The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is
from the caps-don't-work dept
We've argued that data caps for internet access are silly, and even as they're becoming more popular for both wired and wireless broadband data offerings, it seems more people are recognizing this. The NY Times has an article about data caps that makes the key point upfront: no one knows what a megabyte is:But what, exactly, is a megabyte?It's actually much worse than that. The fact that it's not easy to mentally keep track of these things without significant effort means that there's a real extra cognitive cost in using broadband with caps. You have to sit there and think about what you want to do online. You have to think:
If a sampling of pedestrians on the streets of Brooklyn is any guide, most people have only a vague idea. One said a megabyte was “the amount of something we have to use the Internet,” adding, “We should have three or four.”
Miranda Popkey, 24, was closer: “It’s a measure of how much information you store. If there are too many of them, I can’t send my e-mail attachment.”
A megabyte is, in this context, 1,000 kilobytes — or about the size of a photo taken with a decent digital camera, or roughly one minute of a song, or a decent stack of e-mail.
Therein lies the problem: Counting things like minutes and text messages is fairly easy, but there is no intuitive or natural way to gauge data use.
- How much room do I have before I hit the cap?
- How much data will this content actually take up?
- What if I'm wrong?
- How much does it cost if I go over?
- Wait, what if this is taking up a lot more data then I thought?
- How much more data will I need this month?
- No, seriously, what if I confused things and watching this video uses up my entire allotment?
It still amazes me how short-sighted many ISPs are that they aren't looking to capitalize on this more by competing by getting rid of caps. Of course, one key reason is that there just isn't that much competition, and so the short-sighted view can win for the time being. But it's a dangerous long-term strategy. Pissing off customers as a business model isn't a very good idea.
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Mobile Netflix
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Re: Mobile Netflix
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You are talking about his infatuation with Marcus's ass, right?
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And what happens when you run out?
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Re: And what happens when you run out?
And why does all this trickle bandwidth exist? Because the people programming these widgets and web sites and services are written to actually use the resources of the internet, not considering these resources limited.
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Re: Re: And what happens when you run out?
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Re: Re: Re: And what happens when you run out?
*In my experience. Your mileage may vary.
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Nobody Needs To Know
This can be a bar chart, a pie chart, etc. That's easy to understand. People understand proportions, don't they. Problem solved.
The cognitive load you discuss can be reduced greatly by proactive notifications. Caps done correctly would include sufficient outbound notifications to users when they hit thresholds (50, 80, 90, 100%), or are off-pace with their caps: "Hey, you've used 50% of your month's allotment in just 8 days." Users at the cap should be throttled to respectable speeds (164Kb/s or so) or offered an up-sell to the next higher plan.
The problem isn't caps. It's that carriers are terrible at implementing them well.
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Re: Nobody Needs To Know
B. Most people cannot figure percentages either. I've seen servers pissed about getting a $3 tip on a $10 order--I asked how much a 20% tip would have been and got a (serious!) answer of $5.
The correct response to this whole schlock is to treat internet like what it is, a utility. Meter and charge by amount used, just like water, electric, natural gas, what-have-you.
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Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Agreed that metering is the better way to go though -- meters degrade gracefully, so going a little over a cap won't kill you.
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So their's unfortunately, but we can blame Congress / The Supreme Court for that.
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Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
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Re: metered as a utility commodity
1) Do more bytes actually incur more cost to the provider? The electricity is already on ... (And I do realize higher use does necessitate more infrastructure.)
2)The meter can not be on the device that is doing the consuming. It must be on the point of delivery. (You don't have an electric meter on every device in the house.) This presents a significant problem to devices that can get signal from differing sources (wifi hotspot or cell tower?)
3)I admit this point is my own bias but ISP's have not shown that they have an ethical competency any where near that of my other utility providers (not that they are that great either)
I do not see myself as any great fan of regulation but there needs to be clearer rules, and rules that err on the side of consumer protection and not the provider.
my 2¢
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Re: Re: metered as a utility commodity
1) Do more bytes actually incur more cost to the provider?
No
The meter can not be on the device that is doing the consuming. It must be on the point of delivery. (You don't have an electric meter on every device in the house.) This presents a significant problem to devices that can get signal from differing sources (wifi hotspot or cell tower?)
Yes, they can track anyone without competition.
3) I agree whole heartedly.
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Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
The best thing to do is switch to a isp that does not inpose a data cap, if you have the option. I moved out of an area so I could go with another provider. I am glad I did. While I liked where I used to live, I did not like the fact that there was only one isp out there. I do not believe in monoplies. Electric is already raping us for all were worth, we don't need isp's doing it as well.
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Re: Nobody Needs To Know
You're right that the problem isn't caps. The problem is a lack of competition. If there was real competition in the ISP space, either the carriers would implement the caps correctly, or they would eliminate them altogether. Either way, the problem gets solved by adding more competition.
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Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
To your second point on competition. That is completely correct.
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Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
What if in the 4th week you also want to download a new app or game demo, or watch a lolcat video instead of watching the netflix movie?
What if you only send pictures to family after some event (vacation, graduation, birthday party, etc) that doesn't occur on a regular daily, weekly, or even monthly basis?
All of that ignores the essence of the article. It doesn't matter at all if you know that a megabyte is a million bytes if you don't also know how many megabytes the thing you are downloading/uploading is? Off the top of your head, how many MB is a movie/show on Netflix? How many megabytes is a youtube video? How many megabytes is a song on Pandora? How many megabytes is this webpage you are reading? How many megabytes is this PDF (answer before downloading, please, so that you don't go over your cap)?
In order for caps to work, every link would have to include the number of bytes behind it. That's all fine and good for static content. For dynamic content you'd have to have a little javascript number constantly polling the server asking how much the page would be just then, which itself is using part of your cap.
Also, pie charts are horrible.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
The biggest problem is the arbitrary caps, and the problems in trying to see where you are at any given moment. In theory you can go out to the water meter or Electric box and get a reading to see where you are, but even those are difficult to understand if you don't have a reading from the billing date to compare to.
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Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
And, YES, the problem is competition. There's precious little of it about.
One solution as things move towards more competition would be to declare what ISP's do as common carriers because Internet access is a utility these days. The ISP's would howl with outrage but who cares? The volume and pitch of the howling only goes to show that they'd actually have to provide the service they promise and probably make a dollar or two less out of every $10 grand they get from customers.
Caps are just a way to dig deeper into customer's pockets. There really is no technical reason for them.
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Re: Nobody Needs To Know
It is obvious from comments like yours that people still do not understand the role internet plays in a lot of peoples lives. It is used constantly by people like me. I am always on the net talking to people, streaming video or music, playing online games, doing research, ect.
The internet is a large part of life. Putting a limit on data greatly interferes with many aspects of what I do on a daily basis. I then have to choose do I give up communicating for a week or more so I can stream this video?
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Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Already, I am facing major problems. When I first started using the 3G modem, I found out that it hates having multiple connections i.e., it hates it when I try and open multiple webpages at the same time, or trying to open a page while downloading something. So, I have to plan ahead. While downloading Windows Updates, I was unable to open a webpage so had to do something else, instead of doing what I wanted to do, which was communicate with the online world. I also now have to be very careful with my usage of Steam: patches there are not small. I simply detest the thought of having to choose between a patch or web browsing.
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Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Yes they do. For carriers with capacity constraints trying to match the capital they must spend to extent capacity with increased revenues, they solve the problem quite surgically. People either reduce their consumption, or pay more for more.
You'll find it in the encyclopedia under Supply and Demand. It is obvious from comments like yours that people still do not understand the role that economics plays in the market for braodband services. Economics doesn't care that you are "always on the net talking to people, streaming video or music, playiung online games, doing research, etc." Economics only cares that, if the impact of users like you pushes the demand curve to the right, either the equilibrium price will need to rise, or you will need to be constrained.
The Internet is not a charity. Even if "it's a large part of life", that would mean that you want it more, and will pay more for more. Consider a parallel:
Gas stations don't give me unlimited gas for each time I pay to fill up! Putting a limit on how much gas I can pump "greatly interferes with many aspects of what I do on a daily basis. I then have to choose do I give up [commuting] for a week or more so I can [pay my mortgage]?"
Life has costs and trade-offs. Tough. Economics is the study of allocation of resources under scarcity. I think, good sir, that it is not I that fail to "get" these here Interwebs, but rather you that fails to "get" them thars economics laws.
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Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Except, bandwidth is only scarce for brief periods when many people are trying to use it at the same time. Aside from that, bandwidth is essentially limitless, the only real limiting factor being throughput speed.
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Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
If you really want to compare it to something like gas then how about the providers truly charge that way? Don't put a cap on it just change over to charging by the MB. That would truly be supply and demand. The issue is that they want more money and they know that you have no where else to go.
Like in my case, I have DSL because there are no other high speed options. The cable company refuses to run the cable to where our house is located and the high speed wireless options are not practical. So they have nothing to fear by raping us because the options are accept the cost or live without the net. At least with gas if one station charges a dollar more than the one across the street then you have the option to drive across the street.
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Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Oh wait, he didn't. Your reply has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on. Supply refers to the availability of a limited number of goods or services - something called scarcity. That scarcity doesn't exist with something like data - there aren't a limited number of megabytes to go around (do you know what those are?) Comparing ISPs to gas stations only puts you on par with Ted Stevens.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
And let me tell you, I can tell when the teenagers get home from school and start their P2P programs. The throughput on my cable loop goes to hell.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
I'll walk back my statement a bit.
We can all agree there is a scarcity in the rate of communication over time, not in the total amount of communication - time, then, being the crucial factor. I maintain that policing quantity when you want to control rate just doesn't make sense: let's say you can download a file over an hour, or stream it in several minutes. The net effect on your data cap is the same, but the load on the system is very different. Is this fair, if the goal is to restrict the users who place more of a burden on the system?
Current systems of data limits only seem to create as many problems as they solve.
I still maintain that Derek's comparison here is absurd, and in no way represents a "parallel". A gas station is charging you for a fixed quantity of a good that has an easily-defined worth. Your Internet service provider is charging you for a fixed quantity, which is standing in as proxy for a fixed rate of a service that has no easily-defined worth. The differences are substantial and seem to be lost on Derek, as evidenced by his 2:24PM response to TtfnJohn.
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*Admittedly, the specifics do get a little dicey, as the group trying was, I think, a city government.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
If your system slows down, everyday after school, for the first 2 weeks of the month then yes, caps are working.
If your system slows down, everyday after school, then caps are useless.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Scarce: new, faster, more capacity telecom networks.
If you are content connecting by dial-up to AOL, then I will accept your argument that your bits cost almost nothing to provide.
If, however, you want to stream a youtube video once or twice, then you will have to accept that the capacity to serve customers like you is scarce at some point in time, and must be built, at a cost, to meet your demand.
With data demand constantly shifting to the right, supply must constantly build new capacity. There is scarcity right there, my friend.
For I am rubber, and you are glue. It is your comprehension that is analogous with a bridge to nowhere.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
They know demand is growing, they know they need to build but instead they chose to not build anything.
The reason is simple this is not about demand my friend, the backbone is fat and everybody knows it, it can handle the demand this is just a money grab on their part and the excuse is usage.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
And part of that is fair, I mean, business isn't a charity. And part of that is unfair, using oligopolistic practices and lobbyists, etc.
But that doesn't invalidate the argument that capacity IS constrained in may bottlenecks at any given time. And relieving those bottlenecks and installing increased capacity does cost significant capital.
Freezing construction? Sounds like you're changing the topic. I might agree with you on your tangent. Verizon stopping FiOS deployment and partnering with the Cable cos is definitely not progress. But it's still changing the topic. There IS constrained capacity, that means scarcity, that means supply and demand are in effect, and supply should not be considered abundant or infinite.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
I can point you to Free in France and their offerings you be hard pressed to find any caps on the UK, France, Japan or any other place that have shared infra structure and lots of competitors.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
- improve service
- lower prices
- increase quotas / eliminate caps
- increase speed
That doesn't make caps wrong. And that doesn't support the original thesis that "caps are wrong because nobody knows what a MB is."
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Using a petrol (gas) analogy, imagine driving a car without a fuel meter or milometer. You would have to guess how far you have driven, how fast, to know when to fill it up again. Hardly ideal, is it?
If people don't know how big a Mb is, and their caps are too close to the bone, it all matters. If the caps were just to stop the worst offenders and therefore much bigger (like the telcos claim), then people wouldn't need to care.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
If you don't want people using more than some amount of bandwidth per month don't offer higher capacity then regulate the data transfer speed to match the consumption for an entire month that way no matter what one does they will not be able to go above it, but that is bad for marketing and overcharge right?
How many seconds in a month?
Divide that for the bandwidth you want every customer to have, I guarantee you that no one will ever use anything above and beyond what they paid for, the connection will get slower though.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Look at it this way (a litle simplistic I'll admit but bear with me):
Everyone seems too agree (because it's true) that the actual limit on the network is not amount of data it can transfer but the maximum sustainable data rate, because that's the thing that costs money.
Imagine everyone you sell broadband to has a 20GB download limit per month. Everyone starts merrily downloading and gets a warning they're getting close to the limit. They stop downloading until the "next month", when they start again.
If this happens to lots of your customers at once they what you've done is artificially create a high burst data rate at the beginnning of the month that your network has to cope with, when a sustained data rate would actually give you less capacity problems.
I think the problem is that broadband providors advertise and sell the wrong thing because it sounds sexier. Most sell a maximum speed e.g. 20Mbps (which people don't understand either but can be easily dressed in "download a film in 10 minutes a song in 20 seconds" type language). First it often turns out if it's over a traditional phone line that the line infrastructure isn't up to the delivery (hence the kludge "legal" wording of "up to" 20Mpbs broadband). And second that figure doesn't take into account contention ratios (link aggregation at the local exchange) or actual network capacity. That means that when the sustained data rate ends up sucking the customer says "but you said I'd get [irrelevant nice big number]".
I reckon it would be better if ISPs sold lines on the basis of "mean guaranteed data rate" and were contracted as such. It might not sound as sexy but it would be a lot more honest and would get rid of stupid absolute amount of data limits. For ISP's that cared it would make capacity planning easier because it gives a definitive taget to aim for and for those that are cowboys that never upgrade their networks while sell-sell-selling it would empower the customer with a harder to wriggle out of provable contractual breach.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Then no (more) tax dollars for them and they need to give the ones we gave them back thankyouverymuch. Because if I'm giving a company tax dollars I expect them to serve the common good with them. If they don't want to do tht then don't take the government/our money.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
So it's the bandwidth at peak times that is scarce, not the amount of data total. I do not see how you, of uber economic knowledge, do not see that this fact moots your arguement.
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Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
If an ISP has capacity constraints then bloody well fix it and get the money later by raising prices, if you must. Imposing caps does nothing to raise the money because the caps mean the data usage the ISP caps means the money will never get raised. If they must then meter the usage and bill for it. Kinda like Hydro companies do.
As for capacity there's the small problem that data is inherently bursty. It's sent and received in a matter of microseconds and it's gone. Capacity restored. The very design of the Internet makes it even more bursty as every internet connection is dropped after the data is sent or received and reconnected when one end of the other sends or receives some more data. At worst, in quiet moments, the user is left with a carrier tone above or below the data spectrum to keep their connection to the carrier up.
I'm more than willing to get into discussions of supply and demand but what you're claiming to be a scarce resource isn't for a properly equipped ISP. By the way, economics is also the study of resource allocation in times of abundance, too.
As I don't accept that there is scarcity for a half way well equipped ISP the notion of scarcity doesn't enter into it. That I don't accept that it's possible to raise money to fix an imaginary problem by not selling the service you're in the business of selling doesn't raise a penny to fix that problem isn't my problem either.
Your problem is that you don't understand the architecture of these here interwebs, which were designed to deal with and route around capacity scarcity, or the basis of data transmission and how that works.
(Not, in fairness, that many people do, unless you've worked in the field.)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
In our world (the second of the two) ISPs must constantly upgrade and invest to provide new capacity to meet new demand. That costs money. Money is scarce.
So, you can choose: 1) cap people's usage to limit the amount of money; or 2) ask for more money to build out more capacity.
The ISPs have guessed that 1 would be 'less unpopular' than 2. Although, they also offer 2, by way of higher plans, overages, or enterprise-grade plans.
I'll say it again: if you are willing to consumer the same amount of data as you did in 2000, then your bits have near-zero marginal cost, and your argument is good.
And yes, I've worked in the field of telecom. Nothing but, in fact. That and my econ degree from a country that also calls electricity "hydro".
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Everyone needs to know.
Those of us in the industry would get fired engaging in the same kind of behavior that ISPs get away with.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
I'm also noticing that Comcast et. al. are increasing their profits year over year. How does that happen if they're investing at all in their networks? What it seems to me is that they're NOT investing in their product because they have monopolies on the lines, and simply adding data caps so they can preserve the profits without adding additional service because, hey, they don't have to.
Feel free to prove me wrong with citations, though.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Nor am I mixing up the differences between constant demand as opposed to rising demand. Ever increasing is dubious as I'm not in the habit of projecting that far into the future. Though there is increasing demand right now, that I'll give you.
Some ISP's have chosen the cap route which have proven very unpopular others have chosen slightly increased monthly rates which, while unpopular, don't leave the user with a bad taste in their mouth every billing cycle which is the major draw back to caps.
And do I use the same amount of data I did in 2000? No. Has my ISP increased capacity in the 12 years since? Yes. In fact I installed, tested and designed an good part of that upgrade as part of the regular cycle of network upgrades all telcos do as part of their normal business. Heck, we made/make enough from Broadband to afford it quite handily. Our only challenge is geographical not monetary. It's part and parcel of the normal cost of doing business. Cableco's face different challenges with coaxial outside plant, a technology developed as simplex (one way) transmission whereas telcos have always operated in duplex (two way). And let's do keep in mind that network capacity and bandwidth are two different things.
The near-zero marginal cost not only takes into account the amount of data in the network but, as you say, the cost of maintenance and, as importantly, the profit made which can cancel out the cost of maintenance. Expansion and upgrading are maintenance.
Please forgive me for using local slang for electricity transmission and generation. It wasn't an attempt to confuse but me just being lazy. ;-)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
You can say that there are a couple Broadband providers so it's not a true monopoly but in practice they divide communities / cities in such ways that they do not have to compete.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Except that's not how it works. Even if the ISP got no more customers over that time and charged no more they would have to refresh their network to keep everything supportable if nothing else and that would have to be built into the operating costs otherwise they'd go out of business. A gigabit switch now costs in real terms less than a similar 100 meg switch would in 2000. There's a 10x speedup right there and 10Gb is getting way down in cost too. Costs for the curently accepted technology tend to remain roughly the same over time.
In terms of, say, a dedicated leased line from an ISP, I can get a 1Gb link for about what I paid for 10Mb in 2000 (in the UK at least - might be different in the US where you seem to have less competition) and leased lines have no data caps. Do you think the ISP's could or would do that if increased capacity really cost so very much to provide?
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Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
A large demand exists for data consumption from many media forms. It is quite obvious that these companies are greatly out of touch with the desires of consumers. This gap in understanding will only increase in the coming years, because insufficient pressure can be applied to them to alter their behavior. By increasing consumer understanding and awareness, (i.e. everyone knows what volume of data they'd need per month) then more pressure on companies will be the result.
Stop defending them and keep your condescension to yourself.
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Re: Nobody Needs To Know
The problem with this is I've already been "up-sold" to an unlimited plan. There is no "unlimited-plus" plan for me to be up-sold to.
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Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
I'm defending caps, tiers of service and metering as viable economic pricing models in a market with scarcity of resources (network capacity).
I'm not defending the BS carriers sometimes promote, nor the services they end up offering, nor the clumsy way they deliver them.
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http://www.senzafiliconsulting.com/Blog/tabid/64/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/68/Man aging-data-traffic-in-real-time-down-at-the-cell-level.aspx
I think this graph will reveal a flatter usage pattern than most of you assume. If you've ever seen the classic cellular voice graph, you'll notice the peaks and valleys are VERY flattened in this modern data traffic map.
What's happening is that people's phones are consuming data in the background, and at set intervals. They are not just using them during their commute, like they used to. And people are using data on their phones all day long, at work because it is outside the company firewall, at home because it is in addition to their TV.
more:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/research-shows-excess-mobile-bandwidth-110000717.html
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
I won't even disagree with the overstated warnings in the second link as the issue there is more that of the basic architecture of the cellular network that it is about digital capacity once the device gets by the choke points inherent in cellular networks and climbs onto wired beyond there. (When I say wired I'm including light (or fibre optics) by the way.)
Cellular requires, because it's an over-the-air technology, the conversion of digital to analog before leaving the cell site and again from analog to digital on arrival at the phone. The process is reversed from phone to cell site. It's at the analog portion that bandwidth, using the term properly, enters into this. The more data the more bandwidth during analog transmission and reception. At digital the term is capacity, which you're using correctly.
(More for the information of non techy not telco people than you.) Cell has another big roadblock in it and that's the requirement that the phone's antenna can "see" the cell site's antenna. If something's in the way the signal is degraded or lost increasing the number of errors and resends. Also increasing bandwidth during the analog phase. Cellular has big problem there which can't be overcome until the architecture of the technology is changed to reduce the errors and resends during analog transmission and reception. That's not something said directly by the report discussed in the second link but strongly hinted at.
That and smartphones are always sending and receiving data from the cellular towers unless that feature is expressly turned off. That's not a flaw in the rest of the telecom network it's built into how cell sites and smartphones work with each other and on that I do agree with you that bits aren't and likely never will be free using that technology.
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The problem is that network capacity and quantity of data are not the same thing. Total network capacity could be defined as a scarcity (there is a cap on the total amount of data that an ISP can transfer at a given moment), but quantity of data cannot be defined as a scarcity.
If ISPs really wanted to solve the problem of being over capacity (which I don't believe is a problem in reality) then they would offer cheaper plans that throttle data usage at peak times and more expensive plans which don't throttle data. Or offer tiered pricing based on your data rate (for example 1MB/s, 10MB/s, etc.) That at least would fit a supply and demand model. The quantity of data you transfer has nothing to do with supply and demand.
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I agree with you that after the connection is made to the cell site and then onto the broader telecom network there is little or no capacity problem. Caps, where they are used isn't because of a total network capacity issue at digital levels across the operator, it's always a function of "the last mile", that is capacity from the cell site to the broader network. As more and more sites are connected back to central offices by light this is becoming less and less of a problem.
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Just wondering....
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Re: Nobody Needs To Know
It would be like someone selling you a book and telling you that you can only read it once. Wait, I better stop before I give someone an idea.
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A common notion among tech-savvy, heavy Internet users, and one promoted by my friend here, Masnick. Also one I think is patently incorrect.
I see AT&T (make fun of them at will) investing $19 Billion per year on network improvements, all for the goal of increasing capacity. I, thus, find it hard to accept the argument that capacity is free.
A bit on a deployed network has a marginal cost that approaches zero. This is true. And this is where your misunderstanding takes root.
That "Bits are free" argument would be fine...so long as you are satisfied using a dial-up connection to log into "the Well" to share ideas with your buddies, and use your Pine email client or AOL to sent email to your friends.
If, however, your Internet needs have changed, and your demand for bandwidth has increased over the years, then the bits are not free. You are demanding increased capacity, and that, my friends, cost billions.
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People have different billing cycles, so, no.
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Second, AT&T makes between 5% and 10% after tax profit margins for an average quarter. That is well in line with other large international companies.
Third, all the crap about "changing needs" has nothing to do with anything. Data carriers have increased prices as they have increased capacity, it has nothing to do with data quantity. Caps are BS.
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The $19 B is for network, not buildings. I don't know how they fudge their accounting, so don't expect me to vouch for it. But the SEC signed off on it.
Here, let me Google that for you:
http://www.fox19.com/story/17211139/att-invests-more-than-23-billion-in-dallas-fort-worth-fr om-2009-through-2011-to-improve-local-networks
http://philly.citybizlist.com/2/2011/3/18/ATT-Inve sts-19B-in-New-Jersey-Network.aspx
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Everyone needs to know (2)
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True for you and me, but if the SEC were feared, then we might get some real action on the worst offenders in the mortgage debacle.
AT&T owns a goodly chunk of the the FCC. Wanna bet they have some friends elsewhere too?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Here let me link it for you: http://www.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&q=NYSE:T.
Or how about their annual report: http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=22516#ar2011-numbers
Do you know what capital expenditures are or should I google that to?
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define+capital+expenditure
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http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=22516#ar2011-numbers
With AT&T's annual statement. On that page, bottom left corner, the part that reads:
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Again, are you trying to make my arguments for me? You sent this link:
http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=22516#ar2011-numbers
With AT&T's annual statement. On that page, bottom left corner, the part that reads:
$20.3 B - Capital invested in 2011, including an
increase in investment in wireless and mobile
broadband capabilities.
This is your way of COUNTERING my assertion above that AT&T invests "$19 Billion per year on network improvements"? OK. Well, you've made your point. I stand down.
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Are you telling me that 19 out of 20 billion went exclusively to network improvements? Do you have any proof of that?
That's what I thought.
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Keeping in mind that AT&T is a full spectrum telco not simply a long distance company or an ISP but owning and controlling several ILECs, satellite services to which we get to add things like an enormous chunk of backbone services and capacity for the Internet itself.
So your tossing out of the $19 billion figure, by itself means nothing. How much of this was for upgrades to old and outdated equipment in their network which was due for replacement no matter what, how much of it was strictly for internal use such as routing voice and cell calls through their network (via the Internet), how much for new services they were offering and how much for expansion. Then, how much does the new expansion is driven my capacity needs of business, government and residential users and how much was driven by simply by population expansion both in numbers and new customer numbers. Let's also keep in mind that AT&T's network is enormous and global in scope and operation. So the what went where is important.
Keep in mind that given all of this the nature of telco's is to build in relatively small chunks, put the new equipment in service and then remove whatever equipment the improvements are replacing. The reason for this is simple enough -- to use the old stuff as long as possible as an income stream to pay for the new equipment and then be able to provide a minimal downtime for switching from old to new. Preferably unnoticeable downtime for end users.
The end result is that AT&T was collecting income from everything but the totally new equipment/services right up until the last second. As the totally new equipment/services was the smallest part of the services we can safely say there was no net loss on income while this was all happening.
So again, what kind of capacity, where and for what reasons. The bulk of it was replacement of old and antiquated equipment, actually. Old in telecom these days is often less than 5 years so the schedules need to take into account things like writing down the old stuff before installing the new and other tax reasons.
In the industry the planning for the demand for increased bandwidth and capacity over pre ADSL/HDSL days has long been for 100% or more with the midtime frame needs projected to expand logarithmically before declining. Exactly what has happened, by the way.
The needs have gone up tremendously but so has the capacity as a result of the last statement since 2001. Telecoms, by and large, haven't been caught off guard by any of this and have anticipated this even if, as late as the mid 90s the Internet and Web were being written off as fads.
What you're missing in all of this is that though the need for capacity has increased the very nature of data transmission and the architecture of the Internet itself has kept the needs manageable for telcos in that they were in the data transmission business long before people wanted internet to the house. The other is that a great deal of what AT&T spent last year wasn't driven exclusively by needs of Internet customers but for other reasons.
But once the architecture is in place, yes the bits themselves are free. There will always be a need to upgrade and update equipment whit the next big burst of spending in telecom coming when the conversion of outside plant from twisted pair to fibre accelerates.
For a company the side of AT&T the costs will always be in the billions for major upgrades. That is unavoidable. If AT&T were stupid, which they are not, the upgrade wouldn't have taken in to account projections of increased demand though you can be absolutely certain that they did. The usual for situations in the telecom industry are three to five year projections and in the case of the Internet the telecom industry has learned to be very generous with those projections.
The effect on the network(s) would be far worse if data was flowing all the time in both directions if it weren't for the bursty nature of data transmission and the design of the Internet which is, in itself, very bursty.
The cap defense is lacking in being grounded in reality. Both in the sense that you can't raise money for expansion, typically done though market borrowing and lending anyway, by not selling the product beyond a certain arbitrarily set limit and by misunderstanding that data and the Internet are somehow the same as, say, television in that capacity in signals is always there as is normal with analog technologies rather than rapid off/off use as is the case with data and with the Internet.
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Because what's the point of parsing it and reading the fine print. I'm not going to do a better job than the SEC of that. If they are investing $21 Billion in network CapEx, that $21 Billion is either for maintaining existing network or for deploying new capacity. Either one represents a cost of delivering capacity.
My argument, as you recall, is that marginal bits may be free, but capacity is not. Last year to AT&T, it was $21 Billion of not free.
Data capacity is not unlimited. Carriers made the mistake of selling it as "unlimited" for years, and now they are reaping what they had sown: Nobody respects the scarcity of capacity. They now need to push back, to try to show that capacity IS limited. Caps are the blunt tool to do that.
No, they don't speak to peak loads, etc. They are a blunt tool. But they get the customer to consider the marginal price of a bit as non-zero, and that is more right than wrong.
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While the number is nice to toss around the wider the upgrade the more the cost. Unlimited data access over cellular networks is a fairy tale, I agree, but that's not as much a function of capacity as it is high error rates and resend requests at the cell switch under the towers chewing up processing time there. That's the reason why accessing data using wifi hotspots or at home often doesn't count towards the cap. The phone isn't trying to use the cellular portion of the network. That shifts the marginal cost per bit to zero as it will get as it maximizes the design of the Internet to minimize congestion and the normal transmission of data not to be always on. (Even streaming audio or video.)
Unlimited for cell data use was a marketing ploy as the marketing people never foresaw people actually using all that capacity and didn't listen to the technical people who did who just said promise it and customers will use it.
The problem cell companies have when they become ISPs is that they have a well deserved reputation for gouging in every other part of their business so the automatic response to a cap is that "they're at it again". The same, by the way, applies to cablecos.
It's in the very nature of cellular to have capacity "issues" because the system was designed for voice not high speed data.
BUT the cellular providers promoted and promised unlimited and that means unlimited. If a person's contract says unlimited and they didn't just assume that when they signed the contract it had better BE unlimited without caps, throttling or extra charges. Of course, it won't be. Because they get to change the terms of the contract on their own. Something their customer isn't allowed to do. ;-)
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Sounds much better than 'broadband is free'.... promises of broadband were enough for them to steal the funds, and what did we get in return? Caps, Gouging, and Throttling (sounds like a dirty snuff film....) along with demands that we pay more and like it....
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I picked that number simply because:
- users will feel it, but it is not overly punitive
- you can still do VoIP
- you can still Tweet, E911 GPS locate yourself, Facebook, mediocre web browse, check-in, Google Map, traffic update, health monitor, etc... Hundreds of thousands of apps still will work.
- you will have a hard time streaming video, and perhaps audio
But you will notice the throttle if you are the kind of heavy user who hits your cap, and you will either have to buy up to a higher tier, tolerate the throttle, or alter your usage pattern.
That is an effort to constrain an every-growing demand. Yes, it limits people. That's what it is intended to do. You can pay more for more, or be limited at the price you pay. I've wrote it above already, but it is the law of supply and demand in action. It's not personal, just econ.
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The answer is that if your 1 million users decide to download lolcats at noon all together, and your network cant handle it, upgrade your network. Caps are a pure money-grab, and have nothing to do with the capacity of the network.
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Nobody, never, ever, ever, would build a network to handle the peak load, as you suggest with lolcats at noon. That investment is then wasted all the rest of the day.
Look at highways that are congested at rush hour.
Phone networks that are jammed during emergencies.
Generators that are sold out at Home Depot during power outages.
Power outages during the hottest days of summer.
The ISPs could build a network to handle those spikes. Do you really want them to? OK, your monthly ISP bill will be $500, as it is for enterprise customers who want guaranteed service levels. Enjoy.
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If your users downloaded lolcats 100 times every day at different times they likely would impact the ISPs bandwidth capacity less than if they did as you suggested and downloaded once all at the same time.
Caps don't help capacity issues at all because bandwidth capacity problems are time related or number of concurrent connections related. The total number of bits is meaningless.
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Yeah, that would be way simpler. Let's start an ISP that offers that to consumers.
And if users trickle their data for a few Central Offices such that bits are what you consider "free", we will get no revenue and pay our business expenses with lulz.
I think the notion of tiers, caps, meters are a simplification, but a better way to get subscribers to be aware that there is a cost to provide additional data.
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What? That's the point I've been arguing uphill against you et al for two hours?
"consumers are ALREADY charged based on capacity."
Yes. Ever since caps were implemented. Before that, they were charged for an "unlimited" plan.
I must really not be getting it, because to me, it looks like you just made my argument for me.
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If you don't want people to use that much limit data transfer possible to customers.
But that would be bad for business right? because then people would know exactly how much each carrier actually can handle and that would be a problem.
Why caps?
Because it allows carriers to lie about their capacity and intentions.
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Now many dsl companies are selling ~1.5MBps and cable companies are claiming to sell 10MBps or even 50MBps. They have been charging for capacity from the beginning, it has no relation to data caps.
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I never suggested there is no value in learning what a MB is. I just said there is no NEED.
Just as there is value in knowing what a pound of steak looks like when you go to the butcher, or what a gram of coke looks like when you go to your pusher. Knowledge is power, and people who know more will do a better job of planning their use of products and services, and how they spend their money.
But charts, graphs, and pro-active notification about caps can go a long way towards helping ISP customers understand their consumption without ever NEEDING them to understand what a MB is. And you know, what? Little by little, some of them will learn what a MB is.
When you were four, did you know how much candy you could buy for a dollar? Nope. But you bought candy a few times, and you learned, right? Masnick's article falsely assumes that people MUST know what a MB is, then also falsely assumes that people won't learn.
PS, I've been debating him for about 9 years on this subject. It's one of the few on which we disagree.
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Look at electric deregulation in Texas. I'm here in Texas, my per kW rate is $0.075, and they have incentive to give me good service (TXU didn't, and I'm no longer a customer). I don't think deregulation is the answer in every industry, but a certain amount of deregulation would make all of the net-neutrality and bandwidth cap arguments worthless because competition would force the telcos to act in the best interest of the customer instead of themselves.
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I'm curious how much more competition you'd actually get. If a new company has to come along to create its own networks, would there be anyone interested? Seems like creating buzzworthy Internet company attracts more money these days.
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In our (their) defense, its not just a matter of upgrading bandwith as the nature of the internet means any addtional bandwith will be consumed immediately. Don't believe me? Ever see how BGP reacts when links between two Tier 1 or Tier 2 ISPs go down? The net effect is that every other carrier gets swamped with traffic they could never engineer for.
That said, however, I think we (ISPs) can be a bit more transparent about usage trends. Also we could stand to be a bit more fair (I.e. don't cut someone off completly or throttle excessively). Perhaps whe can have graduate throttling (say 10% per 200MB over limit.
Finally, as someone mentioned, this is bad for the internet in the long run. Caps essentialy crush competitors and adjacent markets like video on demand, VoIP, and online gaming. In so much as it stiffles growth in these industries, it stiffles growth and development of the internet at large. Imagine if we had data caps when the Ethernet standard was being developed? No need for additional speed/capacity...no need to develop the technology...
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Also, since the "max speed" used by your sales dept is a joke to the point where it should be illegal, maybe beefing up your network to the point where customers can actually expect something closer to your promised speeds would help your reputation?
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yes, but also an indication that run away costs could kill and ISP if they got enough bandwidth to allow unlimited everything for eveyrone all the time.
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1) As fast as possible for everyone, which in many (most?) cases means 1/5 of the advertised speed, then hit an invisible wall where you pay through the nose and/or are throttled to 1/10 of your previous speed (which is already 1/5 of what you thought you were getting).
2) As fast as possible for everyone, which means during peak hours (read: 5-11 PM), you're getting 1/2 of your promised speed (up to your max promised speed), then the rest of the time, throttle users to their max promised speed, with tiers of what the users' max speed at any time can be (from a low-end, capping out at, say, 100 kbps for basic web traffic for maybe $5-10/month to a "average netflix user" type plan that can get up to 1-1.5 mbps for $20-30/month, then getting up to the "big downloader," who might need 2+ mbps, and charge what we currently see without a bundled plan, $40-50/month). And if someone needs to upload large amounts, have tiered plans for that as well.
In the first case, high-end users are going to keep causing a bottleneck for everyone else, no matter the time of day, and everyone, regardless of plan, is going to have crappy service.
In the second case, you're asking for more from the people who actually use more, which is the real problem (NOT the total per month, which is stupid, it's concurrent usage which is the problem to keep up with), which should allow for network upgrades easier and allow people to stay closer to the advertised rate. And at the same time, those who just get a basic plan won't suddenly spike up and start getting a TON more than they paid for, since they'll always be throttled. That should prevent the need for bandwidth = A customers X B max mbps advertised = broke ISP.
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To reiterate and expand on grandparent's comment, to control the run-away costs, wouldn't it be better to have a sit down with your marketing department and correct them then try to correct your customer, who is just doing what the marketing department told them they could do with your service when they sold them unlimited internet at blazing fast speed?
Most technically aware customers know this is a joke, but there are still a lot of people I know that complain that they can't get the speeds and capabilities they were promised when they bought the service.
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The problem is, depending on how you use this utility, sometimes it seems like you're using very few Clumps, and sometimes, you do something you think is normal and innocent, and you look at your meter and you've used half your month's Clumps in 3 days. And then sometimes, you go to bed, wake up, and notice you've been using Clumps overnight, when you know you weren't purposely using any!
Could you, over time, figure out what takes a lot of Clumps, what doesn't, and how to meter yourself properly? Sure. But in the meantime, how inconvenient is that going to be and how many times are you going to go over your monthly cap by accident? Welcome to the world of people using the internet with a monthly cap.
The point is, if you don't know what a MB is and don't know exactly how you're using it, then other than your meter suddenly spiking up, you don't know when you're really using a lot of data.
You watch a video on youtube, notice the data move up slightly. You watch another (this time an HD one), it moves up faster. You download a 20-minute show in 720P resolution, suddenly it jumps up even higher. To many people, they just watched 3 video clips and don't know the difference between them. Could they learn over time? Sure. Are they going to? Probably not.
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Sadly. You are correct. This is the way most celcos and ISP meters currently work - they are not real-time and the ISPs have to weasel out of the meter information "these data are just indications, represent estimated usage at midnight last night, etc. etc."
I make no apologies for telcos and ISPs sucking. But I believe that caps are not to blame for lousy implementations of caps. No ISP should implement a metered solution until they can provide working, real-time usage meters and reliable outbound warnings.
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I think they lose as a result, because ill-will is generated. If they handled caps better, there would be much less ill-will, and that's good for business.
That's why I think they are just clumsy about their meters, and not malicious.
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Heh. The one subject you and I always disagree on...
Nobody needs to know what a MB is. They simply need to be given a good usage meter that shows their usage as a percentage of their cap.
Disagree. A usage meter would help -- though, so far, most usage meters are problematic in that they don't seem to work very well.
But the bigger issue is the cognitive load which you say proactive notifications can help -- but that still doesn't help in that you are thinking about how much your usage will impact the cap. Even when I use my capped mobile broadband today -- even though I know I'm nowhere near the cap -- I'm much more careful about what I use and that's a pain. It's why I use it much less than I used to.
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I make no apologies for telcos and ISPs sucking. But I believe that caps are not to blame for lousy implementations of caps. No ISP should implement a metered solution until they can provide working, real-time usage meters and reliable outbound warnings.
As for the "bigger issue" of the cognitive load: tough shit. I don't get you're blind spot on this. Usually, you apply economic models to all arguments. Why not on this one?
It is not the job of suppliers of Oranges to enable the innovative use of oranges without any cognitive load. Oranges are scarce, they cost money. If people use more, they must consider the cost of their increased use of oranges. Think of all the orange-based paint, scent, and insecticide solutions we'll never see because oranges have a cost. But isn't that just supply and demand at work?
Also, there would be a lot of innovative users for flash memory, if it just were free. But it's not. So think of all the lost inventions we'll never see using free flash memory. But c'est la vie, right? We don't complain that the flash makers don't offer an "unlimited" plan for buying their memory. Why are data suppliers held to some other standard?
Cuz we likes our Interwebz? Not a good enough reason to throw the law of supply and demand out the window.
And as I argued in prior comments, bandwidth IS a scarce demand. The cost per bit is not free. Not even close. This is because demand keeps growing. So we are not talking about an old, fully amortized physical network with steady data traffic. We are talking about carriers facing a demand tsunami, and needing to invest Billions upgrading their networks and devices to handle it. Customers, of course, are the ones who end up paying. Now, the ISPs are asking people, through their pricing: "If you use more, please either contain your usage, or pay more so we can build more capacity for users like you." Of all the crappy things, false arguments, and cash grabs I see carriers to, this is just one one of them.
Before 2004, you and I complained that plans marketed as "unlimited" were, in fact, limited. The carriers switched gears a little, and now sell plans as "limited" with caps. I think this is, finally, honest. You are still angry about it.
OK, the cognitive load is a pain. I know it. I feel it too, especially on international travel where they really rob you. But that cognitive load you feel is just the reality of needing to correctly allocate scarce resources, i.e. economics. And usually you can spot that kind of thing. You don't complain here about the cognitive load when you go to the store and buy hundreds of other scarce goods. Why just this one?
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I just wish every shill here was as easy to understand and well reasoned. Even if I don't agree with him, if Derek is a shill, he is one of the best ones here on Techdirt.
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I find a lot of bad knowledge around this issue, and occasionally take it upon myself to try to argue the facts. I have some squeezable time today. So call it public service.
If you don't like the facts, or what I say, feel free to skip my comments.
PS What value did your post add?
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I think its quite dishonest to sell "unlimited" then cap it, and this is what most isp's do, and those who dont do not bother explaining to people that they could go over their limit by watching netflix/hulu/youtube to much or by downloading updates for WoW(example, i have games that at times download many real GB of data for an update(real as in 1024MB not 1000 "MB")
I have seen people go over with the above usage pattern, one older lady I know had me limit her net speed so she couldnt go over.
IF ISP's where honest, they would just limit peoples speed so that they couldnt download more then the capped amount per month, rather then selling plans that allow you to cap out in less then a week(common)
I get your logic, I feel its a crock of shit but I get it, you feel caps are a great tool to stop people from overloading an ISP's capacity....
Sorry but I have a real problem with that, ISP's many places underbuild their networks then sell "unlimited"(see capped/throttled) packages for "high speed" well beyond their network capacity.
I feel this should be ILLEGAL, it shouldnt be legal to sell a service you cant provide, but, thanks to people like yourself and our shill politicians its "free market" policy....where monopoly companies can keep a strangle hold on a market and keep selling these fraudulent packages.
years back when att@home owned our local cable Internet service they MASSIVELY over sold their capacity, so much so that at some peek times it was no better then dialup, yet it was "unlimited 15-20mbit" their support admitted they had over sold their capacity, but they where "working on it".....
comcast came in and took over, their first move was to replace the wins based authentication system with mac-id based and expand network capacity as quickly as they could, this took years, but, for the most part, they have managed to stay ahead of demand for years now(outside a few cases where large businesses overloaded a node with new high rate packages like multi 100mbit service plans at one location)
we have a "cap" of 250gb a month, BUT many of us regularly go past that and dont get letters or throttled, I called about the 1 letter I got, and it turned out, it was due to a software upgrade, they had already disabled that system as it was ment to be used in area's that where having capacity issues, and even at peek hours we dont have issues in my node.(tho he did say if we hit a tb in a month there would be another letter....lol)
but yeah, from my exp having worked at 2 ISP's and for quite a few companies over the years dealing with networking and ISP issues, the only isp's that pull dick moves like capping and heavy throttling tend to be those who did not invest in network capacity to provide the service they sold people in the first place, I have even had upper level techs I have delt with over such issues admit this to me, one even got a company I worked for a different package(dedicated t3's)at a steep discount because they couldnt get the multi sdsl package they sold us to work stable(kept dropping well below the rated speed of 7Mb/s u/d per line....)
I still would like to know where all that money ISP's were given to get every American on broadband back in the 90's went.....as well as the money they still get from the govt goes.....i mean where it really go's now where their creative accounting says it goes...
another note, a fellow above mentioned upgrading "old" equipment, from my exp working for isp's many times that "old" equipment gets reused as the network expands despite being counted as a loss on taxes, many times an area gets an upgrade and the equipment from that area is shifted to an area with older gear yet, or a new area that needs setup, they keep making money off the same gear for many years over....(i saw one setup get moved and reused 3 times in 2 years)
no, theres no excuse for this bs, if your going to limit somebody to XX MB a month, then just give them a package that they cant go over on or would have to try very hard to go over on....stop this BS selling 50mbit with a 25-50gb cap(have seen this a few times)
I would personally rather have slower speeds all the time that are steady and giving me what I paid for then risk hitting a cap or being sold a package that only at rare times when conditions are just right gives me the speeds I paid for.....
Darek Kerton: I dont know if your a shill in this or just an opinionated dbag on this subject, but either way, its gotten to the point where you just look like a troll, and as such, I have started reporting you, in hopes others will do the same and help hide your trollish comments.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
http://www.techdirt.com/user/derek
I write articles here at Techdirt. 762 so far, over 12 years. I just don't ever agree with Masnick, or the Techdirt crowd on this topic. I stick with: use more scare resource = pay more.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
but have your own twisted view of reality, the rest of us seem to think reality has an anti Derek Kerton bias.
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Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
but data isn't so ... you're entire argument is moot.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
If you don't understand how data caps have no relation to network capacity then a discussion with you seems pointless.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
What I'm not ok with is an artificial cap on the quantity of data as if it was a finite resource. The low caps are artificially hindering the bandwidth you pay for.
What consumers end up with is a fat pipe they can use for streaming high quality video, etc but wait! You can't because you might run out bytes! WTF?
It's a practice I find dishonest and preys upon people's ignorance of how the internet works.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
and this is my problem with how caps are done, I and most people I know would rather just have slower speeds and get the speeds we pay for, then have caps that could either cost us a mint when we exceed them or throttle us down to useless speeds....
Derek Kerton seems to think that its the customers problem that ISP's over sell their capacity....when it should be ILLEGAL to sell somebody "50mbit service" when you cant provide that 24/7, but here its perfectly legal and even legal for them to sell "unlimited" thats limited....Gotta love this country.....the land of greed and "free market saves all"
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
And to your last paragraph, OF COURSE ISPs over-sell their capacity. That is day 1 of any network planning course. You plan your network capacity for some expected usage patterns of your users. Same for road networks, and other infrastructure projects. That's not evil, that's engineering.
If you want to be able to fully use your 50 mbit service with no capacity constraint, then what you want is an enterprise-grade connection, which is absolutely available. It just costs a lot more.
You can't have a dedicated pipe, and pay shared pipe rates.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
but wait, that wouldnt fit ISP's business plan of over selling their capacities by a few thousand percent or more by advertising speeds or capacity they have no intention of being able to provide....I get it, its a good thing they lie to people and rip them off....good to know where you stand...
and its bad engineering if you design a network to only be able to handle a small % of its probable projected load...I have build networks, and if I was stupid enough to setup a network that was gigabit but could only move files at cat3 speeds most of the time I would have been fired many times over but thats pretty much what many ISP's do, and to you thats a good thing.....*shakes head* I dont get your "logic" it seems that reality has an anti- Derek Kerton bias on this issue.
and I guess when FIOS went in around here they where really stupid, this whole region they put it in with massive over capacity so that in the future they could not only offer higher speed packages, they could deal with higher subscriber numbers(they projected worst case for 5 years, and then went above that) again really stupid from your point of view, they should have built the network to deal with 5% of the population in this area!!!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Check out what this Techdirt author said about it in 2007
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20070418/174522.shtml
He wrote "Sprint's 2.5GHz strategy is tied in my mind for "gutsiest US telco project" with Verizon's FIOS project." I love FIOS and it's a crime that deployment has been halted as part of an accord with the cable companies to not step on each-other's turf. Don't presume to understand how I feel about FiOS because I don't agree with you on caps.
And you say you have built networks? Not one telecom network, ever was built with the assumption that people would use their full allottment 24x7. It's just fact. And it's correct engineering. You run statistical models to estimate expected demand, and build for that. In the case of PSTN phones, that means that you don't assume that everyone will make a phone call at the same time, and stay connected all day (even though their phone plan included unlimited local calling). For highways, it means we don't pave roads with the expectation that all cars will make a trip at exactly the same time, or that they will use the road 24x7 - even though that is their right.
You say "its bad engineering if you design a network to only be able to handle a small % of its probable projected load". Well, yeah, but I never said that, that's your strawman. I said projected load is not 100% utilization from each customer.
You're awful angry about this. By the way, I knew from the start that my opinions would go very much against the grain here. People want unlimited, low cost Internet, and taking the side of the telcos on any point is sure to elicit very unsympathetic responses. But I have exhibited none of the characteristics of a troll or shill. I criticize the ISPs frequently, I agree when people say they are money grabbers, I agree that there isn't enough competition. No shill would ever write that. And, BTW, shills aren't Techdirt authors for 12 years, which I am. As for Trolls, they are just in it to piss people off, but I am making arguments, citing sources, bringing stats.
PS: YOU can't just decide that I'm a shill or a troll just because I disagree with you, and yes, with the wider Techdirt community. This isn't supposed to be a comment circle jerk where we all agree day after day that the RIAA sucks. Dissent is encouraged and desirable. Fortunately, the "Report" system is designed to handle a few angry jerks who "Report" things just because they disagree strongly.
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dont like it....to bad, your actions make you a troll, not your stupid opinions.
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Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
So, plant more cables, so more data can be sold :P
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Thank you for finishing my point.
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from what one ex-att employee I have been friends with for a couple decades has said, att over sold their dsl network capacity by around 20-29x, they over sold uverse (fiber) capacity by 3x that, they sold 50mbit packages that couldnt even sustain 5mbit over any period of time, but they made sure to add a fast pipe to speed test sites(speedtest.net for one) to make it look like you where getting full speed.
other isp's do this as well, they sell you speeds they cant support most of the time, some cap you on top of that some just figure your never gonna hit a cap amount with the actual network speeds you will get so its not worth pissing in your cheerios again with a cap.
heres what I have personally seen, I have watched companies sell around 10x what they can provide at any one time, this was delt with by throttling everybody at peek times and on weekends, when people complained they where told some bs story OR told to read their contract if they signed up after a set date where the throttling was mentioned in the contract in VERY SMALL PRINT.(almost so small you need a microscope to read it)
but thats all good, because in this country doing whatever you can to make a buck at the expense of the consumer/general public is ok.....just ask congress.
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Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
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Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
But in this case, it's really a mostly artificial limitation. That's my complaint. We're talking about an artificial restraint on supply. As multiple technologists for the telcos have admitted, with rather basic maintenance they can easily handle all bandwidth.
Thus there isn't a real scarcity here.
OK, the cognitive load is a pain. I know it. I feel it too, especially on international travel where they really rob you. But that cognitive load you feel is just the reality of needing to correctly allocate scarce resources, i.e. economics. And usually you can spot that kind of thing. You don't complain here about the cognitive load when you go to the store and buy hundreds of other scarce goods. Why just this one?
Because bandwidth isn't a real scarcity. It can be offered in abundance without any real concern for running out with normal maintenance and upgrades. And, when you have true abundance, wasting the resource is a *good thing* because it leads to new innovation.
I think our disagreement is that you still think bandwidth is a scarce resource. It's abundant. The scarcity being discussed is an artificial restriction on that abundance.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
So if Billions of dollars are needed for maintenance, operations, and CapEx for new expansion, and demand is ever-increasing (cellular data grew 123% from 388 billion megabytes in 2010 to 866.7 billion megabytes in 2011), how can you stand on the premise that bandwidth is not scarce?
Money is scarce, and money is required to provide today and tomorrow's bandwidth. Non-trivial amounts of money.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
I work for a company that makes test & measurement tools for these network providers (as an engineer). We charge ridiculous rates to the telcos because like them, we face little competition, and they don't mind shelling out money for hardware that is marked up > 2000% (granted only BOM costs, not development. Over time the development costs DO go away though).
Like everyone has been saying for the most part, I believe the real problem is lack of competition. The current environment is very non-competitive. Tax payers helped pay for all this infrastructure and now they turn around and screw us with poorly implemented data caps. In the absence of competition, I feel that data caps are a monopolistic practice that don't effectively combat the problem they are there to address. It's just (like text-message plans) a new way for these companies to extract money from us.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Your parents must be so proud of that MBA they paid for, you fucking doofus clown.
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Re: Nobody Needs To Know
I was playing WoW at a friend's house. They had broadband capped at 40GB. I played for two hours a night for a week. That took the full month's data. And I was merely questing in-game. I paid my friend nearly £300 for the overage fees. That's playiong a basic MMO.
I'm using around 100GB/month, according to those meters installed by my ISP, and yet my internal datalog is showing not nearly that much data.
Odd, that.
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Re: Nobody Needs To Know
The real problem is that there is no competition in the American market, in Europe and Asia this doesn't happen why?
Because if you try crap like that you get a long list of competitors to chose from so they try very very hard over there to do things right.
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Usage meters
And if they are going to cut people off, why don't they notify them beforehand?
BTW, I don't have this issue (which is why I don't get it), my ISP has no usage caps, they actually encourage people to use more bandwidth and lower the prices every year or so (or include more services, like POTS lines). And my mobile data plan is unlimited except for tethering (and that's ridiculously high for the 3 times a month I use it)...
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Re: Nobody Needs To Know
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Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know
Did I miss the actual point? "People can't be bothered to learn what a MB is, so caps are a bad idea." I think I understood it. And addressed how that' silly, and how people can learn, and how they don't need to learn if they can read a pie chart with two slices.
I also addressed the suggested points of the article, that caps are all-round bad. You don't have to agree with me, but I didn't miss the point.
Now, here's some points for you. You say "there were no caps until somebody decided that this was a great way to take advantage of people." That's baloney. Caps are not the result of what you suggest, instead, they are the result of this:
"Last year's mobile data traffic was eight times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000."
And this:
"The top 1 percent of mobile data subscribers generate 24 percent of mobile data traffic..." in 2011.
But because of caps that 2011 figure is
"...down from 35 percent 1 year ago [2010]."
There, in a nutshell, you have the reason caps were introduced, and the effect they can have.
Source, Cisco VNI:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11- 520862.html
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Re: Nobody Needs To Know
when this happens at all it's in the last week of the month, unless someone's done something unusual.
(like this month, when we got that notice within the first week or so. quite baffling. they're usually quite reasonable about doing what they can to help you figure out what happened there if you don't know, though, and sort out any problems. but the data they store, and, more importantly, that the customer service people have access to, is quite limited due to privacy laws etc.
that said, there's actual Competition in the ISP space here :) )
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Re: Nobody Needs To Know
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sonic.net
No cap!
Furthermore, Sonic.net seems to be more concerned with customer satisfaction and privacy than most.
At one point, I was looking for a wireless provider in the event that I moved to a slightly more rural location - and I literally laughed at one such provider's cap of 30gb/month.
When I asked the lady how I was expected to use Netflix with such a low cap (the *average* Netflix user uses ~40GB/month) she told me that I am not the kind of customer they're looking for.
There it was, in black and white: "We don't want you as a customer." - I fell out of my chair... called another wireless provider, and they told me: "no caps, we can provide services wherever that other provider does" (same pricing, btw).
It amazes me that there are companies out there pretending like they can punish their customers and not see any negative result.
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Re: sonic.net
No cap!
Same here.
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Re: sonic.net
They win!
Hard to have a business that relies on uploading when you have limited service.
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Re: Re: Debate Ended
(There's some links, educate yourself.)
Summary: A Kilobyte is 1000 bytes, a Kibibyte is 1024 bytes. (Etcetera and so all the way up the scale.)
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Re: Re: Re: Debate Ended
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Debate Ended
If I remember correctly, it was the scientists/engineers who made up words because of the confusion caused by hard drive manufacturers ignoring what scientists called a megabyte (which was at one time, 1024 kilobytes,) and choosing their own measure.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Debate Ended
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Debate Ended
Computers use funny binary math, if we instead use decimal math no one (general public) will know the difference! That make it sound like they are getting more storage! 80 GB (actually 76 GB)
AMD did the same thing, we'll call these 2400 because they are similar performance as a 2.4 GHz (Even though they run at 2.0 GHz). If you want to advertise on that fact, good for you, but don't use model numbers that can be confused or are misleading.
I was so sick and tired of people coming back into the computer store trying to say we ripped them off because their 40 GB hard drive wasn't 40 GB or that their AMD CPU ran at a slower clock rate then they thought they bought.
Then lately I've been seeing those ads trying to push HPSA+ as "4G" service.... makes me sick.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Debate Ended
And MB = 1024KB not 1000KB. Everything in computers is based on octal (multiples of 8) numbers The Kilo, Mega, Giga prefixes were adopted because they were labels that were close.
8bits = 1 byte
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte
1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte
Hard drive manufacturers take the loose just take the loose labeling system further to their advantage.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Debate Ended
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Debate Ended
You should blame Microsoft for failing to switch to using decimal values while still incorrectly using SI prefixes. Typical users should rarely be exposed to binary values (except for RAM, where IEC binary prefixes should be ideally used instead. i.e. GiB, not GB).
OS X and Ubuntu (not sure about other Linux distros) handle this (mostly) correctly. But Windows is still lagging behind.
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Kilobyte = 1000 kibibyte = 1024?
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Re: Kilobyte = 1000 kibibyte = 1024?
It's simply not what the SI is supposed to be about.
KB -> 1024 in a computing context makes sense. Base 10 numbers do not.
Write out the whole number if you're worried anyone will get confused.
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Re: Re: Re: Debate Ended
I can't imagine either of us using 'mebibyte' in a sentence with a straight face though.
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Re:
Now, even though I know exactly what a MB is, I still have to ask this question; How big is a 15min video on Youtube?
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On a 1 TB drive formatted with NTFS.
Decimal to Binary conversion: 931.3 (68.7 GB smaller than advertised)
NTFS Overhead (12.5%): 116.4 GB
Slack space (Averaging: cluster size/2 x # of files): 1.9 GB (Assuming 1 million files with 4kb clusters)
So that 1 TB hard drive you bought is only 931.3 GB of which you lose another 118.3 GB to overhead, leaving you with 813 GB.
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A Megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes, or 1024 Kilobytes.
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Of course, this only ads to the argument that no one except a few propeller heads know what these terms mean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte
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The annoying usage of SI prefixes for binary values is an historical artifact of a time when 1024 bytes was a close enough approximation of a kilobyte.
Standard SI prefixes and interpretations (base 10) are used for data transfer and all modern disk storage capacities. OS X and Ubuntu now correctly use SI units for file sizes. Windows still gets it wrong.
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Re: wrong
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1024 Kilobytes is actually a Magabyte;
(1024*1024 Bytes = 1048576 Bytes = 1 MB).
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Apr 16th, 2012 @ 12:33pm
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Apr 16th, 2012 @ 12:33pm
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Re: Size of Megabyte
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1024 bytes *are* a *kibi*byte.
Been that way since '98.
8 bits are a byte.
A bit is a single BInary digIT (One or Zero, On or Off, Black or White).
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This is exactly the situation they want
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Re: This is exactly the situation they want
If there was a ready to use PI with 2 ethernet ports, I would dump my appliance in heartbeat and just run an old style desktop Linux router with all the bells and whistles that have been developed in the intervening 18 years.
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This isn't unique to MBs
We have varying solutions to the above, albeit with mixed degrees of success. It's a hard problem.
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Re: This isn't unique to MBs
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The reason for limits is simple:
If the telcos don't want to spend the money to build sufficient capacity (so that there is no NEED for Data Caps) all they have to do is punish the user enough (with excessive prices, data caps, and strangulation of the bandwidth) and s/he will back off on now much s/he uses the system.
Voila: Less need for capacity, maximum profits for the telcos, and no need to hurry and build more capacity to keep up with demand (that they just killed). Simple, isn't it?
Smile.
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Re: The reason for limits is simple:
What good does it do to have a monthly cap on transfers when the real problem is serving customer needs at peak times of the day? If, for example, a new movie comes out on Netflix streaming, and all your customers to to watch it simultaneously, you've exceeded your capacity regardless of the ridiculous data caps and you still have the same problem.
If they're using the caps purely as a deterrent, that's not a solution to the problem - it's a way to piss off and scare your customers (or would-be customers). This works in a monopoly situation of course, which is what it is.
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Re: Re: The reason for limits is simple:
But it's freaking impossible to tell customers where/when to use data, and when not to. It's freaking impossible to tell them that data is more expensive for these hours, not those hours, etc. So, caps are a blunt took to reduce the peaks. It also puts that "cognitive load" that Masnick talks about...and that's a good thing. Consumers that are forced to recognize that bandwidth isn't free will start being more selective about the apps they install and their use of data. This will reduce peak demand.
Also, you may not be fully aware that the peak load patterns have changed dramatically the past decade. In the cellular world, rush-hour commute times used to be the busiest by far for mobile voice. Data started on a similar schedule, but now, data use has flattened out a great deal. This is because much of the aggregate use is background connections by apps, and associated signaling traffic. Mobile video use also takes place all day, not specifically during commutes.
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Re: Re: Re: The reason for limits is simple:
Um, I pay over $50 a month for internet access. I'm guessing most people pay similar amounts. You have an interesting definition of free.
Also, you keep posting and posting but you need to stop and do some reading. Capacity != Quantity. Caps are bullshit, don't do anything to help solve the problem, and are very difficult for consumers. The "cognitive load" isn't a good thing unless the objective is to reduce consumption of data which would be bad for both tel-cos and the internet at large. Growth is a goal in and of itself if you want to sustain the American economy.
You seem to believe that tel-cos are in some untenable position where just 1 more video streamed per day is going to push them over the edge. It won't.
You don't seem to have any decent argument for caps but you keep re-posting, ECONOMICS, supply and DEMAND, SCARCITY!!!
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Re: Re: Re: The reason for limits is simple:
Maybe...just maybe... these dinosaur companies should actually consider some alternative broadband/data plans for their customers who are looking for services that are custom-tailored to their needs rather than just telling everyone they have a cap and that's life.
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Re: The reason for limits is simple:
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Re: The reason for limits is simple:
Simple.
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Re: I to have done
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Megabyte
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Re: Megabyte
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Solution
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Caps
The caps are an artificial way to make people use less. It doesn't solve ANY bandwidth shortage issues, people will still use their data during peak hours. The only thing it does is curtail data-heavy uses like Netflix which I believe companies like Comcast see as a threat to their cable business.
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Re: Caps
That's almost true of any existing system capacity (which still requires some cost for maintenance, energy, staffing). Let's just agree that Marginal Costs are near zero for existing system capacity.
So, then, you can pay the same amount, so long as you only use the Internet for the same things you used it for in the year 2000 and nothing else.
If, however you want MORE capacity, and more bandwidth to do more things, then that is a long, long way from free my friend. That costs billions and billions of dollars in capital expenditures every year.
The "bits are free" argument shows a half-comprehension of the subject.
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Re: Re: Caps
What changed?
Monopolies changed everything.
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Re: Re: Caps
Stop repeating this dumbass argument. People don't pay the same price they paid in 2000 they pay more and they expect to get more.
The only person who has show a "half-comprehension" of the argument in this forum is you.
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Re: Re: Caps
You know what though? The bits themselves are free. It didn't cost the ISP anymore if I DL a Megabyte or a Gigabyte. That's why it is stupid to cap them as though they are a finite resource. What ISN'T free is the bandwidth capacity of the network. That is finite and requires investment to increase capacity to maintain QoS. I would like to think that network improvement is factored into their pricing so they can recoup their cap ex investments. All of that has nothing to do with data caps though.
A big part of what you pay for from an ISP is bandwidth not the amount of data you get. The "speed" you pay is really how much data you get to push through at once. A fatter pipe would be a good analogy. If I want MORE capacity I pay for it by getting a more expensive plan with more bandwidth. I do however expect to be able to use it for data-intensive things like streaming video. If not, what's the point of buying more bandwidth? Should I not expect to be able to use it for the full 30 days I paid for?
My point was that there is not a bucket of data that gets consumed like it was a resource in itself. So why measure it as such and put a limit on it as if it were?
The amount of data used is irrelevant to the amount of bandwidth in use at a given time unless the customer isn't using any at all. Data caps let ISPs sell a fat pipe that is crippled by a low data cap. They are trying to conserve capacity by encouraging a customer not to use the bandwidth they paid for. It's a double standard that is ludicrous.
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Re: Re: Re: Caps
So you agree with me that network capacity isn't free. Good. Next point.
Your last paragraph is true. Caps don't perfectly manage the scarcity of the network's capacity. You're right about that. They are an approximation, but a useful approximation.
If people considered data completely unlimited, as in a marginal cost of zero, what would they do? They would find ways of using more. In theory, they would use infinite amounts. In practice, we used more and more, with grown growing exponentially. Reality follows theory closely.
So, caps put an opposite force on that unrestrained growth. Whether it does it precisely is not the question. It forces consumers to assign a non-zero cost to their marginal consumption. The result is a better approximation of a working supply-demand ecosystem then the incorrect consumer assumption of zero marginal cost.
Any good Techdirt reader knows the impact zero cost has, and how wonky the results get when we use zero. Consumers were using zero when there were real cost implications. Caps change that zero to something more.
The precise market alternative to caps would be a real-time market like a stock market, with bids and asks for bandwidth in any given cell sector at any given time. This would be rather complex. An approximation is preferable to most stakeholders.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Caps
Wrong.
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Re: Re: Caps
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The company that sets the cap is also doing the measuring.
If I buy gas, the pump is inspected for accuracy by the state. So is the scale at the grocery store, etc. I don't know if this is true for every state, but there is a sticker with a phone number to call a state agency if you suspect the scale/pump/whatever is faulty.
Yet for whatever reason ISP/Cell Phone companies are allowed to use their own measuring tools without any oversight what-so-ever. I can get a letter saying "you are over your data cap, here is your overage charge" and I have no way to contest it or verify the results.
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Re:
But you can do oversight. You can install a meter in your phone. Just look into the app store by apps by a company called Mobidia.
Anyway, you won't like what you find. Your count will almost always be lower than the telcos count, because they include some overhead that doesn't get captured by the in-phone meter.
So, you're right.
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It won't stop until it costs them money...
The carriers think that everyone will just shell out more money for a higher cap, but in reality they won't. Some people won't care and will pay whatever they have to. Others will simply cancel the data plan, and find the content and copy it to their tablet instead of streaming.
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Re: It won't stop until it costs them money...
As for the bandwidth analogy, the perfect analogy that no one uses is freeways. That's what bandwidth is...Freeways. When everyone is driving on them at the same time, no one gets anywhere. During off-peak hours (non-rush hour) you have no problem going the speed limit (your download limit)
Theoretically, if your car didn't require fuel or maintenance, there would be no cost for driving (for you) The freeway system would be maintained by the city (ISP) What ISP's are trying to do is charge you for the milage driven.
The only scarcity is the number of cars that can be on the road at the same time - (bandwidth), not what you have in your car - (data).
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Re: It won't stop until it costs them money...
No. They want him to change the way he uses it. And if he is unwilling, because video over LTE is the only thing he wants it for, then yes, cancel his subscription.
Some will quit, some will change. Lots of iPad users were just using the video for a whim, to try it out. When they learned that it ate up their allotment, they simply reduced their video consumption. That is the law of supply and demand working.
Here's some analyst on Bloomberg TV talking exactly about the issue of iPad users hitting the cap in the first week:
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/88755634/
He makes some interesting points, but you know analysts. They just make it up as they go.
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Re: Re: It won't stop until it costs them money...
The more they add caps the more people become aware of WiFi and the more they use it and the less carriers make.
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Re: Re: Re: It won't stop until it costs them money...
I cant tell you how many people I know who started getting stuff they can access on netflix over p2p or direct download sites because they found it was easier and cheaper to download the videos to their device and watch them off internal memory then it was to stream them.....yet they all kept their netflix for home use.....
and again pleas just click report on Derek Kerton posts and move along...
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Re: Re: It won't stop until it costs them money...
They definitely want "super heavy users" to use less.
They want everyone else to use less or pay more. There's a reason they set their plan limits the way they do. They know how much a typical user will consume...and they want those users to fall right on the border of plans where they will keep going over and either pay more to upgrade, or use less.
Either way, the carriers THINK they win. Either they get more $ for doing nothing*, or they have to provide less bandwidth so they can avoid expanding/improving their networks.
* They can do nothing being in most cases they aren't actually approaching any real limits on capacity YET. The problem will eventually show up for real as more and more people get smartphones and broadband and the carriers do run into capacity problems - because they decided to play games with caps instead of improving their service ahead of the demand. But that's a lack of competition for you.
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Re: Re: Re: It won't stop until it costs them money...
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Re: It won't stop until it costs them money...
my advice, tell him to return the ipad and get his money back if hes still in the grace period, tell them hes not happy with it and leave it at that.
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Data caps harm economies & education
This money grubbing from ISP's is harming our countries, our democracy and our economies.
Look to Estonia of Europe to see an example of what I'm saying.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/estonia-ussr-shadow-internet-titan?mobi le-redirect=false
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Re: Data caps harm economies & education
Most of your cable TV is broadcast on the wire, so that thousands of homes can use the signal.
Pay-per-view is different, which is why it is more limited, and often for a fee.
Your Internet is unicast, just to you. Bits you use cannot be shared by your neighbors. This costs more.
And yes, they are also money grubbers. But get your facts straight if you want to complain.
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Re: Re: Data caps harm economies & education
Cable TV, Internet, pay-per-view are all the same as far as the "wire" is concerned. You are sharing all with your neighbors. The "data" is provided for any differently.
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Re: Re: Data caps harm economies & education
Nor do I see Japanese ISPs doing, nor the British nor anywhere else where there is competition, if it was for something so fundamental everybody would be doing it, because like a death there is no escaping natural laws, instead what we see is that where competition exists caps are not a problem, it is only a problem where competition is zero.
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Re: Re: Re: Data caps harm economies & education
I agree entirely. We need more competition, especially for fixed broadband. If we had it, some ISP would offer cap-free service (as Sprint does with their wireless).
But that's not an argument against caps, it's one in favor of more competition.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Data caps harm economies & education
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Re: Re: Data caps harm economies & education
And yes, they are also money grubbers. But get your facts straight if you want to complain."
You should get your facts straight before insulting others. Internet traffic isn't unicast by cable companies. All data is sent unicast or multicast based on the protocols and addresses used. Any service (like Netflix) could multicast traffic with the consent (and help) of carriers, but most carriers find it simpler to allow Netflix to mirror content on their own networks to reduce their peer traffic.
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Re: Re: Data caps harm economies & education
Then explain to me why your speed drops when everyone in your "neighborhood" is downloading stuff? Cable internet is a "shared" resource among "nodes" You share your connection with 8-15 other people. DSL is unicast, which is why thier speeds are more constant (although slower)
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Re: Re: Re: Data caps harm economies & education
Broadcast = sent on the network to anyone that chooses to tune in the signal
Unicast = sent on the network to just one client.
Multicast = sent on the network to multiple clients (similar to Broadcast)
You bring up DSL. The diff between DSL and cable is not the unicast/multicast issue. It is star versus trunk line topology. That's unrelated to a unicast/broadcast issue.
What I wrote about was how TV content on your cable line is broadcast to anyone who wants to watch any given TV channel. The bandwidth used is amortized across anoyone on the trunk line. Many users watch a given channel, so it lowers the cost per use of that bandwidth.
When you use Internet on your cable line, you are consuming bandwidth in a unicast way. That is, the bits you request are only being used by you, so must by fully amortized by just one user. And you are using an incremental chunk of the finite capacity of that trunk line.
Yes, you share the last mile trunk cable's Internet capacity with your neighbors (unlike DSL's star topology). When you all use the net, you feel the slowdown, but you don't get to share in the use of their Internet bits, that's just for them, as yours are just for you (unicast).
The slowdown you mention supports the argument that capacity IS a scarce resource.
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Re: Re: Re: Data caps harm economies & education
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Data caps harm economies & education
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Data caps harm economies & education
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Win-win for Telecos
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Pissing off your customers must be good business
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Re: Pissing off your customers must be good business
Wow, you just listed a good portion of my lifetime/10-year ban list (you forgot AT&T).
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Glad I don't have to put up with this
In the UK my current ISP (Virgin Media) gives me a cap of 5gb per DAY between the hours of 4-9pm on a weekday. If I exceed the cap I get my speed throttled for six hours, it still works, just a bit slower. No extra charge, and no limit off peak.
Heres a link to the policy for anyone who's curious:
http://help.virginmedia.com/system/selfservice.controller?CMD=VIEW_ARTICLE&ARTICLE_ID= 389465&CURRENT_CMD=SEARCH&CONFIGURATION=1029&PARTITION_ID=1&USERTYPE=1&LANGUAGE= en&COUNTY=us&VM_CUSTOMER_TYPE=Cable#heavy
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Re: Glad I don't have to put up with this
It shocks me, for what a basic phone plan costs here per month, I could get a preimum plan with all the bells and whistles over there AND on top of that a "free" phone of any type i want even the best android phones on the market.....
here we are expected to bend over and spread cheek for the all mighty big business empire that owns this country.
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Mr. Oizo
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Re: Mr. Oizo
A kilogram is not 1024 grams. It's 1000.
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Re: Re: Mr. Oizo
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Re: Re: Re: Mr. Oizo
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Re: Re: Re: Mr. Oizo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte
megabyte (MB) 10^6
mebibyte (MiB) 2^20
In 2007 organizations responsible for units and standards adopted the new definitions but forgot to tell engineers.
I can store a human being with 800 MB LoL
Quote:
Source: Wikipedia
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Re: Re: Mr. Oizo
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caps + lack of net neutrality = no more Netflix
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Re: caps + lack of net neutrality = no more Netflix
"The concept of network neutrality predates the current Internet-focused debate, existing since the age of the telegraph.[25] In 1860, a US federal law (Pacific Telegraph Act of 1860) was passed to subsidize a telegraph line, stating that:
messages received from any individual, company, or corporation, or from any telegraph lines connecting with this line at either of its termini, shall be impartially transmitted in the order of their reception, excepting that the dispatches of the government shall have priority ...
—An act to facilitate communication between the Atlantic and Pacific states by electric telegraph, June 16, 1860.[26]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality
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Not sure if srs
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Re: Not sure if srs
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Re:
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FTFY - please blame the right people for being ignorant.
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Re:
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Re: Re:
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Win-win for the telcos
First, the ISP will tend to collect huge overage fees from their best customers. But once burned, twice careful. Some users will be burned but the word will spread and most customers will tend to cautiously use less bandwidth while paying the same tier fees. Jackpot! The telcos can sell more bandwidth while less is consumed.
And the ISP's motive to provide more meaningful real-time metering so more customers can approach their monthly cap is...?
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Re:
Stupidity for the win! Just remember, if you keep firing, you will run out of feet.
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Re: Re:
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It's than, not then!
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This is the telco mindset -- and it'll never change
But here's my point: telcos believe in generating billable events. It's in their DNA. They believe in it so strongly that they will spend a dollar in costs to record a billable event worth a dime. Everything they do, the organization of the businesses, their infrastructure, their processes, EVERYTHING revolves around this concept. It's so deeply embedded in their brains that they don't even realize it's there any more.
Which is not surprising, given the history of telcos. This was how they made their money. (And still is, in many cases.) And this is why, if you suggested to them that they could better serve their customers (and themselves) by investing 0 dollars in billable event tracking, 0 dollars in billable billing, 0 dollars in quotas, caps, whatever, 0 dollars in the the network hardware to do all this, 0 dollars in customer service reps to handle all the issues, 0 dollars on engineers to maybe make all this work -- 0 dollars on the ENTIRE apparatus, and instead just focused on providing as big/fast pipes as they possibly could...they will look at you like Don Henley's rhetorical cows.
("She just looked at me, uncomprehendingly, like cows at a passing train.")
There's no real engineering need for caps or quotas or any of this. But there is an existential need for it that drives everything they do, and they will never let go of it.
They can't.
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Caps are not half the problem
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Stupidity?
Sure, a usage meter would be nice to have, since it's all but impossible for most folks to gauge and thereby modulate their data usage to avoid hitting the cap. But that doesn't make caps stupid, only inscrutable.
And that's the whole point: Data caps are the ISP's justification for excess-usage surcharge penalties (an incremental profit source) or usage restrictions that might coerce customers to pay more for a higher cap (yet another profit source).
Data caps aren't stupid; they're good business (if you're the ISP).
Naive? Feel entitled? Just write a headline declaring data caps "stupid."
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Re: Stupidity?
There fixed that for ya.
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The other thing...
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A different view
The caps are annoying and mess with market dynamics in various ways, sure, but they're not necessarily "OMG, the sky is falling!" the way you make out here.
Of course, one big problem with the US is that your issues with (a lack of) consumer protection laws in the telecommunications sector may mean that allowing data caps *will* cause the sky to fall, but that's a case of confusing the symptom (egregiously abusive data caps) with the root cause (lack of competition between broadband providers).
The way this actually plays out in practice when there's reasonably healthy competition in place:
- broadband companies provide usage meters and people learn how to access and read them. False advertising laws and competition authorities ensure the usage meters are at least vaguely accurate.
- caps get classified in terms of what you can do with them without running into quota concerns (i.e. "suitable for email, social media and general web browsing", "suitable for online gaming", "suitable for video streaming" etc). It isn't hard for people to do the math to convert "typical bits per second" and "typical daily usage" into "suitable data quota"
- different ISPs offer different pricing models that suit different audiences (up to and including uncapped plans, but also carving out their own "free zones" that don't count against quota limits)
Data caps cut through a lot of the bollocks with "reasonable use" policies and put hard numbers on what "reasonable" means for various tiers. As much as we might wish it was, bandwidth isn't free: networking hardware, local cache and other services cost money to keep running, undersea cable operators want their cut, as to do peer network operators, etc, etc.
Data caps let end users give clear price signals to the providers as to what their upstream provisioning should be - without the caps, the providers are forced to guess based on past usage.
If Australia *already had* a regime where no caps was the norm, would I be happy if ISPs were proposing to bring them in so they could charge more to remove them again? No, I wouldn't, so I can understand US users getting upset by the idea.
But making demonstrably false claims about metered connections destroying the internet as we know it isn't the way to make your case.
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Re: A different view
Instead, they all use throttling. If you remain within your quota, you get the full speed of your connection. If you go over, your connection speed gets gutted (usually to less than 10% of your normal speed). That means you can still get online, check your email, use social media, look things up on Google, etc, but more bandwidth intensive activities like streaming video and playing online games isn't going to be an option until your quota resets at the end of the month (or you buy some additional quota for the current month, assuming your ISP offers that option).
Of course, this only played out like that because we have some genuine competition in our broadband sector, due to the regulations that force Telstra to play nice with others when it comes to offering ADSL connections over Telstra's copper lines. The incumbents originally used overage charges, then were eventually forced to switch to throttling when all their subscribers were deserting them for other providers.
Without those regulations to ensure effective competition we would have been completely screwed. Since the US seems closer to an unregulated Telstra than they are to what actually exists in Australia, maybe you *are* right to be terrified of data caps in your system.
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is it just me or
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How do they charge more?
The caps are adding a punishment to something that people want to do, meaning that they'll do less of it, and therefore value it less.
But why would the carriers want more usage unless they can charge more for it? If they encourage people to download more data, what's in it for the carriers unless they charge more for heavy usage? Why would any carrier want more usage without more money coming in?
In other words, what's the business model for the carriers if people use more data but aren't billed for it? I can't imagine that more usage without more income has much appeal for the carriers.
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Re: How do they charge more?
I'm not sure how old you are, but it sounds like you don't remember how the phone used to work. You could place a local call and stay on for hours for one monthly fee. Yep, all the usage you wanted for one fee. Reconcile that with your statement.
The business model for the carriers has always been to make an abundant resource seem scarce. Maybe you didn't notice the death of the long distance telephony market.
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Re: Re: How do they charge more?
As I recall, when that system was set up, the telephone was a monopoly and for the monopoly to exist, there were conditions set up, which meant everyone could have access for one low price. The system was also overengineered so that whenever there was too much traffic in one place, it was rerouted to other places so it didn't fall apart. Ma Bell was reliable. Those phones you got from the phone company were also indestructible. Not like the junk you would buy on your own after they quit leasing the phones to you.
The reason I ask what incentive there is for companies to offer true unlimited plans is that Sprint hasn't gotten as big a boost from theirs as other companies get from offering jazzier phones and faster networks. Maybe data caps will become an issue in the future, but right now it seems people go where the phone is and then get locked into a contract for several years. Unlimited data hasn't been a big competitive selling point, so what's the reason carriers would want to offer it so that people use even more data? Are they going to get to charge customers more for unlimited data? In which case, it's just a different version of having customers pay more for what they use.
So I am asking, why should they offer it? If it doesn't bring them new customers and if they aren't getting an agreement from the government where they offer unlimited data in exchange for a monopoly, why would they want to follow Mike's advice to encourage more people to use their data plans more? What's in it for them? Your example of the way it used to be is an example of a system set up as a true monopoly. The phone company was a utility set up to serve the public.
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Re: Re: Re: How do they charge more?
In 1934, the government set AT&T up as a regulated monopoly under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission, in the Communications Act of 1934.
As a result, by 1940 the Bell System effectively owned most telephone service in the United States, from local and long-distance service to the telephones themselves.
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I don't like data caps (I hated having one, and I'd love to see them completely disappear), but this is the one and only thing I can't agree with Mike on: they exist for very legitimate reasons.
Besides over-engineering your network, at great expense, or cutting everyone's speed to a crawl, they are the only real way to prevent congestion of networks. (I have a degree in CS, if that's relevant).
Also, there is one very simple killer of data caps: competition. In Australia we've always had data caps, but every year they get larger (I think up to 1TB at the moment), and there are even unlimited plans available from some companies (I'm on one right now), all thanks to competition.
I say don't worry about them: they're not an unreasonable thing to do, and they won't survive competition anyway.
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Re:
It's sort of like this, picture that you have a water pipe running down your street that connects to every house. There is an infinite amount of water running through that pipe. (I know that this is not true in real life) When no one is using it no problem, when everyone uses water at the same time though water pressure drops significantly. Now everyone wants to take a shower at 8AM before work so the water utility is having issues. To solve this they try to limit the amount of water used overall. How does this make sense. I can shower at 3AM for 4 hours and never effect another user, but yet I am treated the same as the user that is showering at 8AM and contributing to the problem. What is even worse is that if the 8AM user is showering quickly, they will never reach the limit and never be penalized even though they are contributing to the problem, while I am being penalized even though I am hurting no one.
Data caps are the same thing.
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Re: Re:
If the carriers really wanted to address the problem, they'd implement something more akin to the unlimited nights & weekends they've been using with 'minutes' for years, but with data, and a time scheme that addresses peak data usage times. Then if their networks really are getting hammered at a certain time every day, they can set a lower limit for 'anytime' data, in turn curbing use during high-traffic hours.
I'm not a fan of any caps, but if they really wanted to address the actual problem, that kind of solution would make a lot more sense than just setting everybody's cap really low, no matter when they use the data.
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Re: Re:
What a silly analogy. The people who only shower at peak times will never hit the cap.
You will will hit the cap if you shower at peak times and at other times. So the cap forces you to reduce shower times.
Sure, maybe you might choose to reduce non-peak showers, but not everyone like you will: some will reduce their peak showers - TADA! Peak traffic reduced.
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Re: Re: Re:
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Data Caps
We recognize our monthly water use, without knowing how many pints per flush. You get the idea.
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What traffic counts?
I think I pretty much understand what a MB (or MiB) is. There's still some fuzz if the provider uses 1000 or 1024 for the kilo, mega, giga prefixes though.
But the main point: What all is counted as data? If I download 10 MiB over HTTP it does not mean there's exactly 10 MiB being sent through the wire. There's always some overhead. Part of it being various protocols' headers. HTTP in this case. But there are other things, depending on your connection, e.g. PPPoE headers.
So, at what level does the counting take place? Do ICMP PINGs count? Does UDP count? Does TCP count? Only payloads? Only HTTP payload? ...
I find it far from obvious. In the end one can never be really sure if one can download/send something when approaching the cap.
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Re: What traffic counts?
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Study: Bandwidth hogs aren't responsible for peak network congestion
Just like hydro, which costs more at certain times of day, not cost more by how much you use over course of month.
Caps are useless at solving the problem. Except for the last week or two of the billing period.
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Re: Study: Bandwidth hogs aren't responsible for peak network congestion
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Re: Re: Study: Bandwidth hogs aren't responsible for peak network congestion
People have different billing periods. Their months end at different times. That problem (which never existed) is thus solved 100%.
Furthermore, the idea is to get people to think about the overall data flow their apps use, and consider reducing. Your hypothesis that this will all take place in the last week of the month assumes people will never learn to use less throughout the period.
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if the cap fits
The decision to impose data caps is one made by bean counters, who have about as much long term strategy ideas as a fly.
The unfortunate part of all is these so called economic masterminds and their lawyer mates are running the companies.
If one looks at all the shenanigans that is part of the entire communications industry one will find either an accountant or lawyer behind each warped dumb idea mentioned here every day.
So lets change tactics and start discrediting these non thinking twits and put them back to where they belong, the basement offices.
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Go with Sprint
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I can't believe people are blindly supporting these ISP's decisions to cap data. The ISP's already have the hardware setup, and it's been proven that they can support unlimited data. So how do you idiots not get the picture that they are clearly raping the consumer by including data caps into their ecosystem. They evidently want to make more money, but at who's cost? You, and you're sitting there trying to win an argument while these company's tear and tear away from people who made them who they are.
No wonder why wireless companies and cable companies charge American's the most. They are the only country that have people that are sheepish enough to just sit there and take it up the ass. You want facts? Go ahead and search how much people pay for internet and wireless data in other countries. Generation of tools and sheep that dig their own graves. It's pathetic!
I wonder how much it will take until finally you start realizing how much of your life and your petty day to day interactions are controlled and distributed by the same companies you put up for.
Maybe that's fine for someone that doesn't care about anyone but their self, but for the people who care about others and how it effects their family and friends they will make a stance against this monopolized data erra. The others that have no idea what's going on around you I feel pure pity for you. Maybe when your mommie and daddy stop paying for your bills you'll understand more.
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scam protection
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In other countries...
1. Whether CAPs actually reduce congestion on the internet (which it kinda reads like it does in a secondary manner: ie. People fear overusing internet -> People don't go online as much -> traffic during peak times slows down)
2. Whether CAPs are the best way to solve the problem.
In South Korea, there are a lot of unlimited data plans, but all the 4G versions give a data cap on the 4G, and slow down to 3G speeds.
Granted, there are fewer people in South Korea in total, but the average consumption of bandwidth should be much higher per person. (Plus much smaller space for towers, which probably means more users per tower)
I mean, I don't care if my internet speeds slow down a bit, I just need reliable access (since I'm not paying too many games, and I'm ok with letting streams finish downloading themselves in the background while I'm doing something.
So if they just slow down my speed a bit during peak hours, but don't force me to nitpick every update for every app I download, does that really destroy the economy?
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Large Video-files
Apparently, i reached my limit on the last download, and the dang thing would not play. I tried making another download and the dang thing is being throttled so badly that it won't download in less than 12 hours. And this is NOT a high-traffic hour; it is 1 am in the morning! I mean -- I have a legitimate subscription that I paid for and Verizon won't let me make downloads! UHHHGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
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Data Caps
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Re: Data Caps
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Powers of two!
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set of packets they now multiply into manerror missed or dropped packets until the entire dowisiso
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If my uploads or downloads, have to be sent multiple time just to get it correct, than it uses up my bytes multiple fast.
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I thought that one byte could have 8 bits or 16 bits or 32 bits or 64 bits, depending on the processor & I/O buss ,etc
128 bit processor will contain much more data per byte than an 8 bit processor.
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they need the money to make more people measurable and when that objective is complete they will only think of way to make you kill your self because you think you have some rights
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Datacaps
Would you accept a cable package that limited what hours your can watch or time limit? Why is this acceptable for the internet. There is already a cap the speed. Now with Windows 10 automatically sharing your wireless with your contact list data caps are even dumber.
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