3 Megabit Cable Modems, Anyone?

joelav22 writes: "I've got to move to San Francisco! RCN has upgraded current customers to 3 megabits of bandwith for no extra charge. In the days of all the bandwith chopping and caps, this is definitely a welcome trend. I hope ATT and Comcast can take a hint."

Comments

Look like a good deal

[Rogerborg]

But it leaves you with a tough choice:

1. Use it responsibly to get faster downloads of the data that you actually want.
2. Get your snout in the trough and suck down everything you can before they admit that it's unsustainable and cut it, cap it, or start charging sensible money for it.

Incidentally, I'm in the first category, but I'm beginning to feel like I've been pretty stupid. Sure, I understand that "all you can eat" is just marketing blurb, and that the fees charged for retail flat rate services don't cover the ISP costs of using them to their full capacity. But why would the majority of customers understand or accept that? They're sold as always on, flat rate, all you can eat. A typical user (i.e. Joe Windows) would expect to be able to use them as such, which is why all of these schemes are doomed from the get go, and are just short term marketing schemes to attract customers (1. Burn money to attract customers away from other company's profitable schemes, 2. ..., 3. Profit!).

And so I'm inclined to say go for it, and leech like you've never leeched before. I know that's unsustainable, but the first sin is being committed by ISP's allowing their marketing droids to sell services as being all-you-can-eat, when that's just not true. Perhaps when they offer services based on an actual sustainable model them then we could consider supporting them. But as long as they're selling services that we know aren't going to work, purely to attract customers in the short term, then there's little point in being the only guy on the block trying to play by the spirit of the rules, because the letter of rules are going to change in the mid term anyway.