TW's new bandwith cap

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Message 883884 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 6:47:56 UTC

Band cap, that is just stupid.. Nothing like sticking to your customers.. I never did understand why companies insist on doing that. Luckily we have a few options here.

Everything started out nice.. Phone company did just phones and cable company did just TV, then came the internet. Then they both stared doing internet! Now both are doing phone / TV and internet.

Price and speed wars were great.

Maybe get on a $9.95 a month dialup for your SETI and make it connect after hours. Who cares how long it takes to up/dn the files when you are sleeping!

Just a thought!


- W
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Message 883906 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 10:42:49 UTC - in response to Message 883798.  

Our current pricing plans require all users to pay the same amount, whether they check email once a month or download six movies a day. As the amount of usage has dramatically diverged among users, this is becoming inherently unfair and not the way most consumers want to pay for goods they consume.

When you go to lunch with a friend, do you split the bill in half if he gets the steak and you have a salad?

the way they say it, or as I read it, the salad and the steak costs exactly the same. So what does it matter? Perhaps if your friend eats 8 steaks and you only eat one salad, that it makes a difference. But then your friend is wealthy and he'll pay the tab for that puny bit of weeds for you, won't he? ;-)
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Message 883925 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 12:47:03 UTC - in response to Message 883906.  

In my post of 4 april 2009, I stated: Up- & Down-load speeds of 8000/512Mbit, this, ofcause should be Kbps not Mbaud/sec or Mbit/sec.
My bad.
Wish it were true :)


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Message 883931 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 12:54:34 UTC
Last modified: 10 Apr 2009, 12:55:48 UTC

My new internet package came in. Now I am really positively completely sure that I told the people on the phone when I ordered it that I wanted to have the wireless package, complete with four wifi cards for my 4 computers.

I opened the package and have:
- 1 router/modem
- 1 PSU
- 1 phone-to-data-adapter/splitter
- 1 box with 4 cables... 3 RJ10, 1 RJ45

No wifi cards... wifi modem yes, wifi cards no. Luckily I can also connect 4 computers by Ethernet to this modem, but I will have to make sure to disable the wifi section immediately upon installation. And probably call my ISP (at 10 cts a minute) again to yell at them.

Happy Easter all. :D
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Message 883934 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 12:59:09 UTC - in response to Message 883863.  

To me, all it sounds like is a polite way of saying, "We're going to be raising prices, if you don't like it, we can drop the level of service you get." I'm not in a TW service area, but used to have Comcast, and they took every chance they could to raise rates. Until now, though, they never gave the option of avoiding a rate hike, just "Hey, we BOOSTED your speeds! Oh, and by the way, pay us more..."


I've been a Comcast HSI (High Speed Internet) customer for about 5 years. I've received about 3 speed boosts but no price increases. I've got no complaints.
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Message 883938 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 13:14:30 UTC - in response to Message 883884.  

Band cap, that is just stupid.. Nothing like sticking to your customers.. I never did understand why companies insist on doing that.


They insist on doing that because of the popularity of P2P. Some users were sucking up all their bandwidth while others simply browsed the web and checked their email. Those users who were running P2P are paying the same amount but using more bandwidth than everyone else, and when those few users were combined, they were taking up 95% of the total available bandwidth.

It takes real money to upgade infrastructures, and its hard to offer certain speed grades to certain areas because most of your bandwidth is being used up by a small portion of your customer base. This bandwidth also takes real time and money to maintain to ensure that it keeps running properly.

Technically, the ISPs could have simply shut down anyone running P2P on their networks, since you are essentially "serving" up content on the internet and most home contracts do not allow end-users to run servers, but then there would have been a backlash of people insisting that the internet is supposed to be open, and that people should be able to run whatever they want on their machines, and would have lambasted any and all ISPs who cut people's accounts publicly. It would have been a PR nightmare.

That leaves a large problem for ISPs, and a broken business model that is not going to work in the long run.

Changing the pricing structure and putting caps on the offerings allows something concrete for the ISPs to act on when a user is using too much bandwidth that they aren't paying for. Like all things, the faster you want to go (or in this case, the more you want to use), the more its going to cost you so that there isn't an offset or disparity in the user-to-bandwidth ratio.

The writing was on the wall long ago for flat-rate internet access. It was a bad business model to begin with, but it helped push most people off dial-up and per-minute charges, which helped move technology forward. Now that millions of people are on broadband, totalling well over trillions of bits of information, a better pricing model has been shaping up to make things fair for those not using all the bandwidth, while the ISP can recover their costs from those who are running at full throttle.
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Message 883940 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 13:17:52 UTC - in response to Message 883906.  

Our current pricing plans require all users to pay the same amount, whether they check email once a month or download six movies a day. As the amount of usage has dramatically diverged among users, this is becoming inherently unfair and not the way most consumers want to pay for goods they consume.

When you go to lunch with a friend, do you split the bill in half if he gets the steak and you have a salad?

the way they say it, or as I read it, the salad and the steak costs exactly the same. So what does it matter? Perhaps if your friend eats 8 steaks and you only eat one salad, that it makes a difference. But then your friend is wealthy and he'll pay the tab for that puny bit of weeds for you, won't he? ;-)


Well, that's one way to read it.

But I think the implication is that a steak and a salad do not cost the same. At least, they do not in most places I've dined at. Average price for an 12-oz. steak around here is $19.95 while a salad averages about $4.95. I'm willing to bet that this is the similar in most areas, meaning your interpretation was a bit askewed.
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Message 883942 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 13:20:04 UTC - in response to Message 883931.  

And probably call my ISP (at 10 cts a minute) again to yell at them.

No yelling then. It appears that the original salesperson I talked to was misinformed. My ISP doesn't give out these wifi cards, I have to get them myself. Oh well. Putting those on the wish list for birthdays/Christmas/Animal Day.

The other line is available already, I can switch over any moment I want. So that'll be tomorrow, as I have an appointment with Radio Caroline tonight (Bob Lawrence's Cover Collection, will have an interview with either me or my girlfriend), while I know myself... if I start now, it either is up&running in 10 minutes... or I break both available lines. ;-)

So shoving it off till tomorrow.
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Message 883944 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 13:21:34 UTC - in response to Message 883931.  
Last modified: 10 Apr 2009, 13:37:19 UTC

My new internet package came in. Now I am really positively completely sure that I told the people on the phone when I ordered it that I wanted to have the wireless package, complete with four wifi cards for my 4 computers.


I don't know about your country, but when you tell most ISPs around here in Northeast Illinois that you want to go wireless, they only privide you with the wireless router. You are responsible for purchasing the wireless cards for your computer(s).

And probably call my ISP (at 10 cts a minute) again to yell at them.


Yikes! I'm glad we have toll free numbers here to phone most company's tech support. The company ends up paying the charges on these "toll free" numbers so that it does not cost their customers anything additional because the customer had a problem with the company's product or service(s), which encourages companies to work hard to reduce customer problems to avoid paying those toll charges.

[Edited to fix quotes]
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Message 883948 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 13:35:14 UTC - in response to Message 883944.  

Yikes! I'm glad we have toll free numbers here to phone most company's tech support.

The less funny thing is that my original ISP was gobbled up by this one. Before I only had to call my ISP once a year, if that. Since KPN took over Planet I have had to call them at least 15 times already. Which wouldn't be a problem if their phone menu made sense, but before you talk to someone on there, you're usually 5 minutes and about 10 to 20 key presses further. All for 10 cents a minute. ;-)
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Message 883951 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 14:14:01 UTC - in response to Message 883934.  

I've been a Comcast HSI (High Speed Internet) customer for about 5 years. I've received about 3 speed boosts but no price increases. I've got no complaints.

I've had very similar experiencies. Over 5 years with Comcast, my speeds have ranged from a start of 1.5Mbit to the current 6Mbit speed, all at the same exact price. All while I've seen their cable rates jump and my Dish Network rates skyrocket.
"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think."

"I never get into an argument that I cannot win."
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Message 883952 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 14:23:13 UTC - in response to Message 883951.  
Last modified: 10 Apr 2009, 14:23:34 UTC

I've been a Comcast HSI (High Speed Internet) customer for about 5 years. I've received about 3 speed boosts but no price increases. I've got no complaints.

I've had very similar experiencies. Over 5 years with Comcast, my speeds have ranged from a start of 1.5Mbit to the current 6Mbit speed, all at the same exact price. All while I've seen their cable rates jump and my Dish Network rates skyrocket.


I should have been a little more specific. Technically, the rate I paid for internet access did not go up, but to get the rate I had, I had to also have cable TV service, and that did go up once a year. To me, it doesn't matter what portion of the bill goes up, but if the amount I have to pay each month increases, that's what I case about. Unless I was un-interested in getting TV service at all, the pricing structure makes it fiscally foolish to get internet from cable and TV from somewhere else.

-Dave
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Message 883974 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 16:31:11 UTC

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Message 883994 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 18:30:01 UTC - in response to Message 883951.  
Last modified: 10 Apr 2009, 19:03:41 UTC

I've been a Comcast HSI (High Speed Internet) customer for about 5 years. I've received about 3 speed boosts but no price increases. I've got no complaints.

I've had very similar experiencies. Over 5 years with Comcast, my speeds have ranged from a start of 1.5Mbit to the current 6Mbit speed, all at the same exact price. All while I've seen their cable rates jump and my Dish Network rates skyrocket.

I've been with Comcast since it was Excite@Home. Back in those days, they did not have up/down caps, and the infrastructure was not very robust. Some nights I could pull 20-25Mbit down, and do 15-20Mbit up, other nights it was only like 5/1.

Then Excite went bankrupt and Comcast took over, and for the same price, we were knocked down to 1500kbit/128kbit. Stayed that way for..years. It was painfully slow. Then they announced they had fixed the infrastructure and would be increasing speeds. Got 3000/256. I was ecstatic. Then about a year later, they announced another speed increase. I inquired what it would be, and was told 6000/384. Well I got the 384 part, but definitely not the 6000 part. I only got 4000. I then called and inquired again, and again, and again, and that's what the story I had previously mentioned was about.

There was a bad interface card in my local node, and upon replacement of that card, I was up to 6600/384 (according to the status page on my Linksys modem). Bandwidth tests confirmed this.

Now with the addition of powerboost, and I guess generally just being generous, the modem's status page shows 6600/1100. That's fine by me. The Powerboost feature doubles both up and down for the first 10MiB downloaded, and the first 5MiB uploaded. I have not paid more or less than when I got cable Internet in July 2001, but have been through many generations of upgrades.

Oh, and supposedly back in October, Comcast instated a 250gb/mo policy. I..haven't been able to reach that cap..and I have been trying.


[edit: After doing some research, Comcast is about halfway through its DOCSIS 3.0 deployment network-wide, and for non-3.0 customers, they have upgraded the 6/384 package to 6/1, and the 8/768 package to 8/2. So that's what my speed increase was attributed to. Also, they will be offering a 50/10 package for $149.95, or a 22/5 package for $69.95, when 3.0 rolls out in full swing, which they set a goal of 100% by Jan 1, 2010.

From the reading I have found, there is one part of this that is conflicting: One article says only the Motorola Surfboard can be used, and you have to lease/rent it from Comcast, or now there are reports of it being for sale at Fry's. The other report says only Cisco has a modem that can be used. So I'll wait until I know for sure that DOCSIS3.0 is here, and then probably get the 22/5 package. I'm hoping I can get a stackable Linksys modem to sit where my current 2.0 one is. Those stackable Linksys devices are very handy.]
Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)
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Message 884002 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 18:51:03 UTC

Don't drink the flavor-aid.

The 5% of the customers using 95% of the bandwidth that has been bandied about so many times by various ISPs and regurgitated by the media companies they own, but has never been proven with actual figures AFAIK

The war is against the internet stealing customers away from other owned media.

Some interesting comments and links here: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Theres-No-Data-To-Prove-Metered-Billing-Is-Necessary-101824

Compare it with the rest of the world, North America is being left in the dust due to the conflicting interests of the media companies that control it all.

I could go on, but this really is not the place.

UncleVom



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Message 884009 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 19:18:48 UTC - in response to Message 884002.  

Don't drink the flavor-aid.

The 5% of the customers using 95% of the bandwidth that has been bandied about so many times by various ISPs and regurgitated by the media companies they own, but has never been proven with actual figures AFAIK

The war is against the internet stealing customers away from other owned media.


So they must be lying, and because they won't admit they're lying, that must be the proof that they're lying.

While it may not actually be 5% of the users using 95%, I'm sure the numbers are fairly indicative that a small percentage is using a lot of bandwidth, and it doesn't sound too far fetched.

Some interesting comments and links here: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Theres-No-Data-To-Prove-Metered-Billing-Is-Necessary-101824

Compare it with the rest of the world, North America is being left in the dust due to the conflicting interests of the media companies that control it all.


The guy's comments about everything being "fixed" costs shows that he knows little about business and economics, so I can't put very much faith into what he says is facts.

Compared to the rest of the advanced world, America has the largest continent next to Russia, but at least Russia, Europe and South America are all divided up into smaller countries who are responsible for just a portion of land to cover for high speed internet.

The claims that its more "evil media" trying to spoon feed consumers is more of the same "I don't want to believe it, so the media must be lying" type BS. If people refuse to believe it, then there's nothing I can do to change their minds.
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Message 884020 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 19:47:56 UTC - in response to Message 883938.  


Technically, the ISPs could have simply shut down anyone running P2P on their networks, since you are essentially "serving" up content on the internet and most home contracts do not allow end-users to run servers, but then there would have been a backlash of people insisting that the internet is supposed to be open, and that people should be able to run whatever they want on their machines, and would have lambasted any and all ISPs who cut people's accounts publicly. It would have been a PR nightmare.

Unfortunately, they did not simply cut off anyone who violated their ToS by running a server (A "bittorrent" server), but Comcast got cute. They were sniffing their network, and they were sending out spoofed RST packets.

That's incredibly dumb. Sure, it slows down torrents, but it does not make them stop. The torrent authors can work to make their protocol look even less like "torrents" and more like HTTP.

So, instead of contacting problem customers and reminding them of their terms of service, they got caught "discriminating" against certain protocols.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation started complaining about how they weren't protocol neutral, and that ended up at the FCC, and Comcast lost.

As a result, a broadband provider cannot enforce bandwidth limits by protocol, or discriminate based on rules like "no servers." They can only limit by bandwidth.

So, in the U.S., thanks to Comcast and the E.F.F., we get bandwidth caps and tiered service.

It's a perfect example of "be careful what you ask for...."

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Message 884026 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 20:07:56 UTC - in response to Message 884020.  


Technically, the ISPs could have simply shut down anyone running P2P on their networks, since you are essentially "serving" up content on the internet and most home contracts do not allow end-users to run servers, but then there would have been a backlash of people insisting that the internet is supposed to be open, and that people should be able to run whatever they want on their machines, and would have lambasted any and all ISPs who cut people's accounts publicly. It would have been a PR nightmare.

Unfortunately, they did not simply cut off anyone who violated their ToS by running a server (A "bittorrent" server), but Comcast got cute. They were sniffing their network, and they were sending out spoofed RST packets.

That's incredibly dumb. Sure, it slows down torrents, but it does not make them stop. The torrent authors can work to make their protocol look even less like "torrents" and more like HTTP.

So, instead of contacting problem customers and reminding them of their terms of service, they got caught "discriminating" against certain protocols.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation started complaining about how they weren't protocol neutral, and that ended up at the FCC, and Comcast lost.

As a result, a broadband provider cannot enforce bandwidth limits by protocol, or discriminate based on rules like "no servers." They can only limit by bandwidth.

So, in the U.S., thanks to Comcast and the E.F.F., we get bandwidth caps and tiered service.

It's a perfect example of "be careful what you ask for...."


Oh, I absolutely agree. Comcast's network throttling idea was very stupid, and IMO it opens the doors for all sorts of potentially bad ideas of throttling if it were allowed to continue. At least caps is/are a more legit practice than throttling, even if the change upsets some spoiled users.
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Message 884029 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 20:16:53 UTC - in response to Message 884009.  

Go ahead believe what you like.

Pay for what is advertised and be unable to use it.
60 GB lasts how long at the speeds they are promising?

I see companies choking the highway on-ramps to suit themselves.

Sure the country is big, but sufficient connectivity and capacity is there unless you are off in the boonies.

Check out what transit and gigabytes really cost, it may surprise you how you are being ripped off by the gatekeepers.


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Message 884049 - Posted: 10 Apr 2009, 21:20:38 UTC - in response to Message 884029.  

Pay for what is advertised and be unable to use it.
60 GB lasts how long at the speeds they are promising?


That's just it, the "advertisedments" and existing business model were wrong and now the companies are trying to correct that mistake.

60GB can last real long, even at those speeds if all you do is browse the web really fast and check your email really fast.

I see companies choking the highway on-ramps to suit themselves.


I see companies stuggling to offer high speeds to everyone because so much of it is saturated by people using P2P and torrents. I see upset people because this is the end of their free ride to unlimited bandwidth and they're only concerned about themselves and not the costs to the companies.

Sure the country is big, but sufficient connectivity and capacity is there unless you are off in the boonies.


Really? According to what stats? Most stats consider that if even one home in a zipcode is capable of receiving broadband, that the entire zipcode is considered "covered". Most certainly there is not enough capacity were every American to sign up and use the network at full throttle. Putting caps is one way to ensure that there's enough bandwidth for everyone.

Check out what transit and gigabytes really cost, it may surprise you how you are being ripped off by the gatekeepers.


As someone in IT, I know there's a lot more to costs than the average consumer might think. Even in business, there's a difference between the cost of an item and the item's "true cost" after all factors are considered. I believe that most people think cost is simple and flat, and that is simply not true.
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