How Does Your ISP Handle Top-Usage Customers?

davidwr (791652) writes "Does your ISP cap overall usage? What happens if you go over the cap? Does it force you into a higher-priced plan, throttle you for the rest of the month, cut you off for the month, or terminate your service entirely? I don't mind paying for what I use, but I'm looking for a list of cable and DSL providers that won't leave you high and dry like Comcast does if you go over the official or unofficial limits."

Comments

Comcast Weans Hogs Off Their Packet Teat

[eldavojohn]

I don't mind paying for what I use, but I'm looking for a list of cable and DSL providers that won't leave you high and dry like Comcast does if you go over the official or unofficial limits.

Well, since it's highly unlikely my similar story I submitted this morning will be accepted after this is the on the front page, I'll just submit it to Slashdot as a comment.

The telecommunications giant Comcast has severed its services to internet hogs who use more bandwidth than others. From the article,

Carreiro said he received a message from a Comcast Security Assurance representative in December, who warned him that he was hogging too much of the company's bandwidth and needed to cut down. When Carreiro contacted customer service about the call, they had no idea what he was talking about and suggested it was a prank phone call. Unconvinced, Carreiro contacted Comcast several more times, but was again told there was no problem. A month later, he woke up to a dead Internet connection. Customer service directed him to the Security Assurance division, which Carreiro said informed him he would now be without service for one year.

This is quite alarming to me, considering that I am forced into using a particular ISP based on some deal my neighborhood made many years before I moved here.

And, if I may elaborate, I feel I am a hog though I have never ever been threatened with this action before. What interests me is that they have my bandwidth capped and even that cap seems to fluctuate with how much my neighborhood is using. But, I'm pretty sure that the cable modem I have is physically capped at a low level because I've read stories of people uncapping them and being pretty much black listed. If that's what these "hogs" are doing, then I have little sympathy for them. The only time I had an uncapped connection was when I was in Bailey Hall at the University of Minnesota my freshman year. They had just installed ethernet and I soon discovered that they trusted me a little more than they should have. An unproductive dumbass freshman with a bass amp/speaker combo, a computer, a modded dreamcast and an uncapped connection to mIRC/morpheus/gnutella/etc made for some interesting nights ... rest assured that rooms adjacent to N410 knew the 8 bit emulated glory of contra theme song as I destroyed Red Falcon night after night.

Back to the topic, though, I have often used BitTorrent while playing World of Warcraft and using Ventrillo with no problems. Me and my roommates pay for the highest upload/download rates but, as I've said before, we never get close to those numbers.

Here's a better question, how does your ISP handle telephone calls by unsatisfied customers who complain that in the middle of the day using a third party site, their bandwidth is pinched FAR BELOW what they've been paying for? In my case, as a current customer of Cox, I can speak from first hand experience that those calls go largely unnoticed--although I've had different results from different providers at different locations.

Re:Comcast Weans Hogs Off Their Packet Teat

[TubeSteak]

But, I'm pretty sure that the cable modem I have is physically capped at a low level because I've read stories of people uncapping them and being pretty much black listed [google.com]. If that's what these "hogs" are doing, then I have little sympathy for them.

You're totally confusing two different things.

The bandwidth cap we're talking about is "GBs per month", not "how fast does my modem go". Your modem goes as fast as the service you paid for, while "GBs per month" is some magical number that Comcast doesn't tell you.

From what I've read, Comcast warns you to lower your usage at some point after 100GB.
Uncapping your modem = bannination if/when as they notice.

Re:Comcast Weans Hogs Off Their Packet Teat

[Red Flayer]

Here's a nifty quote from Comcast (emphasis mine):

"The customers who are notified of excessive use typically and repeatedly consume exponentially more bandwidth than an average residential user, which would include, for example, the equivalent of sending 256,000 photos a month[1], or sending 13 million e-mails every month (or 18,000 emails every hour, every day, all month). In these rare instances, Comcast's policy is to proactively contact the customer via phone[2] to work with them and address the issue or help them select a more appropriate commercial-grade Comcast product."

[1] 256,000 photos? Or one or two HD movies? There's more to this policy than meets the eye, I'd bet.

[2] Via phone? Are you kidding me? Put it in writing or it doesn't exist (I'm an accountant, it's one of the rules that I live by). If a class-action suit does come into being, that policy of contacting people by phone could come back to bite them... of course, if they put it in writing, then the policy could come back to bite them even more easily. Nice Catch-22.

Re:Comcast Weans Hogs Off Their Packet Teat

[onx]

I also have cox at home (currently I am in another state at college) and like you, at home I have their fastest residential plan (12Mb/1.2Mb) however my experience has been much better. We have had Cox high-speed internet for several years, and they have upgraded our service over the years several times. From what I understand Cox (at least they did about a year ago) had a transfer limit of 20GB down a month. A first time violation gets you nothing, no notice phone call or anything of that sort. Repeatedly and frequently exceed that cap, or do so by a significant amount and you will get a warning. I believe they have a sort of three strike policy, but maybe it is four, after which they terminate your account. However I have never heard of Cox throttling a user's rates as you claim.

In fact, a few months ago my stepfather inadvertently switched us to the 256kb/256kb plan, so obviously I noticed the huge speed difference and thought there was a problem. I called Cox and told them my internet was super slow, talked to tech support on the phone, they were nice but weren't able to do anything so we scheduled a home visit. Cox guy comes in his van, does preventative maintenance, and then starts trying to diagnose the problem. He said they had been doing work in the area recently and maybe that was messing with the signal, after about an hour+ of ruling out everything (even installing an amp they gave us for free, just in case) he calls HIS tech support line and they find out the problem, we're running a slow config...Cox guy complains the stupid tech on the phone should have noticed this right away (the one I scheduled the appointment with) and helps me switch us back to the fast config. Thirty minutes later we get 12Mb/1.2Mb again, after about 2 hours total of tech support and a home visit because our speeds are far below what we (thought) we were paying for. The in home tech even went to dslreports to do speed checks.

So, as a current customer of Cox, I can speak from first hand experience that those [speed complaints] are taken seriously, but then again the old saying goes...your mileage may vary.

Re:Comcast Weans Hogs Off Their Packet Teat

[Door in Cart]

I check the cable modem's IP, and it's 24.0.X.X. 24.0 ? what the hell is that ? Comcast IPs are always 68.X through 72.X. According to ARIN whois, 24.0.0.0 - 24.0.255.255 is allocated to Comcast of Pennsylvania.

For Australians....

[danpat]

If you were in Australia, you could use http://www.whirlpool.net.au/.

A consumer advocacy group, with an extensive ISP plan database that lets you search on all the criteria you've mentioned. Anyone know if there is an equivalent in the US?

Re:For Australians....

[Chris Pimlott]

Whirlpool is a great resource, they list pretty every plan offered by every significant ISP in Australia, including bandwidth caps. Which is important since bandwidth limits are standard practice for all ISPs. While some ISPs will gouge you with excessive usage fees (particularly in business plans), most will instead throttle your bandwidth after you've hit the max, normally to 64kbps. A few ISPs do offer unlimited plans, but they are expensive (over A$100 a month) and offer no real guarentees, as the "unlimited" accounts are the first to be shaped if the ISP starts straining its upstream capacity.

Mobistar, Belgium

[Ford Prefect]

Cheap and cheerful ADSL - I get 15GB a month transfer included, and every gigabyte after that costs 50 cents.

No idea if there's an upper limit (but I doubt it) - but it has the benefit of clearly publicising how much you can transfer, and what happens if you exceed that. No hidden small-print or anything...

Bell Sympatico

[zyl0x]

I live in Southern Ontario, and I'm will Bell Sympatico's high-speed DSL. My family switched from their dial-up access as soon as their DSL service came out. I've hit download speed of up to 2.5mbps, which isn't supposed to happen, and we're supposed to have some sort of 8 or 10GB limit, but our online bandwidth counter has always been frozen at 0GB. No matter how much we download, we never get charged more than our flat-rate.

I'm sure this is not intended, but you could always sign up and take a gamble. ;)

7.95$/Gb

[Frederic54]

My ISP, videotron, has a 20Gb/month cap, and charge 7.95$CAN per Gb after that...

Re:7.95$/Gb

[gfilion]

My ISP, videotron, has a 20Gb/month cap, and charge 7.95$CAN per Gb after that...

I use Videotron too. Once I misconfigured a remote backup and used 95 Gb in a month! That would have cost me $556.50 in overcharges, but hopefully they have a $30 maximum for the overcharge.

Re:7.95$/Gb

[jacexpo069]

I am also a videotron subscriber. You only have to pay 7.95$/GB if you are an Extreme High speed internet plus subscriber. (which is 20Mbps) or High Speed (7mbps) and download 20GB. If you have just regular Extreme high Speed (which is 10Mbps), then there is no limit, and that is clearly posted here http://www.videotron.com/services/en/internet/comp arer-xtmplus.jsp On the compare tab. Buyer beware! And yes I have gone over 20GB per month, and all I get is a notice that I went over 20GB per month (I think it was 35GB), no charges or fees.

Speakeasy

[internic]

I've had Speakeasy for years. Between my roommates and me, we've used quite a bit of bandwidth and never had any complaint from them. They generally deal fairly and honestly with their customers, so I think they'd be a good bet for getting clear rules and fair treatement. They actually have fair and reasonable terms of service, good reliability, good customer service, etc., but you do pay a bit more for that.

On the other hand, they were recently acquired by Best Buy, so I'm not certain how long they will continue to be good.

Business Class Line

[SCHecklerX]

Since my last ISP (suscom) saw fit to block inbound port 25 traffic, I was forced to pay extra for their business class line. This gave me 'less bandwidth' but a much more solid connection with a static IP address and no filtering.

Suscom was bought out by comcast, and I am still a business class customer, but now with lots more bandwidth.

I haven't had a serious issue yet other than rolling outages as comcast took over (grrrr).

Anyway. Even for home use, especially if you want to run your own servers, my experience has been pay the extra for the more stable business class line and don't worry about it. You get the advantage of bypassing the level 1 support monkeys when you have problems then, too.

Finland, Sonera

[hopopee]

Back in my student days I got a 10/10Mbit connection from Sonera, which was in _heavy_ use. I did over 150GB in several months but got no complaints from it at all. Nowadays I have 2/2Mbit connection from the same firm and have done vastly more than 50GB on several months. No limits and no problems. Guess the Finnish ISPs are doing at least something right :)

Re:AT&T DSL

[BobPaul]

AFAIK, QWest DSL is the same. I've only ever had problems with Cable. The local CableOne.net throttles your speed to half what you pay (eg to 768kbps for 1.5mbps service) for an hour or two if you go over some limit during an hour time span. Limits are in their cable modem acceptable usage policy, which is only accessible once you enter a zip code, so may very by locale.

Time Warner / RoadRunner

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally love my TW/RR, even hearing peoples' complaints... here's why...

-) I have the "Telecommuter" business class service, which I chose for its cost effective static IP. (approx $60/mo for 6mb down/512kb up)

Being a biz class account, I was given a direct ph num to level 2 support, and any service issue/request I've has had a 1-2 day response.

Initially the service would cut out during bad weather (i suspect rain buildup or something)... call after call they'd come out and replace something (splitters, phone pole connections, cable modem)... after about the 5th call I got a Cisco cable modem/router to replace the crappy modem and haven't had a problem since.

I've heard that their support blows, but that seemed to be level1 ("please reset the cable modem, unplug the cable, try again")

I'm not sure how I'd feel if I had to deal with residential class service, but the extra $ isn't much for the benefits. (too bad they rape your wallet if you want a second IP)

Re:Comcast?

[BobPaul]

I'd start here

Re:Somewhat related...

[nxtw]

Road Runner doesn't care. Downloading a few patches and ISOs isn't going to get you noticed and neither will using large amounts of bandwidth for P2P.

Re:You can get the service...

[_xeno_]

You don't get Comcast for $30/month either. I'm currently paying something like $110/month for Comcast, although that includes cable. According to my bill it's something like $50/month for just the cable internet portion, and $60/month for the TV.

Given the quality of service (ha!) that you get from Comcast, I'm beginning to think I might want to find a different ISP. Too bad my only other choice is Verizon, who have yet to provide me with working phone service.

Re:Comcast?

[Caffeinate]

As a low-level grunt for the company, I will confirm that Comcast does indeed cap bandwidth. The stated limited (and yes, it is in the TOS agreement which nobody reads - available on the Comcast.com website) is 60 GB/month. Yes many people exceed that and don't get cut off (which is the penalty), but be warned that the company can legally do so if they feel you are degrading the service for other customers.

Luckily I don't even live in an area where I can GET Comcast, so it's a non-issue for me! I just have to deal with Rogers' packet-shaping, BitTorrent ruining behaviours :(

Thanks, but no thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I know Bell DOES charge some people for extra bandwidth -- I've seen such bills first hand. Some of their plans were unlimited, but they've introduced 30GB caps for new customers (just check their website). Currently, Bell has *NO* unlimited plan, at any price! Not to mention, their 5Mbit plan is kinda slow (tops I've seen using it is 350KB/s off a very fast server) -- very deceiving IMO. Not to mention their combined modem/shitty router (with ghetto firmware no less) equipment sucks hard. Their availability is kinda low too. Possibly the worst Canadian ISP I can think of!

For the ones around Halifax, Eastlink has very good speeds, and decent prices, but they enforce the 30GB cap bad (you're stuck at speeds 10Kb/s or less after you hit it, for the rest of the month... it sucks!)

In Quebec, the best choice is Videotron. Their 10Mbit plan ("extreme high speed") is super fast (I do get downloads at 1250KB/s!), and it's TOTALLY unlimited. My downloads hit a 3 digit number (in GB) every month, no slowdowns, no extra charges, no caps (in contract or otherwise), etc.

Well, then, fuck Cablevision.

[Wakko Warner]

Cablevision's Optimum Online service is great until you accidentally upload more than you should. The numbers I've heard for "more than you should" range from a few hundred megabytes to a few gigabytes, sustained over a few hours. There are no official answers to exactly how much you can upload or for how long.

I've been capped four times now, since 1997. They keep a lifetime record of this. It's not like moving violations, where they drop off your record in a few years. If I fuck up again, at all, for the rest of my life, they will immediately disconnect my cable service and won't ever do business with me again.

Apparently the free market hasn't made its way to the northeastern united states yet.

Re:You can get the service...

[ivan256]

Comcast may not block ports on business connections, but expect to be blocked remotely... By e-mail servers, for example.

Blacklists treat Comcast static business IPs as equal evils to their dynamic IP pools.

Also, upstream sucks on cable, regardless of whether you pay for the business connection or not.

Teksavvy DSL in Southern Ontario

[Anonymous Coward]

I get 5000/800, UNLIMITED. There are no secret caps or bullshit, I've used over 100GB in a month many times with them and never heard a peep. The best part?
It is $30 a month.

Re:That guy might have been me.

[ClioCJS]

Well, if I recorded the phonecalls after checking ot make sure it doesn't violate Seattle, Washington law, then I could have posted mp3s of them. But I don't record all my phonecalls. The NSA might have your proof. But the actual talking of 100 gigs was done voice, over the phone. They attacked me for being the top downloader in the Washington, D.C., POP. The harassment went on for awhile; I wasted at least 3 hours on the phone arguing with them. "But the terms of service say I can download as much as I want." They didn't buy that argument!

They also told me "you are not allowed to run bots, and bittorrent is a bot".

When I asked if I was negatively affecting the network performance, they said no. Which is the only valid reason in terms of service for disconnecting me based on usage. No, I wasn't hurting the network. They just didn't like that I was using the bandwidth they gave me.

What other kinds of "proof" do you need to see? Here's the only data I still have in phone-numbers.txt (which I have on my thumbdrive here). It's not proof of what happened, though. It's more like.. "Why would Clint have all these phone numbers if he was making all this up?" SpeakEasy.Net [DSL] IPs: hell:66.92.160.137 magic:66.92.160.138 storm:66.92.160.139 fire:66.92.160.49 mist:66.92.160.103 router:66.92.160.132 SpeakEasy.Net [DSL] email:clint@speakeasy.net username:clint SpeakEasy.Net [DSL] ACCT#292773 ORDER#:6604118 order date:Jun 21 SPKREF:164 SpeakEasy.Net [DSL] customer support: 1-800-556-5829 Ext 7713 Todd Voelker 800-556-5829 Ext 2248 SpeakEasy.Net [DSL] rebates:www.speakeasy.net/rebates offer#5744-A started_with:web-rebates.com/Sprebates/5744/step1. asp SpeakEasy.Net [DSL] hardware:Broadxent 8012-V P/N:245-08012-00-00 S/N:C1BF0051510001659A MAC:00E0EB-767AD4 SpeakEasy.Net [DSL] The Speakeasy Activation Crew 1-800-556-5829 Fax:206-728-1500 Email: support@speakeasy.net SpeakEasy.Net [DSL] dialup: username:clint@speakeasy.net password:12345

Here in Canada ...

[Alistar]

At least in Saskatchewan, we have basically Sasktel (Phone) and Shaw cable. Sasktel does not cap, whether they say they do or not, I have never seen them do it, none of my friends have had it capped, and I have several friends now that work for them and even one in that department and they do not cap. Heck they even allow me to run servers, off my basic home DSL, I actually asked and they said it was no problem. I believe the basic home is 1M down / 256 up, and you can go up to 5 down 1 up for an extra 10-15 dollars and then there is another level after that for another 20-25 dollars, but I don't remember what it was. Oh and neither makes you sign a contract, you sign up and cancel when you want, heck I bought out the hardware for both and jump back and forth between companies as I need different services (Shaw is faster for cheaper, but has a few other limitations), takes a day to shift and if you talk nice to the representatives they will even refund parts of the month you didn't use if you get them to shut it off right away. Shaw cable caps me at about 75 GB total used up and down, but will attempt to contact you and ask you to be respectful of the bandwidth first. If they fail to contact you, they will cut you off, but a simple call back will get you hooked up. They don't actually cut you off completely if they get a hold of you, but usually if they have called me, I watch my use for the rest of the month. There is Telus in other provinces, but it is an evil corporation.

Competition is cool

[Jester'snotmynicknam]

I recently moved from Seattle, WA to Columbus OH. When I got here, there were like, 3 or 4 cable providers in the local directory to choose from. Having been locked into monopoly land (WA state) for my whole life, I had no idea anything this wonderful existed. I chose one at random, (road runner I think, time warner? dunno) and signed up. Since that time, I have had obsurdly fast connections (I actually SEE 700KB/s, bytes, not bits, not just advertised) and can call and have things fixed when they go wrong. Anyway, yes, markets with multiple sources of cable exist, and it sends you into a strange nirvana like state of being, where everything just works better. Ok, it isn't that cool, but it is nice. BTW: I downloaded SuSE, Slackware, Solaris (I was curious), scientific linux, Quantian, debian, and this is getting obsurd. anyway, about 200GB of crap, over about a weeks worth the time, much of it over bittorrent (I know, legal stuff over bit torrent, my appologies) and they never even flinched. I routinely pull 2 and 4 GB of log files off of servers I am running elsewhere, push installs across my VPN, and do other wacky stuff, all on a $35/month connection. Obviously, one data point doesn't mean much, but my datapoint definitely likes competition. Its almost as if monopolies aren't good for service or something.