Greed is everywhere!!

---

LETS BEGIN IN 2010

I won't pretend to know much about the costs, technology and politics of the situation...just to report my results.

Comcast HSI, price hasn't changed for 5+ years (42.95/mo), many speed increases over the years. My current Speedtest:

8991kbps down, 2701kpbs up

---

"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."

Why are cell phones going to "unlimited" plans, but cable internet is going metered? It's backward thinking. Just limit bandwidth, sell various speeds at different prices, and you're [revenue and infrastructure] problem will be solved.

Still, this whole thing seems over-controlled. Out west, when I had Cox Communications cable internet, they offered pricing tiers for bandwidth, but no explicit "cap" on how much you can download. There was a significant price difference, so I just went with the slowest connection. At the time, I think that was 1M/256K. If I maxed out my connection for 24/7 all month, that's just over 200GB.

What about these "online backup services" where you can backup your computer to a sky drive on the internet? Doesn't bandwidth capping put those guys out of business?

They are even tested a new "feature" that allows you to download a file faster than the speed you pay for. It works for 30 seconds or something at "turbo" speed, then drops back to the subscribed speed (if download hasn't finished by then). That could be an extra $2.50 a month, for example.

In the COO's defense though, the network neutrality laws prevent them from "throttling" certain extreme-bandwidth usage customers (e.g., when the network is saturated). So, their only solution is making the bandwidth caps fixed and part of the subscriber agreement.

The two big reasons I'm not with TWC: 1) I am across the street from the DSLAM, so I have DSL; 2) TWC in my area has frequent outages and poor routing (many high latency hops).

Anyone interested in a more-focused discussion should visit:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/cable,rr

There is an anti-cap petition and other discussions there.

3 PCs put over onto the new connection now. Linespeed is approaching 18Mbit. Nice.

Sniff.. it was too good to be true. The modem is defect. It was cutting out after an hour. Then we couldn't reach it anymore by browser, until we reset it to factory settings. 45 minutes later, same cut.

Getting a mechanic here now on Tuesday who will check my line and the modem. All for free, thank God. :)

So back on the old connection, oh well.

---

Why are cell phones going to "unlimited" plans, but cable internet is going metered? It's backward thinking. Just limit bandwidth, sell various speeds at different prices, and you're [revenue and infrastructure] problem will be solved.

The problem is that limiting bandwidth is only a stop-gap solution considering there is a large push for faster broadband in the US to catch up to the rest of the advanced world. Many are asking for the FCC to redefine their antiquated stance of what constitutes "broadband" availability (currently anything over 384Kb/s is classified as broadband). As speeds get faster, people are going to do more, including illegally downloading music & movies off the internet simply because they can, sucking up all the bandwidth there is simply because there's no penalties for doing otherwise. Of course, not all bittorrent downloads are illegal, but I would say that vast majority of the ones aggressively downloaded are.

---

Why are cell phones going to "unlimited" plans, but cable internet is going metered? It's backward thinking. Just limit bandwidth, sell various speeds at different prices, and you're [revenue and infrastructure] problem will be solved.

The problem is that limiting bandwidth is only a stop-gap solution considering there is a large push for faster broadband in the US to catch up to the rest of the advanced world. Many are asking for the FCC to redefine their antiquated stance of what constitutes "broadband" availability (currently anything over 384Kb/s is classified as broadband). As speeds get faster, people are going to do more, including illegally downloading music & movies off the internet simply because they can, sucking up all the bandwidth there is simply because there's no penalties for doing otherwise. Of course, not all bittorrent downloads are illegal, but I would say that vast majority of the ones aggressively downloaded are.

No matter how you slice it, a few users take "unlimited bandwidth" and manage to exceed it.

The rest of the users "pay" in higher prices and slower connections.

---

Ars technica has a good article about this.

---

--
Classic 82353 WU / 400979 h

Many are asking for the FCC to redefine their antiquated stance of what constitutes "broadband" availability (currently anything over 384Kb/s is classified as broadband).

Here in Australia the telcos consider anything over 56kb/s to be broadband.

As speeds get faster, people are going to do more, including illegally downloading music & movies off the internet simply because they can, sucking up all the bandwidth there is simply because there's no penalties for doing otherwise.

Hence the implementation of a download cap. If you want to download 250GB, you pay for the privilige. Why should the majority pay for the minority's downloads?

---

Grant
Darwin NT

As speeds get faster, people are going to do more, including illegally downloading music & movies off the internet simply because they can, sucking up all the bandwidth there is simply because there's no penalties for doing otherwise.

Hence the implementation of a download cap. If you want to download 250GB, you pay for the privilige. Why should the majority pay for the minority's downloads?

Precisely. It was the only logical end to the issue, and now people are all up in arms about it.

---

Respectfully, IMO the arms are up over what the caps should be, and their price levels.

250Gb/mo comes to about 96kbps constant 24/7, which is reasonable.
10Gb/mo or 40Gb/mo should not really be a tier, unless it's a very low-priced tier (<$30/mo)

---

"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."

Am I the only one who sees 5/95 and thinks "There's no way?" I mean, a far more likely number is .001/99.9, because in areas that have high content demand, it'll be pretty spread out usually. If everyone's rich enough to download HD movies, chances are most of them will be, but then one person will say, download OVER 9000!!! HD and in doing so, potentially screw over everyone else. THe companies see a small portion and instead of fixing the problem, they screw everyone over. Out where I live I know a few people have actually had to switch companies because they used too much, and some other reasons...

Respectfully, IMO the arms are up over what the caps should be, and their price levels.

I suppose I can see that. But like all things in capitalism, if you don't like what the company does (has a right to do as its their company to run), you can always vote with your wallet which may force them to change their policies to retain customers.

---

Am I the only one who sees 5/95 and thinks "There's no way?" I mean, a far more likely number is .001/99.9, because in areas that have high content demand, it'll be pretty spread out usually. If everyone's rich enough to download HD movies, chances are most of them will be, but then one person will say, download OVER 9000!!! HD and in doing so, potentially screw over everyone else. THe companies see a small portion and instead of fixing the problem, they screw everyone over. Out where I live I know a few people have actually had to switch companies because they used too much, and some other reasons...

LOL Your new number suggests that far less than 5% of the people are using 99.9% of the bandwidth. I suppose that could be true, but I don't think its one thousandth of a percent because I believe bittorrent or other filesharing software, especially illegal downloading of movies is far more prevalent than that. If it were less than that, I don't think the MPAA/RIAA would be so worried about so few. In fact, I would guess that its greater than 5% of the users on the total network, not just per node.

---

Respectfully, IMO the arms are up over what the caps should be, and their price levels.

I suppose I can see that. But like all things in capitalism, if you don't like what the company does (has a right to do as its their company to run), you can always vote with your wallet which may force them to change their policies to retain customers.

Unless the company has a monopoly which is one of the problems with cable service in the US at least in that most places you cannot chose your provider unless you opt of satellite and for internet DSL.

Respectfully, IMO the arms are up over what the caps should be, and their price levels.

I suppose I can see that. But like all things in capitalism, if you don't like what the company does (has a right to do as its their company to run), you can always vote with your wallet which may force them to change their policies to retain customers.

Unless the company has a monopoly which is one of the problems with cable service in the US at least in that most places you cannot chose your provider unless you opt of satellite and for internet DSL.

Speaking in the most abstract values, internet access is still considered a luxury, so you can still vote with your wallet by foregoing access altogether, unless you are running an online business, but typically business-grade internet access do not have caps.

---

Big Announcement!!!

Time Warner Caves In

---

for me the"more you use bandwidth, the more you pay" is fair, i am not willing to pay other peoples use of bandwidth, if they want to p2p/ torrent films, music, tiu diu diu, they can do it by paying it themselves.
and i think all countries and companies are going to do this pretty soon.
( simply put, you pay for usage )

Big Announcement!!!

Time Warner Caves In

So for the moment they ran the White Flag of Surrender up the ol flag pole, I wonder how long this will last?

Well, I like this blurb.

"The company said it is working to make measurement tools available so customers understand how much bandwidth they use."

I think that should have been a first step. Then when 95% of the users realize that their usage actually falls into a cap level that is actually cheaper for them, then they'll stop complaining. Hopefully that's what happens.

Edit: I'm curios to find my own freeware bandwidth measuring tool. I'll post back if I find something.

---

"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."

[Edit: I'm curios to find my own freeware bandwidth measuring tool. I'll post back if I find something.

NetMeter

[Edit: I'm curios to find my own freeware bandwidth measuring tool. I'll post back if I find something.

NetMeter

That's what I've been using for years. It's as good as any other tools currently out there.

---

Boinc V7.2.42
Win7 i5 3.33G 4GB, GTX470