Guy Kicked Off Comcast For Using Too Many Cloud Services
from the why-broadband-caps-suck dept
One of the key concerns we've had about the rise of broadband caps is that they don't take into account the fact that more and more data and services are moving online. When companies put in place data caps -- such as Comcasts' 250 gigs or AT&T's 150 gigs, they always highlight how this really only impacts a tiny percentage of users. But, the truth is that as more things go online, and more data is moved to "the cloud," it's really not that hard to bump up against these caps... and apparently the penalties are harsh. Andre Vrignaud lost his Comcast account for going over 250 GB two months in a row, mainly from using various legal online services, including Pandora and Netflix. He had also switched to a new online backup service, and the initial upload used up a bunch of bandwidth. He did admit to downloading a few things via BitTorrent (a UK show not available in the US), but it seems clear that most of his internet usage was perfectly legitimate. And now he has no account, and Comcast won't let him back on for a year. They won't even let him buy a more expensive package.Yes, his data usage may have been extreme, but these kinds of services are becoming more common, and as we start to see even more new services, there are going to be a lot more stories of people bumping up against these caps. The truth is that the ISPs could upgrade their networks to handle this traffic. And it's not even that hard to do so. But with these caps they don't have to move as fast, and can slow down improving things -- which is what Wall Street likes. It just sucks if you're someone who, you know, actually wants to use the internet for what it enables.
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Filed Under: broadband cap, cloud
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Future predictions
Check family usage under North America at Cisco VNI Forecast. The Bell Curve of internet usage by household can also be found in the data at this link. Note : this was done in early 2010 before internet video via netflix took off and is wrong to the downside.
What all this means is, with caps set the way they are, by 2015 the top ~10%-15% of internet households in the US can be kicked offline.
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Re: Future predictions
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Re: Re: Re: Future predictions
.5 out of 10 from judge #2
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At least most of us know that our lives aren't so empty that we have to troll for fun...
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Re: Re: Future predictions
Regards,
Society
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Re: Re: Future predictions
Funny thing, I was sitting at a lake, rconsoled into my home computer, and working when I wrote that. So total fail in the troll deptartment.
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Nevermind
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I invented it, not All Gore.
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We don't want your money
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Re: We don't want your money
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Re: Re: We don't want your money
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Re: We don't want your money
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Re:
that said, it still baffles me that people can USE that much :S *shrugs* i mean, i can see how it might happen if you had enough people using the thing...
(oh, and i can see it happen Easily if people decided to download console games. seriously, what the hell is going on with sony and their games from their store? i don't care how big the game is, if it's going to install onto my harddrive there's no freaking way it needs to be a seven gig download! PCs use install files for a reason, this is not complex technology! their 'free' games ended up costing me something on the order of NZ$30 or more because of how massively downloading them threw off our data useage. still cheaper than buying the things, but i wouldn't have bought them even at that price.)
... sorry, side rant there.
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Bah
See! It's only pirates (and maybe terrorists, but they're really the same) that run into these problems.
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Re: Bah
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Here is His Original Blog Article from Monday and Followup from Yesterday
(http://www.ozymandias.com/the-day-comcast%E2%80%99s-data-cap-policy-killed-my-internet-for-1- year)
-- Ozymandias.com - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - Follow up: The Day After Comcast’s Data Cap Policy Killed my Internet
(http://www.ozymandias.com/follow-up-the-day-after-comcast%E2%80%99s-data-cap-policy-kille d-my-internet)
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Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
This company is just managing network traffic by kicking off an EXTREME hog. Everyone CAN'T use up 250Gs -- oh, that's right: you don't grasp the concept of "limits", want UNLIMITED for a fixed price, even if that means capital expenditures -- I mean "sunk (or fixed) costs" -- but of course you've forgotten thsoe and only look at "marginal costs". Yes, now I see why you're so baffled at limits.
You want companies to spend so you don't have to face limits, but it just isn't possible in reality, whether subway, phone, or internet service.
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Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Let's look past the fact that various third party studies prove you dead wrong here:
Then the answer is don't advertise that you can provide that much to your customers if you really can't.
Or here's a better idea: Spend some money on the infrastructure.
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Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
It's completely possible and easy to do, they just don't want to do it.
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Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
The biggest reason why everything in the U.S. is completely overpriced and the service sucks is because the U.S. government establishes monopolies on almost everything.
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Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
ISP X sells me a data plan that (lets say) promises 6Mb/s down max (we'll ignore the up). They then put a cap of 250MB a month on it. The justification for the cap is to manage network traffic.
The cap does not manage network traffic. I can still saturate my connection and put a heavy load on the network. I may not be able to do it constantly for the whole month, but I could probably do it during all peak times.
If they really wanted to manage their network they wouldn't oversell their network speeds (because that is what they are doing). They want to advertise big numbers for download speed, but they don't want to actually build a network that can support that speed for all their users.
Additionally most of these ISP's also offer TV packages. They see the threat of online video to their TV packages and want to get in front of that demand by setting caps that are "reasonable" now, but will quickly become very limiting.
Finally the only reason these companies are capable of this behavior is because they have essentially been granted government backed monopolies. The lack of competition in this area allows them to pull in the bucks without fighting for the customers.
My personal solution would be for some situation in which the 'tubes' were available to any company (similar to landline phones). I might even be for a state owned infrastructure similar to the roads over which various ISP's could supply service. But really anything that drops the barriers to entry and allows competition.
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Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
I think you are wrong.
The cap DOES manage network traffic, by influencing the demand. If consumers are aware of the cap, they will restrict (on average) their uses of data. They may do it by cutting out streaming movies, less torrents, less Pandora, moving back to a local backup service, or whatever.
This will reduce the amount of capacity demand on their networks at peak times, as well as off-peak. Now you, individually, as a savvy user, could try to 'stick it to them' by using all your allotment during 'busy time', but most users will not.
I also think you are wrong when you don't understand why they "oversell" their networks. I explain why in the last two paragraphs here:
http://derek-kerton.posterous.com/why-do-isps-lie-about-their-internet-speeds
Like them or hate them, caps are one tool that achieve the goal of managing network traffic.
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Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
And yes, I think services like Netflix will have additional challenges in an era of throughput caps. And I also think that ISPs that offer video content have ulterior motives in protecting their own video businesses.
Yes, caps will restrict our culture, entertainment, etc, etc.
But...since when was it Comcast's cultural role to provide you with unlimited entertainment and culture no matter the cost? Since when is it their concern that Netflix suffers?
If we could build networks with unlimited capacity that could deliver unlimited content to your home, that would be great. But could we not also build a library next door to every home, which would increase culture as well? But it would probably be expensive to capitalize that, right, so we agree to share libraries among a greater number of people. Building unlimited capacity for Internet would also drive up the cost, and that would be passed on to us.
You can't go from a broadcast media to a unicast media world and expect it to be free, or just rolled up into the bill you paid for email and web pages. If people want to do much, much more with the Internet, there is a real cost to pay. This will not kill culture, but yes, it will restrict it following economic rules around scarce resources.
I actually am more optimistic, too. I think what will happen is that content providers will start to be more conscious of the bandwidth their users consume, so they will offer options to scale back. Netflix actually just launched an option to reduce video resolution if the user wants. I think people will still choose to watch streaming content, and information, and culture, but will consider the cost. You know, weight the costs against the benefits, kinda like every other decision that involves scarce resources.
We don't leave the lights on, because there is a cost. Yet we seem fully capable of using the lights when appropriate, and shutting them off when we're not in the room, or we can make due with less light. Why can't this new utility, the Internet, be used in the same way?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
You make parallels to other utilities, which is great - if the ISPs can't get over themselves and just offer unlimited for a base fee - the conclusion here, is to offer it similar to other utilities. That is to say, $x/mb -- completely made up number here, $.0005/mb (approx $125 for a month of 250gb dl)
Wouldn't that actually make sense? Pay for what you use? Exactly the same scenario as the electric lights on/off issue?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
If you want to argue that the Internet should be a regulated utility, that's your prerogative. And an entirely reasonable, at that.
'Regulated monopoly' has been a long-accepted method of delivering services that have universal appeal, high infrastructure costs, and require expensive last-mile installation to most homes and businesses.
Internet could be a regulated monopoly, or it could be a competitive service. I could be happy with either, although I think that in the USA the climate trends towards privatization and deregulation. I suppose competition is more achievable, and tends to work well. Bummer that in the USA, ISP sits somewhere between the two, not quite regulated and not quite competitive.
But that's not the debate of the day. The debate is whether, in the current business climate, caps are a sensible tool. I think they are.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
So, you would say that electric and water pricing should be progressive (price increases the more you use), and Internet should be regressive. I'd like to see electric and water rates be more flat. I don't think punitive is fair. I run a home business with staff, so I pay very high punitive electric rates. Am I environmentally unfriendly? Well, I don't commute, I don't use a separate office building, I just happen to use electricity every day of the week, which ends up being more than the average home, and the punitive threshold.
As for whether Internet prices should be regressive, I agree. Capped Internet overages should cost LESS than the first GBs of the month. A volume discount, as it were. I just don't think overages must be free (i.e. unlimited).
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Perhaps, but we don't have to limit ourselves to that topic.
I run a home business with staff, so I pay very high punitive electric rates. Am I environmentally unfriendly? Well, I don't commute, I don't use a separate office building, I just happen to use electricity every day of the week, which ends up being more than the average home, and the punitive threshold.
I assume that is more than offset by the fact that you don't need to lease or own a separate business. I don't think it's an important public policy goal to make sure the few people in your situation don't pay more for power than the vast majority who don't run a business in their homes.
As for whether Internet prices should be regressive, I agree. Capped Internet overages should cost LESS than the first GBs of the month. A volume discount, as it were.
Right on. I probably wouldn't even be too concerned about whether I went over in that case.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
If they were really worried about lightening the load at peak times there are better strategies than what they are doing. Other utilities (well i guess just electricity, and water if you live somewhere its scarce) offer an incentive to use them during off peak times, I'm sure the isps could figure something out too if that was really their concern.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
You may agree or disagree with the above, but that is the reason it has not happened...yet.
ISPs, actually, would be happy with the time-of-day solution you propose, as it makes their capacity planning easier, and lowers their overall costs by reducing wasted capacity during slow hours. Expect to see it in the market in the future.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
its not unicast yet though, i still have to pay for both services even though there is no reason they can't setup a broadcast network over the internet and combine everything. I still dream of the day I can pick witch networks I subscribe to then access their content at will, or even just a streaming feed if they don't want to let me pick when i get to watch what I want (because then I would just DVR off the stream and watch when i want like I do now)
When are they going to start telling me I can only watch X amount of hours of television a month or increase my plan? HD TV taxes the network quite a bit.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Wow, how many witch networks are there??
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
All of these networks weigh less than a duck.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
My second paragraph above in this thread, from Jul 14th, 2011 @ 6:48pm
"And yes, I think services like Netflix will have additional challenges in an era of throughput caps. And I also think that ISPs that offer video content have ulterior motives in protecting their own video businesses."
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Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Well, yes, choking supply DOES influence demand, so you're technically correct.
The best kind of correct!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
We'd all love to get unlimited for free, but reality doesn't allow it.
With energy, it takes ongoing costs to produce, so electricity isn't exactly the same. But with bandwidth, it takes capital to set up capacity, and the OpEx to keep it working. The capital is the expensive part, though, and a capitalist system has an equilibrium where the capital is paid 'rents'. If you want more system capacity, there will be more rent.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Unless you have a level playing field and companies can compete on service. See Europe, which largely has a better capitalist system in this field than the US does.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090603/2307475117.shtml#c639
That IS overall much better than what we have. We need more competition badly. But that doesn't change the fact that capacity is NOT unlimited here nor there, and as a scarce resource, greater use should incur greater cost.
The EU competitive case offers a better result, but still has problems. They are serving the same buffet as if they had caps, but without caps, yet not increasing the amount of food, and just calling it all-you-can-eat.
In the US case, they put in caps to assure that everyone can approach the speeds they are promised, where in the EU case, they offer unlimited, and users are unlikely to reach their purchased speeds in and around 'busy time'. Our model 'punishes' the heavy user, and their model 'punishes' everyone for the heavy users.
The competition yields the much better prices.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
A smart carrier would just allow an upsell, or reduce speeds to 128Kbps until the next month. Kicking people off doesn't benefit carrier or customer.
BTW, electric utilities also suck, because when you go over thresholds, they charge punitively higher rates, not discounted volume rates.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
19,99 for a DSL flat and phone flat (landlines only) for two years (after that 29,99) with up to 16 Mbit speed (you get as much speed as is available where you live at).
If you hit 100 GB/month, your speed is reduced to 1 MBit.
All other tiers 24,99, 29,99 and 34,99 (50 mbit) don't have caps... yet.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
I pay $1.50/GB for every GB over my 60GB limit.
60GB over is worth $90 on my $35/mo plan with a 60GB cap.
I'm only commenting now as everyone in the neighborhood is using water and I ran out of water in the shower. I'll have to wait for everyone to finish washing hands, flushing toilet, filling pool, before I can finish my shower.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
But it would be a terrible idea to encourage people to use more electricity to get up to the cheaper tier. It's totally appropriate to charge lower rates on lower usage and higher rates on higher usage, because of the public externalities. There are no such issues with bandwidth.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
As you stated, here's where things are different:
-Electrical companies are completely upfront about how much they charge per unit
-The marginal cost of electricity is much different than the marginal cost of bandwidth
-There's a real-time meter on your house that measures the electricity used that you can look at that is required by law to be accurate.
-Everywhere that I've lived at least, electrical companies cannot arbitrarily raise their rates or set caps
I'm against the idea of bandwidth caps because they are poorly implemented, unfair to certain situations, the limits are unreasonable or arbitrary, and the companies have a clear conflict of interest.
I see 2 fair and reasonable options. Neither of which we are remotely close to in the US. Both of these are easily possible with current technology.
1) Real competition in the broadband market. All (or most) users have multiple choices for a provider, and those providers have different rates, policies, services.
2) Broadband as a utility, just like electricity or water. Rates in which the public has input into and reflect the reality of what it actually costs. Rates which go down over time as technology improves. Real-time accurate meters that can be independently verified.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
recent reshufflings are, slowly, somewhat, sliding it towards option 2 as well. kind of.
('course, water here is covered by a tax ('rates', based on property value, mostly, so far as i'm aware), rather than being billed on usage, while electricity is billed based on metered usage but there's several different providers and that system's chopped up into generation, wholesale, and retail, chunks of which are owned by various cities and the national government and private entities and the whole things a mess and God alone knows how they determine their prices. though it's regularly stated that they're not allowed to reduce output/raise prices in summer when demand is low to compensate for the high demand in winter (water levels in hydro dams are an issue, apparantly) which is a problem.)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
You and I actually agree.
I am just debating in this forum that caps, themselves, are not evil, but in fact make economic sense.
The way they are implemented are generally punitive and over-bearing. But done correctly, there is nothing inherently wrong about capping throughput.
Competition is desperately lacking in the US ISP market, and new competitors are coming (mostly wireless, some muni fiber), but not enough and not fast enough. Telcos are blocking competition as much as they can. THIS is evil. Caps...not so much.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Very doubtful.
It is the middle of the month. I am at my cap now. 60GB/mo.
How many people are like me?
All it has accomplished is that they have no traffic for the last half of the month.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
i mean, i know lots of people use this much data.
i even know what services are involved in using it.
i still wonder how on earth it comes about that they use that much.
if i stop and do the maths it all works out, but at the same time i'm sitting here going 'you used How much? what the heck?!'
i have a 20gig cap that i share with 2 other people (one of whom is admittedly only here half the time and the other doesn't use much, but still), get charged extra if i go over, (the concern here is usual price and cap, not speed, as the speeds are fairly consistant unless you pay crazy amounts for the 'amazingly awesome!' plan.) and almost never go over. when i do, it's by less than two gig (data cap extentions are bought in 2gig blocks.) only exception being if i'm stupid enough to get conned into downloading a game off sony or microsoft's networks for the consoles. whatever moron is in charge of that needs to be forcibly introduced to the concept of Compression. also INSTALL FILES. if i'm downloading it, it has to be installed on the hard drive. meaning you can compress it, send it, then run an decompress/install process. there is No Bloody Reason for it to be a seven gig download. (this cost me money i was not expecting to pay and has thus become a pet rant.)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
But not every subscriber has the same billing cycle. So if you are off for the last half of your billing month, somebody else for the last half of theirs...yep, that manages network traffic.
In a shitty way, for sure, but not doubtful in the least.
What's more, you are likely to moderate your use in future months, and make choices about downloading large files or streaming. I'd say it has accomplished far more (of their goals) than you acknowledge.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Funny thing though, the ISP has had no problems supplying the bandwidth for the first half of the month.
My billing cycle has nothing to do with the cap cycle.
Cap cycle, for everyone, is from first to first, bill cycle, for me, is on the 23rd.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
If I don't use it, I lose it.
If I go over by 4GB, does $6 sound like a deterrent to you?
I don't get cut off, by going over my quota, even if it is over during 6 consecutive months.
Caps only started a year or so ago. Correction, enforcement of caps...
Before that, they said you would experience slowdowns if you went over. I never experienced a slowdown even if I went to 110GB/mo. ( I went to 90 and 110GB once each by accident in the prior 6 years. I tried to keep around my limit.)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
If I go over by 1MB, my fee is $1.50/1024.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
P.S.
None taken
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Well, when you said "All it has accomplished is that they have no traffic for the last half of the month" it sounded like you would be unable or unwilling to use your internet connection for half of the month, which to me would be something to avoid.
Now I guess you're saying it only costs you a few extra bucks a month to over, typically.
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Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Does this mean we can sue for false advertisement?
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Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
though it wouldn't be so much 'sue' as 'report' at which point they get hammered by the government.
of course, Comcast and their ilk don't operate in New Zealand.
don't think they could handle the competition. or the massive government regulation in place specifically to keep telecommunications monopolies under control.
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Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
It's to your advantage to have the fastest connection possible, even if you have a very low bandwidth cap, because it allows you to load the stuff you want very quickly. The bandwidth cap doesn't relate to speed at all.
Now, if you want, I am sure that your cable company would willingly set your modem speed down for you. Let's see... 250 gig a month, right? 8.3 gig per day, 0.345 gig per hour, 0.00576 gig per minute, or 0.000096 gigs per second... or roughly, what, a 0.1 meg per second connection? That way they could be providing you exactly the bandwidth you pay for, without any risk of going over.
Oh yeah, good look, techdirt will take a while to load.
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Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
data Quantity is not bandwith. it is a useage cap.
1gig is 1gig is 1gig. a higher bandwith is not more gigs. it means you get the entirety of that one gig Sooner.
the impose a cap on how much Data you can have total, which is arbritrary. this is not the same thing as a bandwith cap, which is a limit dictated by the maximum their hardware can cope with divided by the number of uses attempting to employ it at once.
(i'm not explaining this very well, but your argument starts from an incorrect assumption.)
your attempt to say that connection speed and bandwith are different, or that bandwith and data cap are the same, are misleading mislabellings.
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Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Actually, you are correct. By analogy with the telephone network, when the telco sells you a telephone service, you expect to be able to use it at anytime, for an unlimited duration, and do it all for a flat monthly fee.
If EVERY telco customer made a phone call and stayed on that call indefinitely, it would break the network because the telco network isn't designed to support that kind of load, even though each customer paid for their access.
The telco uses statistics to size their network; those statistics were compiled over years of experience, using queuing theory, hold times, etc.
I don't know whether or not ISPs use a similar kind of traffic analysis to size their networks, but basic engineering economics tells me they cannot size their network in such a way that would allow every one of their users to max out their individual connection 24x7.
Even if competition over the last mile were allowed, I don't think ANY ISP could design and build a network that would allow ALL of their customers to max out their connections ALL of the time.
In this particular case, the guy violated his TOS. It had nothing to do with WHAT he was using his connection for; his problem was HOW MUCH, and the fact that he did it twice.
Whether he read his TOS or not was up to him. It seems to me after the first instance, he would've been more careful.
Live and learn . . .
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Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Yes.
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Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Furthermore, countless water utilities and towns have bylaws that forbid watering in order to conserve water. While still other utilities only allow watering on particular days (ex: od or even) to maintain adequate supply in the pipes.
And, in an smaller network case, when was the last time you were taking a shower, and somebody flushed the toilet? Did you notice the flushing as the hot water scalded you? What comes out of one faucet is seriously affected by what's going on at other faucets.
The analogy to the Internet is pretty good.
So...another example of where usage and demand have been managed to ensure the ability to provide adequate service to the masses.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
This is to keep up with potable demand.
In other words, it is a water quality issue not a water quantity issue.
"And, in an smaller network case, when was the last time you were taking a shower, and somebody flushed the toilet? Did you notice the flushing as the hot water scalded you? What comes out of one faucet is seriously affected by what's going on at other faucets."
Upgrade your system to handle the needs.
Deeper well, higher capacity pump...
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Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
The guy states he still doesn't know how he exceeded the bandwidth.
If you're going to take Comcast's side, care to share how people are supposed to know how much they've used?
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Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
It isn't possible in the USA because it is a monopoly and have zero competition going on, because apparently the French, Japanese, South Korean, British and a lot of other people all have unlimited and nobody talk about caps because it would kill any dumb ISP who implemented that crap in a competitive market.
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Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
which are actually mearly an assignment of Priority, not an absolute limit like the Comcast example here. once you hit the cap, your priority expires. your ISP then either puts you through the system at a lower priority than Every Other Signal that still has priority available (which is Crazy Slow at peak times and occasionally, through some screwy weirdness, briefly Faster at off peak times. not by much or for long though.) or buys the right to more priority allocation from further up the chain to assign to you. (my ISP does the latter. the bigger ones do the former, mostly.)
this is completely different from Comcast's stupidity in this instance.
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Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
If I told you there was a 30 mile long 18 lane section on Interstate 5 in Coalinga, does it mean you would have no traffic congestion driving from San Francisco to LA?
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Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
There's ALWAYS a bottleneck. A bottleneck is the slowest part of anything.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Motion picture studios, TV channels and networks, entertainment, Video post processing, Radio stations, Enterprises with distributed campuses, financial institutions, and many other customers buy dedicated channels with a constant throughput rate that don't have bottlenecks.
Consumers, OTOH, buy "best effort" service over the random-path public Internet. This usually has bottlenecks.
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Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
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Re: Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
well, assuming i'm remembering the definition of soviet correctly.
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Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
My ISP limits me to 100GB per month, at 125M/s (theoretical). They have about 100 000 subscribers, between 5M and 125M. I assume most have 5, because of the major price difference. They will charge me 4$ per extra GB I use.
At work, we have about 10 000 subscribers, using between 10M/s and 10G/s. Most have 100M/s as it's the standard, unless they need more speed or want to pay less. We will charge them 0.08$ per extra GB, and the base package comes with 2000GB per month.
How in the hell can the ISP still say they're not making a profit? Ok, sure, they have a larger infrastructure to take care of, we only have about 6 buildings. But they make over 10 000% more profit than we do, using the same technology.
So less greed = better service. The end user is way happier and the company still makes quite a lot of money. So get your head out of your prehistoric ass and wake up to the 20th century (not a typo).
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Re: Mike, how DO you reconcile your demands that
Why is it okay for them to advertise a service as unlimited, and then change it without telling you? That means they should not advertise it as unlimited, because it's not...
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Just Can't Wait!
I'll be LOL big time, when he hits their cap, designed to sell their TV suckers more overpriced PPV!
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Can't agree on this one
He uses services which clearly mentions the limit to be 250G, and he goes over that twice.
First they warn him, and let go. He does it again and they cut him lose.
What is the expectation here? That Comcast should warn him again (and again, and again)? Or 250G is too less? What if the limit was 500G - somebody would still end up going over that, and we would be discussing this very thing right here.
And please - 250G is a lot of data. We have netflix at home but no cable TV - so we end up watching a LOT of movies, I work from home sometimes for days, download music from amazon/google music etc - upload lot of pictures too. I go nowhere close to 250G.
Not that I am biggest fan of Comcast, but I am not paying for others who go crazy over the internet. He has option to upgrade to more expensive plan, if he really thinks he needs more than 250G.
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Re: Can't agree on this one
1) Comcast did NOT make it very clear that the limit includes uploads as well as downloads.
2) Comcast did not answer his question about what his bandwidth was being used on when he asked after the first time it happened. They didn't even tell him it includes uploads and downloads.
It wasn't until after the second time it happened and he SPECIFICALLY ASKED if it included uploads that they told him it did. He later tried to find the information about the data caps and had a very difficult time doing so.
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Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
1. He is a techie ("worked as a Microsoft technology evangelist for XBox 360 and XBox live"). So I assume he knew pretty well about Comcast and it's caps.
2. Comcast makes it easy for you track your usage once you have signed up/registered.
3. He is 'audiophile' - uploading music to clouds/backup etc in three different lossless formats. Also uploading all his pictures in 'raw' format. This is just few of the activities among many other. Do you think, being a 'geek', he did not know how big those files can be?
4. He mentioned sharing the services with roommates. Not that anything is wrong with that, but if all the roommates are as much 'audiophile' as he is, the usage is just going to multiply.
5. While I agree it would be the best if Comcast tells you what is hogging your bandwidth, but he pretty much knows why the usage went over 250G (see my #3 above). It's a lame excuse to say Comcast didn't tell me what caused it.
My solution to this problem - meter the use and charge by it. That way, you can use whatever you want, just pay for it. If I am using just 50G a month, why should I pay the same as somebody using all 250G?
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Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
Oh that is right in the USA there are no $6 dollar plan and you only get one or two choices in any given area, different from Europe that gets dozens of ISP choices and no one will cap you ever because that would mean the end of the business.
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Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
Netflix, Hulu, Cloud services, etc. can all just plan to go out of business because no one is going to pay metered usage AND for those services when use of the services has a direct and dramatic effect on my metered cost.
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Re: Can't agree on this one
Instead, they opted for the human rights violation, per NATO.
Comcast should be fined, and his account should be reinstated at a reduced capacity. Or, he should have an alternative ISP available in his area.
Bet he doesn't.
Aren't monopolies great?
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Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
And I can't agree more on alternate ISP. Monopolies are good, 'capitalism' is the best.
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Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
The internet is not a human right.
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Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/internet-a-human-right/
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
If you couldn't claim it on a deserted island as the last surviving specimen of the human race, it ain't a right.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
* Right to have a family
* To work for anyone
* To own property -i guess you "own" everything
* Social Security
* Safety from violence
* Protection by law
* To vote
* To seek asylum if a country treats you badly
* Health care (medical care)
* Education
list came from Wikipedia before I trimmed the ones he could keep on his island
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
You still have a right to reproduce (that's really a property right over your own body). Just because there's no one to reproduce with doesn't mean your rights are being violated.
To work for anyone
There was never any such right.
To own property
As you note, this right still exists.
social security
Not a right.
safety from violence / protection by law
Laws apply to people. You still have to right to be safe from violence by others. Without people, it will be quite easy to assert that right. :)
to vote
Vote all you like. I don't see this as a right, though; it's merely one particular method of helping to ensure that your government does not violate your rights. A dictator can uphold rights, just as a voting public can easily violate them.
To seek asylum if a country treats you badly, health care, education
Not rights.
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Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
NATO? Human rights violation? What are you talking about? Cite please.
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Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
Are you saying he did not know any of above activities would contribute to the data usage, and that they was some heavy lifting involved in it? Come one now!
And if I am warned once, I would make sure I know what counts, what does not. It's lame excuse to say "Upload counts too? Wha??"
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
People also forget that even if you measure things you will find that the ISP always have a different ruler, because it doesn't match what they measure with what your measurements are, this is not like electricity or water that you have one standard device plugged to your house doing its thing and it is verified by someone, this is a voluntary system where the ISP have all the reasons in the world to cheat you and they will do it, if you believe otherwise you are naive.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
We have two companies here, rogers and bell, that offer internet.
My landlord has my apartment with aliant, and had his other with rogers.
Had being past tense, because he cancelled on them when, for three consecutive months, they told him the apartment was over the 250GB limit that is actually a 50GB limit.
Which is quite bad, because the line had been seasonally cancelled because he hadn't found any tenants for the apartment for that semester. The modem had been removed and stored at his house, the cable jacks were disabled because he decided to do electrical work while no one was living in the house, and the account was supposed to be, but wasn't, seasonally shut down.
Now, if you can tell me how a house with no modem, no cable jacks and no electricity can use 250GB, (really 50GB), a month for three months, I'll give you a cookie.
I will mail you a cookie. I'll make vegan cherry blast cookies, and mail you one.
Turns out, if you look for complaints, this is a very common occurrence with rogers . . . with Bell, they just randomly send signals to the modem to throttle traffic down to .25/.01 mb down/up, until it's reset. In other words, constant disconnects from any online gaming ...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
Magic!
Can I please have my cookie now its sounds delicious and i skipped lunch?
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Re: Can't agree on this one
It also limits you from using a number of services (Can't backup my hard-drive to a cloud service)
The real problem here is that companies in the US that provide broadband internet are pretty much an oligopoly. They have very little interest in upgrading their service and don't need to because there is no competition.
I have lived in the city of Seattle for the last 6 years and my options for high speed internet have always been: 1) Comcast, and maybe Qwest at one location. I have had Comcast for 6 years and been dissatisfied with my service the entire time with no practical options.
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Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
I am not playing devil's advocate here. All I am saying is the example we have picked is wrong.
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Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
"Sorry officer, I had no idea killing people was against the law. Can I go now?"
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Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
I have Comcast too, and I average about 6G per month. But I don't watch a lot of video, download music, etc. I don't claim to be typical, but I'd wager I'm closer to the average than the guy who got disconnected.
The truth is, there are MANY people who don't come NEAR the caps. Are you gonna claim we are ALL shills for the ISPs?
You need a better argument than that . . .
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Re: Can't agree on this one
Comcast has a monopoly. They provide almost half the internet accounts in the country, and are often the only real pipe you can get to your house in most places. They are the #1 entity in consumer complaints, ahead of even the IRS. That takes some work. The end result is, we pay more, for slower, capped connection, then dozens of other modern nations.
So yeah, he has a right to complain, i dont care how many times he went over the "limit." We should have fiber to every house with speeds so high the idea of data caps would be a joke. We dont because comcast can stay plenty rich forcing us to use what they got, and have no real incentive to change, at all.
Im sure this will all improve though, now that they merged with comcastuniversalgeneralelectricmsnbc.
Get some context holmie.
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Re: Re: Can't agree on this one
According to the Oregon Broadband map:
http://broadband.oregon.gov/StateMap/
the vast majority of Portland is served by 4 or 5 broadband providers. I can't speak to accurate that data is. Have you tried entering your address on that map?
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Re: Can't agree on this one
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Personal Experience
Moral of the story is that the bandwidth overhead of torrents and illegal downloading is really just a relic of times before the cloud. If you think about the size of all your media collections, obtained legally or otherwise, it probably doesn't even top a couple months of bandwidth caps at most. The average person probably has less than 250GB of media accumulated to date on their computers. In modern times, you're likely to surpass that many times over in legitimate streaming and cloud services, a lot of which is never even stored on your drive. At best, illegal downloading is a boogeyman that ISPs use to justify capping legitimate traffic to save them money at the expense of their subscribers.
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Re: Personal Experience
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The simple facts are that they want to provide their own services over the networks and the want to lock-out competitive offerings. You will notice that they almost never (actually AFAIK completely never) count their own offerings toward caps or usage, additionally in markets where there are competitive offerings for last-mile connectivity UBB and data caps are significantly more lenient, if at all present.
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Re:
There is no TECHNICAL reason that Comcast or Verizon or any other ISP needs to impose those caps. As you astutely observe, they don't have any trouble delivering their *own* content far in excess of those caps...the issue only arises when it's someone else's.
The caps are the biggest scam in telecom. (Well, other than the 8000% markup on text messages.) Keep in mind that 250G/month is 96K/sec -- or around about double what you could get out of a robust connection with a 56K modem.
That's NOT broadband. That's not even close. Yet at the same time that these ISPs are taking enormous government subsidies to build out broadband to consumers and at the same time that they're busy running commercials boasting about the speed of their networks...they're delivering crap and then kicking off someone who manages to use that paltry amount.
It's really ironic that the country where the ARPAnet originated has some of the worst, slowest, buggy, expensive and poorly managed consumer Internet service in the world.
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Re: Re:
250GB/month = 8.33GB/day (using 30 days/month for round math)
8.33GB/day = 0.34GB/hour, 340MB per hour
340MB/hour = 14MB/minute
14MB/min = 0.236MB/second
I'm not saying that 250GB is fair, and I think it SUCKS, would never patronize Comcast with this nonsense.... But running about 230KB/s at all times, 24/7, that's not nothing. Sure, it's aggregate across upload and download, but it's a lot of data. You have to bang on the pipe pretty hard to hit that with only 8-12 hours/day usage, I used 24/7/365 rates above.
Oh, and returning to the original point... 230KB/s is way more than "double what you could get out of a robust connection with a 56K modem". Fail. Try about 54X faster than a theoretically perfect 56K connection.
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Re: Re: Re:
To be precise, above when I mention, I say 250GB that really means 50GB, but it's 250GB that means 250Gb, or 31.25GB. They have a 'grace amount' of 18.75GB/mth unless you go over 3 months consecutively, which I believe is simply to obscure the fact that the advertising advertises GB and the company bills for Gb.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
around here, speeds are measured in bits, because it's meaningful, but data caps are always in bytes, because that's what the data is measured in.
i get the feeling NZ has better advertising laws than the USA.
(odd fact: i'm told NZ is the only country other than the USA that allows direct to consumer advertising of medicines.)
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Re: Re: Re:
Hours only have 24 minutes now?
The end result should be 96KB/s, or 16x faster than a 56K modem.
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easy enough to make mistakes like this accidently.
which makes it easier to get away with doing it deliberately, i suppose.
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Re: Re: Re:
340MB/hour != 14MB/minute
250GB/month = 772 kbps
We won't even discuss the errors introduced by your lack of significant figures.
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Re: Re:
So, actually, 250GB is equivalent in theory to roughly 9 x 56K modem connections. Of course, because of they worked, you'd never see more than 80% of the possible speed of a 56K modem in practice, so we're actually talking about 250GB being roughly equivalent to 11 x 56K modem connections. Eleven times faster than the fastest possible dial-up speed definitely sounds like broadband to me (albeit slow broadband).
I'm on your side, but I don't like it when people claim authority and then misrepresent the situation.
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Re: Re: Re:
60 min
24 hr.
30 days
96 KB = 768 kb 1 024KB per MB, 1 024MB per GB
60 * 60 = 3600 seconds in an hour X 24 hrs =
86 400 seconds/day X 30 days =
2 592 000 seconds/mo. X 96 KB =
248 832 000KB/mo divide by 1024 =
243 000 MB/mo. divide by 1024 =
237.3 GB/mo. @ max speed all mo.
I'm no expert, but there is my work if you care to correct it.
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what you want is a Properly Regulated market. (that 'properly' is incredibly important) something the USA's not-at-all-democratic/completely-plutocratic system is not capable of producing.
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But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
In fact, not only do they take that into account, that is the driving trend behind the move to manage traffic with tools like caps.
They are looking at stagnant or dropping prices (revenues) and rapidly increasing traffic on unlimited plans. That does not appeal, so they institute caps to prevent runaway capacity demand growth.
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Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
If it was managing traffic, it would reduce throughput for all users during peak periods, thereby training users to spread their traffic more effectively.
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Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
You say it is going to "encourage users not to use these services." Exactly, and that manages traffic. When London, England put a toll in place for driving in the downtown area, they encouraged people not to use those roads. That was, I believe, managing traffic.
The ISP cap may not be desired by consumers, but it lets the users choose which traffic they want to use, and which they might choose to forgo. Beets DPI, firewalls, torrent blocking, etc.
Your proposal of peak pricing is often considered, in fact, network operators love the concept because it sets prices based on the way the networks are truly capitalized and used. But it is not implemented for two reasons:
1) It is complicated for ISPs from a billing and management position.
2) The ISPs figure it will be too complicated and confusing to customers.
Lastly, "encouraging users not to use these services". Yeah, well, use less of the high-bandwidth ones, at least. But that's just peachy keen from the network operator's perspective. It never was their ambition to make life rosy for Netflix.
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Re: Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
Exactly *how* is any of the big ISPs going to manage demand. The caps are very much vilified and you're going to have a lot of people being kicked off for violations. Pretty soon, it's going to be the newest wave, similar to the adjustment from dialup to broadband. This is going to frustrate customers until newer options without the caps are available.
I would consider this more like OPEC's 70s caps on oil that brought short term profits, however in the long run, it hurt them by having the US find more oil in other areas.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
But there are lots of ways they can use caps and do so much more intelligently. And these methods can be much better for the customer.
1) "Soft caps" - you can hit it and just get notified for one or two months. You only get "capped" after multiple overages.
2) "Overage throttling" - You don't get shut off when you hit your cap, but you do get your speed throttled. The slower speed would still enable web, email, IM, and emergency services like 911 by VoIP, so say 128Kbps.
3) "Upsell" - OK, you hit your cap. Instead of blocking your traffic, we'll offer you the chance to move up to a higher tier and keep service active. They should offer this-month-only upsells, and long-term upsells. The price should be fair (no more than the $/MB of the base plan) and not punitive.
4) "Awareness Tools" - with caps, the carriers have the responsibility to let customers know how much data they have used so far in the month. A website, email, and a widget should all be available.
You say caps are vilified, but AT&T Wireless managed to install them to mixed public reaction ("mixed" is about as good as it gets). The key is to use tools like the 4 above. ISPs should never cut people off. Make it fair, and make it non-punitive.
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Re: Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
Its just plain bunk and the monopolistic nature of these "businesses" proves it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
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Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
....1yr.....
Holy fuck, we have got to deter people from watching all their TV on the internet. Lets put up arbitrary limits that make it more expensive to switch to Hulu and Netflix exclusively. Come back to us and watch TV, yes yes pay a 15 "tech fee" to watch HD television, MUWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
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Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
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Re: Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
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Re: Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
However, the fact that we have weak ISP competition in the USA doesn't change the fact that there are real costs to provide incremental capacity to homes.
In the UK and France, for example, ISPs will sell you 6Mbps plans for very low prices. This is great. But you have a far worse chance in France getting anywhere near your promised speeds than you would in the USA, because they are way more oversubscribed. In France and the UK, they let bottlenecks in the middle mile "cap" or "manage" network traffic. They provide their customers with best effort services.
ISPs like Free need to connect to someone's backbone fiber, or they need to strike 'peering deals' with Tier 2 and Tier 1 carriers to pass along their customers' traffic. These deals are NOT unlimited, so there is a bottleneck in the information highway, whether it is caused by the ISP, or by the ISP's ISP.
Now, I prefer the EU model with local loop unbundling and lots of competition. The competition will, eventually, offer a better result than what we have here. But it is true that the "best effort" they get from the lowest-price ISPs (overall) is inferior to what US customers see.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
Competition does offer more choice, this "Bas debit" account with Free.fr is a low-download option of 15 euros for 50 hours of "up to" 28Mbps:
https://subscribe.free.fr/free50h/
A good deal, but not great. I get the sense that the Techdirt commenters wouldn't be too pleased with a 50 hour limit!!
While Free also offers unlimited fiber up to 100Mbps where available and unlimited DSL at up to 28Mbps for about 30 Euros/month.
A good chart of what's available now in France is here:
http://www.universfreebox.com/article12880.html
Focus on the third column under "Degroupage Total", which means you've cut off the incumbent provider. You can see that Free, SFR, and Bouygues are hovering around 30 euros in price, and the incumbent, Orange (formerly France Telecom) charges about 40euros/mo. What makes it such a great deal is that, for a pittance, they bundle in a fixed landline and TV service. Adding in TV ends up costing about 2 euros.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
But you just went on to describe a bunch of options for faster (than 6 Mbps) service. So it sounds like they have a fairly good array of cheap, but still as fast as much of what's available in the US, up to somewhat more expensive and nice and fast. Sounds great!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: But ISPs DO Take Cloud Services Into Account
The faster DSL, as I had said before, is limited by the capacity of the ISPs peering points with Tier 1 carriers. You can pay more, for sure, and your last mile DSL connection will be up to 28Mbps...but you may not actually get any "faster Internet". That is not guaranteed in the ToS or SLA.
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And therein lies the rub
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prolly getting hated for saying this...
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Ignoring file sizes the most used feature of the internet is email so communications apparently is the first and foremost use of it, for personal and business purposes.
Also if people need to access the Khan Academy to learn and waste a lot of bandwidth trying to learn something is that entertainment?
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So to everyone who is scoffing saying it's really hard to hit caps like this, just look at my example - 2 people, "normal" usage, hitting over 100GB/month easily. I was actually pretty surprised that we had gone that high. Unless you are paying attention just normal usage could get you into trouble if you have caps.
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“People should be careful if they have a terabyte of data to back-up,” Douglas said. “They should manage their consumption carefully, and do it over time.”
fuck everything about that.
translation: "did you recently buy a hard drive for less than $100, and expect to use it? comcast may not be for you".
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I was thinking about switching to comcrap before this article popped up. Interestingly enough, when I was looking into their service, there was no mention of usage caps in their terms of service. Is it possible they only set caps in certain areas/regions? I'm not sure I want to take the chance. I'm not sure about "upgrading" my current service to a business account either, the only benefit I see is having unlimited access again. But who knows for how long?
I feel like I am just a normal user except...
I currently have 6 computers and 1 TV sharing a connection. The kids play games and watch lots of YouTube, I read a lot of crap and occasionally download a TV show or movie and I play a flash game now and then, we all use facebook, twitter, etc. It is incredibly easy to exceed a 150GB cap when you have more than one user that isn't off at work or school or where ever for more than part of the day 5 or more days a week.
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Re:
Hidden in the EULA is the detail that your contract can change at any time.
After that, if you want to sue Comcast, you probably have to do it through mandatory arbitration instead of open court.
My advice? See if you can find their older plan, look at it, and see if that's correct. If you have the mandatory arbitration clause, be wary of trying to sue. Mandatory arbitration is heavily favored to the business and heavily biased against consumers. If you can sue in open court for false advertisement or anything relating to not your ISP not living up to their contract, it's worth looking into.
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Re:
Limiting the quantity is not limiting the quality, or the politics of it. You already have only 24hrs a day, you are already limited for quantity.
And I imagine that a 250GB cap would allow you plenty of page views at HuffPo or Breitbart's blog...unless you filled the month with 30 movie downloads from the Twilight series and last season's Californication.
Accusing Comcast of making people is dumb is misdirected in a country where people choose to watch driven instead of read the brightest authors.
PS: Initially, I don't know what broadband caps the industry will average. But over time, I think you'll see higher and higher caps because of the (small but existent) amount of competition we have and because of long-term declining costs of providing a GB.
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Evolve or die
These companies must evolve or they will die. This is a model from the Prodigy-era, when people paid for internet usage by the minute, only changed a bit when DSL became instant. This model must evolve to a different model, where companies charge for service and speed, not size and amount.
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Actually, Competition is awful for Capitolism?
This is the most obvious case of Anti-Trust ever. I NEED internet service for my job (Though recently I've found that rooted Sprint EVO 4g + usb tether actually gives decent bandwidth), and I have literally no choice but to use Comcast.
On the list of things that bother me, Broadband internet providers in the US and copyright/patent/licensing law are fighting to be #1.
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Re: Actually, Competition is awful for Capitolism?
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Re: Telstra's Dominance
I mean, they are the biggest telephone provider across Australia with a wholesale virtual-monopoly on most of Australia's phone lines and, apparently, they sometimes don't even let competitors access their exchanges in order for them to install non-Telstra DSLAMs for ADSL2+ connectivity. Heck, do an internet search for "simon hackett telstra" to read about some of the problems he and his ISP Internode have had with them over the years.
Unfortunately, our NBN, IF it ever gets implemented across Australia, is going to be no better than what America has now, with a wholesale level monopoly: Yes, ISP's can set their own NBN prices, but they'll be based on the wholesale prices set by NBN Co or whoever buys it should the government sell it off (rumoured to most likely be bought by TPG).
Finally, unrelated to my points above, please show me one ISP in Australia now who does not count uploads in their ADSL2+ caps - no sarcasm, PLEASE do show me one if you can!
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Re: Re: Telstra's Dominance
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They are a cable TV company and they don't want customers getting all their TV programming via their internet connections, foregoing the need to subscribe to their regular cable TV services. Keep in mind that they imposed these bandwidth limits a few years ago when many more TV shows and movies were not yet available on the Internet (Bitorrent, ect., notwithstanding). But they could see the trend, that of most TV programming eventually becoming available online, enough so that eventually people would be able to get most if not all of what they want to see without resorting to regular programming. So they imposed the bandwidth caps at a time when very few customers had reached that point, when very few customers would have reason to complain about it other than as a matter of principle. Now, a few years down the road, as more people start to hit the limits and complain about it, they can point to the rules and say "these restrictions are not new; they've been in effect for x number of years now".
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More Personal Experience
Now, when I signed up for the service, my contract did not include caps, so this is a significant change to the servie I signed up for.
This is what i use (3 megs DSL):
- 1-2 hours of Netflix streaming
- streaming xm radio daily (8 hours)
- 2 VPN running all day (8 hours)
- uploaded 30gb of music to Amazon Cloud
- downloaded maybe 30 songs for the kids new ipod
- used webex / logmein tools daily
NO
- torrents, p2p, etc
- online gaming/steam etc
I'm on a closed WiFi network, and involved the telecom industry enough to be confident that there are no 3rd party users.
My fault, right? Shouldnt be watching Voyager using my dsl account? Using the Amazon cloud service?
Nobody wants to admit that right on time for cloud services, the telecoms are finding ways to increase profits.
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Re: More Personal Experience
You do all that, and you don't think you should be paying more than the average family that does email, web browsing, and facebook updates?
For example, you listen to XM for 8 hours a day! This is a signal that is sent from a satellite, 22,000 miles overhead to cover the entire USA in order to achieve scalable distribution. Yet, you choose to receive it in a separate, low-efficiency, unicast stream. That's wonton disrespect of a shared resource. I understand that this is a good way to listen to XM indoors, but YOU gotta pay the price for your choices.
You seem to think that 'no torrents or P2P' means that you are one of the good guys. But the whole problem with non-neutral networks is that they assume that some things are "bad" like P2P, and other things are "good" like email. But the reality is, there is no good or bad. It's all just bits, and we the users should decide which we choose to send. A carrier that does DPI or filters torrents is meddling with my freedom to choose whatever content or sources I wish. So, that leaves the carrier the cap option, which is blind to what you do, but just cares about the quantity.
If you're online at home EVERY DAY for 8 hours or more, and you're doing WebEx/Logmein daily, well then it sounds like you are not the average home user. That sounds a lot more like a business user. It sounds like you, like me, work from a home office. So don't come on here acting like a *consumer* who's been done wrong. You are expecting business-level service at consumer-grade prices.
When you signed up for service, your contract did not include caps. So this is a significant change. When you signed up for service, you probably also did not stream music 8 hours a day, nor use cloud service, nor stream Netflix. So that is also a significant change. Yet you don't think the price should be different?
Lastly, EVERYBODY "admits that right on time for cloud services", the telecom pricing models are changing. Absolutely. People are raising their consumption exponentially. Prices/caps are changing in response to cloud and streaming media. The ISPs are scared @#$less of runaway bandwidth demand. Why wouldn't they react?
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Re: Re: More Personal Experience
I work in the industry. For a major telecom. In networking. Our engineers are more worried about IP address exhaustion, rather than bandwidth utilization. That battle was fought, and is paid for with your current rates. They already raised prices to pay for the extra fiber, routers, and general network buildout.
You seem to think that bandwidth is a limited resource, and using it somehow consumes something. Maybe, over time, the little electrical pulses can burn a router out, but as long as there is no congestion on the network, guess what - theres no limitation on the resource! Now, if you are someone experiencing slowdowns because others use up the limited amount of bandwidth that your ISP can offer at any given time, then I would fault the ISP for not building/buying enough infrastructure.
The big telecoms, the only ones who are looking at this, already have enough bandwidth in their networks to support as much bandwidth at the subscribers can use at the bandwith rates they pay for. These companies have already invested to move all TV, Phone, and Internet data onto their IP network, which is far cheaper to maintain and upgrade than the old switched and analog tv networks. Their prices are going down, per byte.
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Re: Re: Re: More Personal Experience
Finally, when i signed up, yes, i did stream. This cloud stuff isnt new, just new to you.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: More Personal Experience
Nice try. But the question is WHEN was it "new" to me? Was it back when I Chaired, moderated, and presented around "Cloud" in 2010:
http://www.kertongroup.com/wireless-telecom-industry-speaker.html
...or when I organized this event for the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley in 2009:
http://www.cvent.com/events/building-the-cloud/agenda-d17d0b288da04b1ab45b782f131a201e.aspx
..or when I made techdirt comments about it in Jan 2009?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090123/0705323499.shtml#c388
...or do you think it is when I wrote this Techdirt post about it in 2007 (see para 2):
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071120/181127.shtml
...or was it when I worked at the Javasoft division at Sun Microsystems in 1997, and we were working on the JavaStation thin client computer under McNeely's mantra "the network is the computer".
At least I don't kid myself. None of that was entirely new anyway. Client/server could be considered cloud, and plenty of other "cloud like" tech pre-dates the 90's and thus my career. Processing power, storage, etc have all swung like a pendulum back and forth between the edge and the core through different eras of technology. But sure, if it makes you feel better, consider yourself way ahead of the curve.
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Re: Re: Re: More Personal Experience
Not so much that. If you kept consuming data at the same rate you consumed it in 2005, there would be no capacity issue. New users would come on to the net, and existing fees would handle that slow, linear growth.
However, what IS happening is that joe shmoe users, who in 2005 were consuming a gig or two a month, are now consuming 14 gigs or more. This requires serious network expansion, and that, my friend, requires capital, i.e. money.
If, as you say, I am fooled, and bandwidth utilization is a moot issue, then why are the telcos investing billions in new networks, like FiOS or that uVerse stuff? They are investing BILLIONS!! New entrants are investing BILLIONS. And the public complains that they are not investing fast enough. When an incumbent doesn't invest enough, municipalities invests in a fiber ring. Does that sound like an industry that has no capacity constraints? Your position is ludicrous.
Maybe you are mislead because this country had plenty of dark fiber at the turn of the century, and that has created the illusion that there is lots of excess capacity. OK, at the core there was dark fiber. That has mostly been lit, and the problem isn't at the core anyway, it's last mile and middle mile.
Yes, sir. "Their prices are going down, per byte." But the amount of bytes is increasing at a rate that outpaces the savings. Cisco's historically accurate VNI forecast says that by 2015, total Internet traffic will be 4x 2010 traffic.
In 2009, the average High speed Internet user consumed 11.4GB per month. And video was 4.3GB of that.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Cisco-Average-Connection-Consumes-114-GB-Per-Month-105086
By 2010, that number had climbed to 14.9GB. And busy hour traffic was up 41%. What industry can provide 41% more of what they provide, year over year, and not need to invest in additional capacity?
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/Cisco_VNI_Usage_W P.html
Additional capacity investment = additional capital = additional economic rent required. Therefore, prices climb.
"Boy have they got me fooled?" Please. You're in engineering in telecom. Don't assume that makes you savvy in capital markets, economics, or business. You see capacity where you work because the capital has/is being spent. Then we gotta pay the bill.
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Yes, usage is going up, thanks for posting those stats. Cost is also going down, and will also do so expotentially, as new technologies are developed and implemented.
Dark fiber has nothing to do with this. Real, live telecom networks have been built to excess capacity, and continue to be be built ahead of the curve. Charging $10 to heavy users will not pay for capacity - thats just extra revenue. The price you pay today, already includes the cost to continue expansion.
Last mile is a bottleneck due to technology constraints, not network congestion. My piddly usage at 3mbps impacts nobody. 150gb is a drop ina very large bucket, and pretending that caps are intended to slow usage down, is what is ludicrous and untenable. It is simply to find additional revenue.
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Re:
Video over IP is orders of magnitude more expensive than broadcast video. It is done by the telcos not because it's cheaper, but because it is new potential revenue, and they don't have broadcast resources available to them.
"new technologies are developed and implemented." "networks have been built to excess capacity"
Right. For example the fiber in FiOS and uVerse that we have both been discussing. So who do you think pays for this implementation? They put it the ground, spend the capital, and then they expect economic rents on the investment. You can't just say "that investment is already made, so now broadband is free".
And which of us should pay? Well, given that...
"The top 1 percent of broadband connections is responsible for more than 20 percent of total Internet traffic. The top 10 percent of connections is responsible for over 60 percent of broadband Internet traffic, worldwide." [cisco vni]
...I propose that it's fair that the heavier users should shoulder an heavier share of the economic rents that we pay to our ISPs.
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This guy is a pirate
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