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AT&T Broadband Introduces Tiered Pricing
Joey Patterson writes "It had to happen sooner or later. CNET reports that AT&T Broadband has introduced a tiered pricing plan called UltraLink (3 Mbps down/384 kbps up) for $79.99/month if you buy your own modem and $82.95/month if you lease one of theirs."
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
It had to happen sooner or later.
You make this sound like a bad thing. As long as it doesn't affect my current service, I like having the option of jumping up a notch in performance.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
... If i had this service in my area. We have always complained about poor throughput and this is the resolution.
We have demanded a service, and now the way we want it is being presented to us.
Must be nice - we're enjoying 500kbit cable for $50/month here in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Damn cows must be sitting on our optic cable.
I noticed on my ATTBi bill that cablemodem rental had dropped to $2.95 a month. I wonder if that's because I've been a customer for awhile, or if they lowered the price across the board to discourage people from buying thier own.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Honestly, my cablemodem is plenty fast enough for me. I'd like to know of a cheap alternative to having a static IP, and allow more than 2 machines to access the internet without anything fancy going on on my end.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I was really hoping this could be a way of getting good, quality based pricing but I guess it's just going to become a way to charge a busload of money... ...although for $82 a month I should get some legal mp3's or local TV streaming for free or something. The mention of being able to set-up home networks is nice though, I'll wait for that story next (that is when they shut those down)
Get your Unix fortune now!
what do you need bigger upload on a cable modem for ? they won't let you run any kind of server.
It is a bit steep, considering astound offers 1.5mb each way on a fiber connect for 40$ a month, and it's cheaper if you get phone and cable from them as well.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
AT&T Broadband said UltraLink will serve power users, which it described as those who have "set up home networks, send or receive large files such as when downloading software, or enjoy other bandwidth-intensive applications."
This is a change from the usual tone of set up a home network and die. Of course, you are paying much more for the privilege. My question, then, is if they give you more IP addresses too.
Currently, me and my roomate use ATT, and we pay them another $10 a month for a second IP. Not sure if there's any bandwidth increase with that; probably not.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
With SBC I am paying $159/Month for 6Mbit down / 384k up aDSL line. This is with 5 static IPs and a very loose AUP. I'd like to see what AT&T Broadband's Terms of Service look like for this new service level, but I don't think that the price is bad at all...
"AT&T Broadband Introduces Tired Piercing"
and wondered what high-speed internet has to do with body modification
In mathematics, one does not understand things, one merely gets used to them.
--VonNeumann
Jesus! You people whine too much. At least they're not charging per bit, like just about every other country on the planet does.
For better service, in the real world, you do have to pay more. To me, this sounds like a good deal.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Why must providers always assume that someone who sets up a home network is a bandwidth hog? Personally, I have several computers on my home network. However, none of them hog bandwidth unless I'm downloading a system upgrade. It just happens that the best way to have everyone able to access e-mail and surf at once is to network the computers. (Duh)
I'm on Time Warner Cable, and they prohibit servers. If they were to enforce that prohibition, would that mean their bandwidth usage would go down? I doubt it. How much e-mail does a normal, non-spamming personal e-mail server handle in a day? Come to think of it, the traffic isn't any more than I'd handle if I had to POP it all at once!
The 384 cap, though much better than it was, still leaves me aching.
I wish I could do a 2 meg down 1 meg up. I'd pay $80 a month for that RIGHT NOW.
Bloody hell! Here in Calgary, AB, Canada I have 1.5Mbps down, 640Kbps up, for CDN$34.95 per month with a bought modem, $39.95 with a leased one. Cap is 5GB down, 1GB up.
That's DSL; the cable company pricing is similar, and the performance (I was a cable customer) is virtually identical -- it's theoretically 3Mbps down, but I never saw that. However, there's theoretically no bandwidth cap. That's with Shaw Cable, for the other Canadians reading this: YMMV with Rogers et. al.
Mind you, IIRC, Calgary and Edmonton were the first two cities in NA (maybe the world?) where you could get broadband at any residential address, so the competition has been going on longer, which affects the pricing, but MAN the prices quoted in the article are expensive!
Comcast has been offering a premium service for a few months now:
/ Ad ditionalProducts/serviceupgrades.asp
http://comcast.comcastonline.com/memberservices
They don't seem to promote it though.
The link is over here here
Higher level of bandwidth is nice, but it's really throughput that makes the difference (eg, even though you are supposed to currently get 1.5 Mbps downstream, sometimes the throughput is much smaller due to network congestion, etc.). Paying nearly twice as much should result in some sort of service "guarantee" which I have never seen AT&T or any of its predecessors that I used (RoadRunner, MediaOne, Highway1). So, I'm a bit leery of such a level of service.
Anyway, more important to "power users" would be things like offering DNS service (they are removing "vanity hostnames" -- why not provide nameservice for people that really want to have their own identity on the net?), and static IP's (it's a bitch having your own domain when your IP address may change at the whim of some faceless corporation).
All in all, I'm really quite happy with my current service from AT&T. I don't know what will happen when the Comcast merger happens. I *do* know that my IP address hasn't changed in a couple of years (so the static IP problem is mitigated, at least for now), and my throughput has mostly been pretty good.
Another thought... does the new "Ultra" service give you telephone support from people that actually know what they are talking about? On the ATTBI.* newsgroups, the complete lack of competence of the lackeys in Florida and Canada that answer the phone is legendary...!
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
Which looks great, if you're in their limited service area. Unfortunately, most of the AT&T customers aren't. I wish I was, though.
... What if the $80 a month charge means that they won't complain if you use bandwidth intensive stuff like P2P. If they'd put in the ToS "You can max out the connection 24/7 without fear of being disconnected or having ports blocked.", it may be worth $80 a month.
I already pay $55 a month now. If paying $80 would guarantee those clauses in my ToS for as long as I'm a subscriber, I'd probably go for it.
Tiered pricing is only reasonable, since infrastructure costs scale with bandwidth.
What I would really love is to see a lower bandwidth option for less than $20 or $30 per month. Somewhat faster than a modem but not 1Mb/sec, either.
The only reason I stick to a modem, now, is the huge jump in price to get ISDN or DSL.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Oh how quickly people forget the early days of being online...text based bbs software, arcane keywords and CompuServe with tiered access pricing:
... at least yet...
300 baud 6.50/hr 2400 baud 14.50/hr (prices are in 1982 dollars, so let's say roughly double for 2002 dollars?) Sign me up!
Then the world was invaded by the likes of PCLink, the Commodore 64 version of PCLink and the Mac based version which bore the same name that these three companies were known as once they merged in the mid 80s...AOL. Now downloading new artwork at 2400 baud, only 30 minutes left to go...but aint it pretty!
Hey, at least they aren't rolling out METERED BANDWIDTH pricing
And funny how they chose 3Mbps for the enhanced services...similar to RCN in it's fiber network markets...however, RCN didn't raise its price one cent. Still appx. $40/mo in my bundle from them...that includes modem rental.
However, I daresay that AT&T may have difficulties consistently delivering the higher speeds as their digital network nodes are already overcrowded causing traffic jams and more general angst in the world....
Jack Greenwood Southern California Inland Empire Suburban Hell
Set up your second computer using DHCP and then hardcode the numbers it gives. It's almost as good as static. So long as you don't power off for too long your address shouldn't chqange. PLus the DHCP server doesn't seem to mind if you milk more than one ip address (I think we had 5 at one time once) and as far as I can tell we have never been charged for additional IPs. I don't think their functional system is tied to the billing system. They expect you to be on the honor system with extra IPs.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
I'm wondering if they have the option to differ my money directly from my paycheck, shit I would gladly replace my money loosing 401k with at&t broad band!
Wide Open West, a cable provider making its rounds currently in the Midwest (Detroit, Chicago, etc.) has been offering tiered cable broadband pricing for a while now.
Look at their pricing. 1.5M/256K for $40ish, and 3M/384K for $80ish. Why didn't the upload rate double on the high-end offering?
Oh yeah, we're consumers, not supposed to upload, share, or be creative, only eat the drivel provided for us. Why would we want to connect to our computer remotely? Or videoconference? Or share movies from our ReplayTVs?
I watch in vain as yet more people fail to understand the evils of tiered pricing.
Recently, Case Western University decided to equip thousands of computers with a 1gb/s fiber network. They didn't quite know what people would use the bandwidth for, but they wanted to find out.
Why am I bringing this up? Ordinary users will only pay AT&T the cheapest price possible for a broadband connection. Now, that's $45; soon, AT&T may introduce a $20-$25 package, and theoretically some people now paying the higher price would downgrade to that package.
But there's tons of high-bandwidth applications available that most people don't use yet. Imagine real-time videoconferencing with resolutions as good as a printer. Imagine downloading OS or application upgrades from the Net in seconds. Hell, who would need hard drives anymore; bandwidth would be faster! There's all sorts of things we haven't thought of yet. But as long as AT&T imposes artificial bandwidth caps, that won't happen.
As bad as tiered pricing are upstream caps. That means that two cable modem users can only communicate with each other at ISDN speeds. There goes any useful peer-to-peer connectivity applications. Don't you all remember back when you used Napster, you'd always sort downloads by modem type, and skip anything lower than a T1? Downloading from one of your fellow cable modem users would have taken 8 times as long as downloading from someone with a leased line - but we can't all have leased lines, can we?
Tiered pricing is fine if it's due to technical constraints. If cable lines in San Francisco and Boston, for example, are higher-quality than lines elsewhere, there would be nothing wrong with offering faster service. But AT&T cannot justify offering service slower than what the cable lines allow; doing that will do much to halt the pace of network innovation. Shame on all providers who offer anything less than network capacity, in both directions.
It is much better that they do it this way than a bandwidth cap / per MB charges. I'd much rather choose a connection speed / price tiered plan than be thinking about how many MBs I have used each month, tracking them like minutes on my cell phone plan.
Tiered access is a reality; now hopefully they will introduce a cheaper, low speed plan (like perhaps 500k u, 100k d, for $30/month)...
This is how DSL service has worked for years. In my area, for example, Verizon has 3 levels of DSL speed in a similar price range to this AT&T cable. I don't understand how "this had to happen sometime" when it has been happening, just not for cable. I realize DSL is tiered and cable is not for technical reasons (DSL's distance factors, dedicated servers, etc.). But to offer more bandwidth at a higher price makes sense if you believe in the basics of supply and demand. My only real issue with this topic is that there's virtually no competition (at least in the NYC metro area). Phone service is mostly monoply and cable is pure monopoly. That throws a wrench into the whole supply and demand thing, but basically if you want more data through the provider, it makes sense to pay more.
Developers: We can use your help.
I don't mind paying more for more bandwidth, but does this really solve the cable provider's problems with 'greedy' users? I would think their big hits come from people who run P2P or other bandwidth intensive applications 24 hours a day.
Granted, tiered bandwidth cuts theoretical throughput, but is it the most effective way to share the cost of bandwidth? There are a hell of a lot of people who just want fast browsing, but will probably use less than a GB each month. Will this new pricing structure bring in more customers from this huge demographic?
My original (mid '99) @home link was consistantly that fast, and it was only $30 per month.
However, that kind of pricing is probably impossible to maintain profitability.
However, the regular AT&T service offers 256k upstream, and it would take more than a 128k improvement on that for me to double my monthly bill. I would never pay $80/month for less than 5 mbps down/ 1 mbps up, and a guarantee that I wouldn't be penalized as a "bandwidth hog" for using the service I'm paying for to its full advertized potential.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
DirecTV has DSL for $50/month with no limits and a static IP address. You can't beat it, plain and simple. They are good to deal with and I've had no downtime so far. They will set up a network in your house for you, or they'll let you do it for yourself at no extra charge. It's the way to go, and for us they let us have the first 3 months at $30/month.
~ now you know
I looked on the site and there wasn't a clear answer to that question.
If you can't run your own servers, you basically have to eat what they dish out to you, and you're limited in what you can say. 10 megs for webspace - that's nothing. On my DirectTV DSL line I have a static IP for $49 a month. I have an 80 gig drive in my webserver. That's a whole lotta opinions that I can put on that drive.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I don't see the real question addressed in the article, which is, will this new service have a different TOS agreement (Terms Of Service) then the current service? I'm annoyed enough at being told that I can't run servers, regardless of the bandwidth. I simply will not pay more then I pay now, and still be told that I can run servers, can't VPN, can't this, can't that, can't do anything but consume. (Yes, I tweak the rules with the SSH server that can do anything, but I shouldn't have to.)
On that topic, anybody noticed how almost all of the nasty trends lately that annoy Slashdot denizens boil down to making laws about enforcing the easy things, rather then the illegal things? Instead of enforcing theft laws, make it illegal to change phone ID numbers.... it's easier. Instead of enforcing bandwidth usage (the real money-eater for an ISP), enforce server bans... it's easier. Don't enforce piracy laws, make it illegal to create or use DeCSS and enforce those laws.... it's easier.
I wrote an essay that tangentially touched this issue in the context of automated enforcement a few months ago, but I think the problem is extending out from there. Enforcers of all kind (not just law, AT&T enforces a contract) are getting lazy, and making laws/contracts to help them be lazy.
Think we'll pay more for tcp packets than udp packets? 8 pennies for each 10 meg of TCP, but 5 for 10 meg of UDP?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
So what do you pay when your usage goes over that GB limit, or does your service just get cut off?
evanchik.net
They have 3 tiers:
29.95 - 256 Kb/s
39.95 - 768 Kb/s
49.95 - 1.5 Mb/s (I am currently getting anywhere between 1 and 2.5 Mbits/s)
While certainly those who set up home networks are more likely to be tech savvy and more likely to use more bandwidth, this is also about marketing. You call up AT&T and have a conversation like this:
You: Hi, I wants me some Internet
ATT: Alright, fine, would you like to use our basic plan or our ultralink plan?
You: Ummmm, what's ultralink?
ATT: Ultralink is a service we provide that provides the bandwidth that home networks demand.
Average customer, at this point, will probably think that if they are planning to set up a home network, they'll need whatever this service provides and pay the extra money.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
This actually makes sense to me. (Don't flame me for taking a different opinion)
First of all, the way it was set up before was not fair. My mom, who uses the internet only to send email (that's all she knows how to do with it anyway) would be paying the same amount that I would be paying to play online video games, downloading whatever into My Pants, and transfering whatever to whoever (and all that pr0n when my wife is away) et cetera et cetera.
Yeah yeah, I know: if she wants to just send email, then she should use dial-up. But she shouldn't have to. Dial-up is a totally different service, requiring tying up your phone line or paying for another phone line. On top of that, it requires you to (duh) dial out - a concept to complicated for my mother. She needs it Always On.
The way I see it, she has been paying to support bandwith hogs like myself (and I am not as bad a hog as many others are - I haven't networked computers at home since I left my college roomates).
I would honestly be more worried about their Networking Policy (you need to pay for additional IP addresses, etc.) than to complain about not getting a free ride anymore.
[FYI: I find it compelling to add another tidbit on the irrationality of my parents. They are paying AOL dial-up, Earthlink dial-up, MSN dial-up, and Comcast cable internet. They only use the cable. I have told them twice to get rid of those they don't use. "But we use Earthlink - that's what comes up (reffering to their home page) when we go online (reffering to opening IE).]
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
I thought that your sarcasm was really funny... too bad the myriad of replies don't get it.
Alex
Take your pick.
If you think it costs nothing to run a network, and all the subscriber money is gravy.... well, then, you're smoking some kind, kind bud, my friend.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
But it is called "Cox Internet" and it is $34.95, or $44.95 if you rent the modem. Of course I'm biased. But I'd rather have a lower tier where I can pay less for a slower connection (than what they have been offering). I might even pay that much for a faster one... if it was MUCH faster. 38kbytes up sucks.
But it's possible that you may. I got a nasty-gram from Comcast last year because my wife had turned on some kind of ICQ home-page that served from her computer. It was basically a blank page with a hit counter showing about 6 hits and they were all over me.
(Disclosure: I work for AT&T Business Services, but this is my own opinion.)
sulli
RTFJ.
Bleh, I didn't ask for ways around it. I have a few computers networked to me "1 computer only" cablemodem (including a linux server dishing out webpages from a custom DNS, using dyndns.org), and I know how to hide it from the cable company. That wasn't my point. I'd like to do this with no strings attached, and not having to worry about the cable company noticing that I'm serving up webpages and stuff, and disconnect me.
I want a service that gives me a static IP address. The best I have right now is to co-lo and its waaay out of my pricerange.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
As far as I know, most people are totally content with the downstream bandwidth they get from all of these providers. anything upwards of 768Kbps is probably sufficient for most people's needs and even most power users. I personally have 1.5 down and I could drop to 768 without really caring and I'm definitely a power user.
The problem is the upstream. If I want to be hosting a P2P server, or running a website off my computer, 384 is barely sufficient (I know because I run on 384 right now). Would I pay a premimum every month to get double my downstream bandwidth? Heck no, I'd never use it. But I'd pay a premium to double my upstream bandwidth in a heart beat.
The other thing I have to wonder about with this is what the terms of service are. If I get 3Mbps down and I actually use it routinely am I going to get unplesant messages from AT&T telling me to stop using my service?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
In the same boat.. I really wish my cable company could give me a static IP for a reasonable price. I don't understand how they can justify charging so much (I think I'd have to go to a business account, which is over $100). It's just one lousy entry in the DNS table, right?
As far as hooking up multiple computers with a static IP or dynamic, I just use a linksys router. I think I paid $60 for it. It just acts as a firewall and in conjunction with an old 8 port hub I had laying around, I've gotten that many computers on the internet with it (of course you can also buy routers with more ports and not worry about the hub). I can do IP forwarding with it so if I had multiple machines that are acting as servers (say one is mail, one is web) the router can handle that as well...
also look at dyndns.org to get a hostname for your dynamically assigned ip address. it works really well for me.
-- john
What they're offering is NOT better than a full T1. Sure, it might be faster on the download side, but the advantage of a T1 is that you have equal bandwidth upstream, as well as a block of static IPs to have your way with....not to mention no restrictions on use. (barring legality of course)
Of course, a T1 is still around $800 per month and this is $80, so obviously this is the better choice for the home user with a limited budget.
Just don't say it's better than a T1....it's a far cry from it.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
This just proves why we need ubiquitous wireless internet.
To all you who would say that there are health problems: Bah. There's already tons of wireless signals going through the air with radio and TV, and you don't see everyone getting cancer, do you?
TV, especially now that it's becoming digital, can easily be transferred over the Internet. Radio can easily be transferred over the Internet (look at Shoutcast). IPv6 insures that there are enough IP addresses that every person on the planet can have a subnet and we're nowhere near running out. So why not just make everything go over the Internet?
Take away all public TV wireless broadcasts, and all radio broadcasts. Then, in their place, start broadcasting wireless networks, everywhere. Completely for free. Radios are reworked to use IPv6 and pick up Internet signals; TVs the same. Support for 802.11g, or a newer protocol, is built into every single computer, TV, car; the list goes on.
There's another important impact if this happens: you're no longer paying for connectivity, so that money is freed up for other uses. People who are now paying $10/mo for NetZero, $23/mo for AOL, or $50/mo for AT&T Broadband now can use that money to pay for premium content. Micropayments can be instituted on a mass scale; most people would only end up spending about $10/mo anyway on micropayments, and power users who spend huge amounts of time on the Internet just pay more. People get the same speed no matter what.
Why not?
Give this thing some thought here. This is a sort of cable modem FUD. sure, in DSL the connection between your station and the CO is a dedicated line and you can get guaranteed 3mbps down and 384kpbs up to the CO, but the CO has a pipe that ultimately gets shared as well. So the formula is the same ultimately. Unless the bandwidth on the coax side is worse than the pipe side, there isn't too much of a difference. There are some differences that *could* make a difference:
- Proxy at the CO
- newsfeed from the CO rather than through it
- Services that you actually want served from the CO
Peer-to-Peer operations among customers still capped at 384kbps, so only stuff at the CO can really exploit the advantage of not being a shared bandwidth.
What makes the differences is that frequently, the CO being a branch of a telco company is much more likely to have a much fatter pipe than your average cable company. This is valid, but not always the case. Around where I live, DSL and cable modem are pretty much the same, with cable modems getting the edge in burst speed. All this because the cable company works with the local University and is patched into their extraordinarily fat pipe and thus is not afflicted by the standard problems of a cable company.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'd like to thank all of you who've contributed, with a stylish tote bag, and a brand new Sarcasm Detector.
I am in British Columbia, and we have the same Telco here as in Alberta (Telus). Though I don't use Telus, I have friends that do. The bandwidth cap is not enforced at all. They just say they do so later down the road when they decide that people are leeching way too much they can implement it without much recoil from the users.
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
Then the world was invaded by the likes of PCLink, the Commodore 64 version of PCLink and the Mac based version which bore the same name
The name you're looking for is "Q-Link"
Man, I miss Q-Link. Tight little community where everyone was polite. Helluva chess room, too.
Of course, I don't miss the price ($0.06/min). I remember when my folks got a $100 bill one month.
So what's Canada (or Calgary) done differently (and obviously better) than the US?
Sorry no. It took some searching, but I found their Acceptable Use Policy and:
"Examples of prohibited programs and equipment include, but are not limited to, mail, ftp, http, file sharing, game, newsgroup, proxy, IRC servers, multi-user interactive forums and Wi-Fi devices;"
so you are not allowed to run any servers, nor an open WAP node. I have no personal experience with them so I don't know if they even try to enforce this restriction, but it is there and they could. They want you to pay the business rate even if you aren't making money on it.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I've been looking for an alternative to dial-up for my beach house for a while now. (It's in southern New Jersey, served by Comcast, not that I'm fishing for advice...) I need unlimited usage, but I really don't care about speed... anything at least as fast as my noisy, pseudo-56k connection would be adequate.
As it stands, I'm paying $21/month for local dial-up (which is already a lot.) I believe that cable modem service would be something like $45/month, which I can't justify. We really need another option, something in the $20-$30 range, for people who just want a stable connection. The CNET article implies that AT&T will try to fill that niche, but it doesn't give any details... I hope the idea catches on.
MSK
How about 5000 down and 1000 up for $30?
That's Optimum Online in NJ. When I read about the shit that's happening all over the country I start to believe I'm in freaking broadband heaven. Even if they double the price, I'd still be as happy as a clam....
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
Well, the upstream bandwidth is true, but there is nothing inherent about a T1 that makes it able to carry more IPs, it's just a connection and you can cram as many IPs you want on either end of any connection.
That being said, companies that can make due with a single T1 frequently rely on another company for hosting, since 1.5 mbps really isn't enough to serve content in this day and age, so more and more DSL is a more viable option....
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If they allowed commercial servers on port 80 again, I'd switch in a second. This is some sweet "up" bandwidth for my needs and that price (which should be tempered with the fact that I'll have broadband at hom anyways). Currently I'm using DHS to put up a frame to my servers on other ports, but this isn't that viable for a commercial site (some firewalls at anal companies block http outgoing everything but port 80).
-no broken link
For charging customers who owned their modems more than those who leased their modems? It seems as if they've reversed themselves on the assumption that people who own their modems cost them more in tech support.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Sasktel (the first ADSL provider in North America) has had this for a while.
:)
High speed basic(1.5M, 128k up): $45.99/month
High speed light(128K): $22.95/month
High speed static IP(Basic+Static IP): $59.99/month
High speed enhanced (2.0M down, 384k up): $59.95/month
High speed Extra (3.0M down, 640k up): $95.95/month, $149.95/month.
Personally, I use Shaw's cable modem service, but if I want a static IP and 3mb down, I know where I can get it for $150/month
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
Their revenue is almost doubling and twice as much bandwidth does not cost twice as much, it cost more, definitly, but if you are big enough to peer without charge with the likes of UU it just costs you more equipment/interfaces.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
This is the way it should be. I don't mind paying extra for my service, but what I can't stand is being told "Sorry, even though you're willing to pay a hell of a premium over our Joe Sixpack service, we just don't feel like serving you." Yeah, I realize that economies of scale dictate that the connoisseurs among us can't always be catered to, but good lord am I tired of having to put up with the market's Lowest Common Denominator fetish.
Now they just need to allow for serving in their ToS - allow ANY type of server, so long as you're not slinging spam or distributing pr0n or w4r3z. (well, the pr0n might be ok, but since it's assuredly someone else's copyrighted works, that eighty-sixes the idea of running a porn site on your cable modem.)
The Free desktop that Just Works
Isn't AT&T the company that was appending a $7 service charge if you used your own modem?? (see this story from slashdot.) What happened with that, did they get harassed into submission or something?
Competition? Hah! Forget Microsoft, local cable companies are the real monopolies. Compete with AT&T and GO TO JAIL! Only slightly less evil are the local phone companies, who actually tax their competitors. Microsoft is a saint compared to these guys.
Until wireless gets worked out or we find something else, there will never be a free market in broadband.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Nope. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Bandwidth is still every bit as expensive as it was when we were still using 486's and first gen Pentiums. No wonder the internet never took off like it should have. As I recall, many of the pie-in-the-sky projections for the dot-com companies were based on the assumption that everyone would soon have high speed bandwidth. Based on the last six years I would have to project that the internet will never see significant bandwidth gains.
Why? Because if computing and home network power continues to increase as it has, while internet connection speeds remain static, the internet itself will become more and more useless. Our own personal networks will be faster and contain more information, so why bother?
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I think it is really silly that they try to charge you for the extra machines you put on it. After all, you aren't getting any MORE bandwidth when you add another machine. I might be a little more willing to pay the extra $10 if it meant another full 1.5 mbit.
Similarly though- my cable agreement talks about that but the installers are cool about it. Although a little more recently someone came out to do some tech work on the line (I don't remember the exact reason why he came out right now) and he noticed my hub. "Is that a LAN?" I said "yes" and told him that the reason I have one is because I don't want to have to unplug my computer every time I get on/off the internet to get share my other computers (nor do I want to buy another NIC) which is true. He was cool with that and didn't ask me more questions.
There should be some kind of consumer laws against companies charging for more with no additional product or service to the consumer (as in this case).
What do the cable companies do with all the excess outbound capacity? At the endpoints of attbi or comcast or the like's networks, they are buying symmetric connections to the naps/pnaps. In the attbi example, both the old and the new service have about a 10 to 1 inbound to outbound ratio. That theoretically means that 90% of the outbound capacity is going unused.
It's just one lousy entry in the DNS table, right?
Wrong.
Back in the olden days, IP addresses were handed out in different classes: A, B, and C. You bought the rights to an ip address range. It didn't take long for the Class A and Class B addresses to be all sold out. Nowadays, it is becoming difficult to get a full class C.
In order for you to get your static IP, your ISP would have to have had the foresight to get a block of addresses that it could statically dish out.
Your ISP has to rent its IP address space. They are similar to a parking garage. They have a fixed number of spaces that they dish out to people as they connect. Some people will stay connected for long periods of time. Some will turn their machines off every night. Those that turn their machines off abandon their number, just like someone leaving a parking garage abandons their space. The next user coming in gets it. Just as a parking garage may tow cars away that have been left overnight, your ISP may kick people off that have been connected for a long time. Policies vary.
Some ISPs have a block of IP addresses that they give out on a permanent lease, similar to a parking garage having a section for reserved parking. In order to do this, though, the ISP must designate a block of IP addresses, and design their routing appropriately. Cable ISPs are after the casual, home user. These users don't care whether their IP address is static or dynamic. Half the time* these people don't even have their machines turned on. The cable ISP with 10000 users* may have only 8000 IP addresses*.
* These numbers are entirely made up.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Call AT&T and ask em for a class C for your cable modem. Then you'll see the point I was making. ;)
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Comcast, who forbid any use of VPN on "residential" service
My Comcast terms specify that I can't use my cable to connect a 'VPN Endpoint.' I'm not sure if that term has a technical definition, but to me it means that I can't have a VPN server awaiting connections. It doesn't seem to me that this would apply to using outgoing VPN, since there's not much difference between that and telnet or ftp.
The restrictions on running 'servers,' i.e. accepting multiple connections from anywhere on the Internet, seems like a [mostly] reasonable attempt to have a common-sense bandwidth limit. I would think that any type of OUTGOING traffic, initiated by me, should be OK, within reasonable limits. Of course, what seems reasonable to me may not seem reasonable to them, but if they're not going to allow an outgoing VPN connection, they might as well block everything but HTTP and POP, and call it a web and mail service.
Evil is the money of root.
www.no-ip.com is a pretty good start for your static ip problem. And slapping a DSL router (Linksys makes a good cheap one with a built in switch) onto your network is a pretty damn simple way to connect multiple machines to your network.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Um P2P services?
Tis true and a good point. However, in reality I don't think with a lot of ISP's (especially the smaller ones) the amount of IP addresses are an issue. I've had the same exact dynamic IP address (via DHCP) for pretty much the past year. If it they had more fluctuation/ demand than available IP's, I would expect my dynamic address to be changing frequently.
Perhaps if we went to IPV6 this would be more of a possibility?
It's that way in a lot of places. We have the same problem here in rural Iowa.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
When I was just in about the 5th grade their was a stupid saying.
"Shut don't go up, prices do."
You think non-bandwidth hungry users will get a discount, or do you think higher plans will require a premium? Remember this is the good ole USA...
I'm on the phone as I type this trying to upgrade our Comcast service to Comcast Pro. I swear we just had this conversation.
Me: Hi. I'm currently a Comcast Broadband Subscriber and I'd like to upgrade my service to Comcast Pro.
Comcast: What?
Me: The premium bandwith service, Comcast Pro.
Comcast: I have no idea what you're talking about.
Me: I saw it on your web site. Would you like the URL?
Comcast: Comcast Pro? I've never heard of this before.
Me: Well let me tell you about it...
Comcast: Hold while I transfer you to another department.
I dunno, I just found it funny that the number they give you to call to get the service is answered by somebody who has no clue that there is, in fact, a service.
I don't mind the idea of varied prices for different bandwidth figures.... but what good does that do me if my current AT&T connection is utterly saturated already at a 1.5 mbit cap? What I'd like to see is some package that runs on a separate network that is NEVER oversubscribed, so that pings don't go from 20, to 40, to 200 on a whim. I don't need 3mbit downstream, heck I don't even need 1.5, I'd take 1mbit down, 256k up and pay a little bit more for it if I could be guaranteed that the network would be consistant, and never saturated.
Also announced was the "Still cheaper than renting your movies" plan, 3.5mbps down and 128kbps up, as well as the "Bored guy in southeast Asia with a big hard disk on an ftp server" plan, 1.5mbps down and 5mbps up.
Isn't that what broadband is for in the first place? Why should you have to 'upgrade' your broadband just to get what you should be anyway?
Apparently your parents don't understand the value of that green stuff (or here in Canada, green, blue, red etc.) we get in exchange for going to work every day. I suggest offering to save them $60/mo. in exchange for a flat fee of $200. Then go in and change their homepage. They might just fall for it, and angrily call Earthlink et al. and cancel their service.
Freedom: "I won't!"
If you have DNS records pointing at your cable modem IP, make sure you drop the TTL way down (to maybe 5 minutes) before you change any part of your service. Apparently when they make changes to your provisioning (number of IPs, bandwidth, etc) they reset a central server AND your modem, and you will probably NOT get your old IP back.
This really cought me off guard. I had to wait about 3 days for my records to expire from nameserver caches.
OK thats a valid point..i had not thought of...and it only hurts your ability to share :(
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
"I have the Sympatico DSL, and they just upped the price and introduced 5G up/ 5G down bandwidth caps."
Hmmm... interesting. I have Sympatico DSL (though it's through the (only) local telco, not through Bell... I gather that the local telco is just licensing the Sympatico brand), and I don't have bandwidth caps at all... and I just check the ToS on my ISP's webpage and it hasn't changed.
They offer 20 times as many plans.
Sasktel has no cap on any traffic. With their business plan (2 static IPs, allowed to run "servers"), you have NO CAP.
:)
So for 70$ a month, you get 150k/s (Moz daily in 1.5mins about), and 16k/s up. For double that, you get 300k/s down and 80k/s up. No caps!
Granted, you need to use some traffic shaping. Going full on sending 80k/s causes the DSL routers to generate large packet queues which leave your latency ever higher and higher until you reach some timeout limitation in IP. No caps means I can push/pull terabytes a month
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"Sometimes I think that the first experience most slashdotters had with being 'online' was in the 14.4k era. Very few remember the fun of war-dialing and looking for BBSes."
:)
Fun? It was bad enough when our BBS lists had old numbers that had become "home" numbers again. I'd hate to think how annoyed you'd make customers now, plus war-dialing will get most phone companies to flag your number nowadays
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Find me a network that can handle 100,000 users, a large fraction of which are heavy bandwidth users, and can do so for less than $4 million dollars a month, and I will help you kick your crack habit.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Umm... even if this were true a while back, it's quickly becoming a non-issue. Last time I needed a small hub (5 to 8 port) for my house, I went shopping, only to discover that a switch was only about $10 more expensive than a hub. Some stores weren't even carrying the hubs anymore, except as closeout items, or only in 10-baseT flavor (with 3 or 4 ports) for under $20, as opposed to anything 100-BaseT.
The fact is, almost no home users have a valid reason to purchase a hub instead of a switch, other than cost-savings. With the cost difference vaporizing, it's foolish to buy a hub and flood your network with excessive traffic.
I also tend to question how much of an issue this ever really was, because protocols like Netbios are non-routable. In the past, people setting up cheap home LANs were running Netbios more often than not. (They usually weren't really smart enough to understand the proper configuration of a TCP/IP subnet mask and so forth.)
I was just making a point that he used more bandwidth than many people, yet he complains about "bandwidth hogs". I wasn't saying /. discussions are particularly large pages compared to some of the graphics-heavy sites.
Enigma
They are/were not cable companies. I'm not sure of the details of these companies, but I can guarantee you that they did not lay their own cable lines. If they intended to deliver their service through cable lines, they would have had to rent that right from a cable monopoly, just as DSL companies have to pay tribute to local telephone monopolies.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
No, but you're forgetting that costs more money than @Home thought. They're now bankrupt.
At least you still have service, look at all the poor DSL saps that lost service when their provider went under. When i had @Home, the speeds, well, sucked. Now that my (small) cable provider is back on their own, I couldn't be happier.
> Calgary and Edmonton were the first two cities in NA (maybe the world?) where you could get broadband at any residential address
When did Calgary and Edmonton get broadband? I got ADSL in Saskatoon in January 1997. Several of my friends got it a few months earlier. I thought we were the first.
Saskatoon and Regina were the first cities in North America to have broadband. According to DSL Worldwide Directory
Moose Jaw and Swift Current had them before Calgary, IIRC, in 1997. Though on that point, I'm not 100% sure.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!