Rogers Cable Plans Fees to Curb Bandwith Hogs

jeremyd writes: "Major Canadian broadband provider plans to charge heavy users higher monthly access fees as high as $80 per month. Read the article here from the Globe and Mail. If only the world would protest. What's the point of high speed broadband access if you can't use it to full potential without having to start selling organs to pay the bills?"

Comments

Re:Bandwidth Levels?

[Herr_Nightingale]

I have a good idea what a bandwidth pig uses hereabouts .. in British Columbia (just a couple miles north of your American border, BTW) good broadband currently costs about $40/month and that's uncapped - I regularly get about three T1 worth of bandwidth on demand. One member of my household was pulling in a GB per day in just mp3's ..
Shaw Cable (AKA Rogers Cable in beautiful British Columbia) sent us a friendly little note and several 'urgent' phone messages regarding "Excessive Use," then directed us to a new TOS posted for all to see.
Apparently we are entitled to 8GB download per month AND up to 2 GB upload.

That's a pretty fair distance from our 75+ GB down and 10+ GB upload, eh.

Now they're inspecting us closely, and we can't afford to lose the provider since DSL isn't coming to the area until later this year. Soon enough, though, for us Canucks are a crafty breed ;O)

Hope that helps.

Re:Dream slipping away?

[jbrw]

"This is especially true here in the UK where free dial up internet access appeared, then promptly disappeared. Now a similar thing seems to be happening to broadband. Rather than becoming more accessible to the average man in the street, companies seem to be raising prices and limiting signups right, left and centre. "

I thought broadband prices are coming down in the UK? With the recent introduction of the "wires-only" ADSL service, and the lower wholesale charge for this service, compared to the initial engineer-comes-to-visit deal, there are some good deals coming out.

Indeed, Pipex has just announced a sub-£30 (inc VAT) home service. For a little bit extra, there are better deals out there for the geekier potential broadband customer...

The Daily Telegraph is also reporting that BT will announce, later this week, that the wholesale cost of ADSL will be cut by 50% as ADSL take-up rates in the UK are well below other areas of Europe.

Re:Kudos to Rogers.

[arcade]

I would like to make an analogy, but it may come out a bit strange, as I'm not sure wheter I know enough english.

If you go to a tivoli/amusement park/theme park/whatever you call it in english, and there are lots of different attractions, say, big dippers, merry go rounds, and so forth. There are only a limited amount of seats in each of'em.

You pay for an all-day-card, to be able to use all the attractions as much as you want.

Now, can you use all the attractions as much as you want? Nope. But you've payed for it!!! Yeah, but you see.. lots of others has payed for it too. So, everybody is queuing up. For the greatest attractions, you may have to stay in a queue for as long as 30-45 minutes.

When you've taken one ride, you have to return to the back of the line, in order to take another ride.

Now, what would you do if the ISP that sold you a line with a 'peak connection' of 500kb/s, and you never was able to get it above 50kb/s, due to congestion? You would complain? Right! So would I! Thus, one has to find an alternative solution, as people expect the Internet to be a tiny bit faster than a theme park. :-)

An 'unlimited' internet connection is _not_ the same as an all-day-pass at a theme park. Those that think so has clearly misunderstood something.

Some flawed math.

[oneiros27]

As someone who's worked at a mid-sized ISP, I can tell you that your math is flawed in many ways:

• You can get more than 50 modems perl T1. Although folks might be dialed up, they're not filling their pipe the whole time. You're looking at 100-200 "56k" modems per T1. [depending on scale and your exact user base]
  
• 15 users per modem is horrible. 6-8 is a much better range. Again, it's based on your user base, however.
  
• ISPs have much bigger charges than the T1. First, you have whatever debts you're paying off for your router and modems. Then you have the recurring charges... Either POTS, Channelized-T1 or PRI. Depending on where you are, and the economy of scale, an ISP could be paying anywhere between $30-80 in recurring costs per month, per incoming line.

Now, based on those numbers, if you've got 115 modems (5 PRI), and you're paying $80 per line, ($9200) and $1600 for the T1. ($10,800 total). You're charging $20/mo, and keep a user/modem ratio of 8, for $18,400.

So, we've got $7600 profit, right? Well, no. There's still business phone lines, loop charges, location rent, utility bills [ie, electricity], ongoing costs of equipment upgrades, etc. So, say you're not paying that much, and you're pulling in $7000 per month (which would be damned high, mind you).

Well, that's $7k/month, or $84k/year. Sure would be sweet, but unfortunately, you probably need some other folks to help you run the place, or you'd have to do all of the tech support, 24x7 network support, billing, accounting, etc, on your own.

ISPs are profitable, but it's a sliding scale... if you upgrade too fast, you pay our more to keep the customers happy, and cut into profits. If you don't upgrade fast enough, you have constant busy signals, and you lose customers, which cuts into profits. You have to be slightly forward thinking (as it might take 2-3 months to get that PRI in from the order date), but you can't be too over enthusiastic.

However, as with any business, you don't _have_ to serve people. If you have a problem customer, you can get rid of 'em. It's perfectly legal, and well, the AUP/TOS just helps to cover your ass. Yes, they might bitch, but when you're paying $80/month for modem line and hardware charges, you've suddenly stopped losing $60/month on that person.

[There are, however, ways to handle the problem customers, but I'd have to classify that as secret, as I still have a vested interest in the ISP]