Shed a Tear: The Age of Broadband Caps Begins Monday

reply to post by DJM8507


Those numbers are only real if you keep a constant download, something I don't think anyone does.

As for the speed, even if I had download limits, I would prefer to download Ubuntu 11.04 in 5 minutes (as I did some hours ago) than waiting a whole day for it.

PS: almost all ISPs in Portugal now have fibre up to the clients house (and some even distribute the fibre inside the clients' house) and advertised speeds up to 200Mbps, but they were forced to say in the adverts that that speed is only up to their servers.

reply to post by ArMaP

Yes, the fact that you can have OC48 fiber optics speed inside the house is limited to how fast the slowest piece of equipment is.

There is fiber to premise and fiber to house in some areas as well.

reply to post by macman


Are you kidding me ? Do you know what an OC 48 is ? do you know anyone who has that much bandwidth in their home ? get real ! Do you know how much that would cost ? Do you know how much equipment you would need in your home ?

You people have no clue what you are talking about .

reply to post by OLD HIPPY DUDE

It was a comparison.
Yes I do know what an OC48 is. Fiber to D3 nodes. Most of the ones I worked with were Cerent. Nortel, Lucent and cisco make some as well.

1% of their subscribers are "ruining it for everyone"... Wow. Way to flip off the customer. Do they think we are that stupid? Most of us I hope, can clearly see that this statement an insult to our intelligence. They are placing the blame on us, when it is entirely their fault. What a rude and unprofessional message, for a company that should know better. **** you AT&T, you **** sucking ****heads.

Not picking on you. Sorry.
No one has any Idea of what the are talking about, especially those that you are arguing with.
I have over 30 yrs. in telcom, I have worked outside construction, inside central offices NODs , NOCs and cell phone security, I have installed pay phones to satellite systems.
And not one of you knows what you are talking about.
You have no clue what it takes to provide the service you think you deserve or have a right to, much less maintain it.

And for those that don't know OC 48 is optical carrier level 48 which is 2.488 Thousand Million bits per second.

I use the internet a lot for work,school and entertianment. I have netflix with two devices linked. I upload videos on youtube from 60MB to 400 MB. I also buy songs from amazon. Is this enough for me to worry about the cap? I would say I watch 10 videos per day. I upload at least one video or paper per day.
I notice sometimes at the end of the night videos will start buffering and then I have times where I can't acess the internet. I know when I had cricket they had a limit on their internet I would reach it on a dialy basis therefore my internet would be down for the rest of the day.
I noticed this just started happening to me on AT&T a few weeks a go. I will try to go to a web site but it gives an AT&T error message saying my modem can't connect to the internet. I reset my moden even though all the lights are green. I am not going to pay for going over the limit and if this why I have been getting these errors than I need to start shopping around as well.

I have comcast and I think there's already a cap? 250GB I think it is. While I hate the fact that they are doing this, I find it a little difficult to reach the 250GB cap. I have hit it a few times but most months I use around 150-200GB a month. I literally download things 24/7 and I have yet to hit over 250GB. I have some software installed on my router so I can monitor my usage. It's called DD-WRT, it's pretty nice

I"m in the middle on this one. In my mind I'm thinking it should be unlimited at any speed possible. Strongest companies survive and the weakest companies die off. I would go with the company that is unlimited at any speed possible.

However, if someone is using over 150GB's a month then they are probably up to no good. You'd have to stream video or play online games 24/7 to use 150 gigs a month.

I don't think the vast majority of internet users use anywhere near 5 gigs a month. This appears to be targeting power users doing stuff they shouldn't be doing. And if it makes the net faster then I am all for it.

PS...for some reason my VPN bypasses my ISP's throttle. I surf faster and download faster when using VPN. The only downside I've noticed is they most likely sold my email address to every spammer in the solar system. My spam box quadrupled the day after I started using them.

Ok so I just got off the phone with netflix. I watch about 35 hours of netflix per month; which equals about 17 movies per month. I use 70 Gb this month but this was a slower month. One month I watched 50 hours; which is 25 movies, 100 GB per month. Each movie is about 2 gb per hour at 2 hours run time. I also watch you tube a lot; about 10 smaller videos per day. I am not sure how much that would equal but the Netflix person and I figured about 10 GB per month. So between you tube and netflix I use 80 GB -110 Gb per month.
I still need to call up my ISP and ask what my usage is. I hope they start giving us our total usage on our bills so we know if we are going over or not. It looks like I could easily go over 150 if I watched about 10 more movies per month. I will just have to not go over 50 movies per month. Thats the reason I no longer have a contract cell phone I got so sick of keeping track of minutes!
This really makes me angry because I subsribe to netflix and watch you tube only because cable TVs prices are so high. I also utilze these services becuase after the HD tranisition getting attenna TV reception is a pain and spotty unless it is a 100% calm day with no wind.

reply to post by OLD HIPPY DUDE


Just left Telecom, working for a CLEC. Did everything. MUX, Node, DS1 to OC48, Switch, Agg/border routers, IAD routers.

You are right, most don't know what it takes.
Now worries.

Do you all think because the technology is available, that the CAPACITY to deliver that technology is already in place ?
Do you have any idea how many companys your call from L.A. to New York goes through. Those wires belong to more than one or two companys and you can bet EVERY company is going to get their piece of the pie.
And with the internet there are more pieces to be cut from the pie.
So as the demand for more bandwidth grows, the DEMAND for all those companys to improve and upgrade grows.
Which they are NOT going to install until those demands can be paid for with enough steady business to pay for it,
and by the time its all put in, everyone will be use to paying extra for exceeding their cap limit.

I only pay $15 for my internet which is a great deal at 3 Gb speed per month. I may have to scarfice netflix for the sake of utilizing my main internet better. I don't like the idea of caps but this could be a major problem for all nextflix and hulu subscribers. The average american watches 120 hours of TV per month. If the average american uses 100 of those hours for netflix or hulu then they have already exceeded their quota! They would use 200 GB in one month so they would have to pay an additional $10. If they have to have a cap why can't they raise it to 250 GB for all DSl and boardband users. You don't see them doing this with cable TV where you are only limited to so many hours of TV before you are charged more money!

reply to post by LosLobos


That's because you are only using the ISP as a medium, but are tunneled to your VPN server, which then surfs the web from the VPN server/company network.

reply to post by dreamseeker


Because phone companys were designed and built to provide PHONE CALLS only.
And cable companys were designed and built to provide pictures and sound.
Times have changed, so has technolgy, so has demand and so has the cost.
Get use to it.

reply to post by againuntodust


I'm surpised it's taken them this long to impose caps...

Although for a personal customer wouldnt 250GB be more than enough for a month. I'm on a 200Gb plan i never exceed my limit and i do aloooooot of downloading and streaming.

Do they have shaped usage plans? What i mean is that if you exceed your 250, the speed slows to 256kbs etc. That might sound crap but it sure beats the excess usage charges which can be amazingly high!!

I would have looked at the AT&T site myself but to look at the plans i had to enter a zip or phone number... as im in Australia i gave up..



It's kinda ironic though, that with more services becoming available via online media and streaming that they are deciding to cap the plans. A single full Fibre line or FTTP can have 4 services running on it at once for example;

Phone line, Internet, Fax and Pay TV and even free to air digital TV, so you would think that with fibre being rolled out more and more, they plans would actually increase



Just a tip, check out your providers small business dsl plans, they normally have unlimited plans and on better and more reliable networks and the prices arent to different

reply to post by OLD HIPPY DUDE


I am sorry I can't get used to it. I have cut out so many things because I can't afford them. I need the internet for school work.

reply to post by macman


You wouldnt have OC-48 running to the premises..

Those types of lines are used as network backbone. It would connect one exchange to another or from servers to transmission lines... Abit like Gigbit Ethernet, it's not something you would be able to install in the home due to the price of the equipment needed.

Even the fastest business ADSL/BDSL/Ethernet would not be that fast at your workstation.


FTTP on average should have speeds uptp 100 megabits per sec whereas OC-48 would be running at 2000+ Mbit/s thats a big difference.

Internet Backbone ( Wiki )

There is still alot of copper cable in the ground being used.
There is alot of fiber in the ground.
Replacing the copper to fiber to every house and business across every city, county, state and country will take decades and cost trillions. The further out of a major city you live the longer it will take, if it happens at all.
And it's not just replacing cables it tons of equipment from location A, B, C ........... to Z .Companys are not going to upgrade till there is enough steady regular business to cover the cost of the upgrade.