The Facts & Fiction of Bandwidth Caps

wjamesau writes "What's the deal with broadband caps, like Comcast's 250GB/month data transfer limit, which goes into effect tomorrow? Om Malik at GigaOM has a whitepaper laying out the facts and fiction about Comcast's short-sightedness (which other carriers are mimicking), and how it will impact the future Internet: 'Given the growth trend due to consumers' changes in content consumption, today's power users are tomorrow's average users. By 2012, the bill for data access is projected to be around $215 per month.' Ouch." The white paper is embedded at the link using Scribd; for a PDF version you'll have to give up an email address.

Comments

The projected costs are worthless.

[Aladrin]

I have serious doubts as to their projected costs. This will have changed so radically in 4 years that these predictions are about as stable as gas predictions that far out.

On the other hand, they are somewhat correct about bandwidth usage becoming more common. My sister and mother both have Skype now and use it regularly, and many people are looking to set-top boxes for NetFlix's on-demand and other services like that. It won't be long now before heavy bandwidth usage forces the ISPs here to seriously consider bandwidth issues.

Luckily, I believe in the market and I think someone will lay the groundwork for serious bandwidth soon, instead of continuing to use copper for everything.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily, I believe in the market and I think someone will lay the groundwork for serious bandwidth soon, instead of continuing to use copper for everything.

Me too. Except for one thing, the market doesn't exist. The cable companies has Congress in their pockets and the state legislatures, too. How can market forces work when many cable and broadband providers have legislated local monopolies? Or in some cases, get their boys in the legislatures to pass pro-industry regulation to "protect" the consumer which does nothing but get all the companies to follow the same rules that lines their pockets.

When we have real competition, then we'll have decent service.

Fire your Congress. Vote against the incumbent or vote third party. Show those assholes who's in charge!

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[gstoddart]

I have serious doubts as to their projected costs. This will have changed so radically in 4 years that these predictions are about as stable as gas predictions that far out.

Have you observed the prices of broadband dropping lately? I sure haven't, and you'd think that over time it would.

If the prices haven't been coming down, and they've been curtailing the amount of bandwidth you get ... it does seem like it won't get any better than it is now.

Luckily, I believe in the market and I think someone will lay the groundwork for serious bandwidth soon, instead of continuing to use copper for everything.

If this was anything resembling an open market where competition and other factors might change things, I might think you had a chance in hell of being right. However, the way the telecom industry in the US is structured, the 'market', as it applies here, is a complete myth.

The big telcos own all of the infrastructure, and have shockingly little incentive to make things better. No new player can come along and compete. I see absolutely nothing to believe that the market will sort things out.

Heck, increasingly I have very little faith in this so-called 'market' which everyone seems to think will magically correct imbalances over time -- there's just too many distorting factors, and people end up waiting around for the same players to do something different when nothing else has changed. And it's not just in the telco industry that the industry has managed to get some leverage against the notion of this guiding market.

Cheers

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[swb]

You have to wonder, though, if caps and all the "Bu$ine$$ Cla$$" tiers providers create to get around them aren't just an attempt to prop up their margins in a world they know will be bandwidth-demanding and likely to pay for it. At least in the near term (5-10 years), there just aren't a lot of FTH-type alternatives broadly available or planned (or even financable in the current capital market..).

Not to mention in the case of cable, propping up their existing content distribution system. (nice snarky way to influence your content vendors trying to send shows on the internet when you can cripple their viewers ability to download them, thus forcing them to be reliant on your TV distribution system).

I like to believe in the free market too, but the manipulated and highly regulated "free market" we actually have seems to be more about making rich insiders wealthy and buttfucking everyone else.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to believe in the free market too, but the manipulated and highly regulated "free market" we actually have seems to be more about making rich insiders wealthy and buttfucking everyone else.

Unfortunately, "free markets" and "free trade" are a myth -- someone always ends up skewing the rules to favor their own outcome, because governments are focused on their own interests.

It always serves to make a few people rich and screw everyone else. Anyone going around believing there is truly a "free market" is deluding themselves that their nice, pretty academic abstraction is actually operating according to it's nice, neat model.

They always devolve into oligarchies because the companies get the rules changed, and screw over the rest of us.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Surt]

I have observed the price per bit of broadband dropping recently. My comcast service has gone from 1mbit to 3mbit to 6mbit over the last 5 years with no change in price.

The introduction of the cap, of course, significantly complicates that computation.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

I almost agree, with one exception.

Verizon.

They are spreading FIOS like wildfire, and it is a serious contender to the cable companies.

I now have two choices for wired phone, internet and cable TV - FIOS and Charter. Wherever FIOS is going that has cable is becoming at least a two horse race, instead of a one horse race. And Verizon is laying all new infrastructure.

So, if the blowout continues, I forsee at least 2 infrastructures in place, and the cable companies will have to learn to compete with Verizon as they are currently blowing their doors off (except for their channel guide - The FIOS channel guide sucks. ;-) )

Note that I specifically did not mention wireless or satellite providers, as their service is nowhere near equivalent and cost competitive.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[mweather]

The groundwork is already laid. It's the last mile that's to problem.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I have is thus: 6mbps is $60, why isn't 3mbps $30 or 1mps $10? It is not like administration and billing take up that much money.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Russ Nelson]

That's why we need a freedom of trade amendment to the Constitution. Without it, people want trade to be tilted their way, and then there goes your freedom to trade.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[GenP]

Not really. Just divide the cap in bytes (250GB in this case) by a month (about 2.6 million seconds) to get the sustained data rate they're selling you. Comes out to just over 800kbps.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[sohp]

Luckily, I believe in the market

I believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Clause. Where's my pony?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Naturalis Philosopho]

~Wow, I like soooo totally believe in the market too. Like, and leprechauns. Yeah, leprechauns, with that shiny pot of gold... or would that be fiber/wireless WAN/teleportation. ~

Christ on a pogo-stick buddy, believe all you want, the companys are still going to bend you over just like the rest of us. I had 5Mb/s service in 1999, and today I have, let me check my bill here, oh, wait, 5Mb/s. Max available where I live. Only way the market is going to solve anything is that the telcos are going to jack the prices up to serve data, which will drive the prices of big-bandwidth services like movies through the roof, therefore driving demand (and hence total bandwidth usage) down. The market will stabilize once only the rich can afford the "luxury" of using the 'net like we all do today. Either that or some as-yet-unheard-of competitor will come onto the scene and drive Comcast out of business with their shiny "new tech". Or something. Like I said...~leprechauns.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[athakur999]

Same here. When I got my first DSL connection 2001 I was paying Verizon around $40/mo. for a 768/128 connection. Over the years, that went from 768/128 to 1500/384 to 3000/768 without any significant change in price. These days I pay around $60 for a 20000/5000 FIOS connection. The price of bandwidth has most definitely dropped.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[lysergic.acid]

good point. advertised speed increases are meaningless when those are burst speeds which are never obtained in real life.

as the parent adroitly pointed out, the fact that they cap each subscriber's monthly transfer rate at 250GB means that their network capacity is actually only 800kbps. they're just overselling more than ever.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Sique]

I don't know about Skype directly, but normally VoIP is no real bandwidth hog. A G.711 (uncompressed) encoded VoIP-stream has 64 kbit/sec, add the IP overhead, and you are at 80 kbit/sec. Even if you are talking VoIP 10 hrs a day, you are at 10.8 GByte after a month, not at 250 GByte.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[AdamWill]

Not to mention that the summary talks about Comcast and then cites an estimated cost based on Time Warner's far more restrictive scheme (40GB cap plus $1 per GB). Talk about bait and switch.

As you correctly point out, capped providers regularly increase their caps in any case, so the projection is entirely worthless. My provider, Shaw, has had caps for a while. They are increased periodically. Most recently, for instance, the cap on the regular service was increased from 20GB to 50GB, and the cap on the premium service from 50GB to 100GB.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[gstoddart]

That's why we need a freedom of trade amendment to the Constitution. Without it, people want trade to be tilted their way, and then there goes your freedom to trade.

But, in this case, isn't the network infrastructure a scarce resource owned by the telco? In which case "freedom of trade" is kind of like allowing you to sell the milk from my cows so you can pursue your trade in milk??

I'm not saying I'm in favor of telcos and bandwidth limits, but, until we turn the telecom infrastructure into a public utility .. they're still owned and maintained by private companies at their expense. Otherwise the telcos would be asked to keep increasing their capacity, let everyone use it, and not get paid for it.

I'm all in favor of limiting their ability to skew the rules into their favor, but I don't think that a "freedom of trade" principal here would actually cover the underlying problem -- governments permitting monopolies, and no competition.

Cheers

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[socz]

Back in 2000, DSL was i think $35 for the slowest speed through SBC in So Cal. Now I could get AT&T's slowest speed for about $15 a month.

In 2000, it was a 2 year contract for dsl, and now it's monthly for AT&T - for new and existing customers. Things have changed quite a bit since 2000. But things have slowed down. DSL/Cable have effectively killed dial up, which was the main competition and main reason the prices dropped so much. Now that it's gone, what's left?

Everyone loves cables speed, but in historic areas such as San Gabriel, their lines are so old and over saturated that it's no longer a good experience at any part of service. Some people get killer speeds, but you have to live out in the "boonies" for that.

Anyhow, I have the fastest speed I can get with AT&T and it's ONLY $35 a month. That's not an issue for me. What is an issue though is that I had to pay $60 for a POS modem they forced on me even though I had a compatible modem already. Of course, they sent the modem to me and i used my previous modem which is wireless and has worked without issue.

So some things have gotten better, others worse. But ultimately it's up to us to shape how all this works out. Vote with your money, that's what i do.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[samkass]

I think bandwidth has gotten to the point where you can't measure your capacity by assuming you'll be consuming 100% of the bandwidth all the time. Take electricity... no one seems to be bothered by the fact that if everyone consumed even 50% of their capacity at the same time the system would die a flaming death. And very few people even think about consuming 100% of the electricity available to their home.

I really, really appreciate that I can get 20Mb down and 5Mb up whenever I need it, even if I don't transmit 250GB a month. It's dramatically better than having a 800kbps line that I can max out 100% of the time.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Pichu0102]

I have serious doubts as to their projected costs. This will have changed so radically in 4 years that these predictions are about as stable as gas predictions that far out.

So essentially, we'll have to bend over for as little as possible?

On the other hand, they are somewhat correct about bandwidth usage becoming more common. My sister and mother both have Skype now and use it regularly, and many people are looking to set-top boxes for NetFlix's on-demand and other services like that. It won't be long now before heavy bandwidth usage forces the ISPs here to seriously consider bandwidth issues.

I'd prefer they forget to consider bandwidth issues at all, because they seem to add restrictions to the service instead of improving it a lot of the time...

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[MobyDisk]

Have you observed the prices of broadband dropping lately? I sure haven't, and you'd think that over time it would.

If the prices haven't been coming down, and they've been curtailing the amount of bandwidth you get ... it does seem like it won't get any better than it is now.

I have. 3 years ago, I was paying $60/month for 768kbps up/down SDSL. I had THAT because Comcast limited people to 64kbit up. Then it became 256kbit, then 768kbit, then 1Mbit. Now I switched and I pay the same price for 12Mbit down, 1Mbit up. Comcast has raised their bandwidth allocation from 1Mbit to 12Mbit over the course of 10 years or so. And the price has remained the same.

So yes, monthly prices have stayed the same. But price per bit has gone down.

For mobile bandwidth, the same type of thing has happened.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[robbiedo]

Comcast wants you use use their provided cable TV packages for you television viewing needs, especially the pay per view ON DEMAND function. Comcast is protecting their investments and profits.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

The cable companies has Congress in their pockets and the state legislatures, too. How can market forces work when many cable and broadband providers have legislated local monopolies?

Exactly! Except, those monopolies were granted to trick cable companies into investing the millions required to install that infrastructure. And those cable companies have in many cases already mostly upgraded the majority of the infrastructure to fiber (except the last mile. And now my local Telco has already run fiber to my house to compete with the local cable company, which has ramped up their service yet another notch to compete, and was well known for offering me tasty deals to abandon my DirecTV dish.

If only there was competition!

Fire your Congress. Vote against the incumbent or vote third party. Show those assholes who's in charge!

Useful advice, because government officials really care what people who don't vote think.

Or you know, you could write your legislators (those exclusive contracts are signed at a city level, BTW) and express your concerns in a coherent, well reasoned manner.

Just saying

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[flanksteak]

One thing about all these discussions is everyone assumes the cap won't move. Comcast hasn't said either way, but if it doesn't then we're screwed. If it does, then no big deal. It's just a way to get people who hog bandwidth to upgrade to business class. I already know what everyone here thinks about this, but I believe there is just barely enough competition in the US broadband market to think that this will be moving in the future.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[edmicman]

But what if you're talking on Skype, downloading iTunes songs and movies and TV shows, watching shows on Hulu, downloading linux isos, streaming Netflix with your Roku box, watching YouTube videos, downloading things off WiiWare and Xbox Live, etc., etc. Those things all add up, and as everything gets more and more internet-connected, it's going to become that much more of a problem!

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[moderatorrater]

He believes in the market, ergo he'll make you buy it yourself. Maybe if you pray to the invisible hand it'll give you one, but I doubt it.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[jellomizer]

Have you observed the prices of broadband dropping lately? I sure haven't, and you'd think that over time it would.
Yes in a way. I have been paying $45.95 a month starting June of 2001. And I am still paying $45.95... Back then I got 512Kb/s now I have 10Mb/s. Now if you take inflation into account. Prices have dropped.

if this was anything resembling an open market where competition and other factors might change things, I might think you had a chance in hell of being right. However, the way the telecom industry in the US is structured, the 'market', as it applies here, is a complete myth.

Usually once a Year I check what is around to see if there are any better deals that could save me money.
There is Cable, DSL, Fiber, Satellite, Cell. I have a good choice of Companies. In my Area... Time Warner, a slew of Satellites companies, Verison, AT&T, Sprint... If worse come to worse I could in theory make an agreement with neighbors to share their internet connection, to split the cost. I have a lot of choices to choose from. Granted most will not try to under cut each others in pricing, too much for a long time, as it could cause a downward price spiral, but they will stay at what the market can bare (Echonomics 101). Now if my current provider some how gets more expensive then I will choose an other method, If the price is too high that the market can bare but I have the demand then Black Market Internet will come into effect, Stealing Open Wi-Fi, Sharing Connections across households, etc...

The market corrects itself. Really it does. It is just not as nice as people likes it to be.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[philspear]

I should start this off saying I don't know much about computers in general, just an average user. I personally don't care much about capping because it doesn't seem to affect me. I don't know if my service is capped or not, but if it is, I've never had a problem with it, so I'm going to go with whoever is cheaper. If that is someone who caps, that's fine with me: it's not affecting me and I don't have the money to be making a statement about whether or not the internet should be metered, there are more important issues out there that I can't support financially.

I do realize however that my demands for bandwidth or data transfer have mushroomed up, as have everyone else's. I don't really see that stopping. When netflix does something involving downloads instead of shipping actual discs, I'm sure I'm not going to want to watch low-quality. I'm saying that I am going to keep wanting more data, as will the other average users. I don't know when I'm going to start needing 250 gb a month, but it doesn't seem impossible. I'm also confident that if your average user like me is constantly using up their alloted data transfer, we won't be quiet about it, and the capping isn't going to stay at that. But I won't be voting for politicians based on this issue until it becomes an issue for me. That's absurd with, you know, some of the stuff going on right now.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Free the Cowards]

Why? Why do you idiots always bring up VoIP when discussing bandwidth caps? How stupid can you possibly be?

Skype is so bandwidth-unintensive that you can run it over a modem. That's right, a regular old 56kbps down (but really 53, if your connection is perfect) 33.6kbps up dialup-through-the-phone-line funny screeches and tones modem. Its bandwidth use is absolutely trivial. It is not going to suddenly cause your sister and mother to hit a 250GB/month bandwidth cap. Get a clue!

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Kamots]

Just thought that I'd point out that netflix has been doing DVD-quality video streams for quite a while now... (and it's included in the price of your subscription!)

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Surt]

Sadly, that's just not what I experience, though. I don't use 800kbps continuous, I really do burst traffic. And as long as I stay under the cap, they're really selling me the burst speed.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Firethorn]

So essentially, we'll have to bend over for as little as possible?

Given the nature of caps, essentially the least number of people will have to bend over.

Saying that if the caps remain steady for four years will result in normal users seeing it is somewhat deceptive as places with caps have a history of raising them periodically.

As a power user, we need to be aware of our monthly usage if that's part of the plan we sign up for.

Personally, I figure I use less than 100GB/month. Email - insignificant, some gaming that could almost fit over a 56k connection(if with nasty lag for today), some filesharing - but only about 10GB/month.

In general, I figure they have the cap set to an order of magnitude above the average user, assuming I'm somewhat above average.

I'd prefer they forget to consider bandwidth issues at all, because they seem to add restrictions to the service instead of improving it a lot of the time...

It's reality in some respects. The power user pays the same $20-70 that a non power user pays. The upgrades needed to satisfy the bandwidth demands of the power users could cost in the hundreds to even millions of dollars, far more than what they can expect the PU to pay. Solution? Restrict the cheaper plans so the average user doesn't notice, yet force the power user to either use less or pay to get the premium service, or perform the upgrades via a price increase on everyone, costing you average(profitable) users to cheaper services.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Captain Spam]

Take electricity... no one seems to be bothered by the fact that if everyone consumed even 50% of their capacity at the same time the system would die a flaming death. And very few people even think about consuming 100% of the electricity available to their home.

However, there's also the fact that, in almost all cases, electricity is a metered resource, but in the US, broadband generally isn't. As in, if you're using that 50%, you're paying more than if you were using 25%. If it were unmetered and people could (theoretically) run at 100% capacity 24/7 without any increase in cost, I can assure you we'd have the same people complaining about similar changes here, regardless of the damage it would do to the infrastructure. "Oh, I can't run my array of arc welders constantly anymore with these oppressive 4GW/month electricity caps!" "NOW how is my Tesla coil going to work all day and all night? I need that protection!"

Granted, there is far less "damage" to be done with broadband (and I have a hard time believing that if the telcos/cablecos were actually upgrading their lines with all the money they rake in they can't support it), but if the electricity power-users got used to a (to them) unlimited resource and it suddenly changed to a metered one, the same problems would arise.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Free the Cowards]

Then Skype is not going to make or break your problem.

It's like talking about having financial trouble. You have a huge mortgage, expensive car payments, huge credit card debt, alimony and child support, and a coke habit.

But the first, nay the only thing you bring up when you talk about how screwed you are financially is the fact that once a month you eat out at McDonald's.

It's nonsensical. For some reason people on Slashdot have no clue how much bandwidth VoIP uses. I guess the idea is that if it's streaming then it must use a lot of bandwidth. But that idea is simply false, and anyone who brings up VoIP as an example of the problems that bandwidth caps will cause is an idiot, pure and simple.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[swb]

Just get married and have a child. That bandwidth cap will look completely unobtainable and your list of activities will not be a day or a week, but biennial to-do list.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[hairyfeet]

Yeah,and I really wouldn't get comfortable with that 250GB cap either. I'm willing to bet my soon to be worthless last dollar that will end up the "Elite ultra class" service at $250 a month. More likely you will end up with what I got unless you get lucky and Verizon decides to run FIOS to you,which is 36GB,which with phone(VoIP) and basic cable is running me $146. And that was the best deal in town. So download like mad,load up as much as you can with that 250GB Comcast users,because I'm betting it won't last. Don't ya just love monopolies?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Free the Cowards]

I'd prefer they forget to consider bandwidth issues at all, because they seem to add restrictions to the service instead of improving it a lot of the time...

[[Citation needed]]

With two highly reasonable exceptions, my internet service has only improved over time, counting both improvements in a subscription which came from a single provider, and improvements had from switching to a new provider.

(The two exceptions were moving out of my college dorms, which had absolutely unlimited 10Mbit service, and moving to a foreign country with considerably worse internet infrastructure.)

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[elrous0]

Lately, the invisible hand has been shoved right up my greedy bank's ass.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[I'm not really here]

Um, for the DSL companies, there are laws requiring that the major telcos "wholesale" DSL to independent companies so that there is competition. This is pretty much exactly like "allowing [me] to sell the milk from [your] cows so [I] can pursue [my] trade in milk" because you have the only farm in town and a monopoly on cows. Basically, the government has required that you "sell your milk" to the independent company at cost plus a very small margin of profit. You still profit, but if I can sell your "milk" at a price lower than your retail, and provide better service (likely with a smaller profit margin), then people will buy from me instead of you, yet you still get a cut. Forced competition.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[elrous0]

In my area it hasn't. I still pay the same amount for a 3 mbit DSL connection today as I did four years ago when I first got it.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[IndustrialComplex]

I have observed the price per bit of broadband dropping recently. My comcast service has gone from 1mbit to 3mbit to 6mbit over the last 5 years with no change in price.

The introduction of the cap, of course, significantly complicates that computation.

Your service has gone from a 1mbit to 3mbit to 6mbit service. But what does that really mean? Quite likely, there is the qualifier 'Up to..' right before that mBit number. What that means, is that number means nothing.

They could offer up to 100mbits of service and it wouldn't mean a thing since there is nothing in their contract that states any QoS on it. In fact, they could very well claim (and they have) that limiting you to below those published values is necessary to preserve the network for everyone else. It is pure marketing hogwash.

Amusingly, these caps are the only guarantee of service from these companies that I would bet any real money on.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Danse]

And now my local Telco has already run fiber to my house to compete with the local cable company,

Where do you live that you have fiber to your house? I sure as hell don't have that option. It's slow or slower here. Even though AT&T is now starting to sell its U-Verse service here, it's definitely not fiber-to-the-house. Seems like glorified DSL and cable packages that only let you receive 1 HD stream at a time.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[ajdowntown]

Luckily, I believe in the market

I believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Clause. Where's my pony?

Don't you mean, where is your unicorn?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Alzheimers]

no one seems to be bothered by the fact that if everyone consumed even 50% of their capacity at the same time the system would die a flaming death.

You've obviously never spent a summer in New York.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[IronChef]

I have serious doubts as to their projected costs. This will have changed so radically in 4 years that these predictions are about as stable as gas predictions that far out.

Then at least we can agree prices are only going up!

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Alzheimers]

downloading things off WiiWare

At 1MB/s, you'll have filled your Wii's available space in about 4 minutes. That means you'll have 43,196 minutes a month without having to worry about your Wii affecting your available bandwidth.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Cramer]

And the point you miss... those aren't burst speeds; they are constant. You can run at 20Mb continuously all day long with no drop in speed, no indication you're approaching any limit, and no consequence of passing the limit. You won't know anything until you get the next bill or your connection is terminated. (How many 20k$ cell phone bills have we heard about over the last few years?) Nobody likes the DirectWay traffic shaping system, but that's exactly what is called for here. As I have said a thousand times, if they are capping bandwidth "for the health of the network", they would be rate shaping lines; raping your wallet at the end of the month does nothing at all for network health, but sure as shit will line their pockets. To put it another way, this has nothing to do with "the network" and everything to do with increasing profits.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Jethro]

You do realise that skype does video as well as audio, right?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[BKX]

Actually, that 53k limit was lifted about two years after the first 56k standards were introduced (x2 and k56flex IIRC). In fact, I remember patching my external k56flex modem twice. Once to upgrade it to standard 56k with the 53k limitation, and once to upgrade to standard 56k without the limitation.

Having said that, I've never seen a 56k modem actually connect at 56k. The best I've seen was in the upper 40s. Then I got cable.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Free the Cowards]

And? Do you think Skype video chat is going to put you anywhere near the limit? Once again, get a clue.

(Hint: based on TV shows I've downloaded, 12 hours of video chat a day at a bandwidth that would just reach the cap would give you 720p HD video with great-quality encoding. Somehow Skype has not quite reached that quality level when I've seen people use it for video chat.)

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[clone53421]

No shit. "Up to 6mb/sec" means "you might get 6mb/sec for 1 second at 3:30 in the morning. MAYBE." The rest of the time you'll get less than 6mb/sec, which is what the up to means. I hate all the ads and commercials that do that. "You could save up to $1000 per month on your insurance! By the way, $1000 isn't a typical savings!" Yeah, or I could save nothing. What's the typical savings, that'd be a whole lot more relevant...

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you live that you have fiber to your house? I sure as hell don't have that option.

Move out of the boonies.

http://www22.verizon.com/content/consumerfios/check+availability/check+availability.htm

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[clone53421]

Sure, until your kid finds the computer and you realise that it's only the 12th of the month and you've used 200GB already.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Jethro]

Maybe not, but it makes it not as trivial as mere audio OR usable over a modem. Trust me, I've tried. Or rather been on the receiving end of someone else trying.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Free the Cowards]

Funny, I never heard about that. Learned something new!

I totally agree about real-world connection speeds. There must be somebody, somewhere, sometime who saw an 56k connection speed. But it sure wasn't me or anyone I ever knew.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[HTH NE1]

I switched from my old DSL ISP to my current one years ago due to one specific difference: no bandwidth cap. My speed was 768/384. They used to provide Usenet, then when I complained about them dropping it they comped me another Usenet provider, but when they saw I had subscribed to another they silently dropped my comped provider (I was going to work on a client-side aggregator).

Now I check my ISP's site and though my speed is now 1536/384, they now report I have an 8 GB/mo. cap. Combined charges from ISP and DSL provider is $49.66 a month ($29.95 for the ISP, $19.71 for the phone company). And I'm told they're going to be dropping support for my original Cisco 675 DSL router and don't provide for replacement (ISP even said the one the telco is pushing is crap and I buy another discontinued router from eBay instead.)

Recent ping test from their shell account-hosting machine to my home computer:

100 packets transmitted, 95 packets received, 5% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 23.866/361.592/831.181/259.827 ms

This morning I couldn't get a reliable connection through my DSL router, even after disconnecting all telephones from my service.

I could drop to a cheaper plan with the same speed that offers only 1 IP address instead of 5, but it will drop to a 5 GB cap for only an $11/mo. savings. I'm subscribed to many video podcasts through my TiVo, and there's always some during the month that end up truncated.

Cable alternative is Time Warner Cable, and I have my own set of headaches from them and the software they run on their cable boxes (incompatible with TiVos due to bugs interfering with channel changes, will turn themselves off with only one LED of indication). Plus I already have to use an unbalanced splitter for all the digital cable devices hooked up thus far, and access to that splitter has been recently drywalled up.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Pichu0102]

Saying that if the caps remain steady for four years will result in normal users seeing it is somewhat deceptive as places with caps have a history of raising them periodically.

I have a bad feeling they will lower the caps in response to "piracy" or what have you. I don't expect this to do anything but get worse and worse.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Zardus]

I wish "Flamebait" wasn't a -1 moderation :-(

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[fredklein]

electricity... no one seems to be bothered by the fact that if everyone consumed even 50% of their capacity at the same time the system would die a flaming death. And very few people even think about consuming 100% of the electricity available to their home.

I don't care about "the system". I care about the fact that if I have "200 amp service" to my house, I better be able to get 200 amps of electricity. The fact that "the system would die a flaming death" if enough people used the full amount available is not my problem- it's the electric company's.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[The End Of Days]

Guess what - that is the market. No one is promising that you're going to get everything you want at the price you want to pay. No one ever did promise that. I know this is a shock to you, but the main reason people bother making the investments to make all these services work for you is the hope for profit. Trying to take away that incentive in favor of some imaginary right to free technology isn't actually going to make anything happen.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Missing_dc]

Just $215?

Given the cost of inflation and the devaluation of the dollar, that seems a bit low.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[The End Of Days]

Your bad feelings have no effect on reality. The likely course is that the caps will increase as the infrastructure improves.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[marxmarv]

Then we'll give you 5 amp current limited service and you can chuck your microwave, hair dryer, baseboard heater, washing machine, ... how's that working out for you?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

You can get unmetered electricity - it's usually a juice heavy industrial installation like a refinery that does it, though, and it costs quite a bit.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[baggins2001]

Well you should then realize that $212 dollars in 2012 will be equivalent to $56 dollars 2008 after inflation. So I don't think they are that far off.

Go markets

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[shermo]

The electricity is supplied at a massively discounted rate, but it's still metered. The discount is because of the predictable nature of demand, both short term (a few days) and long term (10+ years). Also there's often associated generation built concurrently with the refinery/smelter etc.

Actually, if you have any links to an example of unmetered heavy industrial use I'd be very interested.

Cheers

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[WhiteWolf666]

That might be the case if you are in Verizon territory, but the majority of the country is in AT&T or Qwest territory, and they have no FTTP plans.

This includes many major metropolitan areas, like Chicago.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Samizdata]

BTW, a Roku box caps at a 2.2Mbps stream on best quality. (Don't work for them, but I do love my little black box...)

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[fredklein]

Then we'll give you 5 amp current limited service...

The service they already installed says 200 amp. That's what I'm paying for, that's what I want.

But hey, if they want to cut my bill by 97.5%, I'll take the 5amp service. :-)

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Skype can't make itself a super-node on dial-up, but it sure can on a high speed service. It will gobble up any bandwidth you throw at it.

Sincerely yours,

id10t

ps. Bite me Skhype Boy.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[ScrewMaster]

If you're consuming a non-renewable resource, everything is metered by definition. Any comparison to the consumption of fossil fuels by power plants to people using a network is flawed ... also by definition. Scarcity of bandwidth can be permanently alleviated by an adequate buildout of infrastructure. Unfortunately, that won't allow the ISPs to bilk us out of every possible penny.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Taleron]

Tim Allen will be delivering it by way of chimney, provided you accept the conditions of the OMGPonyXtreme2009 Professional EULA and assume all responsibilities for said pony (hereafter referred to simply as "the omgpony") upon agreement.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[tha_mink]

And the point you miss... those aren't burst speeds; they are constant. You can run at 20Mb continuously all day long with no drop in speed, no indication you're approaching any limit, and no consequence of passing the limit.

Ok. Great. Go next door to your neighbor's house and hook up a vpn to your house. Tell me (vpn overhead aside) how you think your 20mb is rocking. Try to sustain 3Mb for oh...an hour. Let me know how that works out for you.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Fred_A]

I thought the Invisible Hand had been shoved into every US taxpayer's wallet and had then showered the bankers with early gifts.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost to the ISP is not included in money given to Netflix; WE get buttF**ked by this unless we charge our customers more money. Your convenience doesn't seem to be something you want to pay for.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[ScrewMaster]

Luckily, I believe in the market

I believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Clause. Where's my pony?

Right next to this $29.95/month "unlimited broadband" connection.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[ScrewMaster]

Actually, that goddamn hand is up everybody else's ass. Unless you're talking some prison time for the crooks running these outfits, they aren't the ones getting reamed.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[ScrewMaster]

Guess what - that is the market. No one is promising that you're going to get everything you want at the price you want to pay. No one ever did promise that. I know this is a shock to you, but the main reason people bother making the investments to make all these services work for you is the hope for profit. Trying to take away that incentive in favor of some imaginary right to free technology isn't actually going to make anything happen.

Well, so okay. I understand that. But, in exchange for that profit, we should be able to expect reasonable service. That's what a profit-making venture is all about: figuring out ways to give customers what they want at a price they are willing to pay. Ideally, of course, that is accomplished without misleading, cheating, or outright lying to one's customers, saying one thing and doing another, and providing the least possible service for the greatest possible profit, all the while absorbing billions of dollars in tax breaks ... for what?

What is is happening in the U.S. broadband sector today is most decidedly not an open and competitive market. It's not "the market" at work, it's monopolism. If broadband providers didn't have the Feds keeping competition at bay, believe me, we'd have decent service and we'd have plenty outfits willing to work for our business.

No one is promising that you're going to get everything you want at the price you want to pay. No one ever did promise that.

Uh ... yes, they did. For years upon years, in fact. Now conditions are different (guess what - that is the market, change is the only constant) and they're being called upon to live up to those promises. The problem is, they're bloodsucking leeches and they just don't want to do it. So they'll lie, and cheat, and steal, and continue playing games with us and in Congress. That's your market at work.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[gboss]

"Oh, I can't run my array of arc welders constantly anymore with these oppressive 4GW/month electricity caps!" "NOW how is my Tesla coil going to work all day and all night? I need that protection!"

4GWh/Month, you mean?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[LrdDimwit]

A 20 oz soda from a vending machine costs a buck. Why can't you get 2 ounces for 10 cents?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[LrdDimwit]

Unicorn? Did the man say he believed in unicorns? Santa Claus, sure, but unicorns? You know how many letters Santa Claus gets from little kids who want unicorns? Any of them ever get one? Obviously ol' Saint Nick would come through ... if unicorns were real.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's better than you say. If the dollar amount is fixed, and the dollar is losing value, then it's really getting cheaper.

Look at it against something of more fixed value, like gold. 7 years ago, gold was about $274 per troy ounce. Tdoay, it's around $890. In absolute terms, your DSL dropped from 4.5 grams of gold to 2.1 grams.

The dollar is sinking so fast, we should thank all our utilities that haven't raised their dollar-prices!

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[eternalfire1244]

no drop in speed, no indication you're approaching any limit, and no consequence of passing the limit. You won't know anything until you get the next bill or your connection is terminated.

I live in Ontario and have Rogers. When I get close to my limit (75% of limit) it displays a banner telling me so.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[macdude22]

Plus the fact that as is electricity requires a constant stream of costly inputs to create. Bandwidth, once the infrastructure is down, requires few inputs. Electricity/Water are not equivalent comparisons resource wise.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent +5 Informative

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[philspear]

That didn't make any sense. Who is "we?" What do you mean "Your convenience doesn't seem to be something you want to pay for."

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[andreyvul]

At least Rogers tells you that you're running short. Bell silently fucks you over.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[daBass]

So yo have a duopoly, great!

In much of Europe, any ISP can put their DSLAM into the exchange and access the copper to your house and anyone can run their fiber networks into these exchanges. Incumbent telcos must re-sell their network to other ISPs at wholesale prices.

In fact, to bring in competition, regulators mandated initially telcos spin off their ISP business, which then had to buy wholesale from the telco, just like competing ISPs. Did the telcos fight this all the way? You betcha! But at the end of the day, they are crying all the way to the bank.

All this results in a plethora of competing ISPs and 8mbit and above ADSL with no usage limits for about US$30.

And this will not get in the way of future upgrades, if the market is there it will be built. They will eventually put in fiber even if they have to re-sell that last mile too because it makes business sense to do so. You don't need a monopoly to trick companies into investing - it is the telcos tricking they government into thinking they need to be tricked into investing!

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Electricity is fundamentally a different resource than bandwidth in terms of usage.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[kosty]

Luckily, I believe in the market and I think someone will lay the groundwork for serious bandwidth soon, instead of continuing to use copper for everything.

I suppose believing in the market *IS* lucky if it spares you shear frustration and anger. I'd like to believe in it myself and would like to hear how it will provide options to Comcast in Atlanta [quickly 'cause I'm writing the pricks a nastygram to bid them goodbye and good luck. Especially since they're so anxious to lose their status as a common carrier.] But all this faith in the market tends to ignore a whole litany of inconvenient facts: the biggest example being "barriers to entry."

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

DVD quality is 7 Mbit/sec, not words "DVD quality" in PR.
Netflix does not have DVD quolity.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[electrictroy]

>>>"By 2012, the bill for data access is projected to be around $215 per month."

I pay $15 a month for DSL. I don't really see that jumping 1400% in just three years time; the people who wrote this article are looney. And even if the prediction was accurate, I'd just downgrade my self to dialup service, which only costs $7-10 a month.

>>>I do realize however that my demands for bandwidth or data transfer have mushroomed up, as have everyone else's.

Yeah.

Then what? Bandwidth has been ballooning for a long, long time. When I first bought a computer the files I downloaded were 50 kilobytes pictures. Later that increased to 300 kilobyte pictures. Later it was 5000 kilobyte music, and now 350,000 kilobyte videos. ----- Sounds bad doesn't it? BUT: Every time data sizes increased, the technology expanded from 1.2k to 9.6k to 56k and now 6000k connections. ----- Since 1987, when I bought my first modem, data sizes have increased 7,000 times, but internet connections have ALSO increased to keep pace (5000 times faster). And they will continue increasing as technology improves.

The most telling statistic? Time. In 1990 it took me an hour to download a full Commodore Amiga game. In 2008, that statistic is still the same - it still takes approximately one hour to download a modern PC game. As long as companies continue laying additional lines, and upgrading to newer faster technologies, the internet will continue to grow at the same rate as the data growth.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Firethorn]

This is what I see. I figure that there'll be more games like WoW that distribute updates via peer to peer, even a movie download service comparable to iTunes. Yes, I know there are some out there, I speak more of scale of selection and scale of operation.

Multiplayer games will become more bandwidth intensive, as developers stop trying to squeeze every bit so carefully, indeed, the demands of really massive multiplayer games - imagine a FPS like counterstrike, day of defeat, team fortress, but with hundreds of players to a team, not a couple dozen like current. Bigger maps, etc...

People will demand bandwidth - and companies will respond to serve that market, or they'll be replaced.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[electrictroy]

I have 1 megabit/s for $15 a month. I remember when that same speed used to cost $50 (three years ago), and earlier it was $500 (back in the 1990s). And in the 1980s it didn't even exist. Most of us used 0.001 megabit modems.

Interesting trivia:

In 1987 it took me an hour to download an 880 kilobyte Commodore Amiga game. In 2008, that statistic is still the same - it still takes approximately one hour to download a modern PC game, even though today's games are ~5000 times larger in size. POINT: Data has ballooned in size, but so too have connection speeds. Technology has kept pace. (And it will continue to keep pace, despite Comcast's chicken little cries.)

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[cgenman]

Netflix streams at a maximum of 2.2 mbps
DVDs stream at 8 mbps

The difference between MPEG2 and WMV is significant at lower bitrates, but at larger ones they get to be pretty comparable. In this case, a 2.2 mbps WMV stream is definitely below DVD quality.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[cgenman]

Luckily, I believe in the market and I think someone will lay the groundwork for serious bandwidth soon, instead of continuing to use copper for everything.

You chose this week to believe in the market?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[darkpixel2k]

So yo have a duopoly, great!

What? More proof. Shit. Uh...so you have an octopoly, great!.

Oh...uh, even more proof, huh...er...so you have a quintopoly, great!

Quit moving the goal posts back, pansy! ;)

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

oh yeah? what about webcam? supernodes?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[totally bogus dude]

Scarcity of bandwidth can be permanently alleviated by an adequate buildout of infrastructure.

Really? Who's going to pay for the infrastructure that can handle an ever-increasing amount of usage? And with what money?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Cramer]

(not having FiOS 20/5 service) It works exactly as expected... nailed 384kbps, which is as fast as either end can transmit. Downloads (depending on source) can, and do, fill the 6-7Mbps downstream rate for extended periods (measured in hours.) Looking at the mrtg data for the last year, this has been true the entire time -- I have database backups copied from servers in CA to my house in NC that sustains 3.5-4Mbps for just over an hour every morning. (which is not bad considering the physical/logical distance.)

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Cramer]

Oh, so you get a banner in your SSH session(s), VoIP calls, bittorent client, vpn client, etc. Bottom line... unless you go look, you don't know. TW's "tests runs" didn't show current usage to users. I doubt Comcast's setup will on day one, either. Let me say it again, one rate shapes the traffic for the health of network; one bills "overage" for the health of their pockets.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[sudo]

Bad analogy ... packaging/logistics is not going to cost 1/10.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet cannot be metered this way though, the vast majority of internet users don't use that much bandwidth so the businesses wouldn't get a return on their investment (line, router, customer service, etc).

So what they are doing now is saying you can have this much internet, beyond this we'll punish you significantly, this is so that we can get as many people possible who barely use the internet and charge them ridiculous amounts because they're being charged for up to X gigabytes and at the same time they're fucking over anyone that actually uses the internet.

This is terrible for all consumers of the internet.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Naturalis Philosopho]

As Screw Master pointed out, the free market is one where I pay money and get a good or service in return. I've paid, and I've paid, and I've paid, and now I want my service as promised. If that service changes, I don't want it done in secret; I want to know what my band width caps are and I want that full bandwidth available at all times and for as long as I want it as I've paid for it. I want to know how much data I'm allowed to download, how much extra is going to cost, and I want to be able to pay for that extra data usage (not just get cut off). And I'm angry as I've signed a contract to pay a certain amount, and in return I expect the unlimited data at 5Mb/s which my provider still promises. It would be nice if they invested in improving the product as well. However, I currently get max download speeds at approx. 800Kb/s, and that's even choked off at most hours by network congestion. And guess what? There are NO other broadband providers in my market for me to move to, and no legal recourse to go after the monopoly which continues to break their end of a service contract.

That may be the market, but it isn't the free market.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Kamots]

Gotcha, my mistake. :)

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Kamots]

The cost to the ISP is covered by the money I pay to my ISP. If not, what the hell am I paying for?

I'm the one requesting the content using the pipes that I pay for. If they're not charging me enough to cover costs that's thier own fault and they can raise rates as they see appropriate. However they'd better hope that their competition can't figure out how to get that data to me cheaper than they can...

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree,

If broadband is metered the same way Utilities/Electricity is, I sure would be paying alot less than even $49 bux a month for Comcast. I think people who are streaming HD should have to pay more than the old grandma who wants to check her AOL mail.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[jsailor]

I just started using this Netflix online with Comcast as my ISP. Things are cool for a while, but then Netflix informs me that there's an issue with my connection and buffers traffic for 10 to 20 minutes. I just installed router monitoring and it looks like they throttle me from 1-3 Mbps down to 300 kbps. More testing required, but it appears that Comcast is screwing with my traffic. I only installed the monitoring after I found that my T-Mobile UMA (WiFi then Internet) calls would get disconnected and my VoIP phone (connected to a non-Comcast VoIP service) had issues as well. What could ever go wrong with allowing the cable and phone companies monopolies?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Duffy13]

So what you are trying to say is you are apathetic? It doesn't matter until it effects me? Not to pick on you specifically, but this line of reasoning is why we have so many of these problems in the first place.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[danomac]

It's just a way to get people who hog bandwidth to upgrade to business class.

I've often wondered this, but will Comcast even install a business class connection at a residential address? There are ISPs where I live that won't. Then people are really screwed.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[danomac]

Nah, the moms and pops would just tie a horn to a horse's head. Problem solved! Whenever the question of wings came up, kids were told the unicorn was a cripple!

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Captain Spam]

4GWh/Month, you mean?

Yeah, I keep getting that unit confused. Curses.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[philspear]

Actually, my reasoning was I know nothing about it and therefore am unlikely to effectively help bring about positive change, but moreover that there are bigger, more tangible demons for me that require more time, attention, and money than I have. I'm not going to care about data transfer caps when there are 2 wars going on, the economy is failing in 2 seperate ways, rights ensured under the constitution are under fire. Oh yeah, and I'm trying to get my 60 hours a week in at my job, pay the rent, and not go crazy. That's quite a few things that I care about that aren't yet tangible harms.

That, I would argue, is why we have so many of these problems in the first place: that most people have a limited amount of time and energy, and have to triage their efforts. Come up with a healthy form of cocaine that lets me not sleep, triples my energy, and doesn't kill me within a week or make me crazy (or broke) and I'll get educated on telecos and start a petition, right after I solve world hunger, terrorism, the economy, cancer, and clean out the litterbox.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[CottonThePirate]

Everyone that has ever promised to save me money didn't. I've filled out out tons of online auto insurance applications only to have them end in tears.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[0111 1110]

But are you actually getting 6 mbits? Until yesterday the fastest download speeds I ever get if I'm not downloading directly from, say, Microsoft have been around 100-150 KB/sec. Strangely as soon as the new cap was in place on 10/1 my top speed jumped automagically to around 800 KB/sec (around 6 mbits). Haha. Can you say "throttling"? So no. I don't believe most people have been getting higher and higher speeds. Only the advertised speeds have been going up. Now that they have introduced the cap I guess they feel free to lift the bandwidth throttling. Although maybe that's just temporary.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[MadMidnightBomber]

Fiber To Transfer Porn?

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Surt]

Well, I was never getting 1 or 3 mbit when my speed was supposed to be at those levels either. I've had about a 5x improvement in download speed during the transition from 1mbit to 6.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ranting doesn't actually make a point. All you've done is whine that you want, and want, and want, but you haven't actually demonstrated anything beyond that. Too bad for you. The "free" in "free market" doesn't mean "what I want for what I'm willing to pay" no matter how hard you cry about it on Slashdot. Sorry, hippie. Welcome to the world.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[marxmarv]

That's what you're paying for until they refuse your money and thank you for playing.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the low bandwidth is part of the reason that Skype sounds like crap, but still -- one hour a day on a higher-quality (128kbps both up and down is standard) will use up under 2GB (again, in each direction) of bandwidth per month. I wouldn't quite call that trivial, but it's going to be less than 10% of even Time Warner's very restrictive 40GB limit. Also, the average VoIP user only talks for about a third of that time, anyway.

Re:The projected costs are worthless.

[Free the Cowards]

128kbps is extremely high quality, though. A standard phone line is only 64kbps and that's before applying any compression. 128kbps is enough to give CD quality, way more than you need for voice quality.

Article summary

[neokushan]

For those of you who can't be arsed reading the article, it can be summarised as such:

Bandwidth caps are a bad idea. The only thing they'll accomplish is increasing costs for nearly ALL users.

So, nothing we didn't already know, then.

Re:Article summary

[pilgrim23]

Bandwidth caps are America protecting its poor infustructure. Were we in a backward place like Korea, Japan, or Singapore we would enjoy HUGE bandwidth and no limit for a reasonable monthly fee. The Duaopoly here is protecting its rusty wires and milking that much more out of them. we need fiber please, and not FIOS. Bring us real 21st century bandwidth here in the third (online) world..

Re:Article summary

[FireStormZ]

"Were we in a backward place like Korea, Japan, or Singapore we would enjoy HUGE bandwidth and no limit for a reasonable monthly fee."

You mean geographically small and dense areas with less infrastructure needs to get glass to the curb than the US who have all built the majority of their physical infrastructure (roads, electricity, telephone, ...) in the past 30 years... oh yea that's apples for apples /sarc

Re:Article summary

[superpulpsicle]

With all the providers ganging up on consumers, you can't even call it a monopoly. I dont think there is a term that describe an entire industry all jacking the prices up and bringing down quality of service at the same time. Only a matter of time before verizon and others do a comcast.

Re:Article summary

[neokushan]

There is actually a term for that, it's called a Cartel.

Re:Article summary

[FireStormZ]

Well oligopoly comes to mind, cartel in another appropriate word.

Re:Article summary

[lysergic.acid]

i live in the suburbs of L.A. but my broadband bills are still several times those of similarly dense population centers in other countries.

if you were talking about Australia or Canada, where they have large sparsely populated wilderness and rural communities then that might be a fair excuse. (Canada actually has cheaper broadband than the U.S. in spite of this.) but most Americans live in metropolitan areas or their surrounding suburbs. a relatively small percentage of the population actually lives in places like Wisconsin or rural America.

check out this chart of average broadband speeds to see how far ahead Japan and Korea are. if we want to catch up to those countries, then we need expand infrastructure to meet demand, rather than artificially manipulate demand by putting tight restrictions on consumer broadband usage.

Re:Article summary

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean geographically small and dense areas

Put up or shut up. Nobody's asking for Gig-E for $50/mo in podunkville. Put up your best access in Manhattan or the Silicon Valley, or shut up about this density bullshit.

Re:Article summary

[Anonymous Coward]

There is actually a term for that, it's called a Cartel.

Cartels are a legal version of it. That only happens when they're officially agreeing to it.

The term we really want is oligopoly. It doesn't require the players involved to actually be involved with each other to happen.

Re:Article summary

[FireStormZ]

"i live in the suburbs of L.A. but my broadband bills are still several times those of similarly dense population centers in other countries."

The cost a provider puts out there is distributed among all its customers so while comcast has high density areas it also has low density areas.

"but most Americans live in metropolitan areas or their surrounding suburbs."

But more than a fifth live in rural areas and of the 80ish percent that live in 'metro areas' 20% live in area with a population of less than 200,000! Much of America does *not* look like the suburbs of LA..

"check out this chart of average broadband speeds to see how far ahead Japan and Korea are. if we want to catch up to those countries"

more than 25% of Korea's population lives in *1* city (and well over half live in that cities metro area), and Japan fits half the population of the United States into a nation smaller than California I really don't think you're wrapping your head around the Geography of this whole thing..

Re:Article summary

[janrinok]

So, is your argument intended to suggest that the USA cannot improve its internet access? If that is the case, then I, for one, am pleased that I don't live there. No, I'm not knocking the US, but if your nation cannot rise to the challenge and solve the problems that face you then something is seriously wrong. However, I think your argument is flawed. You might not be able to reproduce internet access to the levels enjoyed by many other countries at the same cost, but you can improve it so that people are not tied to a a single provider - and then watch the prices fall as competition takes over. You might argue that this isn't cost effective. Tell me that again in a few years time when your businesses cannot compete because they cannot communicate, when one side of the US has to 'book access time' to the other side because the infrastructure cannot cope, when a large proportion of your population cannot get adequate TV coverage because the digital revolution has left them unable to get analogue signals yet they cannot get the programs via streaming (or at least not in an affordable manner). In my view, you cannot afford NOT to invest in improving the access of everybody to the internet.

Re:Article summary

[compro01]

Yes, geographically small dense areas like New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, etc.

Re:Article summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for nerds in podunkville, you insensitive clod!

Re:Article summary

[Skuld-Chan]

I live in a geographically dense location called Seattle, but the fastest bandwidth I can get is 8 mbit DSL, and to call it 8 megabits is laughable - its rarely that quick,

Re:Article summary

[FireStormZ]

"So, is your argument intended to suggest that the USA cannot improve its internet access?"

Nope, just pointing out the reality of the task. May here (some Americans and some not) believe laying fiber to improve service in the US is a simple matter when they don't get just how big and spread out this nation is (most Europeans cant wrap their mind around it either).

"You might not be able to reproduce internet access to the levels enjoyed by many other countries at the same cost, but you can improve it so that people are not tied to a a single provider"

People *are not* tied to a single provider. I can go with Comcast, Verizon, Road Runner, SprintPCS, and others. When people say 'you only have one option' they generally mean for a cable modem and ignore other methods of access.

"Tell me that again in a few years time when your businesses cannot compete because they cannot communicate"

Businesses generally don't use the kind of access that were discussing here, the bring in a T1 or use a co-location for hosting. You're confusing residential options with commercial options.

"when a large proportion of your population cannot get adequate TV coverage because the digital revolution has left them unable to get analogue signals"

Ummm, what? the US is *giving out converter boxes* for the digital signal conversion and TV access in the US will be as far wide and deep in march 2009 as it is today.

Re:Article summary

[FireStormZ]

And Albany, Syracuse, Utica.... Get out much?

In Korea 50% of the population lives in *1* metro area, in Japan 14% live in and around Tokyo, and 25% of the population live in just three metro areas! with the average distance between metro areas being next to nothing.

Re:Article summary

[vijayiyer]

I don't know if I would use suburban LA as an example of population density. Have you been to a dense city like those in Asia? Singapore, for example, has a larger population and is roughly half the area. And that's using the numbers for the city of LA - not including its suburbs.

Re:Article summary

[Thelasko]

Cartels are a legal version of it.

Quite the opposite. Cartels are illegal in many parts of the world. You may be confused by the existence of OPEC. OPEC is a cartel of nations, and therefore not subject to antitrust laws.

The term oligopoly usually means there is are few competitors due to a high barrier of entry, such as massive networks for telecoms, or complicated products that require massive research and development as in the automotive industry.

I think you are thinking of tacit collusion, which is a symptom of an oligopoly. We have to ask, is their collusion intentional, or not?

Re:Article summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't there a multi-billion dollar project to give fibre to many major cities?

And the telcoms came back after they went over-budget and said... more please?

Re:Article summary

[genner]

People *are not* tied to a single provider. I can go with Comcast, Verizon, Road Runner, SprintPCS, and others.

That's rare. The reality for most people is you have one DSL provider and one cable provider.

Re:Article summary

[gander666]

Yes, all one has to do is go to Seoul and look at the high rise apartments, stacked like dominoes to realize that even the densest of Los Angeles, or Manhattan are sparse compared to a city like Singapore, Tokyo or Seoul.

The US lives in a barren wasteland compared to these "first world broadband" countries.

Re:Article summary

[Blakey Rat]

People *are not* tied to a single provider. I can go with Comcast, Verizon, Road Runner, SprintPCS, and others. When people say 'you only have one option' they generally mean for a cable modem and ignore other methods of access.

You're lucky. I won't say you're in the minority, because frankly I have no clue, but where I live there's two (and a half) options:
1) Verizon DSL (No FIOS yet)
2) Comcast Cable Modem
2.5) Clearwire Wireless (the reason Clearwire is a .5 is because coverage is spotty, speeds are highly variable, and ping times are terrible.)

Re:Article summary

[RudeIota]

People *are not* tied to a single provider. I can go with Comcast, Verizon, Road Runner, SprintPCS, and others. When people say 'you only have one option' they generally mean for a cable modem and ignore other methods of access.

On my street in Los Angeles, I can only have Time Warner for cable and AT&T for phone.

If I lived several blocks away, I could have Verizon and TW, but then I wouldn't be able to get AT&T.

When I lived 5 miles away, I could get Charter (but not Time Warner) and Verizon (but not AT&T).

In Portland, OR, I could only have Comcast for cable and AT&T for phone.

In Santa Cruz CA, I could only get AT&T and Comcast.

In Danville KY, I could only get Adelphia and Bell South... and I could go on.



I don't think your experiences are representative of the U.S.

Re:Article summary

[FireStormZ]

I have lived in Big Metro's, Small Metro's and rural areas and you can add to your list (for the vast majority of places satellite service and PCS service...

Besides, the OP said there was *not* choice, not little choice..

Re:Article summary

[Fulcrum of Evil]

But more than a fifth live in rural areas and of the 80ish percent that live in 'metro areas' 20% live in area with a population of less than 200,000! Much of America does *not* look like the suburbs of LA..

So why can't the other 4/5ths get faster broadband without these caps in place?

Re:Article summary

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Nope, just pointing out the reality of the task. May here (some Americans and some not) believe laying fiber to improve service in the US is a simple matter when they don't get just how big and spread out this nation is (most Europeans cant wrap their mind around it either).

Well we paid for it 10 years ago - shouldn't we expect to have it by now?

Re:Article summary

[bogjobber]

And there is also only one city in the US that looks like a Japanese city, that's New York. Parts of Chicago, part of San Francisco and even smaller parts of other metro areas are similar, but nowhere near as dense, to what you find in Asia. The suburbs of LA would look like the countryside for most people in Japan or Korea. And the majority of people in the US live in places that are even less dense than that.

Re:Article summary

[Cajun Hell]

Ok, instead of comparing to the total US, compare it to dense and newly-wired parts of the US.

Oops, the guy living in US still loses.

Re:Article summary

[Samizdata]

People *are not* tied to a single provider. I can go with Comcast, Verizon, Road Runner, SprintPCS, and others.

That's rare. The reality for most people is you have one DSL provider and one cable provider.

I only have one cable provider and one DSL provider.

And, thanks to the local telco (and their decaying copper in my neighborhood), the BEST I can get speedwise in DSL is 256/128, and that is assuming the connection stays stable and, ummm, connected.

All things being equal, I don't really see the DSL as an option. In addition, trees preclude my use of the satellite route.

Re:Article summary

[Anonymous Coward]

The Canadian writer Pierre Burton found a good way of describing the scale of the new world to Europeans. He said 'imagine a rainstorm the size of France. That's 900km. Now, imagine it ten times larger. Now, imagine it not raining on anyone.

'That's Canada.'

I put it in a simpler way: 17 Germanies can fit inside of Quebec.

Re:Article summary

[ScrewMaster]

We have to ask, is their collusion intentional, or not?

I'm not sure. Do you know if Brian Roberts and Randall L. Stephenson use the same golf course?

Re:Article summary

[Jorophose]

Not to mention, Japan, South Korea, and Sweden (Finland too?), have the fastest internet speeds but speak a language only spoken there (at least in significant so-more-than-1 numbers). If you're in Japan/Sweden/SouthKorea, with the exception of a video on US YouTube, you're going to prefer getting your stuff on Japanese/Korean/Swedish sites, sites in your language and relevant to your interests.

But on the other hand, me in Canada, and our friends in Australia/NZ, most of the stuff they want to get to is in the US, because let's face it it's the centre of the english world right now.

Re:Article summary

[plonk420]

"People *are not* tied to a single provider. I can go with Comcast, Verizon, Road Runner, SprintPCS, and others."

lucky you. it's Comcast, Qwest (and any DSL provider that can use Qwest lines). and i'm in a quiet apartment complex in a comfortably populated area, probably in the middle of a middle class area. Accords and large new american cars in our parking lot, and you see a few S500s driving down our side street every week, so by no means the a poorly maintained street. in spite of this, only one of the national cellphone carriers has usable service (i dont' know and don't care as to who that is)...

Re:Article summary

[grahamd0]

if you were talking about Australia or Canada, where they have large sparsely populated wilderness and rural communities then that might be a fair excuse. (Canada actually has cheaper broadband than the U.S. in spite of this.)

95% of the population of Canada lives within 200 miles of the US border.

If you factor the entire landmass of Canada, yes, it's very sparsely populated, but there's not a lot of need for telecom infrastructure over most of it.

Re:Article summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't even get a choice. Here it is cable or nothing.

Re:Article summary

[Jaysyn]

Please explain to me how FIOS isn't fiber because I spent a good part of last year drawing construction plans for Verizon & I'm damn sure we were putting down Fujitsu glass in those.

Re:Article summary

[Jaysyn]

...(most Europeans cant wrap their mind around it either)

This is so true. Last year I was dating this girl, dual-citizenship, but she lived most of her life in Heidelburg. We both work in the same place (still friends even) but I live "out of town". She couldn't believe how far I drive to work every day. It's only about 45 miles really, I've heard of much longer commutes.

"Driving to your house is like driving thru 10 towns back in Germany" Her exact words.

Until they visit, Europeans generally have no idea of how spread out the US is geographically.

Re:Article summary

[Jaysyn]

A cartel or collusion, take your pick.

Re:Article summary

[sjames]

What about the major cities? Surely a major U.S. city would have a population density near the average for Japan, Korea, or Singapore.

Re:Article summary

[FireStormZ]

Not really Manhattan *maybe* but the point is in Singapore, HK, Japan, and South Korea they don't have to connect these urban areas which are separated by great distances (NY to LA)... The US can also not ignore the 40=% of its population that lives in areas with a population of less than 200,000

Re:Article summary

[MrAngryForNoReason]

The US can also not ignore the 40=% of its population that lives in areas with a population of less than 200,000

It isn't a case of ignoring 40%, what people are saying is why not improve service for people who choose to live in cities.

By choosing to live in a rural area or sprawling town people need to accept that they won't get the same service as a tightly compact city.

No-one is saying that service to areas with a low population density should be degraded just that by living there they can't expect the same advantages as people who live in high population density areas like big cities.

Just because in Bumfuck Idaho you have to drive 5 miles to the nearest Starbucks doesn't mean you can't have one on every street corner in New York.

Re:Article summary

[cynyr]

Lets take my parents house for example.
Facts:
1) They are 25 minutes(by road) north of the St Paul/Minneapolis international airport.
2) That is still in a second tier suburb. (For those interested the city is White Bear Lake)

With that out of the way, the option for broadband is Comcast. There is no DSL there, they are too far away(I did mention they live in the suburbs, didn't I?). Satellite is out as well as they would have to cut down all or most of the trees on their property to get a clear view of the southern sky. As for using some sort of 3G, or other cellphone type plan, In order for my mother to use her ATT cell phone at home she needs to go outside into the back yard. SO that would rule that out. Anyways there isn't even a duopoly there, it's Comcast or dialup (at on a good day 33.6, most of the time it was 26.4, no not with some crappy built in winmodem, dedicated us robotics and 3com modems.)
As for DTV, they are 15-20 minutes from te towers being used to broadcast DTV, and guess what? half the time the audio drops out, and the picture pixilates. That is within 20 miles of the towers. In fact in the winter they have line of sight on the towers. Right now there are only trees in between the house and the towers. Care to explain why the reception is so poor.

So as far as I can this DTV thing is just result of the cable lobbing so they can try and get the last few people that still get tv over the air. I say fuck them.

Re:Article summary

[sjames]

By that logic, until we can afford to run DSL/cable to the very last log cabin in the deep woods of Oregon, we should stay at 28.8 and be happy. The point is that Manhattan (really all of NYC) is at least as densely populated as the places that get 100Mbps to the home for a flat monthly fee.

NYC itself is hardly podunk, it's not like it doesn't have many many gigabits of trunks feeding in to it.

The cable/DSL provider doesn't have to link all the cities itself either. There are plenty of peers available in any major metro area as it is.

The point is, the excuse of low population density is fine in rural areas, but what's the excuse for Manhattan (at the very least)?

Re:Article summary

[FireStormZ]

The problem is this, look at Korea... How far do you have to route *between* high density areas? (Answer) None..

Even if you ignore every city with a population of less than 100,000 in the united states you still have to support an infrastructure which has hook on three coasts (east, west, and gulf), inland cities like Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh Denver, ..., ..., ....

Very, very few nations have to deal with *that* kind of distribution, Geographically the US is very, very big (3rd or fourth in the world depending on who you talk to) of the nations that are ahead of the US in terms of average performance only Canada and Australia are in the top ten in terms of land area and neither of those is nearly as distributed as the US (seventy-five percent of Canadians live within 160 kilometers) and most of Australia is empty(ish) outside the south and east coast.

No nation with the challenges the US has does any better than we do..

We need a bigger internet

[MisterSquirrel]

Can't we just add some more tubes?

Re:We need a bigger internet

[Lectoid]

Yes, but with the gas prices going up, the cost of running the trucks in those tubes is going to go up. And guess who gets to pay for it.

What were we talking about again?

Re:We need a bigger internet

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the trouble is that all existing tubes need to be made WIDER.

Re:We need a bigger internet

[BorgAssimilator]

Not a problem. Remember, it's _horses_ that run through the tubes.

Everyone and his mother knows that the internet is _not_ a dump truck, duh!

Re:We need a bigger internet

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what she said.

Re:We need a bigger internet

[Thelasko]

I received a big internet the other day. I printed it out and it had to be over one hundred pages. If you need a bigger internet, I think I can forward it to you.

Re:We need a bigger internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you hate it when someone clogs up the tubes with big internets? You are contributing to the problems.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Well .. well.. another example of the wonderful harvard/wharton MBAs destroying the technological capacity of the USA to line their pockets..

With administrations and finances run by such self-serving f**tards, do we really require external enemies to destroy us?

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

... run by such self-serving f**tards

Interesting that you appear to think the offensive part of the phrase "fucktard" is the word "fuck."

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't interesting at all, you fucking retard.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[neokushan]

I think it's more interesting that he couldn't actually spell the word "Fuck" (Hint: It's a four letter word, not F**).

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Foetard

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, you 'tard.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[compro01]

Well, * is generally a multi-character wildcard, so F** would return the same as F* or F***, which would be every word starting with "F". If you wanted to confine the search to four letter words, you would use F___, F???, or possibly F... depending on the environment.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

and he thinks that no one who would be offended by fuck can recognize that f**ktards stands for fucktards.

Thank government restriction

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

You have only government restriction on the existence of competition to thank for the monopolies these jokers are able to maintain, despite customer demand for better services. In a more free system, customers would have threatened to leave for another provider by now. That would have forced providers to upgrade their systems to support the growing userbase. Not so here. There's no other choice.

"Accept our high prices and shitty service! What else are you gonna use? Dial up? DSL? HA!"

Re:Thank government restriction

[MozeeToby]

You seem to think that the average, profit generating customer is the one who is affected by bandwidth caps and monopolistic behavior, but that simply isn't true. The only people that these limitations affect are the people who generate the least amount of profit for the ISPs. Imagine you own a business and you have a certain part of your customer base that actually costs you money to service, are you really going to worry about them leaving you for the competition?

Re:Thank government restriction

[Red Flayer]

You have only government restriction on the existence of competition to thank for the monopolies these jokers are able to maintain, despite customer demand for better services. In a more free system, customers would have threatened to leave for another provider by now. That would have forced providers to upgrade their systems to support the growing userbase. Not so here. There's no other choice.

And, pray tell, who would have paid to lay out the cable, if there were no assurances that the owner of said cable could have a monopoly? There is a significant initial cost to providing cable service. Guess what would tend to happen naturally if there were no regulation?

A monopoly provider. With no regulatory oversight to ensure *some* decent level of service.

Look, I understand that the free market has a lot of benefits, but in a capital-intensive industry where profitability is hard to get without a monopoly, the best thing for end-customers is a well-regulated monopoly. Of course I've yet to see a well-regulated monopoly... but on the other hand I've yet to see a natural monopoly act well either.

Anyway, getting back to my point -- how can you have free competition in cable? One company lays out the capital to lay out the physical infrastructure, then everyone gets to use that infrastructure? Why would the company lay out the cash to build out, if they only see a fraction of the benefit? Say they charge others to use the infrastructure... without regulation, why wouldn't they charge exorbitant prices, so that they'd be able to outcompete their competitors? Wouldn't it take regulation to prevent that?

Or perhaps you'd prefer that the government build out the infrastructure, for all to share... but that doesn't seem to jibe with the rest of your views.

Please, explain to me, how would you propose deregulating the cable industry in a manner that allows competitive access, does not involve government ownership of the infrastructure, and results in greater options for the end-consumer?

Re:Thank government restriction

[Anonymous Coward]

You have only the lack of government restriction on the existence of competition to thank for the monopolies these jokers...

.. fixed it for you. The lack of da gubmint forcing the telcos to play nice effectively shuts-out any new competition before it starts .. its the same thing that stops auntie annie's cookie stop from butting into the walmart bakery's market share.

Re:Thank government restriction

[MorderVonAllem]

The one thing that comes to mind is separate the services from the pipes. One company owns all the pipes everyone else can then offer whatever services they want over those pipes...tv...internet...whatever. This would eliminate the need for the company to worry about anything but infrastructure.

Re:Thank government restriction

[Anonymous Coward]

Except bandwidth doesn't cost these companies anything. They offset each others costs by peering. So please stop spreading the garbage about their costs.

Re:Thank government restriction

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

What's your point, exactly? Those customers who want more bandwidth could be offered higher bandwidth at a fee, and those fees could be minimized through competition. Does the new system offer these different levels of service, and if not why not? No competition.

Re:Thank government restriction

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

The lack of da gubmint forcing the telcos to play nice effectively shuts-out any new competition before it starts ..

How exactly can an existing telco prevent a competitor from expanding into their region? What force is preventing that competitor from existing in that region? Put a little thought into it and you'll figure it out.

its the same thing that stops auntie annie's cookie stop from butting into the walmart bakery's market share.

Actually, it's the customer's desire for lower prices, and Auntie Annie's desire to remain small and inefficient, that does that. If you believe the local shop should get more service, buy from there, and persuade your family and friends to do the same. What you should not do is demand that your government force Walmart to reduce their efficiency, reduce their profits, simply to make the local shop competitive. Doing so makes a mockery of the rights of everyone.

Re:Thank government restriction

[edmicman]

You do realize that the online habits of those few who are "causing problems" for the ISP will eventually become mainstream, right? The ISPs can't head off the inevitable digital download era that companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, etc., are ushering in.

Re:Thank government restriction

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Isn't redundancy a good thing? How exactly is that going to fix the situation, if the government simply tells a pipe-owner what they can do with their pipes. The government essentially owns the pipes, putting politicians to auction to the highest bidder. Whoever pumps the most into my campaign gets the monopoly.

Re:Thank government restriction

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

And, pray tell, who would have paid to lay out the cable, if there were no assurances that the owner of said cable could have a monopoly?

Who said the owner shouldn't have control of his pipes?

Guess what would tend to happen naturally if there were no regulation? A monopoly provider. With no regulatory oversight to ensure *some* decent level of service.

First, people aren't born with a right to internet access. Second, if a single company controls services, but their monopoly is not backed by government force (ie, NO other providers can come along and lay their own lines - like in the current system), what would maintain that monopoly? Either people would all be happy with their service, or some segment would be pissed off and want better service, creating a huge demand for better service. If that company doesn't comply, it is all the more likely that a competitor will move in to fill the void. Except in the current system, that's not possible, thanks to government restriction, as always.

Look, I understand that the free market has a lot of benefits, but

Let me stop you there: first, you either accept that people have individual rights, or you accept the violation those rights. By not accepting and encouraging the free market, you only encourage the violation of individual rights. Privacy, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness, all freedoms innate in everyone. Accept them or reject them, but don't dress it up as some extortionist plot that prevents people from having things when those same people don't want to agree to the terms of the trade to get those things.

in a capital-intensive industry where profitability is hard to get without a monopoly, the best thing for end-customers is a well-regulated monopoly

And whose goal is "the best thing for end-customers"? Who decides what's best? What prevents them from being bought out? And most importantly, how do you justify the rights violations that come with preventing people from pursuing their own goals to their own ends?

how can you have free competition in cable? ... Please, explain to me, how would you propose deregulating the cable industry in a manner that allows competitive access, does not involve government ownership of the infrastructure, and results in greater options for the end-consumer?

Parallel lines. Redundancy benefits the customer, who can switch to another provider if one goes down. Competition reduces costs and increases efficiency and desirable results, all benefiting the customer. Best of all, it does not violate any rights. I'd like to see your arguments against this, besides the paltry "that's ridiculous!", or "that's not convenient in the short-term!", or "that means more money will have to be invested by a company!"

Re:Thank government restriction

[Free the Cowards]

Why do you think a monopoly is necessary, or the logical end result?

Where I live, the cable monopoly is Comcast. Verizon is planning to put in FiOS. Before they can, they need to hold lengthy negotiations with the city.

It seems pretty clear to me that if the city would just step aside, Verizon would set up a competitor to Comcast almost instantly. If they had stepped aside a year or two ago, maybe we'd have it now. Instead they sit mired in franchise negotiations.

The way to have competition should be obvious: multiple sets of cables. My city already has two sets, the phone lines and the TV cables, both of which are used for internet access. Sometime in the next year or two a third set will be added, the FiOS lines. I see no reason why this couldn't have happened everywhere if governments had gotten out of the way instead of legislating monopolies. It's a bit too late to get out of the way now, but having multiple competitors could be the end goal of new regulation rather than simply entrenching the existing monopolies.

Re:Thank government restriction

[nurb432]

Considering bandwidth use is increasing by leaps and bounds by EVERYONE, i disagree this only penalizes the 'hard core users'.

Re:Thank government restriction

[Red Flayer]

Thanks for entirely missing my point, were you purposely avoiding addressing it?

Except in the current system, that's not possible, thanks to government restriction, as always.

With the huge capital outlay for infrastructure, there would be de facto monopoly, as there would be no way for a company to offset the capital expense with sales. The existant monopoly (the first entrant) would underprice sales to the point where the second entrant would be forced out of business.

Let me stop you there: first, you either accept that people have individual rights, or you accept the violation those rights.

Let me stop you there: either you believe that a false dichotomy straw man is a useful component to discussion, or you do not. This not about rights, it's about economics. You can spin it as rights all you want, but the simple fact is that individuals have long traded individual rights for collective good, and it's a matter of scale that determines how they choose to govern themselves.

Parallel lines. Redundancy benefits the customer, who can switch to another provider if one goes down. Competition reduces costs and increases efficiency and desirable results, all benefiting the customer.

And who is going to pay to build out a parallel line? No one -- they know they will not be able to compete against an existant monopoly.

you can go on about violation of rights, etc, all you want, but the simple truth is that markets like this are inefficient by nature, and will result in monopoly time and again due to huge capital outlay requirements just to enter the market.

Go on and blather about anarchy and rights all you want... but admit that the outcome is not always best for the individual in pure capitalism, due to imperfect markets.

I'd like to see your arguments against this, besides the paltry "that's ridiculous!", or "that's not convenient in the short-term!", or "that means more money will have to be invested by a company!"

My argument against this is that it does not work due to inefficient markets. If the cable market were perfectly efficient, then it would make sense to lay out a competing parallel infrastructure... as long as all markets were perfectly efficient. But, if there existed a non-efficient market somewhere, that capital should be invested in that market, to take advantage of the inefficiency. End result? The capital to build out the infrastructure is only invested if expected returns are better there than elsewhere... and given the existance of a current monopoly in that market, there is no way that the best choice is to invest in that infrastructure. So -- no one builds out the redundant infrastructure, and competition doesn't magically appear just because you want it to.

My other argument against it is that it is folly to believe that a functional system can exist where no individual gives up rights in exchange for benefit. This is the nature of collective law. What matters, then, is to what extant you believe a collective group should be able to make decisions for the common good. It's just splitting hairs... you draw the line one place, I draw it somewhere else. None of which matters to the question at hand, which is "How would a competitive environment come to be in a market with a huge barrier to entry and an established monopoly in place, without regulation?"

Please, take your straw man and stuff it. I don't really care what your views on rights are... what I want to know is whether you have the economic understanding of what you propose, and how you think it is possible for a competitive market in cable to arise without regulation or state sponsorship of the infrastructure.

Re:Thank government restriction

[Red Flayer]

The cost to build out infrastructure for cable is massive, which is why it's a natural monopoly.

If we look at the market for internet access (which is different than the cable monopoly I was discussing previously) in your example, you have three competitors -- FiOS from your phone company, DSL from the phone company, and cable from the cable company. Let's see... the phone co and the cable co... both of whom have existing infrastructure that reduces the barrier to entry.

Ever wonder why a new company doesn't sprout up to offer FiOS? It's because the barrier to entry is too high for the company to be profitable, when there are competitors with lower infrastructure costs (due to other lines of business). As for competition, the internet service provided by the competitors (DSL, Cable, FiOS) is not directly comparable -- DSL cannot deliver the same service as FiOS. FiOS is not going to have to compete at the highest speeds, until someone builds out competing infrastructure... which I don't see happening for a very, very long time (if ever)... thus FiOS will have a natural monopoly on the highest speeds.

It's not real competition if the services/goods sold by "competitors" are not fungible.

As for governmental interference in competition, have you checked out why your locality took so long to approve FiOS? I did, in my town. Part of the reason was agreements with te cable provider, but the largest reason for the delay was assigning new right-of-way to Verizon, and determining how to compensate landowners. Imagine the same problem for entirely new infrastructure.

To make a long story short, allowing competition to work efficiently requires a relatively efficient market, and the high cost of entry into internet access provision (due to infrastructure) prevents any real competition from occuring in an unregulated environment.

Re:Thank government restriction

[Anonymous Coward]

Except bandwidth doesn't cost these companies anything. They offset each others costs by peering.

How can they offset each others costs by peering, if there are no costs?

Re:Thank government restriction

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Thanks for entirely missing my point, were you purposely avoiding addressing it?

I cover your "point" at the end of my post. You may want to read that far before automatically clicking Reply To This...

there would be de facto monopoly, as there would be no way for a company to offset the capital expense with sales.

No way? Impossible? Based on what? Show it. What's your evidence? Where's your argument? You have a bald assertion... now back it up or discard it.

The existant monopoly (the first entrant) would underprice sales to the point where the second entrant would be forced out of business.

Now lower prices are bad for customers? It's all a matter of how much crap people are willing to accept at what price. If they demand better service, they will get it, if not from their current provider, from another one. If a desired service (higher bandwidth) is not even being offered, all the more reason for a competitor to move in and fill the gap.

This not about rights, it's about economics.

Individual rights - the freedom to trade voluntarily toward mutual benefit is capitalism . You can try to separate them all you want, for no purpose other than to make it more palatable to readers (and your own brain), but you're still violating rights nonetheless. Rights are always violated when anyone is forced do with their property, their person, their privacy, their values, things other than what they desire to do. The only force-backed entity in the US, to my knowledge, is the government, no?

You can spin it as rights all you want, but the simple fact is that individuals have long traded individual rights for collective good

Who did this? Where are the signatures? Are those people still alive? How can they speak for me or any other individual? How do you eradicate inalienable rights? Who determines what's in the "common good"? Who controls this common good? How are they not susceptible to corruption? You must answer each and every one of these questions if your position is to be taken seriously.

Go on and blather about anarchy

Hilarity ensues. Who's advocating anarchy? There must be some entity to uphold and protect the rights of the citizenry. That is the government. Its only proper function is to support individual rights. Only when it extends itself into economic coercion does corruption occur.

given the existance of a current monopoly in that market

You're ignoring the demand for better service. If this demand is large enough, people will get what they want.

My other argument against it is that it is folly to believe that a functional system can exist where no individual gives up rights in exchange for benefit.

According to what argument? Show it. Where's your evidence? Where's your rationale? How do inalienable rights disappear to support your pet desire for a "collective good"?

I don't really care what your views on rights are

Indeed. Right to privacy be damned. Right to liberty, fuck it. Who cares. The collective good, as defined by those in charge according to the terms of their highest campaign financiers is all that matters. Now I challenge you to show me that that scenario is not inevitable (in fact, it's happening right now).

Re:Thank government restriction

[omfglearntoplay]

If all the techies leave, they'll slowly convince the regular joe to leave. I mean, how many people stayed with AOL dialup?

Re:Thank government restriction

[marxmarv]

This not about rights, it's about economics.

Individual rights - the freedom to trade voluntarily toward mutual benefit is capitalism . You can try to separate them all you want, for no purpose other than to make it more palatable to readers (and your own brain), but you're still violating rights nonetheless. Rights are always violated when anyone is forced do with their property, their person, their privacy, their values, things other than what they desire to do. The only force-backed entity in the US, to my knowledge, is the government, no?

Anyone with the resources to fight a civil "wrongful death" lawsuit can use armed private guards.

given the existance of a current monopoly in that market

You're ignoring the demand for better service. If this demand is large enough, people will get what they want.

The majority of Americans demand a nanny state. Interesting paradox, no?

My other argument against it is that it is folly to believe that a functional system can exist where no individual gives up rights in exchange for benefit.

According to what argument? Show it. Where's your evidence? Where's your rationale? How do inalienable rights disappear to support your pet desire for a "collective good"?

The US Constitution could be read as exactly that sort of contract (if you read it; the Declaration of Independence is at best a "signing statement"). I don't believe that the high level of infrastructure development we know today could have arisen under anarcho-syndicalism, nor do I particularly believe that anarcho-syndicalism is necessarily a stable system.

Re:Thank government restriction

[Ichijo]

In a more free system, customers would have threatened to leave for another provider by now. That would have forced providers to upgrade their systems to support the growing userbase. Not so here. There's no other choice.

If you can get DSL, you usually have multiple ISPs to choose from.

Re:Thank government restriction

[Red Flayer]

Care to defend your original post and address the questions I raised? Or still working on the straw men?

As for my assertions re: ascendence of monopoly in inefficient markets, do me a favor and take some economics classes. While you're at it, take some economic history classics. Emergence of monopolies/cartels in inefficient markets -- particularly those with a high barrier to entry -- is a very common topic that I should have no need to inform you of if you had any knowledge whatsoever in the area. It's Econ 101, and if you really need it explained to you, then I'm not going to bother discussing something way over your head.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt -- perhaps you're of the Austrian school of thought, in which monopolies are not inefficient because they are not permanent, and some other entity will come along and compete given a long enough period of time.

I'm not going to bother making this a discussion about rights, because my concern has nothing to do with rights, it has to do with economics. You asserted something in your OP that runs counter to economic theory -- namely, that deregulation of a market with high barriers to entry will result in an efficient competitive market. Put the straw men down, and either address the economics or admit that you don't understand them -- regardless of rights, the economics do not support your assertion.

Re:Thank government restriction

[ScrewMaster]

In other words, they would charge each other transit costs, but all the big boys agree to carry each other's traffic for free. Now, there have been conflicts in the past between backbone providers, so it can get sticky sometimes, but by and large the GP is correct.

Re:Thank government restriction

[ScrewMaster]

You do realize that the online habits of those few who are "causing problems" for the ISP will eventually become mainstream, right? The ISPs can't head off the inevitable digital download era that companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, etc., are ushering in.

Sure they can. If they don't provide the bandwidth, they don't provide the bandwidth. End of statement.

The only thing that will prevent that ugly scenario is Congress allowing functional competition. There are plenty of big companies out there with deep pockets that would love to spend some of that money building out a guaranteed profit center. I mean, broadband is certainly a growth industry right now ... or it would be, if certain companies weren't inside a zone of magical Federal protection.

$215/month? I could handle that

[AmazingRuss]

I've been paying ~$180/month for 64k ISDN to my secret lair in the hills of California. On Monday, though, I get my T1, for $250/month! I think most people that use that much bandwidth may bitch about it, but they'll pay.

scribd sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure who is dumber, the people that designed scribd or the idiots that publish things there.

Re:scribd sucks

[MightyYar]

I dunno, it has a refreshing Mac OS 8 interface that you just don't see anymore.

Re:$215/month? I could handle that

[megamerican]

I've been paying ~$180/month for 64k ISDN to my secret lair in the hills of California. On Monday, though, I get my T1, for $250/month! I think most people that use that much bandwidth may bitch about it, but they'll pay.

64k ought to be enough for any secret lair!

Rates that high will force rerouting

[jmorris42]

If they try to charge those kind of rates we will just route around them. We use the large ISPs because we find them the best bargsin. Jack up prices to that sort of level and there will be other options.

Get rates up enough and lots of alternatives get practical. Wide area wireless, new competitors like the power company using their universal right of way to lay fiber, etc. Kinda like everybody bitched and moaned at $50/barrel oil and didn't change much but as it kept going up we are talking serious about hybrids, biofuels, drilling in places that would have been political suicide to talk about, building nukes (Nukes! Who could have predicted the greens ever allowing that!), etc.

Get bandwidth expensive enough and we could just do local neighborhood p2p filesharing. Imagine a 10.0.0.0/8 wifi network covering a neighborhood and sharing the big popular downloads among themselves. Also would make the **AA goons job a lot harder.

Re:Rates that high will force rerouting

[Surt]

The problem with your theory is that for many of us, there can't legally BE any competition, so no, there won't be other options.

Re:Rates that high will force rerouting

[gstoddart]

If they try to charge those kind of rates we will just route around them. We use the large ISPs because we find them the best bargsin. Jack up prices to that sort of level and there will be other options.

Route to where? If the major infrastructure and backbone is in the hands of the major telcos, short of laying an entirely new set of cables, where are you going to route to??

Get bandwidth expensive enough and we could just do local neighborhood p2p filesharing. Imagine a 10.0.0.0/8 wifi network covering a neighborhood and sharing the big popular downloads among themselves.

Ultimately, all of this needs to get routed over someone's wires.

Maybe I'm just suffering from a complete lack of imagination, but I just don't see how you can get around sending stuff over the wire of a large company who is metering it. I'm just not seeing how you're actually solving the problem, just hoping that making it distributed will somehow create new bandwidth capacity and places for the data to travel over.

Cheers

Re:Rates that high will force rerouting

[nine-times]

Imagine a 10.0.0.0/8 wifi network covering a neighborhood and sharing the big popular downloads among themselves.

Great idea. Quick question: how will that wifi network connect to the Internet?

Re:Rates that high will force rerouting

[Cro Magnon]

Until it gets to a point where consumers DEMAND alternatives. Telco's campain money won't means squat if 51% of the public is pissed off enough to vote their pet congresscritters out of office. Even monopolys have limits.

Re:Rates that high will force rerouting

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. Within a generation or two of WLAN technology, I fully expect off-internet wireless mesh networks to become a reality, at least for geeks in reasonably dense cities. An organization like Fon could sell the necessary devices.

It'd be something like a localized version of Freenet. There's a lot of potential there, not just for P2P, but for kinds of social interaction that the internet is just too big for.

Re:Rates that high will force rerouting

[jmorris42]

> Great idea. Quick question: how will that wifi network connect to the Internet?

Ok, work with me here. Imagine the bandwidth cap drops to 100GB/month. Hard drives are still cheap and huge and will be cheaper and even bigger by the time this problem ripens. 802.11n will also be commonplace by then. Ok, so everyone participating in a neighborhood net is expected to buy the current reflashable linky, at least 1TB of drive and a 10dbi omni antenna, The AP does all of your bittorrent action, something ASUS is selling now, a browser plugin offloads all .torrent links to the AP, you monitor your downloads on a webpage it provides and when it hits 100% you access the files via a samba share.

Ok, now put this AP on a 10/8 net and it can see the neighbors and your outbound net. It's torrent client has been modified to prefer local peers by a ratio close to the number of members. It also assists in torrents a neighbor is working even if you aren't interested in the file, at a lower priority on the pipe to the outside world. It does something else interesting, it only caches the blocks it downloaded, thus distributing a cache of those files amongst the peers and greatly increasing the effectiveness of the cache. If you later decide you want one of those files your client gets the rest almost exclusively from the local nodes.

Now imagine a future where video over the Internet was about to launch but the cable companies and telcos squashed it in favor of their video on demand pay per view crap. Get fifty neighbors together and together they have an aggregate bandwidth cap of 5TB. If everyone is watching a totally different set of shows it won't help much, but there will almost certainly be a fairly good overlap. When a new episode of moderately popular show X is available the dozen or so people who want it will be downloading it in parallel across their net links and swapping the blocks across a much faster 802.11n WWAN aided to a lessor extent by the 38 peers who aren't interested in that program. And cutting the hit on their bandwidth cap by that same factor of 12+ but offset by helping download stuff you didn't want to help somebody else. And if anybody else later decides they want to watch it before it times out of the caches their cost is zero. By having one smart host do almost all heavy downloading it can know the caps and adjust it's activity to avoid hitting them.

Re:Rates that high will force rerouting

[Stewie241]

Well... okay... say you have... I dunno... 25 houses in your local neighbourhood. Everybody keeps going over their caps while watching TV over IP. Now there is only so many programs on TV that people are watching. So, instead of everybody individually downloading each program and going way over their cap, you pool your 250GB per month of data and only download each show once. Then, you stick a server on that network that will stream those programs to local nodes on the neighbourhood wifi network.

Re:Rates that high will force rerouting

[jmorris42]

> There's a lot of potential there, not just for P2P, but for kinds of social
> interaction that the internet is just too big for.

You do realize what you are talking about, reinventing the BBS as the center of networked life. And yea, perhaps it is about time for the pendulum to swing back towards local communities. Building WWANs of the sort being discussed in this thread would require some level of co-operation between neighbors so it would be natural to put up a local BBS/webforum/wiki/whatever to communicate. Once it exists it is natural to add more topics fo local interest.

Re:Rates that high will force rerouting

[marxmarv]

Problem: In many locales it's illegal to share your bandwidth (in Michigan, the pretext is masking a user's identity).

Problem2: In the US a device capable of transmitting over such a long range would not be Part 15 compliant, and the FCC creating a license class for community networks seems unlikely.

Problem3: The entire confederation is probably sharing the same outbound link to the Internet, or one of few. The performance improvements will probably be less than expected.

Problem4: Breach of contract. Access is provided for private home use only. Anyone participating in the confederation is likely to be cut off, and an ISP or anyone else could trivially enumerate the network by rolling a truck.

Problem5: Privacy. Who's wasting my bandwidth on Debbie Does Quahog? Alternately, who's wasting my bandwidth on Disney crap?

Re:Rates that high will force rerouting

[gregbot9000]

we are trying this in my neighborhood, but some guy keeps just sucking up all the bandwidth on usenet .binaries. We have been racking our heads trying to figure out how on earth we will solve this problem. so far they figure that the best course of action is to implement some sort of thing to prevent people from using excessive amounts of bandwidth they haven't figured out a name yet maybe lid or roof or a top.

my lynching initiative was shot down unfortunately.

Re:Rates that high will force rerouting

[Anonymous Coward]

Some community wireless networks sort of do this.

People download what they want over the internet and everyone shares it over the wireless network which is free. IRC for communication and FTP for sharing is mostly used since its simple, easy to use, compatible with just about every operating system and doesn't create lots of connections like p2p which can affect wireless networks.

sure thing

[A_Non_Moose]

for a PDF version you'll have to give up an email address.

ok, how does bill_gates@comcast.net sound?

Re:sure thing

[danomac]

Using laughing@you.com for sites that require email addresses is even better.

Solution here :

[unity100]

Wireless networks, or New generation mobile networks. If you load the 'tube' onto radio waves, you are off the hook for good.

Re:Solution here :

[Yetihehe]

If you load the 'tube' onto radio waves, you are off the hook for good.

Hook without a string is still painfull...

Re:Solution here :

[Toll_Free]

Bullshit. Somewhere, the data goes over someone's fiber.

-Toll_Free

Re:$215/month? I could handle that

[jamstar7]

Who would I have to shoot for 250/month T1? Around here (NW Arizona Desert, about 100 miles from Vegas), T1 is a dream, not available at any price. They didn't even admit to any fiber running up the highway until a year ago when they started offering severely capped DSL at 50/month.

Tell that to...

[TheHawke]

Sprint, and Verizon. The morons got their wireless aircards capped at 5GB. This in particular cripples a lot of folks that rely on high speed, low latency connections and cannot afford the up-front cost of satellite, nor will put up with their crappy service.

Re:Tell that to...

[rhsanborn]

5GB is hardly enough for my regular use. I added a PAM plan for a month that I was going to be working remote, and I'm already finding that I'm going to brush right up against the edge of that with fairly standard work use (VNC, email, transferring some logs to look over, etc). I can't even think about youtube, etc at night, as I'll definitely bound easily over that. And this is all reasonably simple stuff. I can't imagine how fast I'd chew this up if I had to move considerable amounts of content, or anything else.

Re:Tell that to...

[Toll_Free]

Satellite is not low latency.

THAT is what keeps people from satellite.

Satellite is actually fairly cheap, if you look at the big picture.

--Toll_Free

Re:Tell that to...

[mdarksbane]

Satellite is $80-90/month for DSL speeds, with high latency, and bandwidth caps at around 7-12gigs/month. Moreover, the providers I have found have policies that are beyond draconian if you exceed these bandwidth limits - you continue to pay your monthly fee, but are limited to dial-up speeds.

There are plenty of reasons to avoid satellite if you physically can. The problem is that I'm not sure that's possible where I live :(

Re:Tell that to...

[Toll_Free]

Not sure where you live.

I use WiFi / Microwave for my link. It's not cheap (if you look at the dollars for bandwith), but it's cheaper than taking a week / week and a half to dl a flick over dialup :)

I'm at 6400 feet, a couple thousand feet above the rest of the town. No cable companies, no internet other than the microwave company, etc.

If your in California, they are pretty much EVERYWHERE in the mountains. If not, can't really help :)

--Toll_Free

Re:Tell that to...

[mdarksbane]

I'm out in middle of nowhere Ohio. There's a Wifi company with an antenna on the grain silos in town, but apparently I'm just barely out of range from them. Been trying to find out how big of a tower I'd need to be able to hit them.

Re:Tell that to...

[Toll_Free]

Search for colinear antenna.

A collinear can be electrically steered to give the pattern you need.

No, a pringles can won't work terribly well.

There are a LOT of antenna designs you can use to steer your signal where you need, get maximum gain, etc.

Another thing you can look at is a "direct fed yagi". This type of beam antenna will negate a matching network, allowing up to 6 dB more gain than a similiar antenna not designed (ie, uses a matching network).

Matching networks are WAY more lossy at microwave, as well.

The company I use uses DirecTV antennas with a Motorola device on it. www.creative-wireless.net has the things on display, as well as an install.

LOS (line of sight) rules with microwave. If you can't see it, it's next to impossible to get it to work.

Also, research periscope antennas.

--Toll_Free

Re:Tell that to...

[mdarksbane]

I think they use a pretty big yagi for their normal install. The LOS is iffy - no hills in the way, but a decent number of trees is what the tech explained as killing the signal. My neighbor across the street can get a signal, but sort of barely, since we're out on the far edge. I'm currently trying to work out another wireless jump from his house to mine, but I'm having some bad luck with DOA bridges so far.

FTA: On Innovators

[mfh]

FTA:

A number of new and emerging technologies, many aimed at enhancing the way the Internet is used, promise to change how companies innovate, managers make decisions, and businesses lower costs or realize new business opportunities. Carriers will need to proactively prepare for these trends rather than react to them.

Comcast made promises and failed to deliver, and that's the key issue. Comcast's reactionary (and secretive) policies are based on a scary dollar figure, and their fear of exponential increases in overhead due to customers overusing/abusing their networks with massive transfers that were not originally expected by Comcast management. Comcast is as a result of poor planning, failing to deliver on promises made to customers.

Personally I don't think the technology is there yet. We need to come up with a technology that can handle massive downloads without the huge overhead to companies. Reduce the cost, and increase the data that can be transfered without having the huge expense of wires... maybe there is a wireless technology of some kind around the corner that can make use of teleportation to help this situation get better? Once the wires and solid-infrastructure is under control, it's much easier to reduce costs and therefore provide service to a wider customer base, without having to clamp the valves on customers who simply want to download more information than could be anticipated.

250GB? Boo Hoo.

[DarthVain]

We have had stupid caps up in Canada for at least a year now.

I am with Cogeco Ontario (Rogers Communications), for my cable internet, have been for years. I have a 60GB cap. They have 3 levels of service. Crap at 40GB. Normal at 60GB. Better than Normal at 80GB. They also implemented this cap pretty much without notice. So one day I had no cap, the next I did. I have even had my account disconnected due to going over cap (in fact it was the only way I found out I actually had one in the first place).

So don't cry about your 250GB a month cap please.

Ultimately unless the feds wake up and do something about these telecommunication giants taking advantage of markets and ripping consumers off not a bloody thing will happen. People are getting fed up, which will only become more apparent at time goes on. I would think it will only be a matter of years before the politicians start leveraging this for votes and then some sort of change will take place. However until then, it will be annoying, and we will all live in sucksville (at least if you stay in North America).

Bell can also stuff it as far as I am concerned. In Canada there is only Bell and Rogers, a duopoly, so there is not much choice. I hope the CRTC rips them all a new one and soon.

Re:250GB? Boo Hoo.

[Anonymous Coward]

So don't cry about your 250GB a month cap please.

STFU

Your cap sucks and ours sucks too. All caps suck.

Re:250GB? Boo Hoo.

[rhsanborn]

In most places in the states, there is a duopoly as well, it just depends on where you are. You can choose between the cable company, or the phone company. If you are outside of the metro-areas, your choice for broadband may drop to just one company or none. There are often a handful of homegrown options, but they generally fall well behind the services of the big players. I've seen satellite service, and local wireless service.

It will be interesting to see if content providers start to push on the other end when they see revenue streams in moving content via the internet, and see that threatened by caps. As others have mentioned, increased prices will also bring new players to the market, like more robust wireless and internet over phone lines, and possibly feasible mesh type networks.

Re:250GB? Boo Hoo.

[Warll]

Oh caps suck eh? I thought the point of this article was the establish that as a fact? The thing is though that the article is theory, for a look at real application of this scenario just come to Canada. Up here in western Canada we've always been on caps. Yet what has that got us? For a while we had the world's highest broadband penetration, we as a whole are also a lot more active in file sharing. All this while our caps rise and prices go down, not too long ago Telus was even offering computers if you signed up for a three year contract. Sure our caps may be lower, but that has more to do with the fact that everyone uses a lot of bandwidth, heck the major ISPs even advertise that you can "Downlaod large files fast", "Download your favourite music quickly". Really what I'm trying to say is that caps themselves don't "suck", its your ISP that does.

Re:250GB? Boo Hoo.

[Tongsy]

In Canada there is only Bell and Rogers, a duopoly, so there is not much choice. I hope the CRTC rips them all a new one and soon.

That is not quite true. There is smaller ISPs, like Teksavvy, that while they piggyback on Bells infrastructure, are considerably better than Bell. I just got teksavvy in the hosue I'm in now, and we have a 200 GB cap on a 5 Mbit DSL connection, and it only costs 30$ a month. Can't beat that in terms of price, speed or cap from Bell, and you can get their service anywhere that you can get Bell DSL

Re:250GB? Boo Hoo.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Teksavvy DSL in London (London, Ontario for those not from Canada). They give me 250GB with 8mbit down and 2 up for 29.99 a month. That's the DSL High-speed limited plan. For 39.99 a month you can get the same thing with absolutely no limit whatsoever. Since I only download maybe 10GB a month or less, I wasn't going to give them 10 extra dollars.

Re:250GB? Boo Hoo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to turn this into 'that thread', but the cable ISP covering the area I'm moving to starts at a 5gig cap for residential up to 15gigs for 'professional'. I could just as easily buy a data plan from my cellphone provider if the coverage wasnt so bad.

Alternative is a microwave isp that doesnt explicitly cap but does explicitly forbid p2p and employs packetshaping.

Any residential ISP capping at 5gigs a month scares the hell out of me. Have they slept through the development of youtube, webcams, voip, VoD, etc? 5gigs would maybe cut it 10 years ago, but not now.

Re:250GB? Boo Hoo.

[Anonymous Coward]

"So don't cry about your 250GB a month cap please."

You're a part of the problem. "I have a shitty cap but since mine is so bad you shouldn't be able to complain about your shitty cap. You should have to suffer because I am suffering." Fuck you. Do something about your cap. Don't try to get other people to do nothing about their cap.

Re:250GB? Boo Hoo.

[DarthVain]

Oh there are tons... of what I call independents. However, they ALL share either Bell or Rogers infrastructure.

We have already seen that Bell throttles the resources to these independents. They have taken some criticism, but to my knowlege nothing much has happened to them and I bet they are still doing it.

Rogers hasn't been under the same scrutiny (yet) but I would bet they do the exact same thing.

Bell only recently add dry dsl to their products, probably due to complaints and the independents competition, though it is not really advertised. Could this be because they want to sell phone lines?

Also 99% of those independents are DSL riding Bell lines, I think I have seen one provider in Ontario that is cable, and that was only a limited service area. If you play games and are all about latency, independent dsl may not be what you are looking for.

Bottom line is there is really only 2, and they seem to abuse their position. The stupid thing is, do you think they built all that infrastructure? I am pretty sure much of it was paid for by taxpayers and then custodianship was given over. We have put them in this position and they walk all over us. It is about time we took the reigns a bit and pulled...

Re:250GB? Boo Hoo.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, fuck you. You don't deserve high use internet at the same price as low use customers. My father should not be forced to subsidize your piracy habits.

Re:250GB? Boo Hoo.

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.telecom.co.nz/broadband/select/1,10627,205836-204473,00.html

Re:250GB? Boo Hoo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Something like 8 years ago, the only operator in Belgium (Skynet) was capping at 10GB for 3M/128k. The only people that were complaining (or at least 95% thereof) were downloading illegal materials.

Now that the market is no longer owned by a single operator, Skynet has upgraded the limit to 25GB for a 20M/512k (other operators offer higher limits but with less bandwidth and/or less reliability). Since the Web has changed considerably in the last few years and streaming has become common, 10GB was indeed getting a bit short. Once again, most of the people who are complaining are downloading illegal materials.

In the end, it doesn't bother the vast majority of customers in the slightest way, reduces costs for the operator (okay, we don't really care about that) and even offers some kind of piracy control.

A 250 GB cap is close to no cap at all. Are you downloading a full ISO of your favorite distro each time a new patch is released ?

Lucky bastards!

[Anonymous Coward]

Up here in Canadia I get a whopping 95 GB transfer a month. I long for 250GB a month you lucky bastards!
Damn you Rogers!

Re:Lucky bastards!

[shish]

Over here in the UK our ISPs boast of their massive 15GB caps :(

Re:Lucky bastards!

[KnightBlade]

How does 4GB a month sound? In India thats what you get. an unlimited option is available for the B/W is 256 kbps!

Remember cell phone minutes?

[natoochtoniket]

Once upon a time, we had to pay dearly for a 60 minute-per-month cell phone contract, and some people paid even more dearly for 180 or even 300 minutes per month. Then competition stepped in, and one of the vendors started offering 500 minutes per-month for same prices as the competitors charged for 180 minutes. Now, it's hard to find a carrier that even offers less than about 500 minutes in the lowest price tier, and lots of people have 1500, and "unlimited" contracts are becoming common.

As soon as you are tempted to change internet carriers to avoid being charged for extra gigs, they will bump the gigs-per-month. IF there is competition in a metro area, the gigs-per-month in that area will increase rapidly.

But, if you live in a small town or rural area, you get screwed. That seems to be a constant.

Re:Remember cell phone minutes?

[RemoWilliams84]

There are two problems with this when it comes to cable internet. 1) Lack of real competition. 2) It's a lot harder and more expensive to lay fiberoptic wire in the ground all over a city than it is to buy a couple of spots of land and put up a cell phone tower.

Re:Remember cell phone minutes?

[wjh31]

is that not what wimax is about?

Re:Remember cell phone minutes?

[Lostlander]

There is an error in your comparison. Wireless (Single tower for several miles of coverage) vs cable (well lets just say it's a little more expensive and troublesome to install) While wireless carriers might be able to increase the availability of broadband and compete with cable/phone companies there is very little chance that there will be any new carriers moving into any area less dense than a major city.

Re:Remember cell phone minutes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in such a small town. This month Frontier (the only ADSL in town) announced a 5 GB/month cap on their max-speed-unlimited service in a oh-yes-we've-always-had-this-but-we-never-told-you letter. Go figure.

Shortsighted?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

That's ignorant. They made long range plans. They took a look at the long term trend of ever-increasing bandwidth usage and realized they could rake it in by capping the bandwidth.

Re:Shortsighted?

[Hatta]

Hardly. The foresighted thing to do would be to invest in infrastructure and profit from the trend of ever-increasing bandwidth usage. You know there's something terribly wrong with an industry when they complain that people want too much of their product.

metered bandwidth

[einer]

Why is metered bandwidth not an option? My electric company does this. Is it harder to count bits than watts? Also, why are the airlines charging more for baggage? Just come up with a price per pound and charge everyone fairly. Fatasses SHOULD pay more.

To hazard a guess at my own question... Money is why this isn't happening... It's more profitable, or the income stream is more predictable this way than in a sane, pay for what you consume (watts, fuel, bandwidth) model where everyone is screwed equally.

Re:metered bandwidth

[Nermal6693]

There's no technical reason; I'm actually on a metered plan (but I don't live in the US).

Re:metered bandwidth

[zehaeva]

Metering bandwidth raises a few questions about what should be transferred over the internet. If your paying per byte then all of those flash heavy advertisements are suddenly costing you money. you are then paying to be advertised to. who wants that? What happens when your computer gets a virus and starts to send out gigabytes of email spam? Who's liable for that? How about when windows decides to update its self with that sexy new 500MB patch? Or when WoW releases a new patch and you have to pay for the 800MB-1.5GB patch for that game?

Metering bandwidth now when the internet depends on having an unlimited connection would truly stifle growth of not just the internet, of all computer software.

When people have to think, gee do I pay for the bandwidth for this massive patch to my OS/Email Client/Office Suite/Game/Misc App, then everyone looses. Too many people would make their systems not update, and leave themselves vulnerable to attacks if given that sort of choice.

Carried to its logical extreme bandwidth metering can be pretty scary.

Re:metered bandwidth

[Hatta]

This is also a bad plan. It ignores the fact that fundamentally bandwidth is not a scarce resource in the way that fuel or kwh are. Once you have the infrastructure in place it costs no more to send one byte than it does to send one billion bytes.

The important thing is that you actually want your bandwidth to be used, otherwise what's the point in having it? Any bandwidth that goes unused is wasted. So if you meter your bandwidth, you're encouraging people to use less of it. But your costs aren't going down, it costs the same to power a router whether or not it's actually doing any routing. This effectively raises the cost per byte for absolutely no reason.

Metered access is absolutely not a sane model. The sane business model is to pay a fee to access the network, utilize the network as much as possible, and when traffic outgrows your infrastructure invest in more.

Re:metered bandwidth

[compro01]

Because their business model is heavily reliant on people who buy a large connection and then proceed to barely use it. This allows them to oversell on a massive scale, which is extremely profitable. Now technologies that take advantage of all that bandwidth (on-demand content, P2P, streaming video, etc.) are coming into the mainstream and generally screwing up all their lovely profitable assumptions.

Re:metered bandwidth

[Fumus]

You raised a very good point and I'd like to add my two cents:
Internet is based on connection bandwidth, and that's on what the prices are based on. Electricity is 'instant'. You don't need to wait five minutes for the light bulb to finish buffering it's light stream or something.

The other problem is that there is no reasonable pricing model to be made based on how much people download. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of 'moms and pops' who only use the internet for email and skype, won't ever hit 5GB a month.
On the other hand, there are people who watch on-demand TV. Youtube, webstreams, download from iTunes, etc. And they can easily rack up 50GB a month. So if they charged $5 per GB, they'd get about the same money they used to get from the low-usage people, but the 'power users' would have to pay $250 for their standard line.
Now if they charged $1 per GB, the 'power users' would have a normal price, but the greedy telcos would never allow people to pay just $5 a month, now would they?

Re:metered bandwidth

[rob1980]

Now if they charged $1 per GB, the 'power users' would have a normal price, but the greedy telcos would never allow people to pay just $5 a month, now would they?

Of course not. You'd have your access fees, universal service charges, mandatory CPE insurance charges, etc etc etc

Re:metered bandwidth

[Cajun Hell]

What happens when your computer gets a virus and starts to send out gigabytes of email spam?

A month after that happens, when you see your bill, you decide to stop running viruses.

Viruses are an activity that people choose to participate in; it's not something that just happens to people. If someone emails you an executable, or some web site says it requires Internet Explorer, just say no. It's not that hard.

Re:metered bandwidth

[zehaeva]

I agree, in general people's unsafe behaviors are what cause viruses. My thoughts are for a base line of 90% of people out there. They don't know enough not to click on stuff their not supposed to.

another random thought for all of that, no one will run seti @ home or folding @ home, well I wouldn't if I had to pay for the bandwidth for it to get the data to my house and back out again. Right now those distributed computing projects live in the excess bandwidth that really doesn't cost me, or anyone else anything extra. Just a thought.

~Z

Re:metered bandwidth

[bte]

The problem is that the unmetered option is not sustainable at the prices that are currently being charged. The ISP's (telco/cableco, whatever) have based their unlimited pricing structure on people only using 10% of their capacity at any point in time (that's an example, I have no idea what the telco projections are/were).

Now that people are using more capacity than what they thought they are left with two options:

1. Limit what people can use
2. Increase prices to allow for the increased usage.

I would contend that unmetered access is not a sane business model unless you charge people for 100% of the capacity they have 100% of the time. This means that pricing would increase massively as people would be forced to pay for the speed of their access.

Do you want to pay something like:
1mbps = $200/mon
2mbps = $350/mon
10mbps = $1500/mon
(etc)

This is unlimited pricing based on your access speed, which seems to be what you're advocating.

Re:metered bandwidth

[failedlogic]

Its worse, I think if the household has kids. Downloading games, pictures and movies for science projects, playing on Xbox live, everyone wathching YouTube, buying off iTunes .... I'd be willing to be there's some families over 50 GB that don't realize it. Especially since most kids have no concept of bits and bytes - let alone - dollars and what it really takes to earn them.

IMO, the monopolies of big cable/telco forced people to buy their service. It was cheap, unlimited and offered 'great' technical support '24/7' - those being the big 3. Since these companies meter their current services, they think its cool to do the same with the Net. Residential Telco service doesn't have much to do with the economy anymore - but the Internet sure as heck does.

Re:metered bandwidth

[letsief]

You're already paying to run seti and folding@home. Do you think you're computer uses the same amount of power when it's chugging away at full speed as when it's idling? Do you keep your computer on when you're not using it just so it can run those programs? Then it's certainly using more electricity.

As long as you're letting your computer sleep while you're not using it, it's probably not raising your electric bill too much. But, then again, they don't use that much bandwidth, so they're not likely to cost you very much in that way either.

Re:metered bandwidth

[letsief]

First of all, we already pay to be advertised to. It's called cable TV, and we pay to see that advertising in two ways: 1) in our cable bill, and 2) in our electric bill. So, I really don't see that as a problem. It just becomes part of the cost in using online and offline computer services.

Furthermore, the idea that a computer virus could wrack up charges for a user isn't new. Remember some of the dialer viruses from years past? They were viruses that would use your modem to call some 900 number in Timbuktu.

Re:metered bandwidth

[Percy_Blakeney]

Carried to its logical extreme bandwidth metering can be pretty scary.

Everything is scary when carried to its logical extreme.

When people have to think, gee do I pay for the bandwidth for this massive patch to my OS/Email Client/Office Suite/Game/Misc App, then everyone looses.

Yeah, I feel the same way about gasoline: it's really put a crimp in my style to have to pay to travel. I think everyone should just pay a flat fee to the government every month and then get to drive as much as they want. That way, everybody wins, right?

Re:metered bandwidth

[sineltor]

I'm sure you mean well, but thats just FUD. How much bandwidth do you actually use? I very much doubt its anywhere near 250GB per month.

With a 250GB / month cap flash websites, windows updates and the once-a-month wow patch will not chew up your bandwidth. Those things will barely be noticeable.

250GB/month is around 8GB per day. Flash-based websites are usually no bigger than a meg or two. With 8GB per day you could download a fresh copy of windows vista every day, a 1GB world of warcraft patch and still have enough bandwidth left over for hundreds of flash-based websites.

250GB is a nutjob amount of bandwidth.

Even if you are a rabid torrenter, 8GB per day lets you download about 6 hours of video every day in HD.

As others have mentioned, your electricity is already metered and the world has not crumbled. Hard disks cost money and the world has not crumbled. Why? Because the prices are reasonable.

I share a 140GB internet connection with 5 other geeks and we manage just fine. We could pay more for more bandwidth if we wanted. But, we don't need to. Do we use the internet less because bandwidth costs money? Not really. I mean; who would want to download a new copy of windows vista every day?

Re:metered bandwidth

[GFree678]

Carried to its logical extreme bandwidth metering can be pretty scary.

It might be scary if you aren't used to it. Then again, us Aussies are kinda used to it, so maybe we have an advantage when it comes to working with metered bandwidth. ;)

A few points though - Flash heavy ads? Use Adblock Plus. Computer gets a virus and acts as a spambot? A good ISP would be able to detect such abuse with your email account and deal with it at their end at the very least. Windows updates? Critical updates are never as large as 500MB, only the service packs which are few and far between (ie. nothing major in the grand scheme of things). WoW updates? A lot of Australian ISPs have a pool of un-metered content that members of the ISP can download without increasing their usage quota. Internode for example has a games repository which includes... the latest WoW patches, among other things.

Point is, we've dealt with metered bandwidth for ages, and although it's annoying, it's not as "scary" as you're suggesting. UNLESS of course you've never had to deal with such limitations before, in which case I'll watch the anarchy with amusement.

Re:metered bandwidth

[zehaeva]

I was commenting more on an account being metered by each and every single byte, not necessarily geared towards what exactly TFA was speaking about.

My point would be that a lot of the internet is geared towards unlimited usage. And its only going to get worse.

I don't think the electricity bit is a good example. Sure its metered, but it didn't start with an un-metered system where every device and service that used it never took concern over how much electricity it used and then have all the utilities move to a metered approach.

Alos the 250GB/month is only comcast, Time Warner (my provider) is test driving 40GB/month plus $1/GB after that.

While I do come across as alarmist I do so only to draw attention to the thought that we shouldn't be jumping into this. The internet has exploded because it is so wild and free, both in regulations and with cost. If everyone blocks ads because no one wants to pay to be advertised to then slashdot here wouldn't survive long. Neither would the Times or half a dozen other websites that survive solely/mostly on ad revenue.

I am quite concerned about the chilling effect something like this would have on the future development of the internet.

My last thought is on sizes of files. When I installed Diablo 2 way back in the day (like only 8 years ago) I thought a 1.5GB install was insane and yet today my wow install has to be around 6 or 7 GB. I sold a digital camera in 99 that used a floppy disk to store the photo's, today you couldn't store one picture on 3 floppies.

Re:metered bandwidth

[zehaeva]

I believe you Aussies get the short end of the stick. Granted I tend to only hear 2nd hand info on how much more you pay for things that here in the States or the UK cost much less. You guys down in oz deserve better than getting bandwidth trickled to you and american tv shows showing up months after release here and especially deserve games that cost comparable to what it costs here in the states.

But I'm just a self indulgent wanker who preaches about freedom without doing anything about it ^_^

Re:metered bandwidth

[gregbot9000]

I thought bandwidth was metered for the big pages? I always figured that the large websites and commercial entities that run the adds and send out the patches had to pay for bandwidth and just residential consumers got it for a base fee. Though this comes from my limited experience with small scale hosting sites that had a sliding scale for bandwidth usage of your site.

Re:metered bandwidth

[GFree678]

Keep in mind though that we have to service the entire country's Internet access to the rest of the world (where all the good stuff is anyway) through a limited bunch of cables on the sea floor. It's not the cheapest thing in the world, and because we aren't as physical interconnected with all the major sites as some others are in the rest of the world, there is some basis for the extra costs involved. Then again there's a whole story about how almost all of our infrastructure is controlled by one company (Telstra), so the monopoly angle doesn't help much.

As for TV, well there's a reason why our country ranks either 1st or 2nd card for the highest downloader of torrents of TV shows. :)

Re:metered bandwidth

[the_womble]

Metering bandwidth raises a few questions about what should be transferred over the internet. If your paying per byte then all of those flash heavy advertisements are suddenly costing you money. you are then paying to be advertised to. who wants that?

It is part of the page you are seeing. If a site is to heavy stop using it. You could also block the heavy elements. If everyone does that advertisers will stop using them so we will have fewer flash ads, and more text ads. I do not see the problem?

What happens when your computer gets a virus and starts to send out gigabytes of email spam? Who's liable for that?

You are. I bet you would be much better motivated to keep your computer secure. The rest of us win.

How about when windows decides to update its self with that sexy new 500MB patch? Or when WoW releases a new patch and you have to pay for the 800MB-1.5GB patch for that game?

Big patches are not that frequent. The cost will be negligible. If it does become an issue users will push vendors to use differential patches, better compression etc.

Remember Comcast are charging usage over a cap of 250GB a month. Over 8Gb a day. You are not going to hit this web browsing and updating software. It is enough to download a complete set of Debian CDs (i.e. everything in their repos, which is a LOT) every two days and have enough left to spend hours every day browsing reasonably lightweight web sites.

This is going to affect video and little else. It might affect P2P more generally because it will be easy to save money by just leeching.

When people have to think, gee do I pay for the bandwidth for this massive patch to my OS/Email Client/Office Suite/Game/Misc App, then everyone looses. Too many people would make their systems not update, and leave themselves vulnerable to attacks if given that sort of choice

They will learn the hard way when some piece of malware uses a lot of their bandwidth.

Re:metered bandwidth

[Splintax]

In Australia, almost every ISP has quite aggressive bandwidth caps (most accounts have a limit of 10GB a month or less, with the most expensive accounts offering ~100GB a month or so), and it's been this way since broadband (ie. faster than dial-up) connections were introduced. The contract with your ISP simply explains that you are completely responsible for the usage of your connection. It seems to work fine here.

Re:metered bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling that what will happen is they will simply measure the total traffic in&out at the cable modem, and count it towards the cap with no compensation.
They will most likely NOT give credit for the following:

- ISP problems resulting in dropped packets
- ISP generated traffic (like forged RST packets)
- ISP network overhead
- Data that has to be re-transmitted due to ISP problems, mangeling, etc.
- ISP generated Advertising (ie they replace the ad image with a huge flash animation)
- ISP hijacked nonexistant DNS "parking" pages/search engine pages (with advertising).

So basically they will charge you for bandwidth, then inject extra content you never asked for and that will just take away from your monthly total.
Then they will make extra cash off of that traffic they sent you.

Anyone who complains will be pointed at and called "poopy-head bandwidth hog".

In other words, par for the course- deceptive advertising & shady practices.

 

They should implement peak hours

[antifoidulus]

much like the power companies do. If I want anywhere near decent speed I basically have to be up by 6 before the file sharers get up. I'm sick of having to buffer youtube videos because someone upstream is downloading gigs of data. However, I don't really care what you do while I'm sleeping, so I think that they shouldn't implement caps, but instead do as much traffic shaping as necessary from say 8 am to 10 pm so that people who don't use a ton of bandwidth can still enjoy what they like and from 10 pm to 8 am its open season.

Re:They should implement peak hours

[Hatta]

File sharers saturate their links 24/7. They are not the cause of prime-time congestion.

Re:They should implement peak hours

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop using up all the tubes watching videos! I need to check my email today.

But on a serious note, youtube can be painfully slow where I live too. I know as a fact I don't have neighbors competing for bandwidth in my area. So it's either Comcast's fault, Youtube's or somewhere inbetween.

Re:They should implement peak hours

[Anonymous Coward]

File sharers saturate their links 24/7. They are not the cause of prime-time congestion.

Right, everyone is the cause of prime-time congestion. But if those file sharers scale back their transfers say 50% during prime time then there would be less problems.

Re:They should implement peak hours

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are using a provider that puts you on the same collision domain as everyone on the block, like Cable, this doesn't apply to you.

If you're using DSL, your speeds aren't being affected by what your neighbor is downloading.

And in my experience, youtube *is* spazzy sometimes, regardless of the quality of your connection.

Re:They should implement peak hours

[RockWolf]

They do that here in Australia, but with caps. My plan has 20 gig on-peak, which runs roughly mid-day to mid-night, and 40 gig off-peak. Tends to be fairly self-limiting, because the hard-core filesharers tend to run low bandwidth caps on their torrents during peak, or they'll get dial-up after they hit their cap. It's a touch slow 6-9pm with the schoolkiddies, but nothing unacceptable, then clears up for the off-peak.

Re:They should implement peak hours

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sick of having to buffer youtube videos because someone upstream is downloading gigs of data.

I can't believe you people keep buying into this stupid idea.
your internet is NOT slow because of one person upstream running a torrent, unless your ISP has SERIOUSLY oversold the egress capability of your DSLAM.
You should find out what the average speed of your ISPs customers are on your DSLAM, and what kind of egress it is using (IMA, DS3, etc), as well as the egress bandwidth of the Host device.
I'll bet they are still running an oversell rate of about 40 customers per T1 (or equivalent bandwidth) even though those customers are set for 3MBPS speeds.

Again, this boils down to the ISP NOT re-investing in their own network. They would rather pocket the money and screw their customers.

Looking for new service

[xenolion]

I already know that I am going to be going over the cap due to PC anywhere and my own server working out of my house. I know I use way more then I should but hey I'm paying for a service for legal means to make money to pay them... Looks like its time for fiber in my house.

Re:Looking for new service

[xenolion]

The other thing is this going to be network wide or just in city limits. I cant see them capping Farmer Joe in the middle of no where...

This again? Stop complaining!

[Smoke2Joints]

The US has amazing net connections compared to other places in the world. 250gb cap? In New Zealand, we have to live with 40gb, and thats a lot here.. I opted for more data over more speed. We also speeds of 4m/160k up/dn. We just rolled out ADSL2+, with some people getting near 24mbit/s, but you have to live ridiculously close to the exchange to get anything over 12mbit/s. Most people get less.

If I could pay what I pay now, for 250gb and better speeds, Id be most happy with it.

Re:This again? Stop complaining!

[Anonymous Coward]

The US has amazing net connections compared to other places in the world.

And New Zealand has amazing net connections compared to other places in the world. Try getting a broadband connection at all in, say, Zimbabwe. Now stop whining.

Re:This again? Stop complaining!

[compro01]

Good comparison. A relatively small island nation (75th largest/122nd most populous) in effectively the middle of nowhere so you have to run massive, long, expensive, vulnerable, capacity-limited under sea cables to, compared to the world's 4th/3rd largest country, which is bordered by the world's 2nd/36th and 15th/11th largest countries, not to mention the country that invented the entire thing.

Re:This again? Stop complaining!

[Smoke2Joints]

this isnt about technology. its about what people complain about, and the article is complaining about world class data caps! a bit rich imo, when i just explained that other people have much less and dont complain.

Re:This again? Stop complaining!

[Smoke2Joints]

i agree completely, and i am not complaining. i am simply pointing out, as you just did, that people all over the world have less capable connections to the internet than the US.

Re:This again? Stop complaining!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you've never seen bittorrent forums where those people bitch they have to download an episode again cause it got nuked and the just released one fixed some audio glitches and removed 20 millisecond worth of commercials that accidently was left on it.

Re:$215/month? I could handle that

[SoCalChris]

Now I don't feel so bad having to pay $100/month for a 1.5/512 wireless connection.

No cable or DSL available here, and the phone lines are in such poor shape that dialup won't get over 20Kbps.

email address?

[nsayer]

for a PDF version you'll have to give up an email address.

Fortunately, those aren't hard to come by.

Other options

[mu51c10rd]

Not everywhere is restricted to DSL or cable. I use wireless internet and get speeds around 6 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. It works quite well in thunderstorms and any other bad weather as well. Should I choose to switch providers, there are 3 wireless providers, 1 cable provider, and 1 DSL provider. However, it works well here as I am in the Rockies and it is easy for them to put up antenas on mountains so that most houses can be in range. There are places in the US with a few options.

Where are the Australians?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll tell you that the most anyone should expect out of an internet connection is 56K speeds and a 5 gb/month cap. If they have it that bad, shouldn't everyone else?

I'm only surprised at the complaints

[JimToo]

Bandwidth costs! Cables (copper or fibre - who cares which tech) cost. Businesses expect to make an income against their expenditure. I see from one Australian source that approx 3% users are v. high bandwidth users. If 3% are driving the investment costs (and they are) they need to pay. For the rest, a cap they never reach really is effectively unlimited. What's the problem?

How many people hit the cap?

[Onaga]

But seriously, who would ever use enough bandwidth in a month to have their connec

Re:$215/month? I could handle that

[socz]

Here's what you do, lobby your local congressmen and you state's senators to try to host the upcoming winter/summer olympics. THEN they'll upgrade the entire communications infrastructure and you'll be set! That's what happened in Utah!

Sounds like I should switch...

[pburdine]

250GB per month actually sounds good to me. For a long time Cox in San Diego actually has limits of 60GB on their premium plan and the value plan it is only 4GB (according to an email I received with them complaining about me going over). Since I am cheap, I only have the 4GB plan so I can't even download a DVD iso in a single month!

Re:Sounds like I should switch...

[Anonymous Coward]

I only have the 4GB plan

Wow, that's so small. It must suck, with Cox. But, hey - at least they have powerboost. Yeah?
If I were you though, I'd check for viruses, and secure my ports. They service most of San Diego, and you could get something from them.

/meaningmeaning

uh...who said the caps were fixed?

[buddyglass]

Presumably the 250GB figure is based on the distribution of usage patterns for Comcast's customers. I'm guessing it was set so that it will have no impact on the vast majority of users, but will curtail the activities of the heaviest n% of users.

As long as the general shape of that usage curve stays the same, i.e. a small group of super-heavy users at the top, then Comcast's model remains valid. They may just need to slide the cap upwards as bandwidth usage increases across-the-board.

What would screw them is if somehow the curve flattened out, where all users were using approximately the same bandwidth. But I don't see that happening any time soon, if ever.

Re:uh...who said the caps were fixed?

[Rockoon]

The 250GB decision wasnt made based on how many people it will effect.. it was based on how much profit the provider will make.

The cost/GB that they pay is and has been going down. Simultaneously, the GB/user has been going up. Its akin to a race.

Over time these caps will cut their bottom line significantly, removing the race from the equation.

This is the same ISP that is notorious for traffic shaping. As they say, "its the money, stupid!" Evidence that tey are just being greedy is that many other large ISP's (Metrocast for example) have not dived into either traffic shaping or capping.

Re:uh...who said the caps were fixed?

[buddyglass]

Of course its about the money. And I don't have a problem with that. At its root, everything Comcast does is based on the money, since they're a for-profit venture with an obligation to their shareholders.

"How much profit the provider will make", with regard to where they set the usage cap, is based on how many people it will effect, since banging up against some cap is going to piss most people off. So, when deciding where to set the cap, you set it so that you get the most "bang" (i.e. bandwidth savings) for your "buck" (i.e. upset users who may terminate service).

As long as the curve is such that there's a small subset of users in the upper range whose usage level is orders of magnitude higher than eveyrone else, it will be profitable for Comcast to put a cap on usage. Or, alternately, to charge on a per-unit basis for bandwidth consumed above some "base" level.

I don't get it

[nicklott]

Speaking as an Englander whose always had bandwidth caps (and much lower ones than this) I don't really get the problem. You don't get all-you-can-eat electricity or phone calls (or maybe you do?) why expect unlimited bandwidth? 250Gb a month is 3 and a bit CentOS images a day. What are you doing that requires that? Even if you had a skype video call on 24/7 for a month you'd only approach about 40gb. It's 100Kb/s constantly; if you're downloading torrents you'd be lucky to average that over a month anywhere that's not on or near a backbone. I mean you're not going to run, for example, a proper website on that, but no-one seriously runs anything public like that on an ADSL line do they?

Re:I don't get it

[Free the Cowards]

Most places in the US have had unlimited local phone calls for decades. Many phone plans now include unlimited phone calls anywhere in the country. So yes, we do get all-you-can-eat phone calls.

I still agree with your overall point. If you use more, you should pay more. 250GB is a huge cap, far larger than most people appreciate, and will not cause problems for the vast majority of users. The only problem is that people who use more than 250GB/month should be able to pay extra for their usage, not get kicked off.

Re:I don't get it

[Clandestine_Blaze]

The problem was that these services were being advertised as "Always On" and "Unlimited". In reality, there was some fine print that said "Oh yeah, there really is a cap, but we won't tell you how much it is because it's arbitrary."

That led to a lot of accusations of deceptive business practices. The announcement of a cap is because companies such as Comcast were having their cake and eating it too. They were advertising unlimited services, but cutting people off when they started using too much. To be fair, it sounds like only those that were extreme users were cut off, and that happened rarely. But announcing a real cap is a good thing, as it gives customers a real number and not some arbitrary value.

Of course it would be helpful if ISPs would release a bandwidth monitoring tool, but I don't see people hitting 250 GB. 250 GB, in my opinion, is a generous amount for today. You can pretty much get 8 GB a day for a full month, and that's a lot of pR0n!

Re:I don't get it

[Fumus]

That's why good ISPs provide USENET access. It's 100% of your connection speed. All the time.

Re:I don't get it

[nicklott]

OK. We had the same deal here with deceptive selling of "unlimited" services, but they've largely stopped that now simply by enforcing the law. I think the caps are the wrong target here, it's too easy to make someone arguing against them look stupid. The real battle should be about dishonest selling. An "unlimited" service can simply never encompass any limit, and that should be a very simple lawsuit to win, if required.

Re:$215/month? I could handle that

[Toll_Free]

Hey bud,

Depending on where you live, www.creative-wireless.net might be a decent idea.

I use them, on their basic service. I've been told no more 1000 connections to my computer once, but otherwise, they pretty much leave me alone, and my pipe is saturated nearly 100 percent of the time.

50 bucks a month, half megabit downstream. They have other plans, and all are cheaper than the one you are talking about.

Incidentally, they don't oversubscribe, and they also have quite a robust wifi network. Last year, 3 feet of snow overnight, my internet worked all night long.

--Toll_Free

Scribd? PDF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, what's with the high bandwidth text information? How about a plain text presentation of the information? We have a bandwidth cap to deal with here!

Could someone explain

[DreadPiratePizz]

Could someone explain where the cost comes from? Why does using more of my bandwidth cost comcast extra money? If I buy a firewire cable, it costs the same whether I transfer 80 MB or 80GB using it, and it doesn't wear out with use. What are the expenses going toward? Costs for the routing/switching?

Re:Could someone explain

[Mezoth]

Cable services are shared for the last mile between the homes that they pass. For Comcast, the last numbers I saw (from the fairshare information threads) were ~250 homes per downstream. The higher the per-household usage, the more they have to split up that grouping - which requires putting more cable in the ground, setting up equipment, etc.

This is the bandwidth crunch the cable companies have, not the core of the network. The article actually does not address that fact at all, and seems to assume infinite edge bandwidth with limited core bandwidth. This is true in an enterprise network, but is not true in a cable network today.

Re:Could someone explain

[rrohbeck]

They're talking price, not cost. The two have nothing to do with each other.

Re:Could someone explain

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd mod you +1 informative if my karma didn't suck.

Re:Could someone explain

[styrotech]

Ummm is it really that difficult to understand?

Could someone explain where the cost comes from? Why does using more of my bandwidth cost comcast extra money?

It isn't your bandwidth, or more explicitly it isn't the amount of bandwidth dedicated to you. It's just the upper limit on the rate at which you can use a portion of the ISPs dedicated bandwidth.

An ISP has a finite capacity (uplinks, routers etc etc). Increasing that capacity costs serious money - ie way way more than what you pay the ISP for it. The business model of an ISP is to pay serious money for a chunk of dedicated capacity and spread that capacity and cost over their customer base on the assumption that the customers will each only use a small percentage of the capacity they are capable of.

With flat rate plans, what that small percentage ends up being directly affects the entire business model and even small increases in it could make the difference between being a profitable ISP and an unprofitable one. The low usage customers are directly subsidizing the high usage ones.

If I buy a firewire cable, it costs the same whether I transfer 80 MB or 80GB using it, and it doesn't wear out with use.

And if you lease a dedicated line from a telco to connect you to a backbone provider you'll have a situation like your firewire cable. You might want to try comparing the costs of that to a DSL or cable connection.

But an ISP connection is more like a shared bus (eg USB) with lots of other devices on it - you need to share the total bandwidth with all the other devices and the bus can either have lots of devices using a little bit of bandwidth or only a few devices using lots of bandwidth. If the devices start wanting more bandwidth, extra buses will need to be added to the system (at a cost) to keep each device working at the same speed it used to by having less devices on each bus.

Re:Could someone explain

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it either. Why raise th "prices". The only reason for doing that is the extra "cost". supply and demand show that their is an virtual ulimited supply, minus cable up keep, so what's the deal.

Re:Could someone explain

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. You'll usually a find a relation where price > cost. Usually.

Re:Could someone explain

[bidule]

Your firewire cable is a 1-lane street, perfect for the wee hour traffic. But because of rush hour, you still need a 4-lane highway.

Or you can service a bus line with a single bus most of the day. But commuters will kill you if you try to pull that at rush hour.

Or... you won't put 10 hard drive in a single firewire chain because throughput will suck. You'll prolly put them in parallel, and might even buy a second FW controller.

Or, you know, that table at the cafeteria costs the same whether it's in use or not. Why aren't students allowed to use them to do their homework during lunch?

Do you get unlimited electricity?

[nedlohs]

Unlimited water?
Unlimited gas?
Unlimited cell phone calls?

Unless you live rent with included utilities, then the simple system for commodity utilities is: fixed cost and then a rate per unit, often with a fixed amount that is "free" (as in you only get charged per unit over it - clearly you paid for it in the fixed cost).

Which is exactly how ISPs worked when I wasn't in the US - You paid $X/month for Y GB and then paid Z cents per MB over that. At any reasonable ISP they also offered $X/month for Y GB and then the connection is throttled to something a bit better than dial up for those who don't want a huge bill because the kid decided to download the internet.

Just a cap is stupid, a cap at which you start paying makes sense if bandwidth is limited.

If bandwidth is larger than demand then just like fixed line phones you'll get unlimited plans popping up...

Re:Do you get unlimited electricity?

[Free the Cowards]

Unlimited water?

Yes.

Unlimited gas?

Yes, assuming you mean the kind that comes into my house as an actual gas. (Not the liquid "gas" that goes in my vehicle.)

Unlimited cell phone calls?

No, but I could if I paid a bit more.

I agree with your overall point, but those were kind of bad examples.

Re:Do you get unlimited electricity?

[log0n]

You have a limited mortgage or rent, limited TV bill, limited cell phone bill (VZW or any other unlimited plan), chances are a limited regular phone bill (most places advertise flat rate per month long distance now). You may do something that incurs additional cost, but the basic charge is stable and unvarying, and doesn't depend on how much you actively use them.

And we have unlimited water where I live (flat rate - not charged by usage).

The biggest problem with a bandwidth cap is once you hit and go over, you suddenly get raped on overage charges (example: look at the kid who downloaded the internet via international roaming). This is an artificial scare ceiling. It doesn't cost anything significantly near to provide the service that went over the cap, it's just a ridiculous extra charge to make sure you don't go there again. On the flip side, if you go under the cap, there's no advantage to you.

If I download 250GB of Linux Isos, the cost to Comcast if I went that extra to 260GB is insignificant. But Comcast will either cut your service, or impose an exorbanent fee should that happen.

If I download less than 250GB, I'm not going to see a decrease in what I pay.

If Comcast wants to pose this limit on users, than it should be granted that $price will give you 250GB. If you go over, you pay whatever that overage figure equates to based on $price==250GB. When you stay under, you should only be billed for what you actually use, again based on the $price==250GB equation.

That's what's wrong with having a cap. It's only there to promote fear and generate revenue. It's not there to provide sane billing or usage control.

Re:Do you get unlimited electricity?

[log0n]

exorbitant - i can't spell late in the afternoon =)

Re:Do you get unlimited electricity?

[bws111]

According to the Comcast FAQ, if you go over the limit you get a phone call asking you to not do that again. Do it again within 6 months and they terminate your service for a year. There are no extra charges. Now why would they do that? Because they don't really want you as a customer. Again, according to the FAQ, the average user tops out at 2-4G/month. So for the same 250GB bandwidth you are using, they could add around 100 more average users without impacting their system or spending more money. Even if there was an overage charge, it would not make up for the difference between what you are paying and what 100 more customers would be paying.

Re:Do you get unlimited electricity?

[nedlohs]

You obviously haven't seen overage charges in action.

For example: http://my.bigpond.com/internetplans/broadband/cable/fineprint.jsp

$150/GB so the $37,500 a month from that one big downloader easily covers 100 paying customers, in fact they make 10x as much.

So instead of a cap which people complain about, an overage charge that has the big downloaders begging to be cut off. Some other ISP will offer cheaper overage rates when they see it can still be profitable to have those big downloaders

well

[unity100]

we need to make it sure that it doesnt happen.

Re:$215/month? I could handle that

[compro01]

Hmph. $60/month 2m/256k wireless here, uncapped as far as I've found. No DSL or cable either, though the phone line will pull 44.6k or 48k on a good day, which is useful as a backup.

All bets are off

[westlake]

Can't we just add some more tubes?
.

There is the very real prospect of a financial meltdown in the states.

The "unlimited" Internet service the geek wants to build is going to be hit and hit hard as families under strain continue to retrench --- and I'd not be in the least surprised if access through the public terminal or dial-up at $10/month lies in the immediate future for many a Slashdot poster whining about the 250GB monthly cap he faces today.

Re:$215/month? I could handle that

[orielbean]

Remember that McCain is one of the AZ senators? And he won't porkbarrel or earmark for his constituents? There's the downside...

Mabe trying ot cut the compitition out

[teknosapien]

What about subscription based services? what if I'm subscribed to MLB.com and and watch every game I can and use Vonage on a consistant basis to make calls and I stream my music online? what effect would this have on my bandwidth and would it move me away from competing vendors? Would I then find it more cost effective to drop Vonage and use Comcast's Phone service and watch my games via subscription through Comcast? I think there is more here than meets the eye and only after it's implemented will we see the true fall out. After all what better way to kill the competition than to make it impossible to do business in your area

Re:$215/month? I could handle that

[G00F]

You mean 640k

And actually if I got 640KB/s speed uncapped guaranteed I'd be happy enough. I don't see speeds faster than that when doing things on the net anyways even with con-casts 12Mbs.

Re:$215/month? I could handle that

[Michael Meissner]

I pay about $400/month for a full T-1 line. I thought T-1 was a regulated service in that the phone company had to offer it to anybody that would get a POTS (plain old telephone service), i.e. a copper line. My phone line comes in a wire that is strung over the lake for the 6 houses that are on our side of the lake. I've gone from dual channel ISDN to fractional T-1 to full T-1 line. I would love to switch to business class service over FIOS/cable/etc. but at present it just isn't possible. I do recall that there was a huge upfront cost ($2k?) that my employer at the time paid to get the necessary repeaters in. The way I did this was to go to the network company (net1plus in my case in Massachusetts) that provides the T-1 service, and let them talk to the telephone company, rather than talking to the telephone company directly. Maybe you need to start talking to the board that regulates telephone service in NV.

Well, yes...

[argent]

Unless you live rent with included utilities...

Yes, that's the point, isn't it. Most people's internet service is like renting an apartment, not owning a house. No control over access, visitors need to park down the block because you've only got one space, no privacy, ...

Don't worry, when you're buying dedicated internet service with a fixed IP and guaranteed performance, you pay for traffic.

LAN Filesharing

[dj245]

Get bandwidth expensive enough and we could just do local neighborhood p2p filesharing. Imagine a 10.0.0.0/8 wifi network covering a neighborhood and sharing the big popular downloads among themselves. Also would make the **AA goons job a lot harder.

This is most any college campus in the last 5 years. The only problem comes when it becomes obvious that the campus IT guy is still using 10mb hubs instead of switches.

you'll pay- one way or the other

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else see the humor in a bunch of illegal downloaders bitching about having to pay for a caps? I mean, let's be honest- even on a place like this, there's very few people chewing up 250 gigs a month who aren't downloading/ sharing/ hosting/ whatever big illegal files.

Pay for the DVD or pay for the ability to download it.

Re:you'll pay- one way or the other

[The End Of Days]

I've been laughing the whole time. This is basically the free entertainment crowd getting pissed that someone is going to slow them down at their buffet. Boo fucking hoo.

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact: Caps suck Fiction: Caps are needed

Finland, anyone?

[zooblethorpe]

I have one word for you: Finland.

Cheers,

Re:Finland, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Population density again. The densely populated portions of Finland are higher than New Jersey!

http://virtual.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=25785

http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/showpicture.asp?pictureURL=http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/images/people/popumap_b.gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Population_density

Re:Finland, anyone?

[FireStormZ]

20% of Finland's population lives in the Helsinki Metro area, another 10% live in just three cities..

40% of the population in 4 metropolitan areas..

IN the US the top 4 metros NY (18 Million), LA (12 Million), Chicago (8 Million), and Dallas (5 Million) together contain just 15% in those ares who's mean distance apart is far greater than Finland..

Re:Finland, anyone?

[tknd]

IN the US the top 4 metros NY (18 Million), LA (12 Million), Chicago (8 Million), and Dallas (5 Million) together contain just 15% in those ares who's mean distance apart is far greater than Finland..

Finland's population as a country is 5.3 million. So New York city has more than 3 times the population of Finland yet Finland has better broadband service? I know, Finland is a country not a city. But if you examine the cities you'll find the numbers still don't favor the US.

Going by your cited area in your post, Helsinki has a population density of 3,060/km^2 while New York City has a density of 10,482/km^2. A large US city with similar population density to Helsinki is Los Angeles with 3,168/km^2. So Los Angeles has similar population density, yet 6 times more population (larger market) yet Finland still has better broadband? Furthermore New York City has more than 3 times the population density?

Why are more and more countries consistently beating the US in information technology infrastructure even in similarly populated areas? Clearly it isn't a population or density issue. I'd say a better answer is large corporations using monopolistic power and litigation to prevent smaller guys and even municipalities from improving or building their own infrastructure to compete in lucrative service areas.

Now I do get your general point. It is too hard for a single company (even a large one) to roll out nationwide high speed information infrastructure for a country the size of the US. I agree with that. But I don't see why the rules cannot be changed to allow smaller companies or municipalities from building their own infrastructure to provide for the needs of their local population whether it be a rural area out in the middle or nowhere or a high density area like New York.

Projected costs aside...

[pdxp]

What about projected bandwidth capability? It seems that fiber optics are finally making it down the last mile.

Who knows what we'll use to fill those fat pipes in the next 20 years... will the caps still be 250GB? (cue the double-triple-layer Blu-ray quality pr0n jokes).

I personally don't want to see companies like Comca$t stifling progress by setting a standard of saying "we know how much data you need."

bill for data access is projected

[nurb432]

To be zero for many as they give the ISPS's the finger over the next few years and drop off line.

Assumes that bandwidth caps won't increase

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I hear the carping about bandwidth caps destroying the Internet I sigh. Here in Australia we pay a fortune for 20Gb per month caps, up & down. Yes this sucks, but only if you are downloading a lot of Warez/Porn/TV/Movies. The truth is that most of the bandwidth is consumed by a vanishingly small percentage of leechers, and the bandwidth caps mostly serve to stop them consuming more. This way the average user wins.
While there are numerous issues with competition in Australia that keep the cost per Gb high, the main problem is the cost of the pipes down here. A country almost as big as the US with the 10th the population just can't afford to get the same bandwidth for the same price. Bandwidth caps help to limit demand enough that pipes here are affordable enough for the average user.

The experience in Australia has been that if there is competition these caps get pushed up more or less sensibly over time. 250Gb is so ridiculously more than enough than the average user will need (currently) as to make those decrying it laughable. When it becomes not enough, Comcast will increase it so they don't bleed customers. There are always unlimited plans for those willing to pay (the same is true in Australia), and the average user should not have to subsidize the porn collection of some college kid in the name of Internet freedom.

Bandwidth is not unlimited. Building more pipes, like building freeways just leads to more consumption. It's a supply and demand curve, and reducing demand benefits everyone on average in terms of cost and speed as much as increasing supply.

Re:Assumes that bandwidth caps won't increase

[Anonymous Coward]

Bandwidth is not unlimited. Building more pipes, like building freeways just leads to more consumption. It's a supply and demand curve, and reducing demand benefits everyone on average in terms of cost and speed as much as increasing supply.

Christ, what is wrong with you Australians?!? Every time a internet bandwidth/usage cap issue comes up, an Australian argues that there should be more restrictions and lower usage caps. By "reducing demand" you are also stifling innovation. If Australians ran the world Youtube could never have grown to be as popular as it is today, because Australians would claim that text-only websites reduce bandwidth demand and are better for the average user.

ISPs can make all sorts of ridiculous arguments why they need more profits, but they don't need the help of you Australians claiming that everyone should go back to dial-up.

MOD Parent UP

[PRMan]

This is most likely exactly what they are trying to accomplish. This is also very shortsighted, as it will be abuse of a monopoly and will probably land them in trouble with the Justice Department.

Why is it so hard to accept?

[HexOxide]

I find it very amusing that so many people are complaining about the introduction of data caps, personally I would consider my self lucky to have gone without them for so long. We've had them from the very start, thanks to the government selling 90% of the copper land lines to Telecom years and years ago, we've had to deal with a monopoly from the beginning, and the caps were always there, the service always sucked, and _everybody_ was/is getting ripped off. Sure, eventually other ISPs were appearing, but they all had to rent Telecom's lines anyway. Only very recently has the government gotten off its ass and forced Telecom to split up into separate companies and unbundle the local loops, but guess what: We still have to wait for all the other ISPs to get in there and install their own hardware, and that's going to take time, and money. Sure, there are companies like Snap, who are building their own fibre network, but that's also very expensive, and wont be available to the general public until around 2011ish, and I know my exchange isn't scheduled to be upgraded to VDSL2 until late 2009/early 2010. The average user over here is capped at 10-60 gigabytes a month, jesus, you're complaining about 250 gigs? We should be so lucky.

Impetus for default compression?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now maybe we'll start using Accept-Encoding: gzip more frequently?

Will torrents compress, then encrypt their data? (do they do this already?)

I wonder how much bandwidth we could save even with compress alone, not to mention 7-zip or bzip.

I also wonder how much in terms of carbon outwput that will cost - It will definately take more CPU, but will we make it up in the shorter communications? (Not that I care about co2 - it isn't a pollutant and the earth has been cooling since 2001. - but I don't want to get side tracked --- my only concern is will the use of compression be environmentally endorsed? I've seen those IBM commercials for saving 40% on power consumption -- which is the real story)

Peering

[goldcd]

ISPs currently (at least to in the UK) have been racing to the bottom of the market.
Price is what is currently selling. Nobody cares about email servers, nntp retention (if it's even offered) etc etc - people are buying whatever's cheapest. Your ISP is a utility - in fact they care even less. Your water rate might be fixed, but your gas and electricity charge you on the basis of how much you use. Your ISP is generally accepted to provide 'internet' for a fixes price. A small sub-set of the market might care about the headline transfer rate, but it's an even smaller subset that care about the small print.
Basically we are so so so much the minority on these issues for even noticing they exist. More to the point we are the 'hogging consumers' - I can guarantee that you all download more than my mum.
The small print is going to get noticed soon, and it won't be my us - it'll be the people who signed up to netflix beacause of a mail-shot. It'll be the people that wonder why that 360 demo takes longer than it's supposed to.
So how will the market respond? Well there'll be new 'premium' packages that don't throttle for us - but 90% of punter would be happy if say a dozen sites were excluded from their caps based upon their popularity/kickbacks to the ISP.
Take Netflix or Amazon unboxed. Most end users have currently not heard of either of them - but in 5 years time they'll be watching media-less films on their TV. How will they decide which? Well their ISP will tell them.
The WiFi router most ISPS now offer pre-configged will have an HDMI socket on the back and a remote control. It will provide you movies from and the download due to peering will run at full whack.
Even if you're a 'low kbps' subscriber, your ADSL line will suddenly hum at 24Mb to get that movie onto your TV and that charge onto your bill asap. Market will then move subtlely - you'll be offered a slightly higher charge for, I dunno, 1 free film download a week. Then there'll be the premium unlimited rentals model - in summary your ISP will become your Cable TV provider.

Mobile minutes

[PMuse]

How many minutes do you get per $ today? How many did you get 10 years ago?

The only difference between the mobile phone carriers and the broadband carriers is how much competition exists for servicing your house.

I don't think this is about technology

[guzzirider]

Follow the money, the ISP's are gonna' want a piece of the action for downloadable or streaming movies and TV. (Like Apple TV, Netflix and what ever). The big corporate entities are going to find a way to kill off what ever is left of net neutrality and unfortunately I don't think it is very far off. One possibility is you will be stuck with who ever your ISP has some kind of a contract with. (Read revenue sharing). At the end of the day it will be all you can eat but .. (don't eat too much, unless it is from out approved trough).
It suks.

(Sorry about putting Apple TV next to NetFlix )

Even for Canada...

[Firethorn]

more than 25% of Korea's population lives in *1* city (and well over half live in that cities metro area), and Japan fits half the population of the United States into a nation smaller than California I really don't think you're wrapping your head around the Geography of this whole thing..

Even Canada can, by writing off the remotest 10% or so of it's population, achieve an average density higher than the USA's. A lot of Canada is very, very, empty. Satellite network access is about the only option.

I get pretty good broadband, they upped my speed not long ago, and dropped the price. I used to be on a $40 2mbit plan, now I'm on a $25 4mbit plan. I'd still prefer a higher upload speed(400kbit), but I figure I'm doing pretty good for living 45 miles from the closest 'major' town.

Re:Even for Canada...

[Jorophose]

Who the heck are you with, with a 25$ for a 4mbps plan?

Re:Even for Canada...

[Firethorn]

Local phone company. Why?

intarwebz still cheap

[zmollusc]

Meh. $215 a month for the intertubes will look good against $216 per gallon for gas.

I watch movies, shows and play p2p online games...

[SupremoMan]

and I have Comcast... I'll let you know in 1 month if I still have their internet. I don't suspect I go over, but how should I know? Streaming movies and shows doesn't exactly come with a bandwidth warning. And I'm sure as hell this is what's behind their cap. They don't want me watching on demand stuff if it's not from them.

Haggle

[JamesRose]

Whatever happened to haggling? It's such a weird feeling people have today, that you can't haggle witha corporation, that somehow their prices are set in stone. You call 'em up and tell them you want 500gigs a month or you walk. 90% of the time they'll want you business more with the 250gig extra you'll probably never use than not selling you anything (this works well, because their costs are so very indirect- a light pulse along a piece of glass doesn't cost anything*) It's always useful to have a competitor prepared just to push them a little.

*ignoring the minute electricity costs the sole costs are maintenance which don't vary with use, except for increasing capacity- and any good IT company should realise they're gonna be expanding sooner or later.

Re:Haggle

[shentino]

And that is exactly the problem with comcast.

Without a competitor, haggling is usually an exercise in futility.

Re:Haggle

[0111 1110]

You are missing the point. If you would make such an offer THEY DON'T WANT YOU as a customer. Should I repeat that? You pay the same or nearly the same as little granny who just checks her email a few times per week. Granny costs them nothing. With customers like her it's pure profit. To the extent that they pay an upstream provider for bandwidth or to the extent that they must upgrade their network for the bandwidth users, they make a lot more money if you leave than if you stay. You cost them more than granny if you download even 2 gigs per month let alone 250+. So yes. The whole point of this measure is to get rid of anyone who actually uses their bandwidth. Because most people don't. It is actually smart from a business perspective. Lucky for me I have two other providers here (including Verizon Fios) who don't cap at all. I live just outside of a major city. Of course if this turns into a trend we are all fucked. It will change the nature of the internet.

Caps bring nothing good, just influence peddling

[sethstorm]

The result has been the same wherever caps have been implemented. There will always be someone who will buy enough influence to get their content exempted while the rest of the data gets put under the cap.

Nice attempt for some to demonize high usage to defend metering. Unfortunately it just smacks of jealousy.

If you have capped infrastructure, do not peddle it on us or encourage our ISPs to fall in line. Do something about it on your end, for that is where the problem exists.

Do polygons take fewer bytes than MPEG?

[Vegan Pagan]

I've thought of a new business model that might emerge from a widening gap between processing power and bandwidth: movies transmitted in polygon form. Everybody wants movies, or even better, whole seasons of TV shows in HD and on demand, but the internet, at least in the US, isn't fast enough for this. Meanwhile, many video game companies, especially in Japan, are making their games more and more cinematic. It seems to take fewer bytes to describe a cutscene with polygons than even with H.264, so game companies could use their CG cutscene-making skills to make actual movies, taking advantage of the current problems in the internet movie market.

Something similar is happening in video games themselves. In order for Xbox 360's DVD games to approach the richness of content in PS3's Bluray games, and for CD-sized downloadable games to approach the richness of DVD games, some titles use procedural synthesis for textures and geometry. Perhaps the most famous of these is .kkrieger, which fits a FPS with Doom 3-style lighting into just 96k. It takes over a minute to boot, but the amount of content fit into that tiny file is astounding.

Hollywood, of course, will be horrified that video game companies are using their specific advantages to encroach on the movie studio's turf. But hey, Hollywood has clout. If they want to fight back, they should pressure the telecoms to give customers a lot more bandwidth at a low price.

Re:Do polygons take fewer bytes than MPEG?

[0111 1110]

So you are basically talking about replacing movies with cartoons?

Quit complaining!

[andrewm_za]

Here in South Africa the very best DSL package available is 4Mbps with a 4GB/month cap. For US$130/month. One ISP actually sells a wireless broadband package with a 10MB cap! I cannot fathom what it must be like to have a 250GB cap. That oughta be enough for anybody!

We just need to open the valves more

[dj42]

What is happening is that we have all the tubes we need, but they have tightened the valves on us. Try to get your comparisons right.

Re:We just need to open the valves more

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny. Barney Frank wants to masturbate on your face. That's how funny it is.

He knows about the retards and doesn't care. He loves their eyesockets. He speaks at the level of a 7 year old. But he fucks eyesockets for no reaosn!

Comcast has big tube. You have rigid hose

[dj42]

Comcast has a big tube to your local area. That tube has smaller tubes (aka rigid hoses) that go out to each house. The problem is, if everyone turns the valves on their smaller tubes to full blast, Comcast's big tube would be too full, meaning the smaller tubes would start to back up and shoot slower than they would.

You are degrading service to other rigid hoses. How does that make you feel? Do you like to saturate your rigid hose?

What about the real issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in the telco industry at a global level and reading these "my supplier is trying to screw me" articles are lacking just as much substance as all the previous articles on this subject.

I think the "power user" bs has gone on too long. lets face it, most ISP's give you free traffic on certain networks. Prime example is WAIX traffic in australia or LINX in london and in the US you would get free peering trafic like the rest of the world.

if you can use up 250GB i seriously think you are doing something nefarious.

So how come DL speeds in US cities still suck?

[zooblethorpe]

Great. (Though I must admit your final sentence kinda lost me.) It sounds like you're saying that since Finland is more urbanized, they get better service. This still doesn't answer the question of why urban areas in the US still have crap service compared to other countries. The cost of wiring rural areas is a bit of a red herring, as rural areas often don't have very good service anyway (i.e. not a lot has been spent to wire them), and it would be much more cost effective and profitable to wire up the dense urban areas -- but these still lag the rest of the developed world by a sizable margin, in terms of median download speeds.

If you (or any other readers) are interested in download speed comparisons, have a look at the FA in the thread I linked to above -- or just click here for the linky. :)

Yes, the US is big. But that is not the (only / main) reason costs remain notably high and download speeds depressingly low in the US. Another major factor in this equation is the fact that the US is relying on private enterprise to install the infrastructure -- the same private enterprise that actively obstructs any public-sector attempt to fill gaps left by incomplete corporate efforts, and that increasingly owns the content on the other end of the line. Decouple line ownership from line transmission, and decouple line transmission from content ownership, and *then* the US 'net might just catch up to the rest of the world, in terms of costs, transmission speeds, and traffic fairness. Until this comes to pass (and I sure won't hold my breath), the inherent conflicts of interest in such monopolistic cross-ownership will keep the US 'net market from being anywhere close to a "free" market, and any attempt at analyzing it as one is a waste of time.

Cheers,

Re:So how come DL speeds in US cities still suck?

[Anonymous Coward]

His final sentence is another way of asking why American voters in densely populated areas tolerate a national policy formed by telco-captured regulators in Washington D.C.

Of course, this is not the only regulated sector in which sparsely populated areas have disproportionate federal support that is primarily to the advantage of large corporate interests who merely operate in the sparsely populated areas in question.

There is better and cheaper broadband in the Utah deserts than in the Gobi or Sahara. The people who live there think that's good, and the federal and state governments are happy to help offset the extra costs to Verizon (for example) of providing these services.

Caps will get bigger too.

[Chuck Chunder]

If average usage increases then the caps will grow to accommodate it for the obvious reason that these companies wish to sell to the average person.

Re:Caps will get bigger too.

[ScrewMaster]

If average usage increases then the caps will grow to accommodate it for the obvious reason that these companies wish to sell to the average person.

Good point. Which means one thing ... we need to get Joe Sixpack to start grabbing all the torrents he can. Once everyone is a "bandwidth hog" they won't be able to point fingers anymore, and won't be able to turn Internet users against each other.

You had them up till the end there

[Anonymous Coward]

"and when traffic outgrows your infrastructure invest in more."

is the bit they don't understand.

Comcast cap has a different objective than TW's

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast's cap has a different objective than Time Warner's.

Comcast will happily sell you digital phone and television, which do not count against the cap. So Comcast is not trying to throttle use to protect an under-built system. Comcast is trying to prevent NetFlix and Blockbuster from being able to compete with their cable tv business. And raise monthly rates. And motivate content sites to enter "collaborations" with them. They are simply trying to leverage an access monopoly to develop and protect other revenue streams.

low-density and the automobile

[Anonymous Coward]

"Were we in a backward place like Korea, Japan, or Singapore we would enjoy HUGE bandwidth and no limit for a reasonable monthly fee."

You mean geographically small and dense areas with less infrastructure needs to get glass to the curb than the US who have all built the majority of their physical infrastructure (roads, electricity, telephone, ...) in the past 30 years... oh yea that's apples for apples /sarc

And whose fault is it that US homes are built in such low-density ways? You've had your love affair with the automobile, and now you get you pay for it.

Caps make sense

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

the only people caps hurt are those 3% or less that are causing bandwidth slowdown for the other 97% of the populace. I'm in Aus, and while this may sound like a broken record, I find that I can easily get by with about 60gb/month. And I download several tv shows and have torrents pretty much constantly running. What the american ISPs also need to do however is set up better intranets in the major american cities, prioritise local traffic and make that traffic not contribute towards the cap. They could even do it on a per-state basis rather than cities, much like telecoms do when charging for national / local calls. you don't expect to have unlimited phone calls / unlimited electricity / unlimited water / unlimited fuel for a set fee, so why expect unlimited internet access?

Re:Caps make sense

[u235meltdown]

Actually with many VoIPs like SpeakEasy or Vonage, we can get unlimited phone calls (locally, nationally, and even internationally) for a fixed rate. Many POTS phone providers and Cell Companies also provide unlimited plans.
The problem with VoIP (and cell phones, and even land lines now) is that it (they all) relies on internet access, which is usually not metered for end users (different deal for providers, if you've ever used shared hosting). Once data to customers is limited, VoIP costs may take a hike and you'd be correct.
Internet is not a common utility like water or electricity, you can not judge it as such. Only phones can be truly considered similar, as they relay information and not physical goods.

GG N00bs

[Anonymous Coward]

Man you guys should cry more,
Aussie and NZ have had data caps for years! One of the largest caps we can get is 100GB! On average you will find we have caps of around 15GB! and a power user maybe MAYBE 60GB! and even those cost upwards of $80 to 120$ per month!

Geez learn to cry?

Bad analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

The articles summary prices out access in 2012 using todays pricing standards. It makes no sense to assume that these caps will not shift with usage patterns. Comcast has boosted my speed at least once in the last three years, Hotmail has increased my mailbox size I don't know how much in that time. The ISP's will have to adjust these caps to keep themselves in business. If everyone had to start paying $200-300 for access the demand would fall dramatically. No one intentionally pays for cell service like that, (You might screw up one month, but after that you don't do it again.) they won't pay for internet access like that either. If the caps limit people to where they can only access the internet for very limited uses, they will start considering doing without. If you can't use it for anything usefull, why pay for it?

Net Neutrality Ramifications

[memetic field]

When is a cap not a cap - consider this possibility - Comcast intends to give its users unlimited access to "preferred partners" who work out a deal or make a payment to Comcast. Unlike placing restrictions the sites that don't partner up or pay up, Comcast just gives a free pass, bandwidth-wise, to particular sites.

Can't give it up if you don't visit the site

[darkpixel2k]

The white paper is embedded at the link using Scribd; for a PDF version you'll have to give up an email address.

Meh. No one actually reads the articles anyways.

Limited bandwidth capability is the real issue,

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is, as many others have stated, that bandwidth has been effectively assumed to be unlimited. The problem is that increasingly more people are using increasingly more bandwidth as time progresses... and most importantly, the ISPs don't seem to be upgrading their bandwidth capabilities.

The ISPs have been marketing the bandwidth capability as unlimited up until now. And now that you have an ever increasing amount of people streaming youtube videos, etc. the companies are trying to impose caps on bandwidth use instead of upgrading the pipes. They prefer to both demonize and victimize the so-called "power-users" for their "excessive" bandwidth use, and impose anti-filesharing network shaping and bandwidth caps to try and fix the problem instead of upgrading the damn tubes to match consumer use.

This is false advertising on their part, up until now saying that you pay xx dollars per month for an internet connection with yy throughput. They never said anything about limiting use, and if they did not expressly say that usage was unlimited, it was implied. Now that more people are using big chunks of bandwidth they want to get away with putting caps on usage to altogether avoid upgrading their max bandwidth capability. If Comcast gets away with this without consumers finding alternative providers instead, this will likely set a trend across the board for ISPs to limit bandwidth.

The capability never was unlimited, and I can only assume that ISPs never mentioned it because they didn't think it would become an issue. That, and their lack up upgrades to their systems over time is what makes up their lack of foresight.

It's just another crap trend where companies want to pay less, market an inferior product and make profit instead of continuously channeling profit into development of a competitive product consumers want, market a superior product and gain profit by winning more consumers.

And unless some ISPs decide to upgrade their pipelines with all the money they're making off of us, or they're otherwise forced to upgrade, Comcast-esque bandwidth restrictions are where we're headed.

Africa

[richarddonkin]

We have 1 GB cap at home, on a 384/128 line. Welcome to the real world. No YouTubeing, disciplined Facebooking, but luckily Slashdot is mainly text. I think most countries are in the same state or a worse state than us, too. Third world countries count, you know.

Re:Comcast has big tube. You have rigid hose

[dj42]

I agree. IF you can't GET your rigid hoses under control, you shouldn't be allowed to spew data.

I almost feel insulted....

[janrinok]

they don't get just how big and spread out this nation is

Oh, why don't you imagine the country divided into an arbitrary number of smaller entities - about the size of countries that can solve the problem - and treat each one individually? Its funny, or at least it is to me, that US forces deploy around the world and can always have internet access and yet your folks who live at home cannot. It doesn't seem to me that the size of the country or distance are, per se, insurmountable problems.

The problems with the business is that it is playing within current laws but making it suit themselves rather than the customer. Well those laws didn't exist 50 years ago, they were written by man. Man can change the laws again to make it a more competitive environment. I often read on /. how the government is under the control of the corporations. Again, that wasn't always the case. Man can change it but it will require effort. Some will say it is 'too difficult' - its a good job that your forefathers didn't have the same view of each obstacle that they encountered. No, they looked at what they wanted to achieve and, slowly, built the country that they wanted.

So the final problem is cost? For a country that can propose $700Bn to rescue Wall Street, can spend $1Bn a day in Iraq and Afghanistan, another billion to solve the problem doesn't seem too impossible to me as an outsider. And over time some of the money will be recovered from the customer. All these remote places that you mention all have roads going to them - somebody found a way of making that work in a cost effective manner.

So I read your comment with dismay. I am a European and I mustn't understand how big your country is, or cannot imagine the technical challenges associated with it. No, wrong! I understand just how great a challenge it will be and how much effort Americans will have to expend to accomplish what we smaller countries can do now, but unless Americans try to fix the problem all these comments on /. are nothing more than whinging. Perhaps not every farm and homestead can expect fantastic broadband speeds but they can expect some form of connectivity at a reasonable cost.

This one time I owned a camel

[Anonymous Coward]

Every day I used him to carry 800 pounds of bricks to and from the job site at the pyramid. Then one day a passing farmer dropped a straw on my camel's back, killing him instantly.

"#$#%"ing farmer blamed my bricks, "#$"&!. Anyone can see that the bricks were not the cause of my camel's death -- why, I had carried those bricks on him every day!

Re:$215/month? I could handle that

[sanosuke001]

You do know that a T1 is only 1.544mbit, right? Yeah, it'll be dedicated, but over 30 days, at full download 24/7 you'd only be able to grab 477 GB. Is it really worth the 193kb/s cap and $150/mo for less than 2x the cap?

Re:$215/month? I could handle that

[sanosuke001]

Whoops, got my math a bit off... it's 488.53 GB ( ( 1.544 / 8 ) * 86400 * 30 ) / 1024 = 488.53

Chicken before the Egg...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is more of the same silliness.

Let's take your phone as an example. Phone companies don't kick people off their service for being on the phone 24 hours a day, or complain about "phone hogs" eating up all their phone trunks. If they can't support usage, they (gasp) add more capacity and if the cost is too high they raise rates.

To use an analogy:
You paid for a dozen eggs from the ISP, who also sold a dozen to the guy next door. However, they really only have 8 eggs to sell, so when you can't find an egg ('cause the guy next door just ate 8 of them) they are calling him a fat pig, instead of getting more chickens to lay more eggs. The trick is, although you paid what you thought was a normal price for your dozen eggs, the fine print said they were actually only going to give you UP TO a dozen eggs.

So really you're just getting ripped off by the ISP, and they're blaming anyone they can instead of owning up to what they advertised.

Now is the excelent time to...

[V!NCENT]

... Start an ISP company that doesn't have bandwith caps at a cheaper price and conquer the entire American market for access to the internet.

Capitalism FTW...

It is good to just have the information available.

[Anonymous Coward]

Before none of them would tell you how much is too much. Just that you were using "too much."

Now with this limit public knowledge it can become another factor you can consider when purchasing your broadband, and something that the vendors will have to them compete against.

When it was secret then there was no way for you the consumer to compare whose plan was better.

Now you can.