Frontier DSL Stands By Its Caps... Even As It Decreases Broadband Speeds
from the that's-called-not-investing dept
Frontier Communications last year was a big supporter of capping broadband usage at 5gigs (both up and down). The company is still hyping this up, claiming "It is important that customers that use less don't subsidize those that use the most." That sounds nice, and we'll be hearing that a lot from various broadband providers over the next few months and years -- but there's no proof that it's true. For example, no one seems to be offering cheaper plans for those customers who use "less." So if they were subsidizing the high end users before... what's happening to that money now? It certainly doesn't appear to be going into infrastructure improvements. As Broadband Reports points out, many Frontier customers have recently had their broadband speeds decreased from 6Mbps to 3Mbps.
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Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps
Companies: frontier
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Frontier
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Monopolies Unite
Their lip service is to be expected. It is all greed driven as is most of our economy right... capitalism at it's finest. I am all for making a buck but when companies can do it with integrity it is so much nicer. I am a small business owner and I survive because of my integrity and customer service. Those types of companies seem to be very, very, few these days. I can count on one hand those I have dealt with personally. The list of crappy companies with poor quality service, products and/or customer service is HUGE.
So, make lemonade and be grateful. And of course speak out, get involved, and vote!
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Re: Monopolies Unite
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Welcome to Australian Broadband!
How can you make a walled garden, ie encourage your customers to consume your content/ads in preference to the general content?
Easy. Charge them to download other content, except your own by creating 'free' to download zones.
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Yet when you read articles like this you know it makes sense - the smallest cap an ISP offers is over here about 40Gig a month!
Many ISPs either don't have caps or use traffic shaping during peak hours (eg virgin media gives you 1.2 Gig between the hours of 16.00 & 21.00). So what? Download your torrents overnight - the electricity is cheaper anyway.
Surely the only reason they can offer limitless surfing is because they're allowed to shape the traffic as necessary?
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It Sucks
If you have other options exercise them.
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5 gig?
Consider the last Mac leopard update. It was 365 Meg. I have 2 macs. I also run VM's - several XP versions - these all hit with SP3 around the same time as the Mac update. Not to mention we downloaded a movie from I tunes 1.2 gig. I hit 5 gig in about 3 days. That's all perfectly legal and expected downloading.
The Verizon wireless would charge me for overage - and the Satellite? Ugh.
Hughes - Cut off for 24 hours.
Wild Blue - Bandwidth limited (better than being cut off!) for 30 days.
So I'm pricing T1's.
QUERY - are these people really out of bandwidth? Fine. Raise prices and expand your network.
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Capping.... again
How they did it? Simple.
They invented their own Terms of Use. A very ambiguous and totally unclear policy basically stating that you can download, a lot (some say the limit is about 500 GB per month, but that is only speculation) but they reserve the right to limit your speeds (aka. Traffic Shaping) or charge for the "extra" bandwidth without the need to admit it because customers would start to leave, and some are changing to smaller ISP, myself included.
IMO, what's the point of and ISP claiming unlimited bandwidth (not going off topic here, but Frontier's limit of 5 GB is rather pathetic, as said by Pangolin, anyone can hit that limit just through automatic updates) if they throttle speeds? Wouldn't it be much better if they set a decent limit and the subscriber use his/her connection how they wanted without any speed limit? But, than again, what would be that "decent" limit? Frontier's pathetic example?
This is just another example of what a company can do when there is no competition in sight. And if there was, would it be any different? I've seen many examples of how competition works. They get together, "study" a product, come up with a price range, and launch that very product, on the same day, exactly the same. The only thing that's different is it's colour...
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silly Dogma
Why?
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Re: silly Dogma
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5 gigs, hardly!
That is 3.5 gigs in 1 1/2 days, and I didn't even get on the computer.
How can the ISPs claim this is necessary when the rest of the world continues to demonstrate that it is most certainly not?
If Time Warner Roadrunner charged me for overages or cut or slowed access (which is a right they reserve for themselves in their new 2 year 'price lock' contract agreement) I would be gone in a heart beat.
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Re: 5 gigs, hardly!
Where would you go?
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Duh
Erm....no, that actually IS EXACTLY how consumer line pricing works. I cant believe these companies can bald-faced lie like this and get away with it. The reason BB pricing is so low (relatively, though it depends a lot on location as well) and you get decent speeds (again, relatively) is BECAUSE of this. Otherwise, if we didnt have this flat-rate, all-you-can-eat (though that is going away now) pricing, everyone would need dedicated lines that cost 3-5x as much.
What is "important", Mr Broadband Provider, is that you DO WHAT YOU ARE PAID TO DO AND KEEP YOUR FSCKING INFRASTRUCTURE UP TO DATE TO HANDLE THE SERVICE YOU HAVE PROMISED! Get it? IF not, please go out of business so others who DO get it can provide what YOU promised and didnt deliver.
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Re: Duh
Unfortunately, government people prevent the kind of competition that would kill this horrible business model. :(
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Move
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bleed the public dry
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There Are Cheaper Prices For Grandma
You are not really correct when you say "For example, no one seems to be offering cheaper plans for those customers who use "less."
Many carriers DO. There are "introductory" and low-speed DSL plans for about $20, which is much cheaper than the average price. This is the case in the US, and all over the world.
The main difference is that ISPs typically differentiated those cheaper connections by speed, not by capacity. However, capacity is a much better, more fair way to define a "low end" connection. Also, it's better for the low end consumer, because they get access to the high speeds (even if only up to the cap.)
I think that you're fundamentally wrong here. When DSL hit the US in about 1997, it was targeting high-end customers, with most users still on dial-up. For the first 4 years or so, that continued. Then in 2002, the ISPs really started trying to grow their customer bases by attracting people who demonstrated less demand, and would switch to DSL if it cost less. They have been demonstrably offering cheaper and cheaper products since that time, but trying to limit them in some way (speed) so as not to cannibalize the high-demand users like myself.
Yeah, and Frontier's proposed caps of 5GB are terribly low, and their customers should help them realize this.
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This will be the downfall of Frontier
It's absolutely mind-boggling why this company is still surviving. Right now i'm paying $45/m for 15000k with no cap through Optimum Online and this is after paying an introductory price of $29/m for two years.
Noone in their right mind would stay with Frontier unless they had absolutely no other choice. I swear, I would rather move then to have to deal exclusively with frontier. Also, I was thinking of changing over to Fios but I can't due to the pro-monopoly 'regulations' still in effect in my area. What a shame
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Beware of DLS Hi-Speed Rip-Offs
Many Frontier customers have recently had their broadband speeds decreased from 6Mbps to 3Mbps, this is ture, 2Mbps at best, for a faster speed, and you need to call customer service a request a higher speed for an additional cost. One you see that service has been updated and that things are great, do be fooled! The faster speed is short lived for few weeks and ends up with the lower speed of less then 3Mbps.
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Frontier Sucks
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Frontier DSL
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Why introduce caps, anyway?
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