[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Broadband Providers Cap Monthly Usage here

[smax013]

"...and make a little scratch on the side."



A little? $490 per GB is a little? Hate to see what you consider a lot!



I don't have a problem with the idea of caps...if the caps are fair and really aimed at the abuser since it is supposely the abusers that have made caps required. But, I fail to see how a 1 GB limit (on the low end Time Warner plan) is anything but a money grab by Time Warner. The implication is that an abuser is someone sucking down TONS of bandwidth. Considering a 1 GB limit would be hard pressed to cover the down load of ONE one line movie or TWO TV show episodes, I fail to see how someone who downloads two movies a month is "an abuser". Even the 40 GB limit is too low and if penalizing more than the abusers. To me, the Time Warner plans seems like PURE money grabs to me...and Comcast imposed limits like that on me, I would drop them faster than they could say "crap".



I can understand the more restrictive limits on the wireless broadband. I don't have too much of a problem with 5 GB..but then I don't use wireless broadband for anything near that. But, charging $0.49 per MB ($490 per GB) beyond that is no more than Verizon robbing you...a pure money grab. And AT&T not even bothering to tell you how it will cost you to go beyond 5 GB tells me that they are ashamed to admit how much they will be charging you. To me, it definitely tells me that they KNOW that they are executing pure money grabs if they are too ashamed to tell what you will have to fork over.

[Flashorn]

Hey PCWorld!!



Hell yes, I agree with smax that at $0.49 a meg. that is nothing short of stealing you blind.

I read the article this afternoon and must have mis -read that section. In my mind it was $0.49 a Gig.

Here in my area ( Ottawa,Canada) we have had caps for about two years. We are with Bell Canada and

have a DSL connection . The imposed caps are of 60 Gigs a month and anything above is $1.00 a Gig.

I think this is justified. It kinda holds the abusers in check but, at the same time gives us the freedom to rent movies

or download music on line with ought violating the imposed caps.

Rogers Cable which is the predominant cable provider in our are have just announced last month that they too are now imposing

a cap of 60 Gigs on there clients. So far I haven't heard any negative feedback from this proposal.

Then again our population is only one tenth that of the US. That said , I think that stealing from your customers should be

punishable by law. Those providers already have and use the technology to keep a watchful eye over those who abuse their connection.



Why don't they use that technology to ban the ones that are at fault instead of punishing the customers that abide by the rules.





FLASHORN.

[smax013]

Flashorn said:

Why don't they use that technology to ban the ones that are at fault instead of punishing the customers that abide by the rules.

That is because it is the American way to punish the innocent as well when you go after the guilty. Just look at the RIAA and MPAA way of doing things...some people like to steal music and/or movies, so what do you do...you impose draconian DRM methods that make innocent people's life more difficult, but barely fazes those that did not care about copyright as soon as you crack it once and put it up there WITHOUT DRM, all the people who would steal the stuff have little trouble. In the end, DRM is just a speed bump to those who REALLY want to steal the content...but is a major pain in the a$$ for those who are and have been willing to pay for their content and be legal.

[GlennF]

I was referring more to the $1 a gig charge as being a "little scratch," but I see your point.
My argument is that while you might make the case that 3G limits have something to do with network quality, usage, etc. (maybe), it's hard to make anything like that case with a 40 GB or even 100 GB cap for wired broadband. 250 to 500 GB would be a more reasonable monthly cap for even heavy video users. Above that level, you could start to buy into the 'abusive network use' argument.

[smax013]

GlennF said:

I was referring more to the $1 a gig charge as being a "little scratch," but I see your point.

I kind of figured that...but the $490 was a more impressive number! :) It is all about the spin, baby! ;)



Having said that, $1 per GB for when coupled with a 5 GB limit can turn out to be more than a little scratch. If you are paying $30 a month for that 768k service and have a 5 GB limit and you say go to 15 GB, then you are paying a 33% premium per month (and considering I pay $46 per month for unlimited, unless they secretly limit me, 6Mbps service, seems like a rip off). That is a pretty hefty increase. Sure, it ain't to bad if you go over by 1 GB, but at a 5 GB limit there would be plenty of people that would blow that limit out of the water with things like YouTube, online movie rental, watching online TV episodes, online music, online picture storage, and email. That low end account appears to be a PURE ploy to say "look at a cost efficient option", but in reality is SO crippled that not many would find it useful and thus end up on the higher tier.

GlennF said:

My argument is that while you might make the case that 3G limits have something to do with network quality, usage, etc. (maybe), it's hard to make anything like that case with a 40 GB or even 100 GB cap for wired broadband. 250 to 500 GB would be a more reasonable monthly cap for even heavy video users. Above that level, you could start to buy into the 'abusive network use' argument.

I agree. That was kind of my point too...even if I was a bit more long winded about it! ;) I have much less issue with lower caps on a wireless broadband. But, the caps being proposed by Time Warner are so low that it is obvious that they stated reason for them is complete BS...if someone doing 40 GB a month on Time Warner's system is "abusing" the system, then their system/network has SERIOUS problems and I am not sure I would want there service if that was case (ignoring the cost side of stuff). To me, Time Warner's plans are PURE, 100% money grabs. If they were truly just going after those that "abuse" the system, then the limits would be significantly higher.

[savagesteve13]

They basically are handing over their business to DSL by implementing caps. Nothing new here, cable companies have oversold their bandwidth for years and have targeted who they consider "heavy bandwidth users", hoping to run them off.

[Alber1690]

I just don't think that caps will move America forward. As other countries are instead lowering their prices AND increasing download rates and quality, why in the world are we moving backwards? Our communication companies should instead begin to actually invest in the technology to not only be able to well handle our needs, but to surpass them and make way for the future technologies that will maintain America a leader. Why is it that top technology companies like Microsoft and HP are planning huge developments, via software and hardware respectively, to have more sharing, synchronizing, and a "connected" digital lifestyle, but instead broadband companies are debating how to penalize probable users of this future technology? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for penalizing illegal activity, but what about legal movie downloading services, the future presence of home consumer servers, etc.? This whole ordeal is just another reason why America will lose its foothold to other countries who are willing to invest, but more importantly, imagine the impossible, something we were once masters of.

[RNR19952]

Vote with your wallets!
Remember when cable TV had NO COMMERCIALS!
They had no commercials because you pay for the service
Well now I am paying out the a$$, I have commercials, I have commercials in my rented movies, at the movies, they want to put them on your phone,
there is commercials in the On Demand service from Comcast, stupid advertisements are everywhere! And the prices keep going UP!!!!
I say enough is enough, with no competition they will do what they want.
I am ready to turn all this crap off, and read a book!

[mobiledean]

My ISP here in New Zealand had the same issue until recently, file sharers consuming excessive bandwidth at peak times making even browsing and email checking an awful experience. So they introduced a new plan. Pay $1 per gb whenever you surf - or pay $1.40 per gb except between the hours of mignight and 8am (when email and web broswers are asleep) and pay nothing! My broadband connection has neve been better during peak hours..everybody wins. File sharers get free data, web surfers get a good experience and as a result, my ISP gets more customers.

[rtfire1]

What part of New Zealand are you in? my bro lives over there right now and he can not find a good deal at all on service.

[mobiledean]

In Auckland, although the ISP is nationwide. Signed with XNet. Got an awesome deal. For around $70 per month I get full speed up and down naked ADSL and VoIP connection, no included data but pay $1 per gb. If he's happy to fork out about $120 up front cost for an analogue to VoIP adapter to connect his current analogue phone into his broadband connection (or he can buy an approved VoIP phone) then the thing will pay for itself within a few months. VoIP connection gives you insanely cheap per minute rates nationwide and internationally, and you get services like voicemail, caller ID, call notification for free. Can have your voice messages and missed call notifications emailed which is sweet. Best yet, you dont need to call them to make changes to these services, you can do it all from a web UI.

In case you're wondering I don't work for them, just a very happy customer! He can find them here
http://www.xnet.co.nz/fusion/

[Drumstix42]

Wouldn't this have a huge effect on gaming accross the internet? Lots of files being shared when gaming online.

[mobiledean]

Based on the improvement noticed it seems as thought whatever resources gamers were consuming in regard to bandwidth appear to be negigible.

[smax013]

mobiledean said:

Based on the improvement noticed it seems as thought whatever resources gamers were consuming in regard to bandwidth appear to be negigible.

To my knowledge, gaming usually has rather small bandwidth levels, with the possible exception being if you are hosting a gaming server.

[AuroraDizon]

You can download games offline say if I wiped my computer and lost my wow discs I can download it on my computer. Its a lot of files. Not to mention the patches that can be pretty big. Then on another note there are youtube uploads, other free downloads etc.

[smax013]

AuroraDizon said:

You can download games offline say if I wiped my computer and lost my wow discs I can download it on my computer. Its a lot of files. Not to mention the patches that can be pretty big. Then on another note there are youtube uploads, other free downloads etc.

True...I did not think about that...I was thinking about the actual gaming process, I guess. Too early in the morning...

[alexhungk]

WOW i can believe what i reading about how many people approve the cap monthly usage, what about people who have box for watch movies over the internet, about people who buy games online and download in the pc, i think is enough pay 70 dollars for broadband for the crappy speed we have here in the usa, 70 buck for 8 mega, that sucks, i got a ps3, xbox 360 in home and in each one i wanna download the demos and each demos is like 1.2 gb or more. I think in this new era of tech and hdtv coming more strong than before is better to think twice before doing that.

[smax013]

alexhungk said:

WOW i can believe what i reading about how many people approve the cap monthly usage, what about people who have box for watch movies over the internet, about people who buy games online and download in the pc, i think is enough pay 70 dollars for broadband for the crappy speed we have here in the usa, 70 buck for 8 mega, that sucks, i got a ps3, xbox 360 in home and in each one i wanna download the demos and each demos is like 1.2 gb or more. I think in this new era of tech and hdtv coming more strong than before is better to think twice before doing that.

I think if you read through the posts in response to the article you should see that most people are NOT likely the idea of monthly caps...and if any do, they believe that the caps that Time Warner is proposing are WOEFULLY small. I don't have problem with caps per se as long as they are realistic and reasonable and are truly aimed at those truly abusing the system. For example, a cap of 250 GB per month that Comcast is supposedly considering sound like it might be reasonable. I have an AppleTV "set top box". In the 6 months that I have owned it, I have rented about a dozen hi def movies, purchased several dozen TV episodes, and purchased at least several dozen songs or music videos...not to mention watch numerous streamed movie trailers, Youtube clips, and previews of movies available for purchase. And after doing that, my 160 GB AppleTV is barely more than half full. Thus, I have not even come close to 250 GB in 6 months, let alone 1 month. Thus, it woud appear that 250 GB would be more than enough if that was a cap. Now, I am still not to fond of Comcast doing that as it is likely that they will later decide that 250 GB is too generous and drop it...maybe to something that is too restrictive.

[SmilingCarcass]

I live in the UK and my ISP has introduced capping. They tell me that thier engineers calculated the top 5% were downloading up to 3gigs a day. Therefore they would cap the top 5% users each week for one week. They linked me to the relevent detailed information. This said that the capped users would be limited to 512kbits. I found my speed was reduced to near dial-up speeds, about 60-70kbits. I queeried this, and was given a 'stock' response and another link to the page. The 512kbits that had been stated there the day before was now changed to 80kbits.
My issues are these:
1 They are selling bandwidth they do not have the capacity to deliver and to this end have to cap.
2 Capping the top 5% means there will always be users capped as there will always be a 'top 5%'.
3 This behaviour would not be allowable in the 'real' world. The virtual world of the internet is often not covered by existing consumer law.
I intend taking up the issue with my MP.