Shed a Tear: The Age of Broadband Caps Begins Monday

Originally posted by ResearchMan
reply to post by againuntodust

 

I've been on a cap for over half a year. Comcast gives out 250GB BW per month. I don't care who you are, if you go over 250GB of bandwidth per month as a normal internet home user, our obviously a downloading pirate.

I wasn't aware of a Comcast 250GB cap. I don't imagine I use that much bandwidth, and outside of hosting your own server and website(s), I can't imagine any normal consumer needing to exceed that limit on a regular basis. That is the kind of "cap" that is acceptable, in my opinion. If you want to host a server or website maybe you can upgrade to a business-class package of some sort.

Glad we're overseas right now. Although it's not a great cell system here, we don't have broadband restrictions... yet.

For those saying that anyone exceeding the GB limits are spending way too much time on the internet, I would argue that is not necessarily the case. While I may spend too much time on the internet and need to get out more, that's beside the point. The bandwidth I use browsing is a small fraction of my total bandwidth usage. Most of my bandwidth usage is from my effort to to create a library of movies downloaded from Archive.org. Typically, the highest quality download of a feature film there runs about 3 GB. So if I start a download before going to bed for the night and then start another one in the morning before going to work that's 6 GB in a 24 hour period - even though right clicking 'save link as' and starting both downloads takes less than a minute. But added up, and if done each day of the month, that would total about 180 GB - well in excess of the 150 GB dsl limit.

reply to post by QtheQ


And before anyone asks about it, those are legal downloads.

Originally posted by kykweer

Originally posted by MidnightTide

Originally posted by kykweer
reply to post by AndrewJay

 

I respect that you may have your own opinion... But your victim mentality is the joke...

So what if u can only dl 250gb a month? Hell 20gb should be enough for a single person. Internet won't get slower but to expand it isp need more money. Its so funny that some people make this a big dealn but "they" wanna control what you download illegally...

Might be enough for you, not enough for me.

Your acting like ISPs are losing money - they are making a ton of cash. As to the requirement of capitol to expand the network, cry me a river, its called investment. Also, many of the large ISPs use government funding to expand these networks, which comes from my tax dollars.


edit:Rogers provides the information of your cap limit.

edit on 1-5-2011 by MidnightTide because: (no reason given)

Cry me a river exactly, if you download more than 20gb a month for 12 months a year you really need to priorities. And so what if your ISP wants to make money, its a business and someone has to do it, if everything was free we would still be in the middle ages.

Who are you to question others usage of their internet? Also, because of certain interests in government, it is almost impossible to have true competition in the ISP market.

No one said they shouldn't turn a profit, but as it is - the main ISPs can charge just about whatever they want and if you don't want to pay, you don't get the internet.

Originally posted by randomname
be thankful everything is still reasonable in America.

Land of the free and home of the paid... Is that the way it goes?

No new taxes... only fees...

reply to post by b_cheater21


it's not about piracy, it's about censorship and control

hydraulic despotism

A hydraulic empire (also known as a hydraulic despotism, or water monopoly empire) is a social or government structure which maintains power and control through exclusive control over access to water. It arises through the need for flood control and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy.[1]

Often associated with these terms and concepts is the notion of a water dynasty. This body is a political structure which is commonly characterized by a system of hierarchy and control often based around class or caste. Power, both over resources (food, water, energy) and a means of enforcement such as the military are vital for the maintenance of control.

Saw this coming a while back.
Most of your union based carriers will have to implement this. Their overhead is so high, that the only alternative would be to jack up rates, fire union employees or void union contracts.

Well I think i'm fairly well hosed then. AT&T is my only high speed option, there are no others where I currently live. I know some of these companies, AT&T and Comcast for example, are doing this because their cable and satellite sales are down. Why would I ever invest in either of those when I can hop on Netflix and watch just about anything I want, whenever I want and with no commercials. I would love to upgrade to a business package, but since i'm in an apartment, it's not an option.

Also, the highest speed offered in my location is 3 Mbps, so tell me, at the extra 10+ a month that i'll be spending will that actually go toward upgrading AT&T's infrastructure? Or will I still be stuck with sub-par speeds for a rather high price and regular outages? We lag behind so many other countries in everything else, may as well lag behind in internet infrastructure development as well.

reply to post by Hypntick


Infrastructure is in place and great. The issue revolves on the overhead that the companies have to operate. And yes, their "Land Based" or "Wired Services" sales are down. The thing to be in is now Wireless.

Originally posted by MidnightTide

Originally posted by kykweer

Originally posted by MidnightTide

Originally posted by kykweer
reply to post by AndrewJay

 

I respect that you may have your own opinion... But your victim mentality is the joke...

So what if u can only dl 250gb a month? Hell 20gb should be enough for a single person. Internet won't get slower but to expand it isp need more money. Its so funny that some people make this a big dealn but "they" wanna control what you download illegally...

Might be enough for you, not enough for me.

Your acting like ISPs are losing money - they are making a ton of cash. As to the requirement of capitol to expand the network, cry me a river, its called investment. Also, many of the large ISPs use government funding to expand these networks, which comes from my tax dollars.


edit:Rogers provides the information of your cap limit.

edit on 1-5-2011 by MidnightTide because: (no reason given)

Cry me a river exactly, if you download more than 20gb a month for 12 months a year you really need to priorities. And so what if your ISP wants to make money, its a business and someone has to do it, if everything was free we would still be in the middle ages.

Who are you to question others usage of their internet? Also, because of certain interests in government, it is almost impossible to have true competition in the ISP market.

No one said they shouldn't turn a profit, but as it is - the main ISPs can charge just about whatever they want and if you don't want to pay, you don't get the internet.

well u can use the intErnet as u please, I was just asking out of interest why you need so much data.

And they won't charge as much as they please, there or organizations to check up on price fixing.

reply to post by macman


Infrastructure is in place and great? Really? Have anything to back up your claims there? If you live in one of the major cities maybe, but if you happen to live and work somewhere a bit smaller, you're pretty well screwed. Besides that, is this for a consumer connection or a business connection? The consumer and even some business customers are being screwed by this type of thing. Well maybe if you're working at a giant corporation, but those of us who work for small businesses that do support for small businesses notice what's going on to the little guy.

Pretty much all the main ISPs in the UK already have bandwith caps or "traffic management" - It allows them to continue advertising the highest speeds possible, whilst keeping the truth in the small print.

Nothing new here - it's just big business doing exactly as they please and to hell with customers - they have so many, who cares if a few leave.


Also, people sticking up for the ISPs and judging people for using what you consider large amounts of bandwith - maybe all you do is check your emails and click on lamebook every couple of days - but it's 2011 and MANY people use streaming video services rather than having cable TV and such. When you're downloading HD movies and TV shows - that bandwith gets eaten up pretty quickly - and these are paid services, that you're really paying twice for any way with the cost of bandwith - having this capped and paying extra for a service that was once uncapped - changing the game on your existing customers is BS. People defending #ty big business practices make me sick.

Well, at 10Mbps here is the download.

1 hour = 4,291.53 MB / 4.19 GB
1 day = 102,996.83 MB / 100.58 GB
1 month = 3,132,820.25 MB / 3059.39 GB

So the limits could easily be reached at the low speed of 10Mbps in just a few days. Why even have the speed if they are going to force it lower and impose limits over what they are supposedly selling?

250GB over 30 days is approximately less than 5.76MB per minute or 346MB per hour. Anything more on average and you will break your limits. That is a pretty low average speed of about 98KB/sec, but I suppose it is about 17x better than the 5.6KB/sec download speeds a couple decades ago via dialup.

So why even offer high speed? they are advertising speeds that you are not ever to fully utilize. It is truly a bait and switch and will do nothing but stifle innovation.

reply to post by kykweer


20gb a month might suit you fella but some of us have things called families and have need to use their internet everyday for work and other strange things like that, 20gb would last maybe 2 weeks or less in my house.

Originally posted by DJM8507
So why even offer high speed? they are advertising speeds that you are not getting. bait and switch?

That is precisely what it is.

They already use the similarity in appearance between MB and Mbit to confuse customers, many people don't even realise the difference between these two. Advertising a 50mb connection speed that is dropped to 2mb if you exceed a certain amount is false advertising.

reply to post by Hypntick


What do you want for info?
I left working for a CLEC about a month ago. I know that the LECs in the US have some of the best DSL/ISDN equipment deployed in most major areas.
I know that some of the CLECs are running outdated and non-warrantied DSLAMs, such as Copper Mountain, which has been out fo business for a while. But, the LECs are running the newest and best. Nortel and Avaya/Lucent are running some really good DSLAMs.
The issue with material in the ground is upgraded often as well. Some older areas will be running on DS3 levels over copper, but most neighborhoods are feed via fiber to node, which feeds homes on copper, out to about a 1 miles radius.

Don't really know what more you want. A very basic, non-technical view can be found with simple searches on any telecom sites/forums and viewing the budget breakdown of any ISP.

reply to post by VelvetSplash


Speed does not equate to Download amount.

Speed relies more on the medium of delivery of the service.
The amount of your downloads resides on the internal equipment at the ISP and is how they can bill sufficiently.

reply to post by againuntodust


Welcome to the real world.

In NZ, I have radio broadband, independent from the phone system (I live in a rural area) and if we breach our data cap, it costs us extra.
Nothing wrong with that in my view. It does mean that we do keep an eye on our internet use.

We don't download movies, games or videos as that does not interest us.
Usually we have 4 computers connected, 2 wireless and 2 hard wired to our modem.
One is permanetly listening to internet radio, as we live in a bad radio reception area, that does not seem to soak up excessive data.
Only during the FIFA world cup, when I watched a few games via the internet did we exceed our data cap.

So my answer is - do you really need to spend hours watching movies or playing games.
Maybe you could go outdooors and enjoy the sunshine/rain/snow, do a bit of gardening, play with your children or something.
And if it is your children that sit for hours on the net, well you are the parent.
The possibilies are endless, just don't be a slave to the internet.

Originally posted by QtheQ
For those saying that anyone exceeding the GB limits are spending way too much time on the internet, I would argue that is not necessarily the case. While I may spend too much time on the internet and need to get out more, that's beside the point. The bandwidth I use browsing is a small fraction of my total bandwidth usage. Most of my bandwidth usage is from my effort to to create a library of movies downloaded from Archive.org. Typically, the highest quality download of a feature film there runs about 3 GB. So if I start a download before going to bed for the night and then start another one in the morning before going to work that's 6 GB in a 24 hour period - even though right clicking 'save link as' and starting both downloads takes less than a minute. But added up, and if done each day of the month, that would total about 180 GB - well in excess of the 150 GB dsl limit.

edit on 1-5-2011 by QtheQ because: clarification

So in between internet use and watching all these movies you download, you obviously don't do much else.
Boring!!