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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.
There is actually a term for that, it's called a Cartel.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
for a PDF version you'll have to give up an email address.
Fortunately, those aren't hard to come by.
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.
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.
"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..
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
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!)
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.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
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.
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.
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...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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
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.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
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.
DVD quality is 7 Mbit/sec, not words "DVD quality" in PR.
Netflix does not have DVD quolity.
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.
The ______ Agenda
(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.)
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?