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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?
I was paying speak easy for 768/384 and they where giving me 1536/768. The bastards.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Apparently "unlimited" has been redefined w/o our knowledge. I wouldn't mind paying extra to have really "unlimited" access if that's what it took to not have to worry about this. I have "unlimited" newsgroup access which I pay extra for, and it is well-worth every penny.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Cox.net clearly states their bandwidth limits and their definition of "unlimited", which means:
-always available, no dialing
-no hourly usage limits
-no tying up the phone line
-no content restrictions
looks like only one of these really applies to "unlimited"
Rogers has been doing this to a lot of my friends, I haven't gotten 'the letter' yet.
The facts:
1) The service is advertised as 'unlimited'
2) They are unwilling to tell customers how much they've transferred
3) They are unwilling to tell customers what would constitute an acceptable amount of bandwidth
Judging by postings here, they seem to be going after some areas and no others. Here is an interesting thread.
Supposedly, Cox has a bandwidth limits of like 10GB of downloads a month. I know for a fact that for the past 6 months, I have definately exceeded that. And it's not necessarily illegal activity. I've d/led various linux ISOs for a Linux Installfest. I've downloaded "safe" music through mp3.com, dmusic.com, etc. I'm also always downloading new software to try out in Linux to see what's out there. Add this all to my regular surfing, and I wouldn't be suprised if I was over a "limit" of sorts. The thing is, I've never once received a letter, but other people I know have. I'm curious how they go about deciding who to send letters to.
We are 'little people'. They are big corporations. They could redefine 'unlimited' as 'up to 1GB of traffic per month', and frankly, none of us on here have a snowflake's chance in Hell of seriously combating it.
Let's not get any delusions of grandeur here. Eventually, this is going to be the Standard Operating Procedure for all ISPs. Then what are you going to do-- "vote with your wallet" by going to another ISP who'll be just as bad?
Sorry to be so pessimistic, but this is the way things are, as far as I can see.
And if you think I'm being unrealistic: Well, I can remember a time when you'd call up an ISP and actually be able to talk to a knowledgeable techie... that's obviously in the past now. And don't tell me about your wonderful local ISP. You know damned well how rare those are now.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Some of the letters hint that high bandwidth usage may imply illicit activity.
Like it or not, 90% of those people who have high bandwidth usage are using it for illicit activities.
Should include this link here on DSLReports:
r oo t=comcast~mode=flat
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8737754~
"My experience with Comcast bandwidth suspension"
One of the mobile phone providers advertises "UNLIMITED" minutes in one high-end package. In the submicrometer-sized print at the bottom of the ad it states that usage above 3000 minutes "is subject to review".
Reminds me of the old Dennis the Menace episode where Dennis sets up a lemonade stand with the sign "All you can drink, 5 cents". A thirsty customer gets a small paper cup, empties it promptly, and asks for more. Smart-ass Dennis replies: "That's all you can drink, for 5 cents!"
See, the whole "it's always on" thing doesn't apply. It's NOT unlimitted. We don't know what the limit is. We aren't told. We aren't allowed to know. Customers are not allowed to know what this 'limit' is unless they go over it. Do you know why? Let me tell you why.
Because this limit only applies to those who are in an area where there are a lot of people. If you are on a headend with very few people, you can download to your heart's content, because it just won't affect that many customers. If you try to do the same amount of activity on a node that already has too many users - UH OH! You're being excessive!
So, by not naming a limit, they can impose one as they see fit - not by your actual usage, but by how you work as a unit within your geographic area.
Working for Comcast (though not for much longer) gave me some interesting insights into ISP mentality.
All it takes is a few greedy P2P users to hose the business model for home broadband. The reason you pay a lot less at home than a business user for the same circuit is expected usage rates. You can argue that this is false advertising "UNLIMITED" but unlimited really means that you are not cut off after X MB download in 30 days. (or charged at $.Y per MB over X)
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.
Speakeasy does nice things like have a truly "unlimited" policy. For around US$60 a month, I get a 640/128k pipe, and two static IPs. That's it.
The really cool unlimited part is this:
* I can use as much of that bandwidth as I want.
* There are no content restrictions.
And this is the big one...
* I CAN RUN SERVERS. Yes, I realize that a lot of broadband providers don't stop you at their routers or anything, but most of them have it in their AUP that you can't run your own servers. Speakeasy just asks that you don't make money.
Oh, and I get free nationwide dialup. It's not bad.
Oh, and one other cool thing: They even explicitly say that you can set up a WAP and share your access with anyone you want, so long as you don't charge money for it.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
It's advertised and part of the sign up agrement but man does it suck. Your basicly given a "bucket" filled with 165 MB of data that you can do what ever you want with for 8 hours. If you use it all up your screwed down to dialup speed while the "bucket" refills over the next 8 hours.
sure they have and they don't want you using it. Sadly for us, we have no recourse if they terminate our service...
Just because they advertise "unlimited" service does not mean that they can refuse us service at any time for any reason.
They want to be as vague as possible (by not setting specific limits) so that they can continue to lower and lower the cap until the only people able to use the service are those that are into checking www.msn.com, www.comcast.net, and their email via Outlook Express to their Comcast mailbox.
It is much more profitable for them to drop the high bandwith users and keep these people that never use their connection.
Comcast states, "if you are using service more than the average". If you are living in a residential area in southern FL you are likely to have a lot of elderly residents checking the status of their pregnant daugther-in-law. If you are in a college town you are likely averaging with the best of the pr0n/warez kids.
YMMV,
I'm on Sasktel and have found them to be more than acceptable to the point where I know my TOS agreement prohibits me from running "any server" but I have a small web/ftp server running and they don't mind. However Access Cable in Yorkton services my in-laws and several of my friends and I've taken to calling them Bandwith Nazis! They turn off your internet if you are running Kazaa (they check the ports) as well as if you have any virus that uses bandwith at all! This isn't necessarily a bad thing but when I go over to fix it I have to download all the removal tools at home and burn them onto a CD because if I call them asking them to turn it on to grab a removal tool they tell me that they will not turn it back on until the system is clean and suggest a format!! When my in-laws complain about having to pay for an ISP that shuts them off whenever they feel like it they are told that it's all in the contract and there's nothing they can do about it. Luckily I've convinced them to switch in January but I just hate dealing with these people so anyone in Regina/Yorkton SK area PLEASE DON'T GIVE THEM ANY BUSINESS WHATSOEVER!! I really wanna see this company fail. Every one in Saskatchewan would do well to switch to Sasktel, Shaw, or Image and let's put an end to the Bandwith Nazis!! In a side note, they offer a news server but filter it so horribly that you can't connect to over half the newsgroups! This is just my 2 cents.
Kleedrac
Sure we wang, can.
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"
Canada saw this long ago.
Unlimited Access can be construed to refer to time, not bandwidth. Thus, ISP's claiming unlimited access aren't offering no download caps.
Think of it this way
Access buys you the key to a car, which is parked in your driveway. You can get into the car through any door, and for as long as you want. You have unlimited access to the car. You are not, however, allowed to drive it anywhere, you do not have unlimited usage.
Rogers Cable (Ontario, Canada) is trying to implement this type of soft cap, and it's not working too well for them. The major issue is they won't define the caps, and people are being cutoff for completely arbitrary amounts of usage. The other huge problem is that they specifically advertise 'Unlimited Usage' (consumers having wised up to the 'access' wording) and this is quite contrary to it.
They have suspended people, only to reconnect them when asked. This lead to a good exodus of people, and recently Rogers have been calling people saying 'all is forgiven' and asking them to return, saying the caps are completely gone.
Whether this proves true or not is yet to be seen.
I downloaded 8 gigs in the course of 3 days, and I had my internet turned off, I used the cable service provided in lawrence kansas.
I had absolutely no warning, no phone calls.
The only reason I know I had been cut off was because I figured that my excessive downloading for the last 3 days had probably triggered it.
I called the cable company and they said that I had been turned off for grossly exceeding standard usage amounts. It took me 2 days and about 4 calls, but I finally got the service turned back on with a verbal agreement not to download more than 3 gigs a week.
So, I had to skimp, but i survived!
I cant imagine someone only allowing 2 gigs a month though, i have downloaded more than that just off of demos and things from gametab.
Buzz OUT
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
I had that problem. They thought I was downloading movies. I fixed that thought. Told them the truth. I was downloading porn. Solved that prolem right away and haven't heard a peep out of them.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
>I was downloading porn. Solved that prolem right away and haven't heard a peep out of them.
Now the techies know exactly which user's bandwith they should mirror.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
What legitimate need does a single person have when downloading 40 gigs of data over a short period of time?
The single most obvious answer is videophone. Someone streaming the high-res output of a firewire camera can generate gigabytes of new data every hour, copyrighted only to him.
Another possible answer: He may be downloading music and movie files, and he could've paid for them. Or (more likely, today) he could be collecting hundreds of huge, public-domain movies
While it's currently true that no major legit service offers decent digital movie downloads, the ISP industry shouldn't assume it has to stay this way. If they advertise unlimited, they should try to provide it, or change the ads.
It's quite reasonable to suspect that if 40GB of data was taking place of the port Kazaa uses, that he's not transfering a family photo album or business documents from his office network.
If criminal activity is suspected, they should contact the police.
I'm not saying that everybody who has high download bandwidth usage and low upload usage is innocent; there are a lot of leechers who do just that. However, there's so many file sharers that with my low upload usage I dropped off the list of people my provider was after.
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
(Acceptable Usage Policy / Terms of Service)
There's normally some sort of clause in there, about how they have the right to refluse you service. It's true in almost every industry out there. [I think medical, and insurance have some issues, where they're not allowed to reject you outright, but I'm not in either of those industries, so I'm bound to be wrong].
ISPs are not in the business to lose money. If they have someone filling their pipe 24x7, it's costing them more money than what they're bringing in. It doesn't make sense from a commercial standpoint to provide service to these people, and it's entirely possible that those people are detrimentally impacting the service for the rest of the customers.
I used to work for an ISP, but before the days of DSL, and I know our main issue was people staying dialed up all the time (a phone line was costing us $70/month, we were charging $20/month). Our AUP had stated specifically 'unlimited personal interactive use'. Now, we didn't go after those people who were sharing with their family, or stuff like that, but if you were up 24x7, we took issue -- you had to sleep sometime, and that was not part of the 'unlimited' plan.
[that's not to say that someone downloading a software update overnight, they weren't, unless they were doing it every night (we had a user who had less than 1 hour offline, over a 3 week period, and we had a plan for dedicated line, and it was more than $20/months).
So, let's look at this from the ISP's side -- they let you get away with it. They let your friends get away with it. They lose money. They go out of business. You have to find a new ISP, that might be even less forgiving.
So, my message to you -- get over it. There is no such thing as a free ride, and you shouldn't ever expect to get one. Talk to your ISP. Talk to a supervisor or manager, explain what your usage pattern is, and why you're doing it. Ask them if they can work with you. Odds are, they will, if you make some concessions. They might tell you what their off-peak times are, and so, if you run all of your massive downloads at that time, it won't impact them as much. Maybe you can agree to traffic shaping at the really bad times.
[we had users that we agreed to leave on, even with them online for 16+hrs/day, with the understanding that should the modem banks fill up, they'd be knocked offline to make room for other users]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
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.
However, it's not a great strategy for them. Good businesses protect their customers, and assume the best.
.02.
Your kidding right? Haha, you must be. Let me explain how it really works out there.
For those of you lucky enough to have freedom of ISPs you better be thanking your lucky fucking stars. There are people (like me) that have had multiple types of Internet over the years (dialup, 640/160 DSL, 768/128 DSL, 3000/384 Cable, 1500/128 Cable, 1500/256 Cable, 1800/256 Cable and soon to be 3000/256 Cable). I have had a handful of providers and a wide range of acceptable connections, speed, and tech support.
I currently live in a suburb of Minneapolis. We have two choices currently (where I live)... Comcast cable (which raised the rates on those that don't want their CATV to over $50 if you have your own modem) and Wireless (which has a $500 setup fee and slow speeds (640/640 IIRC)).
Comcast comes in and takes over an area, raises prices because there are no other options for HSD, and then sets these invisible caps...
Do you really fucking think that Comcast gives a flying rats ass if I go over my invisible limit and they dump me (mind you, they refuse to tell you what the cap is, how they determine it, how you should determine it, how you should protect yourself from it, etc)? They don't for one simple reason... MORE MONEY. If I go over that limit I am hogging bandwith money from others that only check email and a few webpages a day...
With 25 million subscribers, moving to a 3mbit speed cap, and needing more money, they are doing exactly the best thing to save their bandwith costs, dumping those users that use the service the way it should be.
Sadly we have no recourse. 90% of their users aren't going to start pegging their bandwith usage and they are going to keep dropping off the high-end users until they are satisfied they are raking in enough dough.
Sad but true... Just my worthless
i worked in tech support for a large brittish isp for a short while, about a year ago. there was a big problem with people keeping their internet connections open when they're not really using them. remember we're talking about diaup connections here, 56k and isdn modems.
the problem was not really the bandwidth, because if you're not surfing or doing somoething then you're not really using any bandwidth. the problem was that idle connections left open consume a modem in the isp's modem bank, so other people cannot connect at all when ther's no modems left.
at the time they were changing their contract from essentially: '24 hours a day any time you like for as long as you like' to something more like 'x number of hours a month, then it runs out'.
people were always furious because they hadn't read the conditions and had used their connection for more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period and been barred.
in ireland there was uproar two years ago when a major isp changed the terms of their 'unlimited' connection to restrict useage because they claimed they couldn't keep up. anyone who kicked up enough of a fuss was allowed to keep their connection because it was in their contract that it was unlimited. anyone who didn't complain lost their 'unlimited' contract. i believe some people still have these contracts, because it was not a condition of the contract that further restrictions could be added later.
funny story: in the job i mentioned, anyone who breached the 12 hour rule was 'upgraded' to use another telephone number. they would call up conplaining 'i can't connect' and we would check their file and see that they'd been flagged as abnormally high users. we would tell them that, because they were heavy users of the service they had been changed to our 'high useage' dialup number, and help them change their settings to dial the new number, and they were so happy that they had been recognised and helped.
of course, now they were neatly switched to another modem bank along with all their selfish idle connection loving kindred, and could barely connect anymore. we were instructed that, if anyone called complaining that their new high useage dialup number wasn't good, or they couldn't connect, we were to get rid of them quickly. this is a reputable firm, but they couldn't have people tying up a modem, when they were sleeping, or out of the house, or otherwise not using it.
(null)
Uh, I think your confusing bandwidth speed/rate caps with transfer caps. The article/comments are about limited transfers (500MB/month or something, etc), not restriction on net traffic 'speed'.
Speed caps for home use, not a big deal. Transfer caps, that's another story.
There's always a cap.. Most .nl DSL providers are up front about it; the basic, $25-30/month DSL contracts are not only limited speed, but there's a finite cap and a per-megabyte overage charge. On the higher revenue contracts (typically in the $50-80/month range) they'll tell you they you there's "no cap, but a Fair Use Policy". None of them will indicate what the FUP-cap is.
;-)
In the case of FUP what it boils down to is that they don't really care whether you go over a certain threshold, but rather, how much bandwidth there is available in your area. In DSL bandwidth is shared among all the subscribers to one telephone "switch" (CO). For residential use, they typically oversubscribe this to the tune of 1:25 - so a "T1" for every 25 people on a 1024Mbps DSL line.
If they find out that one CO is using vastly more bandwidth than planned, and there aren't that many new (and elderly) users lined up to get connected - so they can't afford to just lay down more fiber, they reserve the right to crack down on people who use more bandwidth than average. Of course they don't want to be dicks about this, so they usually target people using more than ten times the average, or the 10% "top talkers". Going after top talkers first makes a lot of sense, since the number 1 top talker probably uses half of the bandwidth of the entire neigborhood
The actual reason that most plans do NOT come with a cap is that cracking down on top talkers takes a lot of effort. Ever metering the bandwidth can take a lot money and equipment. In one of the earliest incarnations of ADSL service you could check the traffic you used online - they removed this, because all the overhead slowed down connections to the point it was costing them more in terms of bandwidth than just ignoring overages.
In fact, some of the budget plans that pretend to have a cap don't have one. It's a "special offer" for "6 months only", but in reality they don't have the infrastructure and the people to meter all bandwidth all the time and to go after people with nastygrams...
Of course, if your connection really is uncapped in the administrative sense, that doesn't mean they won't bandwidth-limit on your ass without you even knowing...
The most elegant scheme I've seen sofar is used by Bredbandbolaget (IIRC), who sell 10Mbps fiber internet access; if you go over your cap, which is specifically stated to be X GB per month, your speed simply drops to 128Kbps for the rest of the month.. Still usuable for the bare necessities (web, chat, e-mail and some windows updates), just no downloading movies until the next month/billing cycle starts. AND it's fully automated which makes it a lot cheaper than nastygrams. Winners all around.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Moderators be flogged for feeding this troll!
Anyone who doesn't think they can chew up at least 20gb a month legitimately is an idiot or a luddite.
Now maybe you're the only one who uses your connection and all you do is surf Slashdot all day, but there are those of us who listen to streaming music (legit), mp3 downloads from sites like mp3.com, magnatunes.com, and others (legit), download Linux ISOs and updates (legit), Windows updates (legit), game demos (legit), PLAY games online (legit), and send high-res digital images to family members (legit).
I've done all three of those this month. Now factor in my two geek roommates and we go through upwards of 5gbytes in a 4-day period. I've seen my usage spike as high as 72gbytes in a 30-day period.
All that without servers, work files, porn, or copyright infringement. Good thing you don't work at my ISP.
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.
If they are going to have Up & Download limits...they should be forced to provide an up to date status of where you stand each day. I have yet to see a message on here where someone got axed or scolded and they actually had details of usage other than....oops you went over the limit.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
My wife and I were dissatisfied with the management of a public (for-profit) discussion forum, so we decided to start our own.
:)
We set it up in a weekend on our personal DSL server, assuming that we could transfer it later if it got popular.
Well, it got popular FAST, because over 150 people from the for-profit board wanted an alternative, and they flocked to our board. In a two week period, we had more than 5gb of traffic. We were flabbergasted at the sheer volume.
Needless to say, we've moved the board to a hosting provider that allocates us a specific (and very high) amount of bandwidth.
It should be noted that our ISP, DSLExtreme, was exceptionally supportive and patient with us during this time. The for-profit board attempted to get us shut down, and the legal folks at DSLExtreme would have none of it. They also allowed us to rack up that temporary 5gb traffic burst with no warnings, no stoppage and no extra charge (I only know how much we used from my own logs.) I can't thank them enough.
I Am a Network Engineer For A Major Cable Company... Most broadband companies has a TOS or AUP (Terms of service/Acceptable Use Policy) which defines the conditions the service is to be used under. Typically when you are installed with service you sign some paperwork that says you agree to blah, blah, blah. Which typically includes not running a server of any kind, violating copyright agreements, and excessive use of bandwidth. Usually that's defined as whatever the company feels is excessive. In my case, continously maxing the upstream for several days will cause an alert to show up in our monitoring utilities. Typically I don't really care as long as it doesn't affect the performance of other customer's service, if it does then I will contact the customer and give them a warning about it. If they continue to abuse the service they will be turned off for a week. They then can have service after a month but if they again abuse the service then they are permanetly turned off. Now I read some concerns about loosing customers due to a policy such as this, but in order to provide high speed internet access at a competitive price it's all about maintaing a ratio between available bandwidth to number of customers. If the ratio breaks due to 1 or 2 customers using too much of the service then the risk occurs that all remaining customers would leave. So it's really about loosing 1 customer in order to keep 50. It might suck, but that's how it goes.
The solution ISPs can use is weighted fair queueing.
This ensures that one person does not destroy the bandwidth of another. It is a hell of a lot better then making users worry about how much they download.
One such implementation is the Weighted Round Robin qdisc in Linux:
http://wipl-wrr.dkik.dk/wrr/
There are other implementations that scale better.
I say this every time someone brings up the "scarce bandwidth" issue, but no one ever listens and ISP continue to use draconian way to solve their bandwidth issues that could *easily* be solved with a little algorithm.
The dialup ISP I used to used let me maintain my connection indefinitely. I managed 1037 hours for a single connection, once (that's like 6 weeks and one day). They let me multilink free of charge, too. For $13 a month.
My mental image was of some admin on their end looking at my pair of 14.4 connections saying "let the poor bastard stay connected, he deserves it."
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Furthurnet for one provides free legal lossless music downloads. Archive.org is loaded with fun stuff to saturate your pipe with. Perhaps I want to send digitized home movies to my parents across country, or doing the webcam thing. Maybe I run gentoo. Just because you can't think of good uses for your bandwidth doesn't mean there aren't any.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Their policy is simple -- You can use up to the bandwith your account type allows. The basic $19/month package has 3 GB/week, add 1 GB/week (4 GB/month) for $10. They give static IP address and no arbitrary server restrictions.
In their newsgroup discussions, they explain that because there are so many people who pay for big chunks of bandwidth and don't use it, they can provide the whole enchalada without problems. If more people started using all their bandwidth, then they'd have to lower the limits, but with all the homes and businesses and colo connections that consume only a tiny bit of the bandwidth they pay for, they don't anticipate it as a problem. Their stats show an aggregate of about 3 empty 45Mb/DS3 lines even at the peak use.
xmission is great.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Cnet, yahoo news, and others- have had stories spelling out the increase and the reasoning behind it.. dsl competetion.. where verizon is trying to entice folks with lower rates for DSL, comcast is competeing by raising the d/l limit.. not reducing prices..
if I could get dsl I would, it's the 256k upload cap that is my biggest problem.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Having seen a lot of feedback here, I'm not sure that I understand what it is that people want. Here are the things that people have said: "Don't offer speed if you can't deliver" and "don't offer unlimited if you can't deliver". Let's take a look at the way that most ISPs work, and then address those.
Your standard ISP pays not for bandwidth, but for pipe density. T1, T3, DS3, OC3, etc. They pay for 1.5Mbps up/down 24-7 if they need it. NOw, obviously, this costs them much more a month than your 1.5Mbps download connection, by an order of magnitude of 20 or so. If you're on a dial-up service, most ISPs don't pay much to maintain infrastructure, unless they are also the phone company. It's some servers, a few banks of digi-cards, and a local dial-in number. In the case of high speed access, they generally also have to pay to maintain lines and equipment along the lines, such as repeaters and routers. A few web servers, a couple of mail servers, and you're an ISP.
Now, here's where the issue comes in. Normally, an ISP expects that some people will use high-speed very sparingly, probably depending on it for a few small critical tasks and the rest is email. And then they know there will be a few gamers and downloader making up some slack. This is expected by your broadband ISPs.
The problem comes in when you have someone who demands to use their connection for 1.5Mbps, all day, every day. The same connection, bursting, might serve six or 7 heavy usage customers, or 40 light usage customers, but now you have one single customer, attempting to consume $500 worth of download bandwidth for $50.
Obviously, there should be some sort of common sense applied here. Capping the top speed lower would be a poor idea, because those who download the occasional large file or movie trailer or whatnot enjoy access to the full speed. Changing the access hours seems silly, since some people play games for hours a day but never come close to consuming full bandwidth. Does it seem right to penalize this MAJORITY of the customers because a very small percentage of customers who seem to be of the opinion that if you have a 1.5Mbps connection, you MUST use all of it. If you gave them more bandwidth, they would simply find something else to do with it, not content unless they are pushing their connection as hard as possible, obviously lacking any idea of the economics behind it all.
Some have said that hard limits should be imposed in the contratct. This makes me sad, because it means that you are telling the company that they cannot trust their users, that they cannot use reasonable judgement, or expect that from you. Sometimes, you might have customers who never go over the limit, but might have a school project one month that pushes their usage up high once. As an ISP, I'd prefer to be able to use my discretion in this situation rather than hear the "told you so" of users crying about "lax enforcement of rule".
DISCLAIMER: I work for a mid-sized ISP.
--- I'm going sane in a crazy world.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I am *QUITE* familiar with 'caveat emptor' ...
But, then again, I'm also aware of "false advertising," "deceptive trade practices," "fraud" and a few other terms that broadband ISPs don't want to talk about.
As an earlier poster said, "If they say 'unlimited' they damn well better MEAN "infinite, limitless bandwidth" unless they want to run afoul of some VERY nasty consumer protection laws.
Just my $0.02 ( & BTW, IAAL)
utter rubbish
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!
The ISPs specifically mentioned on the mailing list I was talking about were Comcast, NTL (England, Ireland, Wales) and CFaith.
One guy thinks maybe buried in the Comcast legalese it says "unlimited access" means access at any time, but not for an unlimited length of time.
I've never received any complaints myself, but as an avid DC++ user I am waiting for it to happen and wondering what the highest odds outcome is if I ignore the warning.
Streaming audio, streaming video, OS patches, umpteen programming applications, remote backups, distributed computing, perfectly legal P2P applications...this is the short list.
Oh, yeah, and another thing: who the hell are you to define what's legitimate? Whether I'm downloading pornography, telecommuting, or watching reruns of 'What's Happening Now?' from a server in New Guinea, it doesn't matter. If I'm not violating my TOS, and I'm simply using my 'unlimited' connection, then I'm not doing anything wrong.
I'll call a spade a spade: certain broadband providers are screwing a subset of their customers, because they can, and relying on 'common sense' from non-techies to justify their actions. I understand their business justifications (hey, I'm a businessman), but their tactics suck, and it will bite them square in the ass someday.
If you are willing to claim unlimited, be prepared to put your money where your mouth is. If not, don't make the claim. Unlimited means just that, no limits, no qualifications. You can't afford to offer that at your price range? Then don't offer it. You can make other claims such as no preset limit or so on. However if you want to say there is no limit, be prepared for people to use that.
I do with my ISP. I expect that my connection be on 24x7 barring problems. I expect to be able to use all the bandwidth they choose to give me as often as I like adn not hear about it. I put a heavy load on that line too, what with three servers, two roomates and lots of personal use. They don't complain, their pricing is such that they can sustain that.
It is the ISPs that need to get over it, with it being the concept taht you have the right to advertise something and not give it. ISPs want the allure of being "unlimited" but not the associated costs. Too bad. Either be unlimited, and don't whine about it (my dialup ISP never bothered me if I left the modem on for a week straight, which I did) or don't advertise as such. Isntead of unlimited say no time restrictions and no preset limits.
Notice that American Express does NOT claim they give you an unlimited spending amount. They say they have "no pre-set spending limit". That means that, unlike other cards where you have a hard cap as to what you can charge, they have no default cap in place. Doesn't mean they'll let you charge anything you want. They couldn't do that or someone would get one, charge $50 million in shit and skip the country. However, it would be dishonest to claim otherwise.
Finally, I would not that DirectPC got sued over this and lost.
"Servers, which are generally prohibited"
The interesting thing about servers is that if you're not running one, you're probably not a real part of the internet. People without server status are just consuming information, and not really contributing to it.
There are ways to participate in the internet without a server (by email, sourceforge accounts, slashdot accounts, yahoo accounts, wikipedia accounts, etc) but the internet always grew up a peer-to-peer thing. I visit your website and you visit mine. When you read something interesting, chances are it was written by an individual, rather than by a company.
We're starting to see more push for the idea that the internet is just one big television show, where you upload your credit card number, download "content", and go shopping. And the ISP accounts with crappy upload figures, bans on servers, dynamic IP addresses, and bandwith limits, port blocking, and all the rest only encourage this.
What does a vagrant contribute to a city? What does a port-blocked upload-limited dynamic IP address contribute to the internet?
An old friend was once a manager at a Pizza Hut. At that time, PH also had a salad bar. It was sold as an all-you-can-eat salad bar. His regional manager was riding his ass about controling the salad bar costs. My friend said, "It is an all you can eat deal, how can I control what people eat?" He was told to keep track of how much had been consumed each day and stop restocking the salad bar when their cost limit was reached.
Guess what happened next... Salad bar sales dropped by about 2/3rds and then he got his ass chewed about the drop in sales. The main thing companies seem to want is for people to pay for 'unlimited' services/food/etc... and then not use them. Unlimited makes for good marketing strategy because the marketers don't have to deal with the realities of a greedy consumer.
I ran into this with my first ISP in 1995. Each account had a shell account and ftp space with that shell account. I would download large files from non-resumable ftp servers *cough*microsoft*cough* of the day into the ftp space and then download them locally. One day I found the file I had transferring was no longer in my ftp space and an email about my 'suspicious' activity. I called and finally got hold of the person that sent the email, their security/compliance officer.
I'm stunned by this and he starts grilling me about what I was downloading that was 50megs. I inform him that it was the linux trial version of Wordperfect and could he please restore the file so downloading could resume. He declines and says that I'm using too much space. I asked just how much space is allowed. I was told that they had no set limit, but that I was using too much. The closest thing he would give to an answer was that the number would float according to overall usage. When he still refused to give any number, I asked why they even had the ftp space and he said it was one of the services they provided.
Their policy was that I could use ftp space, but not too much or too often, with no amount or time given. I asked him how much sense that made to him and he wouldn't answer except to say that was their policy.
I was so pissed that the next week I signed up for AOL just to dump the bastards.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
It is reasonable for them to assume that there words will be taken in a reasonable manner.
Yea, that's why when I see "unlimited" I think it means "unlimited" not "unlimited unless it becomes inconvenient for us". If they don't mean unlimited, they need to say something like "150 hours a month for $49.95" or whatever the actual service is. 150 hours or some mysterious, unknown limit is NOT unlimited, plain and simple.
But let's not take "Unlimited" to mean something unreasonable.
I REALLY don't understand where you're coming from or why you think anyone is going to buy this argument. You're arguing this point on quicksand and you're already in up to your neck. Look, whether you're going to admit it or not, unlimited has a clearly defined meaning. It's not ambiguous. They're not saying "lots of access" or "a whole bunch of access", they're saying "unlimited access". Unlimited is a very clearly defined, well understood term. How could I apply an unreasonable meaning to it? Unlimited is unlimited. No limit. None. Zip, nada, zilch. NO LIMIT TO ACCESS.
Would you assume 'unlimited internet access' means I have unlimited access to whitehouse.gov and could change it to fit my needs?
Completely pointless and offtopic. You're arguing the meaning of access, not unlimited. Access to the Internet does not automatically grant write privilege to a small portion of the WWW which is only part of the Internet. When they say "access", it's generally understood that they're talking about the ability to connect to their server in order to use the Internet in some capacity. How you use the Internet is not guaranteed by them in any way.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!