The Power Of Intermediaries To Silence Speech Online

When You Measure Broadband Caps In Terms Of How Many Emails, Something's Wrong

from the that's-not-broadband dept

Mon, Jul 7th 2008 6:48pm — Mike Masnick

We've already talked about how low it appears some ISPs are making broadband "caps." Doing so seriously destroys the value of a broadband connection and will likely backfire on the ISPs who provide it. But, for those companies that are putting in place such low broadband caps -- a small suggestion: when discussing how much the caps allow, listing out how many emails you can send or receive under the cap is probably a bad idea. If the cap is so low that the number of emails is even worth mentioning, you've got a serious problem.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps, cable, tiered service
Companies: time warner cable

28 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Not Bob, 7 Jul 2008 @ 7:07pm

What??
Psh, if all I wanted to do was email, I would have stayed with dial-up. I want to play games, download the occasional tune, watch a video here or there, update the previously mentioned games, and surf the web 'til my eyes burn. All of that takes a lot more bytes than all of the emails I sent and received in the last two or three years. And that's just this month.

Silly ISP's, stop trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle. You made it available and they came, now live up to your agreements.

PS: So far I haven't had any trouble with my ISP--so far.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Joel Coehoorn, 7 Jul 2008 @ 7:27pm

E-mail is significant
While you are right in suggesting that e-mail is a drop in the bucket for any serious broadband account, limiting the number of e-mails does have significance from a spam prevention point of view. I can't set up a 'home business' and use my broadband account to spam the world with shady mortgage deals, male enhancement, and the like.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Cynic, 7 Jul 2008 @ 8:12pm

It won't backfire on them too much.
At least I don't see it happening any time in the near future. The primary reason I say this is that there is a shortage of real ISP competition in a surprising number of markets. I know where I live Comcast has pushed out just about everybody else. There might be some smaller ISPs around but their coverage is limited, or they are specialized towards businesses so their prices are for comprehensive packages for phone service and all that and prohibitively expensive.

So if I want a "broadband" connection, my choice is Comcast or... umm... hang on a minute, I need to get back to you on that.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mogilny, 7 Jul 2008 @ 8:17pm

An attempt to fool the not so tech-savy.
5 million 1 KB emails sounds a lot better than a 5 GB cap. Most people probably don't know what a GB is.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
neil, 7 Jul 2008 @ 9:22pm

Re: An attempt to fool the not so tech-savy.
roflmao and you think they know what a KB is?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Tigobitty, 7 Jul 2008 @ 9:31pm

Bring it on
I get a lot of porn emailed to me. Videos, pictures, flash-based games. 1.2 Terabytes so far this month alone. I love my porn.

My usage will be less than TimeWarner's quote of 350,000 e-mails, and best of all, I can prove quantities in court.

Thanks, marketing guys!

Bait and Switch
How does the FTC define "bait and switch" advertising?

It's illegal to advertise a product when the company has no intention of selling that item, but instead plans to sell a consumer something else, usually at a higher price.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
pyager1, 7 Jul 2008 @ 10:49pm

hughesnet lied to me
I was told I would have 200Megs every 4 rolling hours, now its only 200Megs every 24hours!!! Plus, high speed!!!??? yea-right I have a hard time reaching 200Megs in a day!!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Fiber troll, 7 Jul 2008 @ 11:11pm

How USA competes
US:
Cable 5GB a month, $35.00

Japan:
Fiber to the house, 930GB Per Month 30GB upstream cap per day, unlimited downloads, no overage charges, and included voice line. Cost? $42.00 a month.

Winner:
JAPAN
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Spectere, 7 Jul 2008 @ 11:53pm

Re: How USA competes
Never mind the fact that the US is physically a hell of a lot larger than Japan (over 25x larger) and, thus, requires a great deal of money and time to make sweeping upgrades to its infrastructure.

Or do you honestly think that purchasing cable, hiring contractors to install said cable, and upgrading network backbones is free and easy?

I also noticed that you neglected to note that fast fiber networks are starting to spring up with extremely competitive rates (namely, Verizon FiOS).

Sheesh. If nothing else, your name fits you like a glove.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Indentured Servant, 8 Jul 2008 @ 12:44am

Re: Re: How USA competes
Your right, it looks like not one FTTP (Fiber to the premisis) companies worldwide has installed bandwidth caps. If the cable companies really think cable == fiber optic, why is Verizon not throttling? Seems like there's a bottleneck somewhere if they "...already have a fiber-optic network serving ALL our homes"

Fiber backbone upgrades are easier than last mile.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
News Story, 8 Jul 2008 @ 12:54am

Some cablecos "have" a fiber optic network but don't "own" it like Verizon does. Which warrants the question: If they are at capacity, why don't they just purchase additional capacity or upgrade to 100G? Seems like a better solution rather than upsetting customers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2008 @ 1:48am

Re: E-mail is significant
A cap on the number of e-mails you can send might prevent spam, but the point is that an e-mail is so small that using it as an appropriate unit of measure for a cap indicates that said cap is really quite small.

To put it another way, we know that there's 60x60x24 = 86,400 seconds in a day, but you dont use a second for calculating your wages, do you?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2008 @ 1:50am

Re: Re: How USA competes
the USA may be much larger, but did that stop them from building a power grid? or a road network?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2008 @ 3:08am

Re: Re: An attempt to fool the not so tech-savy.
Probably not, but there is no need. 5 million seems like a massive number so they will just read it as:

"I can send 5 million emails before hitting my cap"
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2008 @ 3:10am

Re: Re: How USA competes
The UK isn't particularly big, yet many parts of it are limited to sub 1Mbit connections.

What's the excuse there? Rain?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2008 @ 3:19am

Re: It won't backfire on them too much.
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/07/07/2351252.shtml

This is your only hope.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Allen (profile), 8 Jul 2008 @ 3:26am

I wonder where they got the number from?
I am curious to know where they got their figure from. The whole argument for usage based billing starts with the position that a small% of users consume a large% of resources. So you'd expect there to be some statistical base to the number: a median or average or average plus stddev or something like that.

Could it be that 50% of users use 5GB or less in a month? Plausible?

Who am I kidding, I expect some marketing "guru" pulled a figure out of their @rse. It fits with the need to express it in units like number of emails...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2008 @ 4:07am

Re: Re: Re: How USA competes
leaves on the track
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Corporate Lackey, 8 Jul 2008 @ 5:42am

Think Who It's Aimed At
I actually wrote a document like this for a different ISP. The whole idea was to re-assure the 90% of customers who would never reach the limit. People, in general, have no idea what 5MB or 5 GB or 5TB means. You have to put it in terms that are familiar.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Kiba, 8 Jul 2008 @ 5:42am

Re: Re: How USA competes
And we don't live in said US cities? US cities have high population densities like many of Japan's cities.

What you make thing it is harder to wire a city with similar density as Japan?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2008 @ 6:09am

Re: E-mail is significant
I'm doubtful of this. It's at least already presumed that spammers are using zombie machines infected with malware to send most of their traffic. A cap like this just means that those infected will be charged from valid emails, incoming spam, and outgoing zombie messages.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ejm, 8 Jul 2008 @ 9:19am

forget multiple users
They seem to forget that most households have multiple users...4 people in my house means i'm down to 1.25 GB average, i guess i'm only allowed to download one movie a month from itunes
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Joel Coehoorn, 8 Jul 2008 @ 9:26am

Re: Re: E-mail is significant
Assuming the ISP knows about e-mails sent by a zombie machine, than this is still a good thing because it's a reasonable way to give incentive to owners of infected computers to fix the problem.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
mobiGeek, 8 Jul 2008 @ 10:31am

Re: Think Who It's Aimed At
But knowing that I can send "5 million emails" is just as obtuse as uploading "5GB". The people who don't get 5MB, 5GB or whatever certainly aren't going to understand the concept of "5 million {anythings}".

Heck, I bet most here have difficulties with that number. Yes, we *know* the number but honestly ask yourself: how large a container do you need to hold 5 million {some_item}.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
bait and switcher, 8 Jul 2008 @ 10:38am

Re: Bring it on
kind of like when i called at&t last night and they list their plans and fail to mention (twice, two different reps) their cheapest plan. Must of just forgotten that one.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
bob, 8 Jul 2008 @ 2:34pm

How can my ISP limit my email to X per month when I don't use their servers?
I have Comcast as an ISP and I don't think I've ever sent a single email via their servers. I have my own domain remotely hosted. It provides individual email addresses for my entire family. That way if we dump Comcast, or Comcast turns into something else, we don't have to change our email address.

Taking care of email through your ISP is like buying gas from the dealership where you bought your car.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Woadan, 8 Jul 2008 @ 3:08pm

Is this a cap on using the ISPs mail systems? Or is it a cap on anything sent via POP3/SMTP/IMAP protocols?

Personally, I don't use the email accounts the ISP has given me. I do check periodically to see if they sent me updates to the EULA/ToS, but mostly they just SPAM me to buy more of their services, which I do not need.

So, if it just capping use of their servers for email, I say cap away. However, if they are capping traffic on the email protocols, then it is an entirely different story.

Woadan
[ link to this | view in thread ]
merry, 15 Aug 2008 @ 7:38pm

we make all kinds of caps,hats,gloves and scarves in China
Dear Sirs:
We are specialized manufacturer and exporter for caps,hats,gloves and scarves in China,
If you are intrested in our products or you have some questions ,pls telephone or email us.
We can send our new catalogue to you for your reference.

Sincerely,Looking for your reply!

Manager of Sales Department

Merry Zhang

CHAMPWIL INTERNATIONAL LIMITED
YANGZHOU CHAMPWIL HEADWEAR&GARMENT CO.，LTD
Manufactory Address:
No.126,Xin Xing Road,Li Dian Town,Yangzhou,Jiangsu,China
Tel:86-514-87411549 Fx:86-514-87411631
Office:
Room 504, No. 450 Yang Zi Jiang Middle Road, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, P.R.China
Tel :86-514-87223656 Fax: 86-514-87223731
E-MAIL:info@champwil.com
sales02@champwil.com
[ link to this | view in thread ]