Toledo Uncappers Getting Shafted

Jacob writes "Broadband Reports has a well written article detailing the plight of those Ohio cable modem users who found themselves facing gun wielding FBI agents for uncapping their cable modems. Buckeye Cable has clearly crossed a line and the tech community and consumer groups should be all over them like a wet, angry rag. Kudos to Broadband Reports for not letting this thing die." Granted, those who were indicted were violating their service contracts, but having their posessions siezed by FBI agents is overkill.

Comments

Stealing is wrong

[Uhh_Duh]

These people were stealing a VERY valuable commodity.. bandwidth. For those of you who don't work near the ISP industry, bandwidth is --VERY EXPENSIVE--. $200 per megabit per month is an absolute STEAL (to get that rate, you need to be buying it on the DS3 level). $400 per meg is more realistic on lower levels.

Cable companies simply cannot afford to let people steal this stuff. Quite literally, someone who is uncapping a cable modem and mooching 10 megabits of bandwidth could easily be costing them several thousand dollars a month.

I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy for these people. What they did not only violated their agreement, but it cost someone else a LOT of money. Stealing is stealing, folks. And unlike the arguments that may apply to software piracy, this really does directly affect someone else's pocketbook.

Re:how was this overkill?

[garcia]

so one of them uncapped to 100/100. The bandwith of a T1 is 1.554mbs. The most a cable modem will probably get is 10/10. That's a DS3. That's more than $600/mo.