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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."
A company so large, they don't give a damn what any individual is doing.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
...But be prepared to pay for it.
Speakeasy used to be such an ISP. With their recent acquisition by Best Buy, I'd no longer gamble that way. But there are other ISPs who will be just as tolerant.
You just won't get them for $30/month.
I am not about to defend the ISP practice of advertising "unlimited" downloads, then dropping customers using more than their "fair share". That's even stupider than presuming that high levels of bandwidth use is an indication of copyright infringement.
However, if you are paying $30/month for DSL or cable, you should keep in mind that that is comparable to AOL/CompuServe/Genie/Prodigy rates 15 years ago. For that you got a minimumal connections speed (at the time typically 9600 or 14400 baud) into their system and then shared access to their internet gateway (if any) and either caps on usage or extreme overage fees. You could pay for higher speed, busness-class services (higher speed modem pools, ISDN, frame-relay, etc.).
I would argue that the current, minimally-acceptable speed in the US is somewhere around a symmetric 384k based on the currently available services and typical usage patterns. At the low price points, the ISP will be focusing on meeting this minimum need across their subscriber base. Their ToS should clearly establish what your usage limits are and the termination clause, upgrade process, or price/MB for exceeding that limit.
On the other hand, if you know that the minimum plan won't meet your need, don't whine or subscribe then bitch about it. Go find a plan that will either through a competitor (if available) or via a business class service. For example, Cox Business Services division will sell cable-modem service to a residence. You just have to call a different phone number. You also get a more tech-friendly ToS agreement.
The problem with defining the limit is that people will realize that they are far from it and make more use of their bandwidth.
There's been talk of for-pay P2P services where you could actually earn money (or free movies) by providing the bandwidth to distribute stuff for the big movie companies. If i knew I could use 200 Gigs of comcast bandwidth each month, but i was only using 3, then i'd be able to sell 197 for something i could use.
The problem with a cap is that I'm sure i can consume 50 gigs in a busy month just by working from home - I routinely download huge files overnight. But I'm not sure they could support every user on the network moving 50GB a month and don't want to imply that it's reasonable for everyone to use that amount. In reality their network can maybe carry 5GB for every user, but they can't set the limit there because too many techies would leave and badmouth the service to their friends and neighbors (and i've set dozens of people up with internet access and/or recommendations).
Worm devlopers are smart enough not to flood thier connections. It's much better to have 5 bots at 20% cap who never get detected than one at 100% that gets shut down.
They didn't used to be this smart, but then it became big enough business that they got into customer service.
Even so, banning people outright is stupid. Why not just dial their bandwidth down to 3 KB/s or so as they approach the limit?
for a minute there, i lost myself...
Vancouver, Canada here. Shaw cable has four plans for cable internet.
There's a "Lite" version that's a bit better than dialup. 256Kbps SL/128Kbps UL with a 10GB/mo limit
A "High Speed" version, for $40/mo. 5Mbps DL/0.5Mbps upload, with a 60GB/mo limit
An "Extreme" version, for $50/mo. 10Mbps DL/1Mbps upload, with a 100GB/mo limit
And a new "Nitro" version, for $100/mo. 25Mbps DL/1MBps upload, with a 150GB/mo limit
All of these limits are "soft" limits. If you push them too hard, they email you a nasty message and start monitoring your usage. I'm pretty sure I've gone over these once or thrice, but have yet to receive an email about it, though my friends have.
I've had the High Speed version for... yikes, 9 years now (was originally 3Mbps DL with a 1GB limit that was never enforced). It's been pretty good for me, though in some neighbourhoods people saw slowdowns and outages from time to time.
Shaw is a decent company that isn't run by jerks. And no I don't work for them. (And their digital phone service is too expensive!)
Previous 'grunts at the company' have stated many different figures, where does the 60GB come from? I scoured through the Comcast TOS (which consists, separately, of the Comcast Service Agreement, Acceptable Use Policy, and Abuse Policy, and does not appear to be available from comcast.com), no mention of 50GB anywhere, or any hard numbers, anywhere.
From the Service Agreement, though: Facilities Allocation. Comcast reserves the right to determine, in its discretion, and on an ongoing basis, the nature and extent of its facilities allocated to support HSI, including, but not limited to, the amount of bandwidth to be utilized and delivered in conjunction with HSI.
Basically, like people have been complaining about for years, it can easily be a moving target, and they can terminate your account without having to tell you either what the hard limits are, OR what generally acceptable numbers are.
Back when I had Comcast, they started sending me nasty letters after I was just using 10GB/month (mind, in a college city, too!), and trust me, there are lots of ways to fill up a *lot* of bandwidth besides BT, particularly with faster, larger, higher capacity games, online video, music, nevermind what percentage of HTTP bandwidth comes back down to advertising.
Comcast doesn't seem like a very good company to begin with, though. In my first-hand experience, they're rotten. I'd been acquired through their buying out AT&T Broadband Internet cable service, it hadn't been so much of a hassle, except that they had given everyone else new cable modems out of it, and even though I was still renting mine, they refused to do anything about mine, which had given consistently low speeds and generated a ton of heat. This wasn't even the biggest problem. When it came time to move, I had tried a half-dozen or more times to cancel the service before moving, but they refused, because I had really been a customer of ATTBI, and so, they told me they had no obligation to allow me to simply discontinue service, since, apparently, I wasn't even really in the system. Despite numerous attempts both over the phone and in-person, they would just not let me discontinue service. I still had to move. Of course, even when I tried to return the modem, they started going on about how that wasn't Comcast equipment, so they couldn't accept a return, a month later, they charge me for several months of supposedly unpaid service (when I had only moved a month before), and the modem, when they refused to handle anything in a remotely sane manner.
So, it doesn't really surprise me in the slightest when people consistently have problems and fears over Comcast discontinuing their service, since they never announce even so much as a safety margin on how much you can use. Though, other people have stated figures quite different from 60gb numerous times, too.
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
What legitimate (according to their TOS) way could you even hit the upload cap for an extended period? Remember the TOS probably says no servers and they can easily argue that includes your bit torrent client so there goes the "linux iso's" argument.
Maybe I'm a web publisher and need to upload lots of files? Maybe I VPN into the office and need to move data? Maybe I want to send my 700 pictures from Italy to my Mom? Maybe I'm an Indie Artist and I want to upload my library to Live365? I can think of a million reasons I'd want upload bandwidth that aren't related to bittorrent or servers.
We need net neutrality. We also need a law: If it says unlimited, it's unlimited. No fine print. If they can't support unlimited connections then stop selling them. Print in plain English what your limits are. Then I'll be able to choose based on that. That's how a free market works.
If I could do anything I'd kill all the lawyers and outlaw fine print.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.