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Have You Fought Your ISP Over Bandwidth Limits?
serutan asks: "Recently, a DC++-related mailing list I subscribe to has been buzzing with posts about letters from various ISPs in the U.S., UK, Australia and NZ, warning customers to curtail their download bandwidth usage to an 'acceptable' limit (generally 200 hours/month for three straight months). These are people who thought they signed up for unlimited access. Some of the letters hint that high bandwidth usage may imply illicit activity. All are vague on possible consequences, and nobody has mentioned actually being cut off by an ISP. One guy received an apology after talking to a supervisor about the meaning of the word 'unlimited.' Is this a growing trend? Have you received similar threats from an ISP? What was the outcome?" Of course, would it be so difficult for ISPs to stop advertising "unlimited" access, and instead include in the small (or not-so small) print exactly what the "acceptable" bandwidth usage is? If you did sign up for "unlimited" services and find yourself in this predicament, what have you done to get your bandwidth issues resolved?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Due process only applies to government actions (when it's not overlooked altogether). I'm not saying it's moral, but your ISP has every right to terminate your service for any reason they want. It's in the contract, and as long as they pro-rate your monthly fee, there isn't much you can do about it.
but your ISP has every right to terminate your service for any reason they want.
Totally correct. It is their legal right.
However, it's not a great strategy for them. Good businesses protect their customers, and assume the best. Take safety deposit boxes, rented storage space, and many other examples. They can be used for illicit activities, but such businesses do not go around snooping on their customers. They prefer to keep them.
Hopefully, technology companies will figure this out one day.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
This is a completely bass akward way of looking at it, which was the original poster's point.
Your line of arguing might extend to the pleding the fifth. "If he has nothing to hide, why doesn't he say anything?"
No, innocent until proven guilty means exactly that.
I don't see anyone arguing against bandwidth limits, rather that they need to be spelled out.
Examples of legitimate use might be playing online games, streaming online video, doing X over the network, etc.
Until you know *exactly* what is being done, you can't argue whether or not its legitimate (especially since you never define legitimate).
- Serge
A more reasonable solution, that some ISPs are looking at is to throttle P2P traffic so that it never takes up more than say 30% of their bandwidth. They use layer 7 packet inspection from guys like P-Cube and Ellacoya .
The rationale? always-on users want to use their P2P stuff, but are not sensitive about the speeds that they get it - they'll just queue up a load of files and come back next morning.
It seems to me like the least worst approach, and is certainly better than hard caps. One benefit for the customer is Web traffic will usually still fly, even though P2P is crawling. I believe Telenor in Sweden is using this stuff.
The reason ISP's use the word "unlimited" in their advertisements is because it sells more accounts than if they don't.
The fact that they are lying is really not a relevant point. Consumers will flock to the guy that says "unlimited" in his advertisements regardless if it's the truth or not. Consumers don't think that hard about the issue.
It should be obvious that you can't provide a dedicated "unlimited" 56K connection profitably at the $10-$15/mo market rate, but you will sell a lot more accounts if you say "unlimited".
This is also true in the web hosting business. I see advertisements for "Unlimited Bandwitdh" web hosting all the time. But we all know that this is neither physically possible nor economically possible. Still people sign up for these lies.
Guys like me that run businesses that want to be honest about things are punished for our truthfullness. Consumers demand to be lied to. So ISP's are forced to choose between significantly lower sales and being dishonest.
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't ISPs that try to be honest in their offerings. I could give you a list of honest ones that don't use the word unlimited unless they mean it. All I'm saying is that dialup consumers do not typicaly choose these honest guys when they see an "unlimited" offer for the same price.
unlimited - adj 1: lacking any controls 2: BOUNDLESS, INFINTE 3: not bounded by exceptions.
Hmmm... I'm looking at a recent ad copy for high speed access from Comcast that says "unlimited" and provides no alternative defintion.
Guess we cleared that up pretty easily. If they say unlimited, they better damn well mean that I have infinite, boundless bandwidth. They better mean that if I want to 5000 copies of the latest Red Hat distro queued and let it download for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year I can do that.
If they want to cap downloads to prevent obnoxious abuse like that, that's fine. However, when they're still advertising "unlimited" access knowing full well they have no intention of providing that service there's a problem. It's not really that complicated of a concept, the whole truthful advertising thing.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
You ever hear of buyer beware? You didn't read the AUP did you?
IRRELEVANT.
Comcast is, in this current, valid offering which I am currently holding in my left hand saying - quite explicitly, mind you - that I can get "Unlimited Internet Access" by signing up for their cable service. The TOS/AUP/POS/whatever is NOT printed OR referenced ANYWHERE on this advertisement. NO alternative definition for "unlimited" is provided that says they mean anything other than the dictionary term.
The advertisement is, quite obviously, advertising a service THEY DO NOT SELL.
If it's that easy, can I start selling shale through the mail as gold and claim in my convoluted, small print TOS that "gold" really means a "a brittle, grayish-brown stone"? Does my TOS vindicate my false advertising? I think not. That's exactly what Comcast is trying to do here.
They want to cap people? Fine. Then stop advertising something completely different that you're not selling and never have. That's all I ask. Advertise your product or service, don't try to hide your deceptive ads (which are actually flat-out lies) behind convoluted terms and pretend that that justifies your fairy tale advertising.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!