Slashdot Mirror
Broadband Providers' Hidden Bandwidth Limits
An anonymous reader sends us to the Boston Globe for a story that will come as a surprise to few here: broadband suppliers will cut you off if you download too many bits. It tells the stories of several Comcast users who were warned — without specifics — that they were using "too much" bandwidth, then had their accounts summarily cancelled. Looking into the future: "...even if only a tiny fraction of customers are downloading enough to trigger the policy, that will probably change as more entertainment moves to the Internet."
Lemee see. Downloading the max a line will allow is OK. They understood the contract as "unlimited".
Seems to me that they're way overselling their lines. SBC DSL doesnt care how much you use, nor should they. (We had them for 2 years and kept 60% up and down utilized on average).
These cable bastards need to be raked over the coals for this. Or at leat, lose a bunch of profits.
First Post. Anyway, I've never gotten anything with my ISP, and I download a lot of Linux ISOs..
printf("meow....\n");
Not if ISPs start charging the content providers. This looks like just another argument to this end...
perhaps this should be a marketing point for DSL providers. "DSL: the bandwidth you pay for is really yours."
My upload with Cablevision's Optimum online is currently capped. I think it's due to my torrents, even though I had a global limit of 40 Kilobytes per sec. I download at 10 Mbits but upload is 140 Kbits.
I've had this happen with them before, and it seems like there is no way out except to call, and you only get 3 strikes before you're out I've heard.
It's very frustrating, I pay for a fast internet connection and should be allowed to use it within reason. I purposefully capped my torrent uploads at 40KBytes, that's not too much, I shouldn't be capped.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
I hear this from Shaw and Cox users all the time, they're getting shitograms from the ISP over their heavy bandwidth usage. Well, Verizon's never bitched at me and I have full uplink running almost 24/7. This was true even when I had a residential line.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
ISP's have been limiting dl/ul for like....forever.
Since when does this make it onto slashdot???
Now.....TRUE unlimited speeds/bw....that would be a story.
I'd sign up.....five days ago.
Comcast says that only .01 percent of its 11.5 million residential high-speed Internet customers fall into this category.
ONLY 1,150 customers are at risk of being cut off?
Comcast has an interesting definition of "common carrier". I wonder if the courts will agree with it...
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I mean I've heard about these sort of things years ago, I'm surprised that people don't expect this to happen when they use too much bandwidth.
I use a lot of usenet, downloading a few hundred gigs a month (by my estimation.) I am using RoadRunner as sold by Earthlink, and I have never had any problems. Yet when my friends in the neighborhood start using that amount of bandwidth as Roadrunner customers they get these warnings all the time. One even had his connection throttled.
comucast.
or commucast.
or something.
What changes? Its all about your money with no use that is acceptable. All want "grand ma's" who only use the service on Sundays.
BellSouth: They change renew your DHCP address 5 - 10 time a minute to drop you from you connection. Follow your logs. Accept, on my system they just slow thing down. Anyway, no wonder we a "last" in the world in high speed connections. It's a Republican thing!
Ok. You buy a 1 year subscription to a 3Mbps-down/256Kbps-up line. You are told, along with adverts claiming it is an unlimited line.
They disconnect you for unspeakable limits. That is called FRAUD. No ifs ands or buts.
If they cant maintain profitability on selling those lines for whatever they do, too bad. Not my problem. if they can only sell 512Kbps sync and keep it truthful and honest, all the better.
If the telcos DSL circuits can do it, why not the "Pig"?
For any reason...
That's how this works. That's the only way this works. They can advertise whatever they want, but as long as their contracts have that little clause in them, it really doesn't matter WHAT they advertise.
This and the net neutrality fight tell us something - the ISPs are not prepared for a large surge in bandwidth. Despite having about 10 years notice and charging up the ying-yang in many places, they're still not ready to provide the necessary speed to even those areas of the country they currently cover. When ISPs tell customers "5 Mb/s", they really mean "5 Mb/s, once in a blue moon, otherwise 512 kb/s normally and maybe a 2-3 Mb/s burst at times". 250 GB a month is only about 756 kbps. When customers realize this, there's gonna be a problem.
250 GB/month is not going to sound excessive when we start rolling out movie downloads in HD (that's 12 movies), or Steam-like solutions take off, or people start using things like Skype. Nowadays, your game console, your HD-DVD player, and your DVR/cable box want Internet access to get patches or content, and these massive numbers are getting more and more reasonable. This shouldn't be a sign to Comcast that users should download less, it should be a sign that they need to upgrade their networks drastically and fast.
I'm with an Australian ISP, on an 'unlimited' plan. The problem is, 'unlimited' doesn't apply when the ISP's network utilization is over 80% - which since they oversell their bandwidth is always...so my 'unlimited' 1.5 mbit line is capped 24/7 to around 768kbits.
I find it unsurprising that countries that are decidedly anti-consumer, pro-corporate like Australia & the US are seriously lagging in broadband adoption...you've essentially got to be desperate for internet access to go for any of the ISP offerings.
"...even if only a tiny fraction of customers are downloading enough to trigger the policy, that will probably change as more entertainment moves to the Internet."
If you're downloading gigabytes of movies and music from a service that the RIAA or MPAA approves of then suddenly bandwidth caps will cease to be an issue.
I doubt that anyone will ever get a takedown notice from their ISP for excessive iTunes usage.
Three Squirrels
lets have a max out your provider DAY!
yes, on 3.14.2007 from 8am to 8pm, lets all get on and download lots of terrents and youtube and,....
max out our providers, let them know we all need our bandwidth and shouldn't be canceled.
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
It seems like they are simply trying to eliminate customers who are unprofitable, or not very profitable. They have to invest much less money if they get rid of the people who actually USE their service, rather than just downloading the occasional e-mail or web page. You can offer unlimited bandwidth if no one uses it. This is very much like the cell carriers dropping support for users of older phone technologies because those users don't purchase extra services.
DSL has more local bandwidth as you have your own link back to the point there the big links come in.
With cable you are shearing the bandwidth to the HEAD-END where the bigger links come with a lot of other people. Some areas are more split up then others so that is way there is no fixed cap as it is based on local use and capacity.
And why shouldn't they? Most ISP's advertise their service as "unlimited" yet they aren't. So why shouldnt the customer be pissed off?
Nobody can say the customer should download "reasonable" ammount of bytes, because that leaves too much open as to who believes how much "reasonable" really is.
The bext thing the ISPs should do is outline exactly how much the customer can download before offering the service or explicitly outlining how much they allow.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
If publicity doesn't get them to change this, I'm sure a law firm will jump at the chance. Which will maybe get Comcast customers a coupon for a free pay per view movie or something equally worthless.
My cable line comes from my local power company, and I read the fine print when I signed up. In the contract it says they limit you to 10gb a month. I go way over that all the time and have never once gotten a call. It's obvioustly just a CYA (Cover Your Ass) clause in case I decide to download the entire library of the Pirate Bay or host a web server. It's stupid Comcast doesn't do the same.
Your $39 package explicitly states that there is absolutely, positively no guaranteed service level whatsoever.
Face it, folks, you're not buying an "unlimited" package when your contract has a 42-point bold oblique heading titled "LIMITATIONS." It also generally states quite clearly in those contracts that the sort of activity people usually bitch about in these threads should be performed under a business SLA account where they explicitly do not put any limitations on your usage...and you probably pay more for the cable TV portion of your bill than the business data line would cost anyway, so stfu already.
Refusing to tell the customer what that limit is is the problem. Tell them they can download 50 gigabytes a month or whatever, but don't give this "It's unlimited but it's not" BS.
It's false advertising.
Oh, yeah, Republican administration. Never mind.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Brighthouse just finished laying the fiber outside my house, 100/100 for $135 a month, no caps no limits
The CSB (CocksuckingBastards) at TWC(TimeWarnerCable) with Roadrunner "Quarantined" our modem because of bandwidth usage. Needless to say I was outraged and am still strongly considering a switch to ADSL. Oh, and they've still ignored my request for a copy of their TOS EULA and Fair Use policies. Their service sucks, it goes down randomly, and I've had more intelligent conversations with a rock than with their support centers.
In the end, the only thing that matters is how much fun you had.
Download midget porn, it takes half the time (and bandwidth)!
Ya, I've been saving that line for a long time....
Another reason why Triple Play sales pitches are HORRIBLE.
Cable line has been "exceeded". They then hijack your other 2 services for leverage.
It's free, until you use it.
But seriously, you can uncap your cable modem easily.
you've been cox-blocked
Boy if you know an ISP that serves residential broadband which can pull down a terabyte a month over bittorrent, I'd love to see it, as far as I'm aware Comcast is nowhere close.
Speakeasy will let you use as much as you like and not bitch. It's more expensive than some others, but maybe that's part of the reason.
I had Adelphia which was purchased by ComTrash. With Adelphia I had 6Mbit cable downloads and they were fast. After the acquisition by ComTrash, I was down with no service for 10 days. When the service came back, I was throttled down to 1 Mbit. Techs came and went - service remained at 1 Mbit. Customer [no] service was beyond worthless. They had no answers why the rate was so slow and they were unable to remedy the problem. They did want a rate hike though!!!
I finally cancelled both the net and the TV service. Now I use two different services (network and TV) and the cost is half as much for better service.
If you use ComTrash I recommend you consider your options.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
There have been some great posts before over at Broadband Reports.
q uestions that are being asked in this thread were asked by the user in question. There is no hard limit at Comcast and you're guilty until proven innocent. The best part was when the user posted proof that the computers weren't transferring as much data as the Comcast Abuse department claimed. Regardless, there is a real problem out there that needs to be addressed.
In particular are these posts detailing how a Comcast employee harassed a user's elderly parents. The thread is quite good. All the http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15937695">
I currently have COX internet cable, and would consider going to DSL if COX wasn't giving me basic cable for free.
However, on any given day I could be legally downloading an HD movie (via xbox or similar services), downloading legally a gig or 2 of pron (I pay $10/month for a service that provides DVD quality rips), and downloading a TV show or two (legal, if you consider timeshifting to be a valid defense). So just by using legal services I'm doing a gig or two a day.
It would be nice to know what a good safe weekly or monthly number is. It would be fine if they said "100 gigs a month is the cap" but "we have a secret number" doesn't really cut it.
but I do have a problem with how they handle it. I mean, they don't specify a limit, it's basically a nebulous figure, and that they aren't clear at all about this in their marketing. I mean, if they don't mean to say that always-connected is for always maxed, then they shouldn't use weasel words in the fine print. The claimed interpretation of "unlimited" is that the connection is basically always on, as opposed to dial-up of old where you were allowed a certain number of hours. Of course, they know that unlimited also gives an impression of not having a bit limit either, but they never do anything to prevent that impression except in said fine print.
I got my Internet access cut off by a local DSL provider a little while back because of a sudden bandwidth spike. They had noticed that my account had suddenly gone to the top of their bandwidth-usage chart and stayed there. They informed me that the account had been suspended because of a "probable virus infection". At first I thought that they were just having problems with (legitimate) torrent use, but I did have a Win2K box up at that point to run some software my wife needed for work. Lo and behold, despite patches and security, the box had been owned. I told them I had taken the 2K box off-line (booted it back into Linux and the other box was a Mac) and they immediately reactivated the account.
While perhaps the ISP's have "invisible" quota, the people being affected by this are downloading truly pathological amounts: enough to fill modern hard drivers SEVERAL times over in a month.
On a 6 Mbps/s connections, if you did nothing but download all the time, you'd be downloading a little less than 2 Tb a month, roughly 4 for 5 hard drives worth (at today's hard drive sizes). That a over 200 double-layer (9G) DVD, 450 regular DVD's, 3,000 audio CD, hundred for thousands of DVD's. You could download every Linux distribution ever made with room to spare.
The people getting these notices and having their connections shut off have been approaching a MINIMUM of 1/3 this capacity (given a casual survey of those who got letter on DSL Reports and other forums), and note that these people got a at least 1 warning informing them of this.
This is truly staggering, even for the heavy downloaders here - even the warezers - you monthly download is probably WELL under that. (Even if you have no life at all you still need to time watch/play your downloads).
Even if the ISP said there were an "all-you-can-eat", there people are well beyond that. Even the big downloads might bring an elephant to the buffer and still not get thrown out (suspended), but these people are brining herds of elephants in, and then when their elephants are full, having them throw up over the buffet and repeating.
I think one of these assholes lives up the street from me...sucking up my bandwidth.
"you pay $/month for X megs/second" do you not understand?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
An artificial shortage.
The standard comcast service is capable of >50Mbps. They just don't give it to you because they want to charge more for "business" service.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
More and more people are using VOIP as their primary phone service in the home. Aren't there laws against cutting off one's access to 911? That would be the net effect if the internet provider killed a person's broadband. If a person doesn't pay the bill on their POTS telephone the telephone company will generally kill the phone's ability to receive calls and dial anything except 911 and the customer support, but they won't make it completely dead.
I could be completely wrong, of course.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
That's funny... I also had adelphia and now have comcast. Adelphia was 4mb/sec download, comcast is listed as either 5 or 6 but with bursts up to around 12... and sure enough when I go to speakeasy.net/speedtest or other test sites I tend to get around 10~11mb/sec download, and upload around 900kb/sec... much better than with adelphia.
Of course if you do not know what the "Limits" are, you have no real limit to limit yourself too.
Here is my IP Accounting from the last year.
-Red is Comcast
-Green is local lan 1 (Computers)
-Orange is local lan 2 or my DMZ (PS2/Xbox/wireless/SunRocket)
If I understand this right, I downloaded 375GB in the last year?
[root@outbox root]# ipacsum --starttime 1Y
IP accounting summary
Host: outbox / Time created: 2007/03/12 23:56:12 EST
Data from 2006/03/12 23:56:12 EST to 2007/03/12 23:56:12 EST
Incoming GREEN Direct 21G
Incoming GREEN Forward 17G
Incoming ORANGE Direct 9M
Incoming ORANGE Forward 25G
Incoming RED Direct 375G
Incoming RED Forward 295G
Outgoing GREEN Direct 377G
Outgoing GREEN Forward 263G
Outgoing ORANGE Direct 2M
Outgoing ORANGE Forward 33G
Outgoing RED Direct 21G
Outgoing RED Forward 42G
I'm glad to see this finally on Slashdot. I've been pushing for Comcast to provide full disclosure since I was terminated. I didn't have DSL in my area until last Monday so now I'm not dealing with 28.8 speeds. While this may be legal, I'm hoping Comcast will come clean. I really appreciate Carolyn from the Boston Globe for publishing the story. There are many other articles coming from various consumer advocate groups in the next couple months so stay tuned.
Since Comcast disconnected me in january, I've found dozens of people who have been disconnected across the country. What's amusing is Comcast is untilling to disclose what "Acceptable Use" is. They only point to their AUP/TOS on their web site and tell you to read it and follow it. Cox Communications and other reputable providers will tell you what Acceptable is in real numbers (50 Gigs a month, 80 Gigs and so on). Comcast will ONLY tell you an example of what Abuse is.
They say an abuser downloads 256,000 photos or 30,000 sounds or 13 million (that's right, million) emails a month. So on my blog I posted what Comcast is saying in english. Abusers of their system are downloasing around 200-250 Gigs a month which is 100 times more than their "average" user. So the average user is only downloading about 1 - 2 Gigs a month. Hardly using the service in my book. Not really streaming video, purchasing movies from Amazon.com Unbox or anything. If you purchase 2 HD-DVD videos from Amazon and download them then you are already violating AUP/TOS with Comcast. Tonight I've updated my blog to include stories of other's who are providing videos for download online.
I've posted my story on the web at my blog. I'm hoping to get the word out and have people look at fiber networks such as Utopia. Their fiber infrastructure provides choices. If a company (such as Comcast) is abusing customers, they can choose another. Of course having a 1 gig pipe to the house is also faster than anything Cable can provide. Must be why Verizon is rolling out FiOS.
Anyway, Major Kudos to Carolyn at the Boston Globe!
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
A while back, in my third year of university my Cable ISP called me up and kindly asked me to come down to their office. I had signed up for my plan a year prior, back when they first offered their unlimited packages. However, recently they had made changes to their unlimited plan; turning it into an "unlimited" plan. Problem was, I never signed their agreement and I was also (so they told me) the small city's #1 consumer of upload bandwidth. I was consuming roughly fifty times the upload bandwidth as the typical non-casual customer.
I explained that since I was switched off a meter, I had been seeding torrents a lot more and even uploading them in some cases. The more people to download "Shining Force (complete series).torrent" the better, IMHO. I'm a nice guy, however, and said I'd stop seeding past 1.0 for their sake. I even signed their "unlimited" agreement uncoerced.
I hate to be the evil alien to spray concentrated acid for blood all over your class action suits parade. But has anyone here even *read* their acceptable use policy with thier ISP? unlimited internet access does not in any way mean unlimited internet *bandwidth* access. It simply means that your ISP has not blocked your user account from any internet website in the world. like some earlier ISP's did mentioning no *chough*Aol*chough* names of course.
... more bandwidth for me..
Some ISPs will give you strict guidelines about how much they are willing to let you leach of their pipe before you have to start paying for it. Say 5gigs down to 1 gig up residential. while others don't go to the trouble as long as you dont bring your MP3WAREZJUGOTNOTINGWEDONTHAVE.COM up above their radar, then, of *course* they have to smack you down. SILLIES. You are being flagrant about how much you are abusing the system. They will let you off once with a warning. that sounds something like "Hi you are on our radar, try not to be on it again" The smart user will go "yipes!" and cut his usage down for 2 or 4 months to about half of what he was doing then after about 6 months at that *slowly* ramp it up to where it was *just* before he got warned. and hopefully the ISP has enough grannies who only use email once a month to camoflague your bandwidth use.
If you can't do that, most ISPs have extra bandwidth packages. They have to buy the bandwidth. so they will sell it to you if you ask nicely.
or go ahead and get your account pulled.
-m
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
Did the people read their terms of service? Or did they think the "unlimited" meant they could do what ever they want. Comcast, along with most ISPs are smart enough to protect themselves.
Excerpt from the Comcast High Speed Internet Terms of service is below. Full terms in link.
http://www.comcast.net/terms/index.jsp
Network, Bandwidth, Data Storage and Other Limitations
Comcast may provide versions of the Service with different speeds and bandwidth usage limitations, among other characteristics, subject to applicable Service plans. You shall ensure that your use of the Service does not restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an overly large burden on the network. In addition, you shall ensure that your use of the Service does not restrict, inhibit, interfere with, disrupt, degrade, or impede Comcast's ability to deliver and provide the Service and monitor the Service, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services.
You further agree to comply with all Comcast network, bandwidth, and data storage and usage limitations. You shall ensure that your bandwidth consumption using the Service does not exceed the limitations that are now in effect or may be established in the future. If your use of the Service results in the consumption of bandwidth in excess of the applicable limitations, that is a violation of this Policy. In such cases, Comcast may, in its sole discretion, terminate or suspend your Service account or request that you subscribe to a version of the Service with higher bandwidth usage limitations if you wish to continue to use the Service at higher bandwidth consumption levels.
In addition, you may only access and use the Service with a dynamic Internet Protocol ("IP") address that adheres to the dynamic host configuration protocol ("DHCP"). You may not configure the Service or any related equipment to access or use a static IP address or use any protocol other than DHCP unless you are subject to a Service plan that expressly permits otherwise.
I have not seen an ISP ad say "unlimited" for quite some time. I know roadrunner never did, at least to me. And I looked in their TOS to see if they 'reserve the right to limit bandwidth' and there indeed is a clause. Not that I've ever seen them do it to me, despite my addiction to data.
There's a really simple fix when your cable company isn't giving you what you pay for:
http://www.tcniso.net/
I love me a 30/30mb config file.
maybe 2.....I got a warning that I used "over my daily allotment[up and down]" cause I was downloading, I think a Fedora torrent....sent them a reply of what I was doing, and how, exactly was I abusing my [whatever it was then] free bandwidth.....never got a response.....maybe they've changed their limits, but never heard from them again, and I know I've done wrose in a day since......(just recently....rebuilt the comp and been trying out different distros.....the amount on bandwidth I must have used the last couple weeks.....cause I like to let the torrents sit a while after I'm done.....i dunno)
You would have to be one rich SOB to legally utilize as much bandwidth as I do.
I mean...I don't do that sort of thing. Why are you looking at me like that?
In Hungary this become a normal practice.
....
At first they will cut some extreme users lines without any notice,
and then they will change the contract, that if you have more than
~150G usage per month, than that's not fair use, and they will cut
the user off, and they will still use the unlimited in the AD's.
The same story:
http://three.co.uk/xseries/fair_use_policy.omp
Unlimited Data - Fair Use Limit: 1 GB each month
Unlimited Windows Live Messenger - Fair Use Limit: 10,000 messages each month
Unlimited Skype to Skype calls - Fair Use Limit: 5,000 minutes each month
Seems like we've seen this story here before. Basically another Bittorrent user gets pissed that Comcast doesn't want them pulling down a terabyte every month; so they post it to /. where they know a vocal few will attempt to make it appear to be a mainstream issue.
.01% of their 11.5 Million customers is 115,000 people to be terminated. Hardly a vocal few.
Huh? People purchase bandwidth not meg per month as Comcast doesn't have a download cap. Ask them right now. Talk to a CSR and they will tell you. No download limit. Heck, I posted the live chat I had with one on my blog. They are very clear on what HSI customers purchased.
I would say this is a mainstream issue. My current ISP Xmission provides very clear limits on what I can consume each week and each month. Cox Communications and other's also very clearly stipulate what consumers purchase. But not Comcast. And you are terminated for 12 months with no recourse.
Since Comcast disconnected me in January I've been researching the issue.
I'm sorry but I strongly disagree with you here.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I find it ironic reading stories like these where an unlimited account is told his account is in fact limited. My own broadband account is supposedly limited to 30GB a month, at which point I'd effectively be capped to 56k speeds. At the time I started the account broadband had only just been introduced and uptake was slow, the ISP said the limit most likely wouldn't be enforced for a few months. It's now over 3 years later and I've not once been capped, despite going over the 30GB limit numerous times, quite possbly 11 months per year (to give you an idea, I've downloaded nearly 2GB today). This includes P2P, various media streams, and everything else from HTTP and FTP to games etc.
/. who work for ISPs, any chance of a confirmation/denial on my theory?
The thing is, I do 90% of this downloading between 11pm and 7am, using timed download managers and just starting P2P software before I go to bed. It seems logical (to me at least) that the ISP is internally using come kind of tariff system to downplay the effect of my broadband usage at off-peak times when I'm basically not affecting contention ratios or anything else. If such a system were being used in this case it could also explain why the ISP is unable/unwilling to provide a hard limit on bandwidth. There must be dozens of people on
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
i've torrented for a couple of years, no concern to my trunk isp...but what shoves me over was shoutcast streaming. i started using "streamripper" with soma.fm so that i can sort through, find new artists, remixes of what i know i like, and have fresh music.
a 128 kbps shoutcast stream downloading for a full month will consume 38.562 GB of bandwidth.
my bandwidth went to 64GB for the month of february, and when i got the letter, i noted my utilization for march was 45GB.
i feel really bad for people that use things like "locationfree", xbox360's game downloading service, shoutcast streams, and other legitimate bandwidth hogs. using your bandwidth as advertised and 100 percent legal is still wrong, and it's horrible.
Sig: Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
So broadband is (theoretically) unlimited in the US? I don't think there's a single case of that here in Australia. There's generally always a download (and upload in the case of Telstra) limit, and if you exceed that, you either get charged per MB or your connection is shaped to about 64Kbps for the rest of the month. Proabably why I didn't quite understand the whole net neutrality thing for a while there.
http://www.comcast.net/terms/abuse.jsp\
read the last section there, jethros & debras of slashdot... and be careful what you bitch about. These ISPs could always institute hard limits and start ganking access left and right for the 2% of hardcore users that cost 30% percent of the infrastructure issues.
I happen to know that comcast leaves it open ended so that you can get yer downloads when you need them. they pad the pipes, so to speak, to overcome slowdowns from peak usage. they go out to neighborhoods and split nodes (i.e., install multi-million dollar, carrier grade blinkenlights) as soon as projections of node saturation look so-so. they even release excess node capacity for big downloads if it's there.
the whiny whingers in this article, the ones that got cut off, were either jamming things up with a massive list of active torrents or worse, ignantly running a heavily infected computer and refusing to get it cleaned up. either way, it's selfish and stupid behavior.
as to the reporter who crafted this warm and fuzzy story well, he/she has played you like a hand of cribbage.
I know some ISP's require 1 year or 2 year contracts. This seems like a great way to get out without having to pay the cancellation fees. Start farming your machine out for Linux-disto downloads (or any other legally distributed files) and make them force you out.
Except that the caps for business accounts through cable and dsl providers are often the same as for residential customers.
So, uhh, yeah, fuck off and die.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Here in Australia, all broadband is limited by a quota. The same is true of much of the rest of the world, outside the US.
A big reason for this (as it was explained to me) is that apparently the US (or US networks) charges other countries for data transmitted from the US (though that didn't stop local AU providers from charging us equally for Australian content, or even content cached locally by the ISP). I'd be interested to hear someone confirm or deny this theory.
As for limiting a cable user's volume, remember that unlike other transmission methods, their bandwidth is shared with other cable users on the local loop, so they *can't* all get full line capacity. If one user tries to max out the cable continually, it's hardly fair on his neighbours.
I certainly agree that the cable bastards could be much more upfront about these implied limits in their contracts however.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Shaw hasn't been advertising unlimited use for a long time (years). So you get what you pay for. More ISPs should do this. It's a lot better to actually know the real limit and have the ability to select a package that's better suited for your bandwidth use.
For example, the average package is 60GB per month and the highest residential package is 150GB/month. http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet /ShawHighSpeedInternet/
Since this change I've never been contacted by them and I tend to download a lot.
As a Cox customer here in Kansas, I never had issues with any bandwidth usage ever. Sometimes I noticed a throttling on my torrent, but I accept that as normal in that I have to share my bandwidth with others in the total customer base here in Kansas [specifically Wichita]. But I never had at any time been threatened for using too much bandwidth. I've been caught DLing stuff I "shouldn't", but that's it. So unless you got some evidence Cox does this, I'm going to have to file 13 your claim here.
-- Bridget
It seems like it would be better all the way around for access providers to charge by the gigabyte. They could do it like a debit card. You buy so many gigabytes up front. If you use them up, your access is cut off, but you can buy more. You can use them fast or slow. You can see how fast you are using them. You can buy more before you run out.
Or, they could have a split fee, where you pay a monthly rate for access, and that gives you a certain number of gigabytes, but you can buy more if you want them.
Web hosting companies already do this. Why not access companies?
The result would be that people wouldn't use bandwidth unless they really thought it was worth it. People who don't use a lot of bandwidth would probably do better because they wouldn't have their service degraded by bandwidth hogs. And if people did use a lot of bandwidth, the provider would make more money, which they could then use to beef up their infrastructure, making more bandwidth available.
I don't know if it's the cable companies trying to charge the flat rates or a government body forcing flat rates by regulation. But it's wrong when the pricing structure doesn't resemble the cost structure.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
These cable bastards need to be raked over the coals for this
Cable, unlike DSL, is a shared medium. In other words, if some selfish jerk wants to trade torrents 24/7 and max the bandwidth then that can very well impact every other user on that line.
If their advertisement of "unlimited bandwidth" is several hundred of gigs each month then that is effectively "unlimited."
In my opinion, it is completely reasonable to threaten to terminate service to people who are, in effect, diminishing the service of others.
I work at an ISP and we've not said the words unlimited for well over 6 years. I find the problem to be the lack of will to read the lengthy jargon in AUPs and EULs. People just want to get on and they just click the "I Agree" button so they can get to surfing. Then when we tell them they had to agree to limitations and refer them to an online copy of said agreement they call us liers. My favorite line is remark is "You guys must have changed this on me, I don't remember agreeing to this." Well yeah, part of the agreement is a clause saying this agreement can change at any time without your consent. Most likely you did agree to it, but in the event you didn't agree to that specific version you really did by consenting to a previous version. The truth of the matter is, capping is only a safegaurd for other consumers. It catches those virus infested computers, it catches the bandwidth hogging server running file swapping people causing other consumers to experience poor performance. The reality of it is most people who get capped move on to another company, and in turn get capped there, so they come back. If you don't like a practice a company has, speak with your wallet! But we'll see you when you come back.
My provider is Cableone.net and they have such policies, I didnt know until I "violated" it. It's not as bad as "losing my connection for a year", instead they 'only' slash my connection by half for about 2 hours.
"Computer activity resulting in excessive or sustained bandwidth consumption such as from unattended computer activity may burden the network and such usage may be restricted." "Customers who exceed threshold limits remain at Standard speeds as specified during the sample period. For example: A "Residential" customer getting extended speeds who consumes 337 MB during a two hour period will automatically change provisioning to Standard Speeds for a period of at least one hour or until measured consumption drops below threshold. Cable One may, without notice, modify the speed, interrupt, or prohibit such data traffic."
Instead of modding you -1, can't multiply or divide, even with the help of 3 previous posters who got it right, I'll spell it out for you:
.01% of 11,500,000 is 115,000 / 100 = 1,150.
1% of 11,500,000 is 11,500,000 / 100 = 115,000.
You're welcome.
Perhaps the dumbest example of this was run by Optus, one of two telecom duoplists in Australia.
Every month, they'd terminate the accounts of their top downloaders. There was no limit or actual number to this. You just had to be in the highest percentile. So, every month, you'd try and download as much as possible, desperately hoping there were enough people out there downloading more than you. And there was no way to check until the billing period ended. The dumbness of this was pointed out to Optus, who, unsurprisingly, were too dumb realize it was dumb.
Since then there is more competition in the Aussie ISP market and Optus eventually dropped the policy. Now they and every other Aussie ISP does what they call 'shaping'. When you exceed your quota (which can be 200Mb, 500Gb, 1Gb, 3Gb, 10Gb, 30Gb depending on your ISP and plan) they strangle your download rates. Optus cut it to a piddly 22Kbps(!!!) Their rival Telstra instead advertises cheap 200Mb quota accounts, and then charges customers $1.5 per Mb over that. If your kids discover bit torrent you're in for a big fat phonebill, and its your fault for not reading the fineprint.
So while the developed nations have speeds upto 100Mbps and no limit(** not withstanding this article), Australia has 22Mbps if you are really lucky, but more likely only 8Mbps or 1Mbps and shaping to deal with. Clever count, my arse!
You work for time warner? Cause I have had issue with them and both times I've been told it was listed on the CD that came with the internet, I had to click yes to install the software. I should have read it.
I then replied that I didn't install the software because I don't want your stuff on my computer. And the other time, I simply reply, your installer loaded the software and clicked on everything. Did he agree to something On your behalf?
both times, the issues were taken care of with the asumption that I knew better now. But you sound a lot like the guy who asumed I clicked on something.
Now verizon, they specificly told me one thing to take their service out and then told me another afterwards. I specificly asked them on the service's uptime because I was going to run a server on it. I specificly asked them if there was a problem with that and they said no and asured me they had good uptime. I also have this on recording. Now when I got my pachage to install the service, there was a letter with my DSL contract in it. It says in the contract that I'm not allowed to run any server of any kind on the conection. I called and asked about it, They said it was the standard agreement and wouldn't do anything about the server because we had spoken directly about it. Of course i recorded this too.
So, I am waiting for someone to say something this time and I will just take them to taks for it. Although, My service with verizon has been better then with Time Warner and the uptime has been better (for my area). No complsints so far (from me or them).
.01 % of 11.5 million is actually only 1150.
Dupe. And they warned of something similar a while ago.
Have you read my journal today?
Do you really think that it is economically infeasible for very many subscribers to that service to be attempting to fully utilize it all the time? Do you have any concept of how much 100 Mbits onto the Internet would cost if you purchased it as a dedicated line?
:)
The saving grace for you is that you can't possibly consume at 100 Mbits/second very long, unless you are just hoarding by downloading stuff you never have any intention to use (creating your own google cache or archive.org) since even HD video is only a fraction of that 100 Mbits/second. And if you do try to create your own google cache and get cut off, I for one would be forced to laugh in your face at your protests!
Personally, I download on average around 200 to 300GB a month, with my biggest month ever being over 640GB and several gigs of upload as well, and I have never heard so much as a peep out of my cable provider (Time Warner / Road Runner) about my bandwidth use.
So that makes me wonder if those ISP's are dramatically overselling their capabilities, or if those who've been warned have been downloading terabytes of data on a monthly basis...
Whatever the case may be, this is nothing new. I've heard these stories since the first offers of "unlimited download" began in the late 90s.
-- This sig for rent.
They won't cut you off as such, but here in the UK, Demon Internet sell an "uncapped" service which has a "limit" of 50G per month before you are throttled back to 128kbps during daytime hours (Mon-Fri, 09:00-22:00). Annoying since the package is sold as having "no download limits" (technically correct, but weaselly). It's not the end of the world, since the throttle is removed overnight and at weekends, but it's a pain during business hours. And normal service is not restored until your rolling monthly average returns to within limits, and only then on an arbitrary date set for review, so it's possible to wait over a month for full speed to return. I'm able to monitor usage now (using IPcop), but it's very easy to hit the 50G limit (OK, I download the odd TV show), so am on the lookout for a better deal.
Given the relatively limited bandwidth going in and out of Australia, and that 99% of the world's websites are at the wrong end of that, there is arguably some justification for this. Still inconvenient though.
</devilsadvocate>
In the USA, the gov't gave the telecoms industry a nice 200 billion USD to upgrade our network. We did this a while ago, and I have yet to see much of it being put to use for Memphis, except for businesses. The homes are SOL. XO Communications tried home-based fiber here and botched it bad.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Sounds to me like they are too lazy/unwilling/stingy to upgrade their networks, so as a result they cut off people who they deem to be using too much. Whatever that 'too much' is, likely the local office's discretion.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Cable modem bandwith is shared in its node. From the node it goes to fiber back to the head-end.
:-/
If you live out in the sticks and there maybe 5 cablemodems on your node you could get away with downloading 5TB a month and no one would say a thing.
BUT
If you live in a 150unit building that has a few other buildings in this one node then you might have problems. People will complain that their service is slow and the headend guys will look for a reson why. (Nevermind the company over sold that node...) they have to find and fix the slowness "problem". Thats where you come in...
Thats basicly how it was told to me by one of the system techs at the cable co i work for
I have to return some videotapes...
I'm not sure what was told to you but no I do not work with time warner. Just about every ISP that I know of does not allow the use of servers unless you are a commercial account. That being said, get a commercial account.
Our bastard of a monopoly ISP offers 384/128, 512/128 and 1024/384 with 4096/384 as a trial for random sods. We have caps running from 1Gb upwards with 50Gb costing R17999. Just to put that in perspective, I am an IT engineer grossing R21400 and taking home R16000 per month. Telkom, the monopoly telecomms company says the prices are fair. At least they cut you off when you hit the cap and don't bill you for the overusage.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
They sell cable modem service. Not phone service. They make no guarantee's as to the systems speed or uptime. Read your TOS.
Now if you get the IP phone from the cable co thats another story...
I have to return some videotapes...
At first I thought that they were just having problems with (legitimate) torrent use, but I did have a Win2K box up at that point to run some software my wife needed for work. Lo and behold, despite patches and security, the box had been owned. I told them I had taken the 2K box off-line (booted it back into Linux and the other box was a Mac) and they immediately reactivated the account.
:-)
After which your DSL provider's technical support people informed you that your Linux box is not supported.
Reading some of these anecdotes reminds of my dial-up days. I live in a small resort-ish community where, prior to SBC and Adelphia/Comcast's arrival, there was a single locally-owned mom and pop ISP. During my years with them, I never experienced a rate increase from the $18 per month I was paying, or a single busy number, delay in connecting, authentication, drop or any other sort of problem. I was able to download/upload All I Could Eat from usenet (the Supernews usenet feed was provided for free) and regularly did so.
Now I'm subscribed to SBC DSL with whom I regularly encounter problems of all sorts. The first year or so, my connection ran at about 90% of advertised. Then it dropped to 60%. Their NNTP feed as next to useless (even for text-based groups), so I incurred the additional cost of ten bucks per month for a premimum usenet service, which soon got throttled on my end. I eventually upgraded to an Uber-Premium DSL account with fixed IPs and and double the bandwidth (for twice the price, of course), and then watched the process repeat itself.
The irony is that my habits have long since changed and I have little need or interest in downloading anything other than an occasional ISO over HTTP. For that I'm paying what I consider an exorbitant sum. The commercials on TV make me wonder whether I'm missing out on some great fun, but the reality is that from a consumer perspective, we all hate our providers and we resent the added costs and decreasing level of service. Even more, I think we resent their resentment of us.
Disclaimer: Neither Comcast or Cox is available to me, nor is DSL or Cable Internet from Charter, so I have no axe to grind. As a matter of fact, I have no opinion at all as to any of these companies. So far as I can see, through all the bitching about Comcast, one thing is missing: actual proof of the phrase "Unlimited Bandwidth" being used as a teaser to entice one to subscribe to their service. Now, I'm no fan of Comcast (see above), but I find it difficult to believe, without some evidence to the contrary, that their legal dept would let the phrase be used. I find it far more likely that those grousing about the situation somehow convinced themselves that they were subscribing to "unlimited bandwidth", when in fact what was touted was probably along the lines of "unlimited access" or some such phrase. I deal with customers in a retail-and-service environment on a daily basis, and I find that no matter how clearly and carefully I explain something to a customer, they hear what they want to hear, not what I said to them. It's human nature. If you dont think that Comcast has covered their backsides seven ways from Sunday in both their advertising and their AUP/TOS, you are simply deceiving yourself. If you're griping, ask yourself this: If they built the ballfield, provided the bases, balls, bats, and gloves, AND wrote the rule book, why do you think that you're going to have any luck convincing them, even though you agreed to play by those rules, that they told you something entirely different that wasn't actually in the book? Face it, it's their game. The only thing you can do is quit it and go find another game to take part in. Quitchyerbitchin and get on with your life.
If i needed a comercial account, you would think they would have told me when ordering the package. As far as i'm concerned, I got the equivilent. A recording with them saying i can run a server. And a recording saying i can still run the server after i asked them about the no server policy. I even got the part where their system says the call might be recorded for training and quality asurance purposes. I've been jacked around enough in the past by companies outside ISP's that i am actualy waiting on somethign to happen so i can get some bait and switch resitution/vengence and maybe force them to change thier policy. However, I will be just as happy watching them get investigated for the entire event.
I havn't had any problems with them And i'm not really expecting to. So i guess the talk about it is nothing more then talk about it until something happens. But it doesn't seem like anythin is going to happen so who knows.
Anyways, Your comment just sounded like a canned responce I got from Time Warner a couple of times. I just figured you might have got it from them.
you insensitive clod! midgets like XXL's too ya know?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Just the other day, a friend told me somebody from Comcast called his house and gave his mother the cock-and-bull story described in the article, though his service has not as yet been terminated. She, of course, had absolutely no clue about what the Comcast people were going on about. The interesting thing is that they actually told my friend not to call the regular customer service people because they wouldn't know what he was talking about. When he told me the story, I assumed it was some sort of social engineering scam...until I read TFA.
I agree with another poster. These calls are more than likely a precursor to legal action by the RIAA or other interested parties. Possibly, it's just a trial balloon for a CYA to indemnify them against same.
Somebody else said a friend of theirs has had five such contacts with Comcast (or their ISP of choice) without any detrimental effects. I say, time to buy your friend some soap-on-a-rope. Even if he doesn't end up in the clink, at least he can use it to lube up his hindquarters for the forthcoming rectal probe.
Two years ago, if you used more than 1 Gig in a month, the Telkom monopoly would cut you off with a nasty note saying you were "abusing" the internet(?).
Now I note that the cap is now around 3 Gig and that 1 Gig is considered okay.
As TFA said, "fair" usage is increasing as the popularity of bandwidth-intensive activities like viewing live video and music increases.
"I'm a snake if we disagree"-Jethro Tull, Bungle in the Jungle
I got a call from Comcast last week telling me that I used 287GB of bandwidth during the previous month. The person asked me if I had an open wireless network that was maybe being exploited. I told him no, it uses WPA2 security and I doubt that it's being hijacked. I told him that I definitely didn't want to abuse the priviledge of having broadband Internet so I would make sure to cut down my usage. Since then I've been thinking about all the stuff that I did that contributed to that 287GB, none of which was illegal. Let's see, got an XBox, filled the hard disk with demo games. The machine died so I took it back, got a new one, and filled the hard disk with demo games. Downloaded some Linux ISOs. Downloaded from Microsoft MSDN ISOs. Transferred some computer backup files from one my my clients. Got both my TiVos connected to the home network and configured them to download a bunch of TiVocast programs. My wife loves CNN and MSNBC video clips. I don't mind staying within limits, but I would like to know what those limits are. I am wondering if I should order DSL now because Compcast is about to cut me off? I do not think that they are handling this well. I think that it would also help if Comcast would tell me how much I used during the month.
The accounts are designed for burst speed, not sustained. If you want to run your maximum bandwidth 24x7 and you have the "entry-level" $39/month residential plan, you are falling out side the stated limitations of the account.
This issue is so fucking tired it's stupid.
I used to run an ISP, back in the day. When I became aware that some hosting services providers were capping bandwidth and charging per unit of served data, I started to do a few calculations.
.1831 GBps, or 10.986 GB/min, or 659.16 GB/hr, or 15819.84 GB/day, or 474,595.2 GB/mo.
.0003 USD per megabyte of data, no? Three hundreths of a cent for a megabyte. When I realized these figures, it just didn't seem...honorable...to charge users for the piddling little amounts of traffic generated by their servers.
.01% of their subscriber base. The estimates tell us that the abuser consumes 200 GB/mo, the average user 2 GB/mo. So, of their stated 11.5 million customers, about (and I'm not actually a statistician, so forgive me, here) 1150 are consuming a total of 230,000 GB/mo, while only paying for a bit less than half of that, or 99665.9 GB/mo. Meanwhile, Comcast is collecting 26 USD/mo from the other 11,498,850 customers, who are paying for a grand total of 996,559,334.1 GB/mo.
/bin/sh load of money, which of course is actually the case. According to what I see on Yahoo! Finance, in the trailing twelve months, Comcast, as a company, made a profit of 2.24 billion USD on revenue of 24.97 billion USD. Are they honestly claiming that they can't make their network perform? Boo fscking hoo. Not all of Comcast is an ISP, but they soon will be. Better string that fiber a bit faster, boys...
Hmm, let's see. A typical T1 line delivers data at the rate of 1536 Kbps (don't bother about the extra 8Kbps, OK?). So, that's 1536000 / 8 / 1024 ^ -2, or a whopping
That's over 474 Tera-frickin-bytes with a capital B every month. On a single T1.
Now, back in the day (mid 90's), a top-tier provider T1 Internet access port cost, what--say, 1500 USD/mo including the local loop? For the math-inclined but time-challenged, that's about
I think the cost structures of a company like Comcast might offer them some economies of scale, but hey, let's be generous here and give them the benefit of the doubt. Let's say Comcast has to get all of it's backbone bandwidth from T1's, and they have to pay another provider for it. Let's say that the average Comcast Internet customer pays about 52 USD/mo for the dubious privilege (which is about what they actually charge here in New Jersey, the last time I looked). We'll take that 52 bucks and give up half in administrative overhead. So, our 26 USD/mo buys us 86.666 GB of data each and every month.
Now, Comcast would have us believe that their average user consumes according to the estimates here, about 1% of the data that so-called abusers consume. Comcast admits that these abusers make up approximately
So, Comcast's revenues from all of this total 299,000,000 USD/mo when, if those "abusers" were paying for their rightful share, Comcast would be making (and here, let's make the abusers pay triple to cover it all) 299,059,800 USD/mo. Is Comcast really going to whine over a loss of revenue of 59,800 USD/mo over a 300 million dollar a month revenue stream? It would appear so!
Now, what was I saying about the cost of backbone bandwidth? Ah, yes...Comcast, having to provide a total of 996,789,334.1 GB of bandwidth a month, needs to install 2100 T1 lines to cover it all. Let's go nuts here and suggest that Comcast actually needs double that to really cover it. So, Comcast pays out 4200*1500, or 6,300,000 USD/mo to cover their backbone (though, of course, not all the traffic actually leaves Comcast's network).
Ergo, in our hypothetical situation here, Comcast is making 292,700,000 USD/mo from their Internet services, while their users are leaving the backbone network at 50% utilization.
And they're complaining about 1150 users losing them 60 grand a month?
Anyone who knows even the slightest little bit about how the Internet works and is paid for can see how patently ridiculous all of this is. Yes, the numbers I'm using here are widly skewed, but mostly in favor of Comcast. Even if you double the costs and halved the revenue here, Comcast would still be making an fscking
But they don't state the limitations.
With a rebel yell, we screamed more, more, more.
Customers will ALWAYS want more speed and bandwidth. This
is ALL the Cable and DSL providers actually sell. Bandwidth.
Sure , some attempt to provide "content", but we all know
how lame ISP/CABLE/Telco webpages are.
These providers need to seriously upgrade THEIR infrastructure
to accomodate what people want...more bandwidth. Upgrade the DSLAM's
and copper/cable connections.
They all talk about how cool it will be to grab streaming(Put your fave
here) content, 24/7. Then they try to penalize you for actually taking
them at their word. The pipe that handles XXX Bps download, can handle
the same XXX Bps upload.
They also need to understand that many of us want to run servers. This
is not rocket science.
I find it difficult to respond to this article, there's 2 angles I can take.
Basically, living in Australia, we're accustomed to limited use infact some ISP's have an "AUP" (acceptable use policy) specifically the unlimited ones.
There's no specific limit but I guess common sense is meant to prevail, if you leech 300gb in a month on an Aussie ISP, it's extremely likely you'll get kicked off.
Now, both the US and Australia shouldn't have companies falsley advertising unlimited.
That being said, I have to honestly ask, who the hell can be downloading over 2 or 300gb a month LEGITIMATELY?
Seriously!? and no guys, please don't respond with "well this distro X and there's free legal torrent Y!" - you can be sure that if only a fraction of a % of internet users are downloading "un-acceptable" amounts of data,.. well only a fraction of a % of those downloaders would be legally doing it, I'd almost be comfortable enough to say not one of these guys being kicked off is downloading legitimate data.
Don't get me wrong, I'm in Australia! I'll be damned if I'll wait 36 months for a T.V show, a hell of a lot of people do it.
None the less "leech addicts" can't help themselves, I know one he pulls in quite literally 500gb per month and burns it and NEVER uses it.
The ISP shouldn't be advertising it but common sense should also kick in, making a fuss over being kicked off because you can't steal HD TV rips, DVD movies, PS2 and Xbox games seems somewhat,.. well retarded.
On a related but offtopic note, back in the dot com boom, I worked for a very stupid company which was new to being an ISP, management had advertised "unlimited plans" with no "kick off" periods.
Since it was the dot com boom and everything was, well ridiculous - this customer called and abused the jesus out of us if he got disconnected during the month at ANY PERIOD OF TIME.
Management eventually setup a dedicated line / modem for this chap and changed his sessions on the server to simply not drop, common sense did not prevail.
I do not know in which world do you live but in the rest of my world, in Mexico and UK none of the broadband plans (Cable or DSL) has a quota limit. Although of course in Mexico the speeds are about 512/256 and 1024/256 here in UK I have a plan of 2Mbit/256 for £10 (for one year... after that £18) and you can download whatever you will.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Sure - just try it. I am in the UK and they all have quotas (though they may not make a song and dance about it). Plusnet a while back had an issue with a few users who were using the system literally 100% and they were told they could leave or reduce their usage. It makes sense, if you want cheap connections then expect not to use it as if you were the only user. Plusnet, incidentally has a 'fair use' policy where you can download 100% between the hours of midnight and 4pm, but at peak time.. expect to be monitored.
.. more aggressive in their targetting of seriously heavy users. (and we are talking people who don't use 150gb here, we're talking people who use it 100% 24/7).
The old adslguide website used to have stories of cable operators who were
False advertising isn't cool, even if there's some loophole in their contract. It stinks plain and simple. So if you're exceeding whatever they constitute as "fair use" of the service, they should spell out exactly what that is. None of this "exceeding our unlimited use" crap!
Another thing is that what they're doing is B.S. to begin with. They control the cable modems to some extent, instead of cutting off service completely - they could send a blip to the thing and throttle back service to "excessive" users. It would be like their "PowerSurge" but in reverse, and the modem knows to let only x amount of bits through per second. Sure the heavy hitter's YouTube or Torrent may suddenly take minutes/hours longer, but they still get service and everyone else is happy because the overall network isn't pushed to its threshold. Somebody along the chain is either dumb or lazy and implements bad policy to patch what should be fixed as a problem of network architecture.
Plusnet a while back had an issue with a few users who were using the system literally 100% and they were told they could leave or reduce their usage. It makes sense, if you want cheap connections then expect not to use it as if you were the only user. Plusnet, incidentally has a 'fair use' policy where you can download 100% between the hours of midnight and 4pm, but at peak time.. expect to be monitored.
No, it doesn't make sense. How can make sense having a defined quota, but being bullied away if I'm using it?
If you tell me, say, my quota is X megs/day, if I download X-1 bit megs/day all days I am below the quota, and the telco should just shut up and leave me download. It's them that proposed the contract, it's them that know how their infrastructure works, so it's them that must improve their service if they have troubles in maintaining that quota for all users, or think before proposing quotas that they cannot meet.
It's like saying that if an email provider gives me 1 gigabyte of free space and I use 990 megabyte, my email should be shutted off. Just makes no sense.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
The UK is the *worst* for this.
Lots of ISPs advertise unlimited broadband, then have an FUP limiting you - some as low as 2GB/month. They're allowed to get away with this even though it's blatantly false advertising.
I went with an ISP that chose not to lie.. and I don't regret it because it's never overloaded even at peak times... the heavy downloaders stay away (and as they define peak as a much more realistic 8am-6pm it's truly unlimited in the evenings when I need it).
Average of 1-2 gigs? On What? I metered myself once and just barely hit 100mb, but that included a 30mb patch for Civ 4 and a bit of youtube. What do people do that consumes 2 gig?
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
It makes *perfect* sense to have one or more plans which are not, infact, unlimited. But when you do, you should have the guts to openly say so, and state up-front what exactly the limits are.
It's fine to sell "2Mbps broadband, will be throttled to 64Kbps if you use more than 100GB/month", and then enforce that.
It's NOT fine to sell "2Mbps broadband, unlimited flat-rate", and then subsequently warn and disconnect users for using "too much" bandwith.
It's ok to have limits. Just be honest about it. Saying one thing in the comersials and another thing to customers who use a lot of bandwith is fraud, plain and simple. If you claim to be selling an unlimited plan -- you better actually *do* that.
You'r math for T1 traffic is way off.
Go type in "1536 Kb/second in GB/month" in google, and get the real number, which is 481.520477 GB / month.
( 1536 * 3600 * 24 * 30 ) / 8 / 1024 / 1024 which is about 475GB, close enough.
And for future reference, 1536Kbps equals 0.00146Gbps (or 0.000183GBps), NOT 0.1831GBps.
The "Unlimited" services annoy me but as long as the adverts say they are subject to an FUP, Oftel will allow them to use the "Unlimited" claim. The service I'm currently on claims to be unlimited at ADSL2 speeds, subject to an FUP. The FUP states that if they think I'm using too much bandwidth over any consecutive two month period they can warm me to back off. If I fail to reduce my usage within seven days of the email they will throttle the connection for a month (first "offence" as it were). The really annoying bit is the FUP doesn't give a figure for what is considered too much, in the words of an email sent to a user recently and posted on adslguide's forums: We do not cap our service or set a defined usage limit, just simply asking all our customers to be fair and considerate in the way in which they use the service. Which basically means they can decide any level they like is excessive without warning. Having said that, the collective experience of users generally show that 500GB per month is the warning level though I know some people who use will in excess of that.
After which your DSL provider's technical support people informed you that your Linux box is not supported. :-)
Not that an ISP should really be supporting any OS in the first place.
Maybe they clamped down on it in the US.. in the UK it's a sorry tale:
Vodaphone 'unlimited' 1GB
Eclipse 'unlimited' 20GB
etc. etc.
Those that don't have specific caps use weasel words like 'bandwidth management' and 'excessive usage' which in practice means they can decide to put you on a 56kbps connection tomorrow and you couldn't do a damned thing about it.
I'm not sure what was told to you but no I do not work with time warner. Just about every ISP that I know of does not allow the use of servers unless you are a commercial account. That being said, get a commercial account.
You must have worked for some shitty ISPs. I've never heard of such a clause and would never join an ISP with such a ludicrous limitation.
ADSL plans may have quotas but Cable (Formally NTL & Telewest, now Virgin Media) do not. I mean, they really really have no caps. Not even one hidden in the TOS. I've been blasting my cable modem connection since the day I got it, nearly seven years ago now, and there has not been a peep from them.
I also live in the UK and haven't had any problems with downloading ~500GB/mo for over 4/5 years, and I've had my cable connection for as long as it's been available. Our ISP played about with limits for a while, but then they dropped them again less than 6 months later, in that time, I never heard anything from them. BTW - if you're in the UK and you're on 2mbps, unlucky. 20mbps is what I have at home and it's only £40/mo. Suggest you start looking for a better ISP!
doesn't disconnect you for your offences, but will throw you in "walled garden" with 911/112 services intact if you have a VoIP subscription, and you will ofcourse still have access to they payment services online :)
OTOH I haven't heard of people who have tried this because of usage, only actual abuse, IE spam/virus/botnet activity... and if you don't pay your bills. I don't know if its different here in Europe.
I live in one of these stupid premium-style residential communities that are cropping up hereabouts like mushrooms after a spring rain. The latest trick offered is covering all utilites except phone, including electric bill and high-speed internet. The latter contract, despite numerous service problems since the place opened three years back, will be with Comcast. I have DSL; since I won't be able to get a static IP from Comcast, I plan to set up the damn Comcast connection running a DDNS Fedora Core rsync/http/ftp/torrent mirror, then throw one of my old 60GB drives full of (legally downloaded, redistributable) pr0n pics onto it, and add an open Wireless point to it as well. All kosher, according to my lease. I may even add some locally accessible public R/W storage, just to see what gets put on it.
And if (when?) I get Comcastically cut off, I'll take it up with my landlord... and start escrowing the rent. =)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Well, I am not one for arguing for big business, but it's their network. They don't want to impose hard limits but reserve the right to maintain quality of service. We have all been pissed off sitting there trying to check a quick email only to get the "thinking" status from the browser followed by a timeout error. So, as TFA says:
You look at it and see there's some two to three people in the neighborhood or a college dorm . . . and what they're doing is impairing the customer experience for the rest of the people off that node," Davis said. "Then it's a business decision: Do you alienate a small percentage of customers to make your other customers happy?"
If you have 25 customers pissed off because their $50/month broadband service is constantly slow, and 1 or 2 other people are constantly downloaded 300GB worth of data per month, what would you do? The problem, I am sure is that the situation was not handled with tact and reason. It was probably handled by some schmo customer rep who was like, "naaa, you just download too much, we just can't have that." If a nice polite person got on the phone and explained it just as the guy in the article, then people might be a little more understanding, and if not, tell them to go buy their own T3 line.
OK, so I've read all the comments, and the more I read, the more I'm amazed. You see, I'm from Belgium. Situation in Belgium: An ISP duopoly offering broadband internet at inflated prices. The limit? 10GB/month. That's it. This is not even a loose limit, it's actively monitored: download one kb too much and you'll get trottled down to a speed that would make 56k owners feel proud. A LOT of discussions have been going on on Belgian forums about this, with the main statement of the ISP's being: "there is no way you are filling up 10 gig/month with legal downloads", followed by the dowload linux/watch youtube/xbox live/buy movie arguments, that do make a lot of sense. I am one of the people that gets over 10GB monthly with normal internet use only. What am I reading here? People getting cut off for downloading 200 or 300 GB/month after getting warned and they are screaming and kicking like it's the end of the world. Even more: someone here claimed he gets 250GB monthly with legal downloads only. Sorry, but that is bullshit, even with all those linux distros you claim to download. An average of 300GB/month is NOT "reasonable". Your ISP warning you about your insane behaviour BEFORE cutting you off is reasonable. With our 10 GB/month limit we are very conscious about how much traffic an average action on the internet takes. Let me start by telling you that stuff like youtube and mp3 stores are completely neglectible, unless you are downloading 24/7. I'm estimating that if you love playing demos on your 360 and purchasing movies over the internet several times a month ("heavy legal usage", so way above the average) you'd end up using about 30GB/month.
As a former Telus customer (now a Shaw customer, they were the ONLY other choice) I can tell you they do enforce their limits. That they added after we signed up. Yes, we were with them that long. Will go to satellite before going back to big T.
The consumers are getting mixed messages. On one hand media and cable companies are pushing for movie downloads, TV over the Internet and other bandwidth heavy applications, but at the same time some internet providers who are also pushing for TV and movie downloads are trying to limit how much consumers can use. Something just isn't right here. Companies that limit bandwidth need to advertise limited Internet access and not have flashy commercial with people downloading movies 24-7. Can you imagine if all the people actually used what they are paying for?
YOU MUST BE A SHAW EMPLOYEE.
Please don't mention watermelon or you will give yourself away.
Valid point which begs the question: is one's bandwidth calculated by the port or all ports? What about other (possible) high traffic apps/services like WoW (being played five hours a day and four days a week), VNC (and RDP to a lesser degree), Yahoo's "music unlimited" service or streaming video for distance learning? Do they ignore some ip ports like 53? If so just change ports and problem solved.
With that said I know someone that's been serving a half dozen light RDP sessions five days a week for the last three years without a peep from his cable ISP.
That, and there's many times more dark fiber out there than lit fiber.
It's all lies. Bandwidth is not precious.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
We don't have to care. We can cut off your lifeline at any time we wish. Even if other of 'we' don't know we will always stick together.
Captcha: electron
and the other telcos don't either.
you're up against resource hogs, switch. you don't like your ISP, switch. with cable, you have one choice of end-link ISP. with the major telcos, there are dozens.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Apart from the fact that a T1 is 1.544Mb(it) per second, everything else in the above post is grossly incorrect, to orders of magnitudes.
Even a T3 (30x faster than a T1) couldn't push through 1/30th of the numbers linked above. And that's assuming in this bizarro world that you don't have to share bandwidth (which all technologies do), and don't have to accommodate spiking when everyone goes online at common times.
The cable companies are using terms in their marketing materials like "Always On" and "Unlimited". If that is what they are advertising, but it is not what they are selling, then that is bait and switch (claimed "unlimited", but the contract says really it's limited). If that is what they are advertising and selling, but then the product doesn't live up to the claims (claimed unlimited, contract says it's unlimited, but really it is limited), then that is false advertising. Both are illegal, and anyone harmed by this can sue.
Of course, it's difficult to prove what they are doing by yourself, but if you can get a few hundred folks who were terminated for using unlimited service "excessively", which is impossible since it's unlimited, they can bring a class-action suit and all of a sudden the preponderance of the evidence starts looking very different.
You see something similar all the time in one of my businesses: Landlording. A question that comes up a lot is what to do about an applicant who "just doesn't sit right". The app looks good enough, but your gut just says "no". The common mantra is: "Find a legal reason to reject." This is fine, but only to a point.
A guy asked once what to do about a fair housing complaint he received. It turns out Hispanic people "just didn't sit right" with him, and he was finding "legal" reasons to reject them all. Well, that is blatantly illegal (see the federal fair housing act), and I don't know what ever happened to him, but my guess is his overt racism cost him an awful lot of money in fines, judgments, and legal fees, not to mention lost rent (he turned away paying customers!).
My point is, if you do it once, you'll get away with it. But if you do it as a matter of policy, you're in big trouble.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
What's funny is that the most 'official' looking letter I got (DMCA violation) was completely incorrect in it's accusations. It stated that I had downloaded the movie "Waterworld", and instructed me to remove the offending material immediately. It even listed some details, like the IP address that was used to track me down (not even the same prefix or subnet as the one I was assigned by Comcast) and the dates/times as well as the filename.
I wrote them back telling them that they must be confused, because I don't even know how to download that kind of stuff (snicker), and if I did, I wouldn't risk being caught by downloading garbage like "Kevin Costner's Wet Dream", or whatever it was. Talk about offending material, sheesh. I then went on to happily use my Internet connection as normal for the next few months until I moved.
Anyway, even as an "alleged" copyright violator, you do have rights, and keep in mind that there are people out there who can help you if you do get into trouble. www.eff.org
However, the ISP is _really_ screwed by their upstream. If they want to sell generic ISP service to anyone in the UK, then they pretty much have only one choice - pay BT for a 'central pipe' - this is a virtual pipe that goes from the linecard at your local exchange, to the ISPs NOC.
For this 622mbit/s pipe, the ISP is charged the very scary number of 150K pounds per quarter.
This is about 70 megabytes/second, once all the layers (ATM, IP encapsulation, maximum pipe loading) is taken into account.
Per month, this comes out to almost exactly 200000 gigabytes.
That is - assuming traffic patterns were ideal, it costs well over 50p per gigabyte to get that traffic back to the ISP. Letting users max out 8mbit lines will cost you over 3000 pounds per month in bandwidth bills alone _PER USER_.
Assuming half revenue they get goes to bandwidth providers, half on staff, and half in 'profit' - that's around 3000/6 - 500 'regular users' paying the bills for one heavy user, before you start seeing _any_ possible profit.
Of course, most users will not do this.
But, even 30 gigabytes per month means that the ISP is certainly subsidising you, unless you're paying well above the normal market rates, or are in an area dense enough that it pays the ISP to install equipment in each exchange.
If you actually go to court, certain... uhm ... compromising facts may come to light.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I seem to be the only person on the planet to ever get anyone at Comcast to actually tell them how much bandwidth they can get away with. I finally ended up connected with someone in Florida who told me in so many words that if I went over 90GB/mo they would be upset with me. (I live in California.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't want my internet service rates pooled with DVD and music downloaders (ARRR matey!!!) any more than I want my health insurance pooled with fat smokers, or my car insurance with drivers carrying points.
I look forward to the day I pay for what I use, without subsidizing others.
No, it doesn't make sense. How can make sense having a defined quota, but being bullied away if I'm using it?
It makes perfect sense, and there's even a legal term for it: "consumer fraud".
Of course, delivering something other than what the customer paid for is really only fraud if there's a danger of being convicted. At present, at least in the US, there's little danger that an ISP will be prosecuted for fraud if they get a customer to agree to a contract and then don't deliver what the contract specifies. Instead of "fraud", that's called "business as usual". Almost any company that thinks they can get away with it will do it.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Comcast needs to be sued for false advertising, and for specific performance. They said it downloads this fast, costs this much, and nothing in the advertising or ToS says anything about specific download limits. To act otherwise is both fraud, and Bait & Switch. Why hasn't a lawyer already gone after them for this? They're a monopoly most places, and that places them under tighter play-nice rules -- or should!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I know this isn't new news, but here in Europe such practices are illegal and are in the process of being clamped down on. It's a breach of EU Consumer Regulations(Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts) to have limits on usage/download caps without explicitly stating what they are.
A few lines in terms and conditions talking vaguely about 'fair use' policies without specifically outlining what those policies are just don't cut it.
I know France has gone after a few, and am aware that a good few other jurisdictions are starting to move on the issue.
Concrete analysis...
FTA, ""It's like if you're driving down freeway, and there's nothing to say what the speed limit is," Carreiro said"
More like you're driving and you don't know how full your tank is. Bandwidth speed is clearly labeled, you just don't know how 'far' you can go.
Customers should be allowed to rollover unused bandwidth to the next month like some cellphone carriers are for unused minutes.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
You must have worked for some shitty ISPs. I've never heard of such a clause and would never join an ISP with such a ludicrous limitation.
From Cox Cable:
6. Servers. You may not operate, or allow others to operate, servers of any type or any other device, equipment, and/or software providing server-like functionality in connection with the Service, unless expressly authorized by Cox.
Comcast tells me I pay for 8 Mbps.
If I manage to saturate my download bandwidth for a whole month, I've downloaded 2.5 TB.
We gather that 250 GB (a tenth the maximum possible) is the threshold for getting a nastygram. Say you're downloading pr0n or TV shows or movies. And say it's high-def divx/xvid. An hour of high-def content with 5.1 channel surround sound is around 1 GB. So to get busted, you need to consistently download 250 hours of content per month, or almost 10 hours of downloaded TV per day.
Naturally when we start downloading 1080p content, the numbers will change, but for the time being this tells me I'm under the threshold, and it's probably safe to say that so is anyone else who isn't doing something quite extraordinary with their internet connection.
I specifically asked pre-sales people if I could use 100% of my connection 100% of the time. They said yes. They lied. I lost hundreds in setup fees and having to buy ANOTHER dsl modem (they all insist on using THEIRS).
Fuck speakeasy. Don't listen to the parent post.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/tags/speakea sy There's my pre-sales chat. They told me they would waive my $300 termination fee (even though they terminated) if I didn't blog about it. Fuck them. They were the evilest of all ISPs I've ever had -- a total of at least 10.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I used to download torrents, but I stopped after a rather unusual set of events that occurred one night. I should preface this by saying I am a Time Warner RoadRunner customer. While I was downloading (and uploading, as is the nature of bittorrent) my network connection inexplicably dropped to 0 kb/s. I thought it might be a problem with the client I was using, so I opened up my browser to find out more information, but instead of opening up to my default homepage, it was a form letter from Time Warner that said, in a nutshell, "We know what you're doing. Stop it." At the bottom was a submit button acknowledging that I had read the warning.
I realize this sounds conspiratorial, but it honestly happened exactly as I describe (the form letter was obviously longer and more lawyer-sounding... I wish I had taken a screenshot). My first thought was that somehow my Firefox browser had been hijacked through some 0-day exploit, and if I clicked the submit button I'd be taken to porn sites or something. So I close the browser, check my running tasks to make sure it's not still running, then open it up again. Once again, the same message. OK... weird. I then try and trace route Yahoo, and all my outbound connections are going to the same place... a Time Warner IP.
In other words, they redirected all my outbound requests, and the only inbound response I got was from their web servers. I mean, I know intellectually that they have the power to do something like that, but it was friggin' spooky to see them actually do it.
As soon as I clicked the submit button, my outbound network traffic was restored. And I have to say, even amidst all the scare-mongering on sites like Slashdot about the MP/RIAA's tactics, this finally did the trick.
Also note, I'd downloaded (and uploaded) hundreds of gigs of traffic before this without a peep. In the form I got in my browser, it stated that my IP had basically been singled out as violating their usage policies and they had received complaints from copyright holders. As the parent poster said, they didn't have to do this. They could have simply handed my IP over and wiped their hands of it. Take their warning to heart. It might be the only one you get.
His tone is annoying as hell.
As TFA said, "fair" usage is increasing as the popularity of bandwidth-intensive activities like viewing live video and music increases.
As the price of connectivity (that ISP's have to pay for themselves) falls - which is what allows it to be cheaper.
Cable or DSL is sold in unlimited fashion within reason. What happens is ~ 5% of customers use ~90% of the bandwidth (it may sound like a sound bite but that's really about the ratio we've seen here, on a sample of tens of thousands of customers) - invariably because they are downloading illegally copied software and media form P2P networks / Usenet. These customers literally are do the maximum possible data transfer 24/7 , these customers typically have another connection (e.g. a second DSL line) they use for browsing/email/games/etc.
What we do here is put them in a single 'bad boy' pipe, where all the users using the service exclusively for Usenet leeching and file trading have to contend with each other (rather than with customers trying to use the line for something more legitimate). I think in this day and age it's pretty lame for a provider to resort to kicking people off rather than doing rate limiting so that they have a worse QoS - it means they don't have their act together technically.
I would add that given that these same users are using the system to break the law in the first place (they are all to a man using it to copy movies/music/software illegally), they are out on a limb here IMNSHO.
If they want to providers to act more 'fairly' the 'fair' thing to do would surely be to give them truly unlimited bandwidth as the consumer expected, but then to immediately report them to the authorities for suspicious activity, who will then barge in and confiscate all their equipment (thus rendering them unable to use their line at all) and they will likely end up with a big fine and stuck paying for the connection (which they can't use) until the contract is up. That way, everyone is a winner. Oh, except the guy that was leeching movies/music/software.
Personally, I like this idea a lot, though I imagine it would give the PR department a headache (so it's win-win! *boom* *boom*).
If people who don't want want *truly* unlimited bandwidth and same-QoS-for-every-user (the 'say no to two tier internet' folks who don't really understand how things work already - and who presumably think we charge business customers much more because business are stupid) get their way I wouldn't be entirely unhappy. That way, everyone would have to pay about the same rates as commercial customers for bandwidth, and the signal to noise ratio might increase on the intertubes.
Yes, yes - I'm evil.
.....those buffets that have tried to kick someone out after X number of trips through the line in spite of the "All You Can Eat" signs hanging everywhere. It's either $7.99 for "All You Can Eat" or else it's not -- if it's not, don't hang a sign saying it is. (Anyone who knows me and my appetite would understand my making a food analogy -- and NO, I am not one of those who has been thrown out of a buffet.....yet.)
I'm sorry, Mr. ISP -- "unlimited" means "unlimited" and probably would in any court of law. Either state clear limits and parameters, or live up to the word "unlimited." I'm surprised this hasn't been litigated yet -- a good class-action lawsuit might get things changed.
Really, how many people actually hog that much bandwidth anyway? Back to the buffet analogy -- such a restaurant understands that, even in today's obese society, rare is the diner who's going to make half a dozen trips through the line. By contrast, I know quite a few folks for whom an AYCE buffet isn't about quanitity -- it's about efficiency (no waiting to be served) and variety (a little of this, a little of that, no menu to stick to)-- in reality, they probably aren't even getting decent value for the amount they eat. The restaurant knows it all evens out in the end. Likewise, for every broadband subscriber whose connection is gobbling terabytes of data 24/7, there are probably hundreds more who might use their connection a couple hours a day, if that. (Hard as it may seem for the hardcore web addicts to believe, lots of folks have other things taking up their time, like school, jobs, kids, relationships, hobbies, etc.)
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if this is not about cost or infrastructure, but rather a result of the **AA's and others leaning on providers, convincing them that the more bandwidth being used by someone, the greater the liklihood that they are doing something illegal.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
And that's the point. If you want a metered account with guaranteed service, they are available and not for that much more money and from damn near every provider out there.
Those accounts that are not metered by guaranteed bandwidth do not guarantee, well, ANYTHING and state their limitations in behavioral terms e.g. "thou shalt not run file servers," ergo, you're lucky they don't just cancel your f'ing account entirely if you're running torrents 24/7.
You want stated limits? Get an account that has them and stop trying to screw over everyone else because you're too cheap to spend the extra twenty bucks to get what you want.
The article fails to mention the fact that its fairly easy to avoid congestion when you institute rate limiting / traffic shaping on outbound traffic. From the article, it sounds like the ISP's like comcast have no choice but to remove people from the network who are causing congestion for the rest of the users on a subnet. This is not the case, as it is simple to configure a router to control the flow of bandwidth to a particular link. This can be done on a connection basis, protocol basis, port basis, etc.
You'll get this: a claim (probably correct, too), that their sales/connection center is outsourced. If sales, the salesperson "should not have agreed to this and was misinformed. they have been retrained/retrenched.", the latter, similar. You'll at most get a refund for the existing costs for your setup and monthly bills, be apologized too, and perhaps offered a discounted rate for a period on one of their commercial plans.
Two things spring to mind, not to imply though that these negate your consumer rights: "E&OE" - errors and omissions excepted (let me tell you the fun time when I was trying to order multiple ISDN lines to my home and the dear old bat who'd been working for the telco since the days of manual operator services insisted over and over that it was only $10 a line for installation because I'd already one POTS line at same premises) - this also ties to the second point, that employees below a certain level "have no power to alter the terms and conditions of connection contract".
You were the victim of a simple (although annoying, unfortunate and etc) error, perhaps compounded by a salesperson eager to get commission (not inherently the telco's fault, though of course, certainly not yours). Thinking that you'll force them to enact some kind of "servers allowed" policy change, though, is hopelessly optimistic, naive, and ultimately uncalled for.
It's no trick to download 90-120G per month.
And with services like the new Unbox, I anticipate bumping that up by another 20G a month.
Is that excessive? Not hardly.
And no, I don't use P2P.
Yeah, get a commercial account, so you can get the same exact service and SLA, but be charged a lot more for it.
Surely you don't believe the crap the ISP's spout, right?
Looks to me like a textbook case of consumer fraud. If I am paying for "unlimited" Internet, I would expect it to actually be unlimited.
How come I can't find such a price (R18K) on http://www.telkom.co.za/ ?
I've got the fastest plan Cox RI has, and it's 15Mbit/2Mbit. Not too bad. So yea I've easily downloaded over 300GB in a month. I've left my upload pegged at 2Mbit for a week at a time.
It's never been a problem.
They don't advertise what they have for a "limit" and although I've seen other people say Cox will limit bandwidth I've experienced none. Of course, Cox has purchased up a lot of regional cable providers, and they don't consolidate the systems.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Let's tell Comcast that, in the spirit of their advertising, and by the example it sets, our binding "shrinkwrap" understanding of the terms of service are
Regards, -- Chris Johansen
Speakeasy cut me off without warning. After calling support for what I thought it was a malfunction I was told that they had cut me off and I would have to speak to a technician (if this sounds like "you misbehaved and you'll have to go to the principal" it certainly felt that way). This technician told me that on my line there was "too much P2P traffic". I replied that I wasn't running any p2p programs or running any servers. In the end, they said that from their perspective I was maxing my bandwith too many hours a day and if they had many customers like me they wouldn't be profitable; If I agreed to use less bandwith they would restore the service, otherwise they were not interested in having me as a customer.