like the comcast's policy a lot *lol in essence it says:

"we do what the hell we want we would like to inform you, now pay your bill"

Is it the 21st century or just the late 60's? I'm lost on this one

Well, it's bs on Comcasts part. People pay enough money for it, and it's supposed to be unlimited. Comcast service is an example of what you need to use large download transfers, so I'll bet it's pretty common. If you're just on the net to check e-mail and do some research, etc., and to not play mmorpgs or download, you don't necessarily that kind of internet speed.

I have Verizon FIOS 20/dl 5/up And i only pay 40 bucks a month and i dl 24 7 @ around 2.4 megabytes a second! They dont mess with my connection Whats next after Fiber optics?

Originally posted by scientist
you bring up a GREAT point. All of the phone / cable services over the past decade were given HUGE tax breaks, because they promised they would take it upon themselves to upgrade all the networks to fiber optics and etc.

guess what.. that never happened. Here is a link and explanation:

www.niemanwatchdog.org...

---------------------

so again, the problem is NOT with the consumers, but with the companies and the government that let them get by with these lies (that actually cost consumers LOTS of extra money).

I would LOVE to see someone argue this away...

All the networks are fibre optic, except for the last leg into the consumer house. If your on cable, it will be fibre from the street cabinet. Fibre doesn't magically equal high speed, you know. An electrical connection can run up too 140 Mb/s.

There are plenty of technical reasons why you cannot have fibre into your house and if you want someone to "explain this away", I'll be more than happy, seeing as it is my job.

Originally posted by stumason
All the networks are fibre optic, except for the last leg into the consumer house.

There are plenty of technical reasons why you cannot have fibre into your house and if you want someone to "explain this away", I'll be more than happy, seeing as it is my job.

I'm not interested in technical reasons for anything, when promises were already made:

Phone companies have documented plans to wire 86 million homes with fiber optics by 2006

that doesnt say anything about a "last leg." In fact, it says the opposite, it says HOMEs will get fiber optic connections. Now I can understand why we haven't and how much it would cost, and the technical implications, etc. etc.

The bottom line is that this thread is about people who hog too much bandwidth, yet the same company complaining made a legal obligation to have faster speeds anyway, which would have rendered the original bandwidth negligible.

Originally posted by scientist
I'm not interested in technical reasons for anything, when promises were already made:

Well, if your not interested in "why" fibre to your house is technically a complete waste of time and is so cost prohibitive, then why the bitching?

In order to use fibre, you need an optical device to send and recieve the signal. Also, like I said, a electircal conection using coaxial cable can give you a speed of 140Mb/s. The Mux in the cabinet will be connected to the network via an STM-1 link, which can be either fibre or electrical, it does not matter. However, if you want a a superfast connection into your home, the cabinet itself would require even more bandwidth, requiring more fibre to connect it to the network.

The cost of laying fibre in the UK comes to about $90,000/KM. Not sure about the US, but I would assume it is around the same mark. Now, imagine this cost on a national scale. No Telecomms firm in the world can afford to fibre every household., especially in today's climate where margins are shrinking and cost cutting is being done. The bubble burst of 2001 really hurt the Telecoms industry.

Firms are improving bandwidth, but this is using DWDM technology on the Core network to maximise existing fibre capacity without laying more cables.. This is being done now. But until the core network is upgraded, it is stupid to allow people to download 100's of GB's each without asking them to pay attention to the fair use policy. Even with the increasing bandwidth, you won't just be able to download excessive amounts as there is only finite capacity.

Originally posted by scientist

Phone companies have documented plans to wire 86 million homes with fiber optics by 2006

that doesnt say anything about a "last leg." In fact, it says the opposite, it says HOMEs will get fiber optic connections. Now I can understand why we haven't and how much it would cost, and the technical implications, etc. etc.

When was that plan put in place? Do you know anything about the industry at all? I bet that plan was announced pre-2001.

Originally posted by scientist
The bottom line is that this thread is about people who hog too much bandwidth, yet the same company complaining made a legal obligation to have faster speeds anyway, which would have rendered the original bandwidth negligible.

Not so. Bandwidth usage and speed are two different things. You can have a uber-fast connection, but you'll find that no matter what speed you are given, there will always be a limit on exactly how much you can download. I will bet that those "lucky" orientals with their 100Mb/s connections probably still have usage caps and a fair use policy. There is, after all, only a finite amount of bandwidth to go around.

But, as you said, your not interested in the technical reasons, so I', not going to bore you. Instead, just accept that you can have a fast speed, but you cannot download 100's of GB's a month without someone complaining your hogging bandwidth. All your doing is taking bandwidth away from other network users. There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth.

ah, the rare on-topic, logical debate. Thank you for the response.

Originally posted by stumason

Originally posted by scientist
I'm not interested in technical reasons for anything, when promises were already made:

Well, if your not interested in "why" fibre to your house is technically a complete waste of time and is so cost prohibitive, then why the bitching?

OK, let me be more reasonable. I understand the downfalls of fibre, and the implications of converting our system over to it. The most obvious answer is a hybrid of copper and fibre. There are already small ISPs that offer this, but again the major companies all promised to develop this on their own, hence tax cuts, and the mergers. Those mergers were only allowed, because they were going to take the costs of R&D, and implementation on their own - so that the government did not have to intervene.

Well, it never happened, since they have a monopoly on the industry. only a few small, local companies like SureWest offer consumer level connection speeds that are up to par with th rest of the world:

SureWest is able to offer this unmatched Internet speed by delivering 100 Mbps of bi-directional bandwidth to each customer's home on its FTTP platform, leaving room to bundle video and voice services as well. With over 190,000 total marketable homes over its combined copper and fiber Broadband networks, SureWest can offer the 50-meg product to 52 percent of its Broadband service territory.

a electircal conection using coaxial cable can give you a speed of 140Mb/s.

Right, but as soon as the connection goes to wire, it's now bottlenecking the speed for all other connections in the particular leg of the network. That't the hybrid part they never did. Also, we are so far behind, do you think 140 is really going to cut it in another 5 years even? 10?

The cost of laying fibre in the UK comes to about $90,000/KM. Not sure about the US, but I would assume it is around the same mark. Now, imagine this cost on a national scale.

Right, which was the incentive for the tax breaks / merger (the ONLY reason the merger was allowed to occur between AT&T, MCI and Bell) in the first place - the networks would develop this on their own, as opposed to government funding (we have a war to fight! but i digress..)

Even with the increasing bandwidth, you won't just be able to download excessive amounts as there is only finite capacity.

care to explain? I don't understand what you were getting at.

When was that plan put in place? Do you know anything about the industry at all? I bet that plan was announced pre-2001.

i am not ignorant, if that's what you were getting at. How about some sources:

www.isp-planet.com...

The Bells promised fiber optics, an open network with 45 Mbps to every home, collected hundreds of billions of dollars, and failed to deploy. In some cases, they even built advanced networks before the passage of favorable legislation and then ripped them out after the laws had passed.

Now, regardless of when this was announced, or how the industry changed - it's quite obvious that it was never the intention to develop the networks as promised. It was a financial loophole, that was exploited for profit (the merger!), and ultimately (as we are now seeing as the US sinks in connection speed compared to the rest of the world) will hurt all the consumers here. The businesses that can afford the high speed connections have nothing to worry about, but PROMISES WERE MADE!

Bandwidth usage and speed are two different things. You can have a uber-fast connection, but you'll find that no matter what speed you are given, there will always be a limit on exactly how much you can download. I will bet that those "lucky" orientals with their 100Mb/s connections probably still have usage caps and a fair use policy. There is, after all, only a finite amount of bandwidth to go around.

i fail to see how this is relevant. If ISPs are sending out notices and charging more for their "unlimited" plans, then blaming it on over-usage, then it's just as much their fault for not being able to handle a single person's bitTorrent. We're not talking about 50 people using torrents on one line, but maybe 2-3 people max using torrents from a single connection.

But, as you said, your not interested in the technical reasons, so I', not going to bore you.

Only reason I don't care about the technical details in this particular context, is because that's the exact reason for the tax breaks / merger (the ONLY reason the merger was allowed to occur between AT&T, MCI and Bell). It's technical, and expensive, and complicated. So thats why the plan existed in the first place! $200 billion dollar plan! That's not a small fund by any means, and would have been more than capable of upgrading what we have now.

Instead, just accept that you can have a fast speed, but you cannot download 100's of GB's a month without someone complaining your hogging bandwidth.

lol, another classic ATS assumption. You couldn't be farther from the truth. see, i have the added bonus of being a third party observer. I have no personal stake in this, other than seeing 10 years into the future where we (consumers) are paying out the ass, just to keep up with connections overseas. Other than that, I couldn't care less, as I download 300+ GB per month, and have done so for the past few years without a single complaint, hiccup or extra fee. So don't worry about me, please just read that link I posted.

[edit on 11-9-2007 by scientist]

Here's another one after you are finished:

www.isp-planet.com...

summary of the SBC and Verizon mergers and their harm to fiber-optic deployments...

During the early 1990's, the phone companies made commitments, by state, to rewire America...

Pacific Bell was supposed to spend $16 billion and rewire 5.5 million households
Ameritech was supposed to spend $6 billion to fund over 6 million homes

after EVERY merger, SBC closed down the existing fiber optic deployments, including all of the work in California, Connecticut, and Ameritech's five states.

Verizon (Bell Atlantic) did the same thing. The company promised to spend $11 billion and rewire 8.75 million households by 2000, but after the Bell Atlantic-NYNEX merger, every state halted their state fiber optic plans—from Massachusetts to New Jersey, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania

This was 45 Mbps, bi-directional, 500 channel, fiber to the home services, that were supposed to be open to competition and ubiquitously deployed.

Combined, Verizon and SBC were to spend $48.9 billion and have 36.5 million households by 2000. But there is nothing to show for it. 26 states were impacted by two companies' bad decisions.

Instead, America is 16th in broadband because these companies didn't deliver, yet convinced regulators they would rewire America, during each merger. Overall, the Bells should have had 86 million homes already wired as customers paid over $200 billion for networks they never received.

I don't see the US ever having "fibre to home". The most logical and cost effective thing to have would be to have the fibre going to to the local DP (cabinet or what have you) and then having an Ethernet connection (copper wire) to the household. Ethernet can give you High speed over wire. This is what the Next Generation networks are working towards.

Even in the UK with it's concentrated population, I doubt we'll ever have fibre to home. But then, we get damn good speeds off our ISP's anyway.

Right, but as soon as the connection goes to wire, it's now bottlenecking the speed for all other connections in the particular leg of the network. That't the hybrid part they never did. Also, we are so far behind, do you think 140 is really going to cut it in another 5 years even? 10?

I think you misunderstand. Personally, I have cable broadband which is 20Mb/s right now. Using that same connection, which is coaxial to the cabinet, I could, in theory, get 140Mb/s from that same wire. Then at the cab, they would multiplex my 140Mb/s connection (STM-1) into a larger STM-4 or STM-16 fibre connection into the network. A 140Mb/s connection to household would not bottleneck the network, provided that the DP was upgraded with the necessary multiplexors.

In any case, even if they only provided a 140Mb/s connection from the DP into the Core network, then only I would be bottlenecked (and other users in my street)

With regards to Network capacity, you have to remember that Telco's don't exist to serve the public only. Businesses payan order of magnitude more than consumers for bandwidth and are prioritised. Currently, core network rings run at speeds of around 10Gb/s (STM-64). With new DWDM technology, the capacity will increase with more wavelenghts being added to existing fibre connections. Only now are we seeing connections like STM-256, which is around 40Gb/s, on the core network.

There used to be an over capacity on networks, but increasing demand placed by consumers and business, plus falling margins, increased competition and what have you have rectricted bandwidth availability.

Like I said, if they ever got round to fibreing the entire CONUS, I would be amazed. The cost alone would be staggering. If they promised it return for tax cuts, then that is bad, but still, remember that when these promises where made, the Telecoms industry was booming and everyone had high hopes. Now we are being realistic and just cannot afford to do it. We would never turn a profit and go bankrupt if we had to fibre up every household.

As for the amount downloaded. I personally download around 30-50GB a month and havent heard a peep from my ISP. This particular areticle has been blown out of proportion and these are people who can and do hog all the bandwidth in the local ring, preventing anyone else getting the advertised spped, which in my opinion, is much more important than wether you can download 400GB of porno a month.

Also, remember that a Byte=8 Bits. So if someone is downloading 300 GB a month, they have utilised 2.4 Tb of bandwidth. Then factor in overheads from payload labelling, signalling etc and you have a pile of bandwidth being hogged by one user, preventing others either in the local loop, or worse yet, in the core ring, from getting the speed they were advertised.

Speed of connection shouldn't automatically be assumed that you can the donwload GB's worth of data. Just because you can go at 20Mb/s or what have you, does not mean the ISP is allowing you to download 20Mb/s, every second of the day, every day of the year.

Assuming you get full speed, 20Mb/s would allow you to donwload at a speed of 2.5MB/s in optimal conditions. That's 78.8TB/Year (630Tb) or if you leave it running 24/7 . Thats ALOT of bandwidth. Thats the equivalent of using an STM-64 Core ring for 17.5 hours, all to yourself!!!! Not really fair if you only pay $40/month! Especially when the each mux in the ring can cost around $50,000 (and each ring can have up to 30 odd mux's in it), then there is the miles of fibre too......

Normally, no one would do this, but if some people do, they are hogging bandwidth that is clearly a breach of the fair use policy.



[edit on 11/9/07 by stumason]

i see you started getting back into technical details. I read them, but will not comment on them as they are still irrelevant to my point.

Originally posted by stumason
With regards to Network capacity, you have to remember that Telco's don't exist to serve the public only. Businesses payan order of magnitude more than consumers for bandwidth and are prioritised

understood, but if you read my last post, and got the general idea of my point, as opposed to picking it apart line by line, you can see i was clearly displaying that the telcos PROMISED this, to serve the public. It was not intended for business use - they can afford higher speeds when needed. This was a national plan, put forward by the major telcos, explicitly stating how much they would devote towards development for homes. Not only did they not follow through - even worse, they went backwards, and removed existing fibre that was only laid in the first place to pretend as if they really intended to follow through in the first place.

[edit on 11-9-2007 by scientist]

I did read your post and didn't pick it apart line by line. However, it seems you took one paragraph from me and ignored the one directly below it:

Like I said, if they ever got round to fibreing the entire CONUS, I would be amazed. The cost alone would be staggering. If they promised it return for tax cuts, then that is bad, but still, remember that when these promises where made, the Telecoms industry was booming and everyone had high hopes. Now we are being realistic and just cannot afford to do it. We would never turn a profit and go bankrupt if we had to fibre up every household.

Also, I stated that instead of fibre in everyone's homes, which is unrealistic and expensive (is everyone going to have a mux in their home?), the actual real, cost effective alternative would be to have Ethernet connections from the home to the DP and use the existing fibre there, which is benefitting from DWDM technology in the network. However, for rural homes, Ethernet isn't even an option due to it's rather short transmission distance, so you have to face the prospect that, for some, they just won't get broadband.

[edit on 11/9/07 by stumason]

im not disagreeing with you on this.

expensive? yes.
complex? yes.
overkill (more than necessary)? yes.

was it promised anyways, despite these point already being brought up before the plan was announced? yes. to the tune of $200 billion or so.

Now when we talk about expensive, that sounds about accurate. The problem is, we were scammed. Now it will be on the back of the consumers to develop the networks (by paying more for less).

Again, are we really disagreeing on anything? I agree it's not the best plan, and expensive - but that is not my point!

Originally posted by omi_kron_gravitron
there is a fine print in the comcast contracts that say if you are limited to half a trabyte per month. [500gb of download]

even though i don't think they should be able to turn you off for DL'ing if you have an unlimited plan, 500gb a month is a lot...

i have downloaded 10-12gb files before but i could not imagine grabbing 500gb a month.....

most of that is probably porn....all that traffic.
i guess that is what saves me then.....pron don't do it for me....never was int it.

guess i am safe....


i do think the glory days of the net are going to stat to fade. i already see differences. we all do i am sure.
i'm sure it won't be long untill we are on some sort of meter and that will be how we are billed, just like with any other utility.

more you use, more you pay....

sure that is coming.....
pretty sure we saw the internets glory days...at least as far as cost goes

Originally posted by Boondock78
most of that is probably porn....all that traffic.
i guess that is what saves me then.....pron don't do it for me....never was int it.

it never ceases to amaze me how everyone automatically assumes high traffic = illegal downloads of movies, music, warez and porn.

The fact you assume it's all porn just reveals a little more about you - that the only thing you could imagine someone downloading 500g of, are porn videos? Freudian slip of sorts?

I assure you, as you can read at many other points in this thread, that there are legitimate reasons why someone may be using more than you, that don't involve pr0n.

i had a problem with road runner a few years ago i share internet with my neighbor and her kids thru linksys router and adapters. well as you can imagine 4 computers using basic roadrunner at times could seem like 56k
especially when they are using limewire and i am using dc++ or trying to watch tv over internet anyway i ramble i went to road runner office told them my problem . they said no sweat just get a business hook up . i paid the extra amount they said it would be upgraded the next day. well after a week i was getting upset because the service was snail crawling along turns out they never upgraded my service but were charging me for the upgrade. they upgraded it the next day and gave me 2 months at basic rr price for my inconvience.

Originally posted by scientist
it never ceases to amaze me how everyone automatically assumes high traffic = illegal downloads of movies, music, warez and porn.

The fact you assume it's all porn just reveals a little more about you - that the only thing you could imagine someone downloading 500g of, are porn videos? Freudian slip of sorts?

I assure you, as you can read at many other points in this thread, that there are legitimate reasons why someone may be using more than you, that don't involve pr0n.

calm down cowboy....never said anything about anything being illegal....
i also stated legit reasons in this thread why people would download large amounts of data and it is not porn. i use bit torrent all the time for large bundles and it is legit and not porn.


it's not a freudian slip at all.
it's my opinion that if you're grabbing that much a month(not YOU) there is a good chance it's porn.
i am talking about all of the people on all of the net...

i'm with ya....tons of legit reasons why you can grab all that data....

no need to freak

Originally posted by Boondock78
it's my opinion that if you're grabbing that much a month(not YOU) there is a good chance it's porn.
i am talking about all of the people on all of the net...

i'm with ya....tons of legit reasons why you can grab all that data....

no need to freak

no freaking here. just pointing out another classic ATS assumption.

"there is a good chance it's porn.
i am talking about all of the people on all of the net..."