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AT&T Begins a Trial To Cap, Meter Internet Usage
An anonymous reader writes "On the heels of Comcast's decision to implement a 250-GB monthly cap, and Time Warner Cable's exploration of caps and overage fees, DSL Reports notes that AT&T is launching a metered billing trial of their own in Reno, Nevada. According to a filing with the FCC (PDF), AT&T's existing tiers, which range from 768 kbps to 6 Mbps, would see caps ranging from 20 GB to 150 GB per month. Users who exceed those caps would pay an additional $1 per gigabyte, per month."
... I wonder if this is an easy way of coming down on net neutrality, under the guise of being "rational".
Next month: Slashdot meters trolls posts. Only one per day, or you get charged $4/troll.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
At least they should be required by law to use sarcastic air quotes when they say "Unlimited." I don't buy their attempts to redefine "Unlimited", either. That's pretty much my definition of "Consumer fraud".
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
They do realize that they are getting up to the point in cost that they will be driving people *back* DVDs and other media, right? Blue-Ray suddenly sounds like a deal for movies.
And driving away customers to a better paying deal is not a good thing in any market, much less a harsh modern market in the post-speculator market of today.
Idiots. They should be making sure they are making a reasonable profit without shoving off your potential customers.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
I'm fine with schemes like this provided the ISP makes it perfectly clear and obvious when you sign up what your download limitations are and the costs of running over. This allows consumers to make an educated choice about which provider they want to use. Unfortunately, I see this being shoved in the fine print while still advertising "unlimited" internet access. I mean, we are dealing with telecom companies here. I know my bill is a surprise about every other month after all the "taxes and fees" are tacked on to the advertised base price...
sometimes I'd rather see them charged with something more serious, like libel/slander. Or a rampaging bull. Or... ;)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Was in the age of Dial-Up. I remember that there were a few ISPs back in the mid '90s that charged $20/month for a limited amount of time online...somewhere between 30 to 50 hours per month. But when other ISPs offered unlimited time online for the same price (or $25 to $30 per month), it was a no-brainer.
Of course, this was also back when even a mid-size municipal city (80,000+ population) could have three or four local ISPs to choose from.
Now, if you live in a place like Minneapolis, your only choices are Comcast or Qwest. If both decide to switch to a capped bandwidth, you're screwed.
that's nothing. Rogers has a 60gig limit here in Canada.
Personally I'm supportive of published caps. We know hidden ones have existed for some time. It's far better if you know you're buying 20GB of bandwidth or 100GB and it's fair if those using 100GB aren't subsidised by those using 20.
Don't whine that you bought an unlimited connection for $30/month and you should get to use it without penalty. I do agree connections should never have been sold as unlimited (indeed this addresses that very point) but you're an idiot if you think current networks to the home in the US can deliver that sort of bandwidth at that sort of cost.
The problem in the US is the lack of competition. This should allow prices to be driven down. Our parents and grandparents should be able to buy uber cheap 2GB/month packages.
Look at the UK where almost everyone with a phone line can pick from dozens of DSL providers. Competition helps keep prices in check. More expensive providers offer better customer service etc.
But there's so little competition in the US market that there's serious potential for this to be almost all negative.
What makes even less sense is the varying of both bandwidth and capacity. If you're metering the connection, there's no reason at all that everyone shouldn't get the fastest connection available. That's also how it works in the UK.
What's the point of artificially slowing down data for those on the 20GB tariff who in fact are paying more per byte for the data?
All you whiners feel free to come spend some time in Australia and see what real caps look like...
http://www.westnet.com.au/internet/broadband/
That's my ISP's plans.
(I'm on Active Option 4 standalone by the way, plus $5/month for a static IP)
How about software updates? I'm just curious if software sellers will be coerced into offering quality software on the original install disks, or mailed updates, instead of just expecting that every user will happily download 1/4 of their monthly cap just to keep software current.
When your bandwidth cap is exceeded your ports are all shut except 80. Your web browser can only get AT&T's page. You have options to (a) pay for another XXX GB of transfer or (b) upgrade your plan.
It ain't all that hard to do this. Making people pay a dollar-per-gigabyte without giving them notice that they've exceeded their limit is clearly not informing the user.
Tag this story lawsuitwaitingtohappen, whatcanpossiblygowrong, goodluckwiththat, monopoly, luserunfriendly and !cool.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Try southeast Florida where is only Comcast and AT&T guess you get to chose 150 or 250 Meg
As long as the underlying resource is limited (bandwidth), then usage of it has to be limited. I agree that the advertisements should be more honest, but it seems like the question is how to allocate bandwidth (pay for what you use, first come first served, "just get lucky" lottery). Since someone loses in each scenario, aren't there many different solutions that could be considered fair?
So now they will need to monitor the amount of bandwidth you use, set up a database to keep track of it, change their billing software so it can deal with variable billing, and verify that the customer actually paid the (variable) correct amount. All to collect a few bucks from a few customers.
There's a reason the phone companies go to unlimited calling plans. It means they save big bucks on the hardware and software needed to keep track of your usage. Those systems are not cheap and they eat into the computing power that could be used for routing calls. So instead they jack up your bill by the average amount you would spend, and let you go to town. They still get the money, but they don't have to maintain (as much of) a billing system.
AT&T will try this for a while, realize it's a losing proposition that annoys their customers, and go back to the way it was.
(This assumes rational behavior, of course. That is definitely not a given)
If you could sustain 1Mbyte per sec that's not a bad rate. One would think that if the system was overloaded, you would fall below that. So what technical purpose can such a limit have? It doesn't seem like it has anything to do with demand management. Realistically its for creating tiered pricing structures - that's the only purpose for which it makes any sense.
Squirrel!
N.Z has had the $1 /GB excess for years now. Makes me feel somewhat dissappointed...
Well, it looks like I'm screwed since the only two options I have are AT&T DSL and Comcast. I currently have AT&T $10 DSL, but this latest development will have me moving back to Comcast. This time, however, I'll go with the more pricey Comcast Business Class DSL, which has no metering (at least not yet).
...or charged with a couple hundred thousand volts across their testicles?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
One upside to a unilateral application of bandwidth billing by the ISPs: The implications for Botnets and other malware.
- It provides a financial incentive to users to get their machines cleaned out and keep them that way.
- It provides an easily measurable cost of the traffic imposed by malware, which can then be used in prosecutions against those who deploy and use it.
Which brings up other issues:
- Will AT&T bill for incoming packets? Even those not solicited?
- If you're charged for all incoming packets how do you STOP somebody's botnet from sending you packets? DDoS attacks could become Distributed Denial of Funds...
- Will they charge for ICMP packets?
- How about the packets they use to communicate with and control their modem (which don't even get to the customer's interface)?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Where I live they used to advertise it as 'Unlimited' but they don't anymore. They dropped the word 'unlimited' and now call it 'internet access' when they mean a dialup modem (ok goahead, squirm), lite high speed internet for slow 1.5 Mb/s down, 500kb/s up 20 GB cap; and medium high speed internet for 2.5 Mb/s down, 800 kb/s up 60 GB cap. The word unlimited went away. You pay extra for blowing the cap (I think $1 per GB). You would have to be downloading hard all day every day to blow the caps.
I hear all the time about cable companies constantly raising their rates, even for basic programming. Are subscribers really using so much bandwidth that the "poor" cable companies are losing money? This sounds like just another scheme to squeeze every last dime out of customers who usually don't have much of an option, IMHO.
I suppose next we'll hear about the pending mergers of big oil companies and cable providers...
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...
If you don't qualify for the faster packages there should be no higher then the next level bill. as if you only qualify for 768k and you do 80GB of usage ($80) over instead of the $5- $20 more for the higher levels. They should make it line max with prices levels for how much download that you want. As well having roll over like there cell phone plan has.
I am fine if they did implement the dollar an gb extra if they gave me 250GB of download a month for $30 and adjust the dl/mo for my ratio accordingly.
If I had 10mbps DSL, I expect 550GB of bandwidth a month.
Then I am fine paying a dollar for each additional GB.... of course, they will never do such a thing unless the govt kicked in.
Hell, offer the internet for free for 30gb/month
and have rates or packages that go up from there.
They should not be fixed rates per gb but packages, you go over, you get the least cost package next. Whether it is a 1gb extra package, 50gb package, there should be a discount for more consumption. But unless they make it fair enough for third parties to provide the network, than they should subsidize the consumer.
Great idea, I am going to bring that up if I am ever capped and fined extra. I should not have to pay for downlink because I can be DDOSed out of my funds with an always on network.
Some cell providers give free incoming text messages for this reason.
charged with a couple hundred thousand volts across their testicles?
I'm a female troll, you insensitive clod!
At least it's in the right order of magnitude.
Really fair pricing would be like some electric companies: A small "account charge," say, $3/month, and a per-GB or even per-MB fee with no minimum.
If ISPs did this, the "fair" price would probably be somewhere between $1 and $5 for the "account charge" and between $0.05 and $0.50/GB for traffic. A 60GB user might pay $35, a 240GB user might pay $125. It would break the economic model for things like "Netflix online" unless they used really tight compression, but face it, sometimes a plastic disc or a dedicated video-on-demand cable channel really is more efficient than the public internet.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...or charged at with a couple hundred thousand stealth ninjas with knives aiming at their testicles?
There, fixed that for you.
OBLamePun: They'll never know what cut them off.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Currently I'm sitting under a 40 GB cap. On top of that Cox just increased the bandwidth to 10 Mbit. That's less than 9 hours worth of Internet (at max speed) per month. Woohoo! Fuckers.
This download quota system is standard practice in Australia. They typically fall into 2 categories - fixed monthly cost (when the quota is reached, your speed is throttled back to dial-up) and uncapped (charged $X for downloads exceeding the quota).
Many plans also count traffic in both directions toward your quota, so the uploads generated by P2P software can result in a significant reduction in your download traffic.
The uncapped charges can be EXTREMELY nasty - for example the Telstra BigPond plans charge (http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc/isp-1/telstra-bigpond.htm) 150 per Gigabyte after exceeding a quote of 200 Meg. So $1 per Gigabyte after a quota of 250 Gig doesn't sounds all that bad!
I wonder if I could sue my town or state in so limiting my internet choices through government granted monopoly. Given that all of the major players (who get the government granted monopolies) all seem to be moving towards usage caps it would be nice if it was easier for competitors to enter the market. Particularly with download and upload speeds comparable to cable and without the lag of satellite services.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Seriously, billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies and all I got was this lousy duopoly.
THL phish sticks
I get 20GB here in New Zealand, for $40 USD~ per month... where do i sign up
Which brings up other issues:
- Will AT&T bill for incoming packets? Even those not solicited?
- If you're charged for all incoming packets how do you STOP somebody's botnet from sending you packets? DDoS attacks could become Distributed Denial of Funds...
- Will they charge for ICMP packets?
- How about the packets they use to communicate with and control their modem (which don't even get to the customer's interface)?
From extensive research on the behavior of modern ISP's, I can answer all of your questions with 100% certainty, including the one you didn't type out:
- Yes, Hell yes.
- You can't.
- They will.
- Of course.
- Lube will cost extra.
Speaker wire is the reason "unlimited" will never exist in pure form. The same people who purchase $8,000 speaker wires are quite convinced that even if they were capped at 1TB/hour for their holographic porn, it would still be a curly hair shy of the real thing.
I'd have no problem with capped download if the cap decayed at a sensible exponential rate, the same way that gmail's free storage ticks ever upward. If the cap doubled every two years (corresponding to a 40% annual cost reduction in the cost of carrying traffic, which I'm certain the optical portions of the backbone achieve), then ten years from now, the current monthly cap would have evolved into the daily cap. At that rate, you're already watching a three hour HD movie every day of your life, or multibooting every Linux distro that every existed at the same time onto your 256 core processor.
Depending on the cost of your speaker wire, this might or might not suffice.
If the limit is greater than PER_SECOND_RATE * NUMBER_OF_SECONDS_IN_BILLING_PERIOD then it might as well be unlimited.
A 250GB/month quota might as well be unlimited if you are on the 768kbps plan, but it's very real if you are on a 20Mb/sec connection.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Now, take your current Internet access bill and multiply it by 1000. So stop complaining.
(Yes, yes, get off my lawn, too.)
Honestly, can't we just get rid of anonymous posting? Let logged-in users check the checkbox and post 'anonymously', but keep ramifications for people's actions. It would solve this BS troll problem once and for all, since persistent trollers could eventually end up with such negative karma that they couldn't post for a month.
Everyone wins.
2,592,000 seconds hath September, April, June, and November.
A "slow" DSL connection of 1 million bits/sec would chew up 2.592 trillion bits, or 324 billion bytes, a bit above the 250GB cap of one ISP and a bit over twice that of another.
That's American trillions and billions and millions for you Brits out there.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Woo hoo!
I'll just go have a T1 dropped now. I'll be cheaper in the long run.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Is that Combined UP & Down stream bandwidth?
Guess it's time to make a Linux Mesh distro, put that ol' Pentium to use. Would do it myself, but I only have a vague understanding of mesh networks. Where do I donate?
You must be knew hear.
10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1... HAPPY KNEW HEAR!
Capping internet usage is like charging per minute for phone usage. Oh, right... they already get away with that.
I noticed that here in Pittsburgh, we have a relatively new entrant into the DSL space (Cavtel) who are offering the maximum possible speeds(up to 8 Mb/s, depending on line quality) with no caps and no tiers and they advertise a price lower than Verizon's 3 Mb/s service. Basically, they set themselves up as a CLEC and have access to the last-mile copper and their own backbone (probably transit) links.
I wonder if the caps will make it profitable for more of this type of activity to take place? Could we see some alternative DSL providers open up shop?
...my AT&T DSL service is so slow I don't think I could reach those caps anyway.
A guy could be all the rage in the tech community when word gets out that he's replaced all of his environment-killing light bulbs with his incandescent penis... and I have to say, it could help a girl in the dark if the thing lit up. I'm just saying.
...just to watch it die.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Fact is, bandwidth ain't free. As long as the caps (and what happens if you exceed the caps) are CLEARLY stated BEFORE you sign up, all changes to the caps are CLEARLY communicated to customers and ISPs stick to the caps (and remove the traffic shaping of BitTorrent etc), there is nothing wrong with them.
They also need truth in their advertising (including not advertising this stuff as unlimited)
Will the users have the option to choose between paying for the extra bandwidth or cutting off or slowing the data link when the cap is exceeded?
Some users prefer to know that in no event they are going to pay more and would prefer a dead datalink to an unexpected bill.
Actually many of these users prefer this because they don't trust the ISPs to do correct billing: there are many stories of companies around the world, both private and state-owned, that send massive bills at random just to collect more revenue whenever their stock price goes down and want to show better results for the next quarter investor's report.
This thing happens regularly around the world with water utilities, power utilities, telephone operators, mobile phone companies, and Internet providers, primarily in countries where political corruption is high and the law doesn't work.
I don't know whether such things happen in the US, but in other countries it is as regular as rain in the winter and many users specifically try to find fixed-price plans in order not to let providers do this to them.
So, if a company wants to attract those users who are cautious, then it should offer an option to either switch off the datalink until the next month or slow it down to 64 or 128kbps when the cap is exceeded, until again next month (or other billing period).
We the minions of permanent at-home employees are captive to our corporate overlord's web, network and email architecture as well as whatever is common practice in the organization. I
EASILY
accrue several hundred MB a day just doing my job. Each time some yob sends me an email with a 7MB attachment and 8 other flunkies respond-all with "Me Too!!!" So unless my employer is willing to pay for all those overages for all those thousands of employees day after day after day I will just shut off my VPN connection so I'm not on the hook for it.
First off, I'm a AT&T DSL customer. Between me downloading Linux updates and releases to try, playing my online game, the kids using their computer to watch videos, hula and the PS3 this is going to suck if they do this here.
I sent them a email that basically said I'll either have to drop my service with them, or update to a business account. (yeah, that was a ultimatum.. sigh) Thing is, our cable company here sucks balls compared to AT&T DSL, so I really don't have much of a choice. Ugh... they truly are still evil.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
.... for texting...
lets face it, its all very abusive.
Think of the spammers..... you know they will find a way to do what they do, for free, while the ISP's figure out ways to make you pay for it.
And they will learn from your consumer power. There are usually other companies that aren't doing this within many people's ranges...
Think ad-blocking is a problem now? Just wait until every kilobyte of traffic actually costs users money.
Charging for traffic is a surefire way to tank Google's (or anyone else who depends on ad revenue) stock. IMHO the entire advertising-based model of the Internet is predicated on free, unlimited bandwidth.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Crap decisions like this are why I cancelled my AT&T DSL after a month.
The quick answer is "yes - you will be charged for all of the SPAM and ads".
Since SPAM will cost you actual money, will you be able to sue for damages?
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
250GB should be enough for anyone.
Tag this story lawsuitwaitingtohappen, whatcanpossiblygowrong, goodluckwiththat, monopoly, luserunfriendly and !cool.
Seriously, do you think there's an omnipotent magical being that reads slashdot tags?
Please help metamoderate.
The Internet is out there waiting for us to use it. The ISPs are trying to stifle our use of it.
I use legal services on the Internet to consume media.
Tivo
Hulu
Netflix instant
Xbox Live
gaming both PC and Xbox
downloading Linux updates
amazon unbox
itunes
amazon mp3
pandora radio
revision3 TV
Steam store
EA online store
I use all of these services and depending on the month, usage may be more than 250GB.
Not only is it not consumer friendly, but it's a step in the wrong direction.
This should set off alarms at apple, amazon, netflix, nbc, microsoft, and other media conglomerates.
If we don't have the transfer available, we can't consume these services.
They're using their grammar skills there.
This isn't really news. AT&T's "unlimited" data plan (i.e. the one all iPhone uses have), has a 5GB/month cap, and has since the beginning. You can ask them yourself if you don't believe me.
I just bought a Blackberry in the store on Friday (returned it already, what a horrible device), and the woman I bought it from warned me about reaching my "data plan bandwidth limits". I thought it was odd that an "unlimited" data plan would be limited... but it is. The charge for going over your 5GB limit? $0.40/k. Owch.
Look closer : this troll was not an anonymous poster.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
"unlimited" data plan (i.e. the one all iPhone uses have), has a 5GB/month cap
In Greece, EU unlimited data plans are either truly unlimited (if business account etc) or have a cap at 30GB.
Say goodbye joost, hulu, netflix, pbs, the beeb, and a plethora of other online media resources you partake in daily. They are now too costly for a television replacement because we've screwed you over, but by the way for no (additional) cost to you you can use the AT&T crappy replacement so we can use your eyeballs to pay for our Campaign contributions to keep the net free of neutrality!
If a person can generate his own electricity and sell it back to the electric company. We should get the same deal when we upload to the internet. Fair is fair.
What?
Business people are low volume people and most of them would probably be under 2GB per month. It's only when you start downloading videos that you run in to these problems.
I mean seriously, you pay your ISP to constantly upgrade their equipment. It doesn't cost much to run it so much of the money should go to upgrades. If they don't manage to be able to do that, they should go out of business.
I mean it's not like you have to dig up the road and lay new fibers. You can use wavelength multiplexing to get more and more data onto those.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength-division_multiplexing
If nothing is done, the US will fall even further behind the rest of the world when it comes to internet access.
Furthermore, there is a lot you can do against this by yourself. Of course you probably cannot change your ISP in most regions as they often have local monopolies, but what you can do is to build your own networks. There's software around like OLSRd which you can install onto computers or routers. It implements a meshed routing protocoll. Essentially you turn your wireless network cards into ad-hoc mode. Assign IP-Addresses and start OLDRd. This programm (availiable for preety much all OSes, even Windows) negotiates routes with all the other nodes it can reach. This way you can easily build up large networks which configure themselves automatically. If a node fails, and there is still another way, the network will find it.
This way you can build an additional network, free of any greedy big ISPs. You can use it wherever you want for whatever you want.
http://www.olsr.org/
$1/GB charge if I go over 150 GB, then $1/GB discount if I go under.
Hehe, that's good. Have any new material though?
...not only that, but it would put an end to 'video' ads, and return us to the era of the 10k GIF ad.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
We should make a shorewall type floppy or CD based distribution, that blocks all ads from web pages, and strips out spam as well. Perhaps a similar setup can be made with the Linksys WRT54G or similar devices. We should go to all the places where broadband caps are being experimented with, and promote them to users as protection from those caps, via door to door if nothing else.
I suspect that these large ISPs would reconsider bandwidth caps if caps implied an advertising-free internet.
An appliance type setup that used ClamAV, spamassassin, or similar software to block botnets and spam would have a healthy effect on the internet as a whole. However those types of programs usually consumer lots of CPU resources, and may not be appropriate for all hardware.
You could just adjust your filters in the preferences. Why force your choice on me?
I think all of this is a prelude to the ISP's trying to squeeze extra revenue from content providers, by setting up 'partnership' deals where the bandwidth cap doesn't apply to the partnered content providers.
E.g. Amazon pays the ISP some amount of money per month for the privilege of getting truly unlimited bandwidth to the customers.
If the content providers are smart, they will all band together to 'educate' consumers about this, and setup a website with information about competing ISPs which are available with truly unlimited bandwidth. Maybe if they are *really* smart, they'll all cooperate with Google to build out a competing network to cut out the ISP's in the middle who are trying to put the thumbscrews on them.
How many of us would it take to get enough cash together to do a class action lawsuit over the use of the term "unlimited" ?
While I agree a minority is starting to destroy it for the majority, it would be beneficial to swipe back and stop their "lie" about "unlimited" usage.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
See my previous post.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1005029&cid=25479145
It is also worth noting that while _some_ ISP's in Australia try to charge an Arm and 2x Legs for going over your CAP most ISP's offer a "Speed Cap" where your speed is limited if you use more data than you have purchased.
Also there is at least one ISP that I know of that allows its users to by extra data if they want / need more than their standard plan allows for a calendar month.
Oh an to all of those people who are bitching that "bandwidth is cheap" have you ever wondered why your 20Mbit Cable connection typically runs at something _much less_ than that??
Go on , have a think about it for a while.
if an average user knew how much data they use now. As it is AT&T knows, you don't, they are holding all the cards. You don't know if you will be paying nothing more, $10 more, or a $100 more. Hell I don't even know how much data I use, that's why I use "unlimited" plan.
Or just create new accounts...
250gb / month = 8.33 gb a day = .35 gb an hour = .01 gb a minute - when I reach that .01gb this minute everything stops until the end of the minute then I have another 10 mb.
Then give me a website that I can adjust my mb/min in case I need more (and adjust my fee for each of those minutes too).
-Software came on floppy disks. Being as CPU cycles, disk space and RAM were all much more limited resources, lean coding was a primary goal for any program being written. The fact that it would cost the company a whole lot less in materials and distribution for fewer disks being necessary helped.
-Windows patches were uncommon, and at that Microsoft would ship you a CD or floppy with the patch.
-E-mail normally involved Telnet.
-Flash didn't exist.
-Websites were written in plain HTML.
-Images were 256 colors and MUCH more compressed.
-No one had heard of MP3, and even if someone did, a Sound Blaster was optional and expensive.
-No one had heard of DivX/Xvid, and no computer could handle it even if they did.
-No one had CD-ROM ISO images because even if you did have a CD-ROM drive (quite an expense in itself), your hard drive would be too small to hold a full 650MByte image.
-No one uploaded photos to Flikr/Photobucket/Myspace/Facebook.
-If you had a modem, you had to know something about computers to use one, and odds are that you would only be talking to other people who also knew about computers. ISP's were taking a rather notable risk because the 1990 Internet is so drastically different from what it is today that most people who rely on the Web today wouldn't recognize it. ISP's couldn't rely on volume sales, the field had (and still has) an extremely high cost of entry, and for all they know this whole thing might not have gotten off the ground, leaving them shirtless in their datacenter.
I could keep going, but I think I've made my point. Yes, it's alot cheaper now, but whether you believe the chicken came first or the egg did, either way we consume a whole lot more bandwidth than we did in 1990; keeping the price the same rate as back then would have severely halted subscriptions as sites became more sophisticated, or sites would still look like sites made in the early 1990's. *shudder*
Joey
We also have FIOS available here.
Comcast leading the way.
Everyone knows this is the good old 'foot in the door' technique right?
Well, their internet access sucks anyway.
Because $1 per Gb is a lot less than it costs in Australia [...]
Why must every bandwidth discussion be accompanied by "Well, in Australia...."?
It's right up there with "When I was your age ... blah blah blah...".
Some of the claims here are just outright insanity, honestly you Americans really are a spoilt spoilt group of people, sometimes this makes us foreigners feel envy and other times it's a pure and utter facepalm.
250gb might drive people back to DVD and bluray!
These caps may stop people getting software patches!
etc.
What the hell are you people TALKING about, people are not going to take you seriously if you're going to make such crazy statements.
I could format a PC right now and download a copy of XP or Vista. (on a spare machine)
Then download firefox, nero, azureus, hardware drivers, anti-virus packages, anti-spyware packages, benchmarking tools, mirc, winamp, skype, itunes AND all of the Windows patches, including service pack 3 for XP then download all the updates / definitions for those packages.
Then download a linux iso of my choice, then install that on another partition then install all relevant apps for that AND updates.
Then I could download about 5 popular brand new video games and patches AND cracks (should I be so inclined) for them and I still would be very very unlikely to use HALF of that amount of data for all that.
I could youtube it up for an hour a day, stream some radio, constantly check news sites as I do, re-install steam and re-download the 30gb of games I have on steam I'd STILL not be hitting that cap.
Then I could download some popular movies (again, should I be so inclined) let's say 5 new movies in 700mb format, plus all my favourite TV shows (let's say 6 shows, 4 episodes for the month, 24x350mb) etc
I STILL WOULD NOT BE HITTING THE CAP.
I could do this every single god damned month with a 250gb cap for goodness sakes, do you people re-install and re-download everything, every month?
Let alone the fact that I shouldn't be pirating the movies, shouldn't be pirating the TV shows, shouldn't be pirating the games, even with over the top crazy bandwidth usage, (legitimate) I'd have a hell of a time hitting more than 150gb a month.
Now before you hit the reply button I want to make several things clear.
1, caps suck, I totally and utterly agree, ideally it would be unlimited for everyone
2, putting a cap in place and NOT providing a metering tool is bullshit! if you're going to cap users, damnwell let them see their usage (the Aussie ISP's can do it)
3, if you're going to charge extra per gb, there needs to be a clear notification to the user when they are close (again, Aussie ISP's can do this) furthermore this needs to be made clear to the client before switching their connection to this 'plan'
I don't like caps but some of the claims you people make are bonkers, absoloutely bonkers, I live with a 25gb 'peak' and 40gb 'offpeak' plan in Australia and that's a recent change, I was on 10peak/20offpeak for 2 years before this.
25/40 is restrictive, yes but it's not un-usable, not in the slightest, I'd be very comfortable to be honest with the same 65gb just in a single block rather than peak / offpeak and yes I download pretty much all I want (TV shows especially, TV over here blows)
What does suck is if you're a bunch of guys in a share house, say a nice uperclass pad with well paid guys in there, all geeks, say 4 of you, then 250gb could start to be a problem.
What you do need is the ISP's to offer upgrades to the plans, or better notice about switching users on these plans, metering tools, ways to inform the customer the limit is close, you need competition and alternatives.
I can fathom a share house of completely legitimate internet use of complete geeks (not meant as an insult) using maybe 500gb in a month but that's a very very rare instance and in that case surely 4 geeks putting a bit of coin in together could afford some kind of business plan which offers substantially more (we have those here)
Ultimately the point of my post is that some of you pulling a bleeding heart over 250gb are really just making yourselves look ridiculous, seriously people.
We've got people over here gett
"Don't whine that you bought an unlimited connection for $30/month and you should get to use it without penalty. I do agree connections should never have been sold as unlimited (indeed this addresses that very point) but you're an idiot if you think current networks to the home in the US can deliver that sort of bandwidth at that sort of cost."
Actually I've been saying a lot are idiots on the grounds they don't understand economics or physics. both need to be understood in order to realize why there isn't going to be an "unlimited" (at least as they define it*) connection at a price they're willing to pay and the population they wish to see (universal broadband). In other words the present setup, or the alternative which is fewer people have higher cost broadband. Company may make less money, but you (generic YOU) may be turned down for getting broadband.
*To the guy who said "unlimited" isn't an ambiguous term. It is if you don't place it in a context.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Post anonymous already keeps track of who made the post if you are logged in. Try posting and than moderating your post. (You can't.)
However, I think it could be quite dangerous to get rid of all anonymous posting, due to so many people on /. working for big corporations, the .gov etc. And then posting things that may be in breach of NDA's, contracts or whatever. It is better for those people not to have as little association between them and what they post as possible.
Now for the oblig. troll GNAA PENIS ROCKET TO MARS. We're sending Bush, McCain and Obama, whoever comes back gets to be the next President of the USA. If none of them come back, WE ALL WIN! (Except that another shitty person would become president.)
(Not to mention, preview already takes about twice or longer when posting anon, than otherwise.)
The post you seem to refer to is posted by
Luke727 (547923) not by an Anonymous Coward like me.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time.
And I thought you were just saving bytes to avoid the cap.
Yeah but that's communism, and evil corporations and prevents competition.
There fixed it for you... :)
Though the sentence still needs a few tweaks to sound intelligent...
I particularly like "caps ranging from 20 to 150 gigabytes per month, depending on which service speed tier a customer signs up for (AT&T offers DSL tiers ranging from 768kbps to 6Mbps)." If they were really doing caps to keep the internet faster for everyone because they cannot handle the traffic they would cap everyone at 150 GB. But no, they are shrinking the cap based on your connection. They want more people to hit to hit the cap so they can charge a premium. Otherwise people might just buy the less expensive connections so that they never hit their cap. I mean if they are capping me at 150 then I don't need 6 Mbps per month, I'm more likely to hit the cap, I would buy a slower link. But to stop me from doing that they are nice enough to lower the cap on slower connections to make sure I hit it. This is hardly fair.
IF I don't want a Cap, what can I do? When the 1-3 service providers in each area provide caps, where can I go to get an uncapped connection? Isn't this cap and premium a sort of trust? If all the ISPs are agreeing to this (and obviously they are looking to each other as an example) and setting the same (or similar) caps, isn't this what a trust is under the laws, they are all fixing the price to ensure no matter where you go that you get a cap?
Is this the telcos solution to voip? Meter the internet until it's cheaper to download through USPS? Cheaper to make long distance calls by carrier pigeon?
If an ISP already controls the speed, that connection should be able to be saturated 24/7/365 without a cap.
Otherwise it's just, "Get our new 500TBps connection with speed-rape (latency 50s), and browse up to 50MB of the internet per month!".
it's funny as hell to see so many people talking seriously about how many gigs / months you can download, or about municipal fiber. i live in romania, and i bet 99% of you don't know where that is. the lowest plan comes with unlimited internet, 100 mbps metropolitan download, tv, and a phone with unlimited calls in the same network, all for about 15 euros. competition is a beautiful thing, isn't it? the only competition americans get is how companies get to screw you harder.
funny pics
I doubt any coincidence at all. The first two were cable companies, and AT&T trying to become a major TV provider with their U-verse product. Bottom line: They see IP-delivered TV as a major threat to their business, so if they get people used to paying bandwidth caps now, they preserve their future revenue from TV revenue. The only way around this will be another, truly unlimited ISP. I'm no fan of Google, but I love the disruption they've caused with android and I hope they'll do the same in the ISP world.
Well it's still nowhere near as bad as it is here in New Zealand. We've *always* had bandwidth caps, and the leading provider (Xtra, owned by Telecom NZ) stings people HARD once they go over their measly bandwidth allocation. They unscrupulously take advantage of the average New Zealander's ignorance and rape them for everything they are worth. If I was to turn on my television (something I never do, its used as a small table) I would see ads for Xtra promoting "OMG BROADBAND INTERNET FOR THE PRICE OF DIALUP!!11!!11!oneone1" claiming that for $20 a month you can have more bandwidth than you'll probably read. In extra-fine print at the bottom of the screen it says that you only get 200MB per month and that surcharges apply once you go over this limit. Note that this small text is unreadable by their target audience, which is the elderly that know nothing about computers and are blissfully oblivious to the fact that on this deal they are going to get charged hundreds of dollars for going over the cap. When I was 12 and living with my grandmother, on 56k dialup, some sleazy bastard telecom representative phoned her with a hyped-up offer that we could upgrade our internet connection - to the fastest connection available - for free - but only today. The catch was that you were charged $1 for every MEGABYTE over something like 500MB - we were absolutely clueless when it came to bandwidth and didn't understand why the internet bill was between $400 and $500 every month.
/rant
In the states you guys really don't know how lucky you are with broadband, not only is it over ten times as fast as ours, but it seems to be much cheaper. If you're really complaining about caps like 150GB, go and buy a box of tissues.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
I'd love to get worked up about this, and two months ago, I probably would have. But since then, I've been paying 20â* per month for undependable Wifi with an eight gig cap. I find I have to work at it to hit the quota, and I haven't yet.
(Still trying though.)
Everything's worse than the unlimited infinity zoom we've been enjoying the last decade or so, but with money changing hands, this stuff is bound to happen.
(Right?)
*Euro symbol won't display consistenly... weird.
Honestly, can't we just get rid of anonymous posting?
Troll. Why do you hate our freedom?
Since I use an AT&T Wireless Connect Card for my internet access, the 5GB limit attached to it means that my $60/mo is $12/GB... THAT is expensive...
AT&T brags about their cell phone service having "carry over" minutes, where if you don't use all your minutes in a month, the remainder carries over to the next month (presumably expiring after some long period of time, like a year).
I wonder if my unused bandwidth will carry over to next month, too.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
"Competition helps keep prices in check."
Except that in the UK despite all the competition for cell phones and ISP's, it's cheaper in the U.S.
Don't believe me? Do a comparison.
The power to cap is the power to destroy.
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
in the context that my only option is Cableone. If you download more than about 1 GB from 12 pm to 12 am whack you down to 1/5 your usual download speed for the day. I'm not saying that what Comcast and AT&T are doing is right by any stretch of the imagination, but from this yard the grass looks a lot greener over there... :)
At 250 GB per month a continuously utilized connection would have to be limited to 768kbit total to avoid crossing the cap. That really sucks. If you're only downloading for the 5 hours you're not at work you're fine, but if you want to seed torrents for others and stream internet radio it is risky. I guess that's their point.
"We get by quite well on 40GB a month"
Yeah, my mother and father get by on nothing a month. What does that prove other than they're old and backwards? Where do you fit into that scheme?
You don't have a clue why these bandwidth limits are in place and yet you revel in your own limitations. You're pissed off that in the United States, we don't accept limitations, we get around them and make it better.
Go back to a modem, or better yet, use the phone to make calls. The internet is not for you. You don't understand it, and you think the purpose is primarily to look at web pages and send email. Welcome to 1995.
Peer (sorry) pressure:
Comcast: "Okay, we're going to put in caps and metering! Agreed?"
AT&T: "You go first! We're right behind ya!"
Comast: "No, cuz we wil then you won't!"
AT&T: "Yes we will, we promise!"
Kid 1: "Okay, I'll jump if you jump!"
Kid 2: "You first!"
Kid 1: "No, cuz I'll jump and you won't!"
Kid 2: "Yes I will, I promise!"
Comcast couldn't tell me whether TCP/IP overhead was included in their 250GB limit or not..
I did, however, finally find out that upload AND download are included in it, but without knowing whether TCP/IP overhead is included or not (which I've been told could be as much as 40%), we have no real way to gage our usage..
-Myke
No. The "Slow down cowboy" traps to slow down posting don't work. I've had a maximum of 2 hours 20 minutes or thereabouts before a post was accepted.
That the "slow down" message SAYS you're going to fast AND says "it's been 28 minutes since your last posting" shows that the site is coded HORRENDOUSLY.
Why subscribe when the system is so bad?
"There's no reason to do a cap, except for finding a new way to raise rates."
There actually is a better reason. Imagine in this constricted environment somebody wants to sell you hi-def movies to download. These movies are 5-10G each in terms of download. Now, if you're paying $1/G, then that's silly. It's cheaper to buy it. But if this company were to, ahem, subsidize the download, then it becomes more interesting.
So this proposal is to:
a) Raise your rates (of course)
b) Raise more revenue by essentially bypassing the rate limits if the *sender* of the data pays for the data to be sent.
c) Nobody really liked Net Neutrality anyway, except consumers.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
If I visit a web site that is mostly advertisements are the ads (giant flash objects) metered?
Would this mean I am paying to be advertised to? Would this drive up the usage of AdBlock Plus and similar tools (and make them more accessible to grandma)? Would this drive down ad revenue for ad-based on-line businesses?
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
In my mind, the only solution to the capping and other BS the ISPs are pulling is to take the monopoly away. That means we need an open, fiber network. The best model I've seen for such a thing is Utopia. The government bonds to pay for the infrastructure build out. Then has access fees for anyone to make connections on the fiber backbone. So any ISP can serve customers over it, no playing favorites. So Quest, Comcast, and the local mom and pop ISP all pay the same rates. Equal footing. From there, they can all compete without a monopoly on the wire getting in the way of changing providers.
I don't see any other reasonable way to deal with the situation. Wireless isn't up to next generation bandwidth requirements, and the incumbent telcos and cablecos aren't going to do it. We need to get together and start pushing at the city/state level to get this done. And the incumbents can't really complain as the government isn't competing with them, they are just providing an alternate delivery system that those same companies are welcome to make use of.
I see it as being the same thing as the governments paying for the roads. They build the roads, then people pay for access to them via gas taxes. In this case, they would build the road for data, and people would pay an access charge to push their data over it. And the ISPs offering services can deal with the issues of connectivity to the rest of the internet. The network I'm thinking of would be local only, at least to start with. So no hassles with peering and such.
What the fuck is the world coming to? How can they get away with implementing limits on bandwidth and Internet usage, while at the same time the media industry is finally beginning to embrace digital media?
I hate my current local cable company - their TV selection and HD selection sucks. I was thinking about switching to AT&T DSL, as that's the only other broadband option around here. I think I can get satellite TV and DSL for about the same price as my cable TV and Internet now, with much better programming. But then they go and pull crap like this.
I think about the articles I've seen about dropping your TV services and getting all of your entertainment and media online. AT&T speaks about heavy users, but aren't the "heavy users" becoming your "average users"? I don't think average is just checking email and light browsing checking sports scores anymore.
How much bandwidth would you go through if you dropped TV and got AT&T DSL for all of your entertainment wants and needs? Keeping up with your favorite TV shows with Hulu, iTunes, individual show sites, YouTube, and Netflix streaming? Add in iTunes HD or Netflix movies, too. Oh, and downloaded MP3s from Amazon or iTunes. And streaming netradio for working during the day, or if you're bored with your MP3s at night. And then you have Xbox Live or Wii downloads or whatever else might come along. And that doesn't even include other online gaming, or donwload Linux isos, or game demos, etc. Those things might not be mainstream, but I don't think they're too far out, either.
Which brings me back to the beginning - if we're finally starting to see real viable ways to get all of our content digitally over the Internet, why are we getting penalized for consuming that now? Those heavy users of today are the normal users of tomorrow. Crimping bandwidth isn't the answer, building more bandwidth infrastructure to alleviate the pressure will fix things. But of course, that would cost money.
And what are we supposed to do about it? We can't vote with our dollars if every option is implementing caps or filtering. And there's nobody to complain to to report if a business is being an asshole. And that's banking on having more than one option anyway. Usually you have cable, and DSL.
How did they manage to take the Internet away from us?
If I'm being charge by the byte do I get to charge back sites for obnoxious (large) ads they add to their sites?
i was pretty sure they did it, thanks for confirming what everybody thought from the beginning. hey, did you know the AIDS virus was brought to the US by Obama? Sarah Palin is a lesbian!
Actually, I would have modded this +1 insightful.
Or slashdot has no posts at all, since it will cost too much money to read it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How much does bandwidth actually cost for a major ISP? Sure, I know that servers, infrastructure, workers, etc. all cost money and the internet will probably never be close to free, but the ISPs are clearly making this a bandwidth issue. I don't buy the "pirates are using up all our bandwidth" excuse when just about everybody is watching videos on youtube.
Imagine if the cable companies capped how much TV you could watch per month.
True. But they won't meter all traffic the same way. Movies on "ATT Movies" won't count against the tier. They will partner with lets say Amazon for unmetered music downloads.
And the problem with that is... ?
Shouldn't a company be allowed to discount services on their own networks as incentive to gain customers? As long as they're not blocking the traffic of competitors, and as long as their policy for outside traffic caps is consistent, so?
On my Altel cell plan, I can talk to a number of other Altel customers without taking a hit on my minutes. How is that any different from an ISP going "OK, our standard plan is 250 GB of traffic a month, but if you download movies from us, we don't count it against your limit"? As long as they're not blocking the traffic of competitors and treating all their traffic the same way (IE, their competitors traffic all counts equally against your 250 GB limit), then again, so?
In all practicality,, this is the end of net-neutrality.
First of all, net neutrality is an illusion, and always has been. As long as it costs money to use the Internet, there's going to be restrictions of some kind. Was it a violation of "net neutrality" when early dialup plans limited the amount of time you could surf?
Everyone knows that the biggest users of bandwidth are a few people that are constantly downloading things like movies, all day long. When guys like that start affecting my use of the Internet, then to hell with net neutrality if it means that I'm paying full price for my plan while they slow the network down for everyone else.
I have no problems whatsoever with a pay-per-use plan for the Internet. People that use more bandwidth should pay more for their service. We meter electricity. We meter water. We meter some aspect of telephone usage. Why shouldn't Internet use be metered? It costs money to use this service. As long as it isn't, as long as everyone has a flat rate plan with unlimited usage, the reality is that most people are subsidizing the usage of a few bandwidth hogs.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"It's the same old story that we've seen forever. If a resource is essentially free and limitless, you can only make it commercially viable by restricting it's supply by some means. Music, Water, Electricity, Freedom, you name it. The less it's available, the more it costs you. Information is no different."
Except that none of those things are free and limitless. Music is work, made by people. Water is not only not free, it's downright scarce in many areas, especially when you consider that it costs a lot of money to make water usuable for humans to consume... or do you drink straight from mud puddles or the ocean?
Last I checked, it cost money to produce electricity at plants... infrastructure costs, fuel to run the plants, people to operate them.
Even as cliched as it sounds, Freedom isn't free. Eliminate your military and your police force, and get back with me in one year and tell me how free you feel when criminals start abusing the populace and foreign powers start setting up shop wherever they like in your territories.
Like everything else on your list, Internet usage wouldn't exist without work, resources, and infrastructure. All those things cost money.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You say that as if it were a bad thing. Let me assure you that in my ... mmm doughnuts...
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
just a personal experience?
To be in an industry where you don't have to serve your customers but can instead unilaterally jack up rates and cut service.
The icing on the cake, of course, is that the we have paid billions in taxpayer money over the past 20 years directly to these same companies so this wouldn't happen. "Trust us" they said...
After they screwed me, I shopped around and found much better deals for Internet and phone service. If you're not an incessant mobile user, T-Mobile's $100/1000 minutes, prepaid, is an awesome deal. (They don't expire for a whole year.)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Meanwhile there's no meaningful cap on how much water, electricity, and gas a person can buy at market rate and how much CO2 he's allowed to produce?! We're doomed.
please send me yr banking information
I hate credit card transfers!
"Everyone knows that the biggest users of bandwidth are a few people that are constantly downloading things like movies, all day long."
Actually, we don't know that. We have the words of the people who have a vested interest in that. The day that Comcast opens up their records to let the public see that information is the day I believe.
Let's really start with what everyone knows:
The ISPs are looking to increase rates and charge content providers to traverse their networks (http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/06/technology/phones_internet/index.htm). Download limits are the first obvious step in making that happen. I suspect many people don't realize this because their notion of the internet is one of getting email and browsing websites. This is a 10 year old notion of what happens on the web.
Furthermore, there is a general notion that ISPs connect to each other through quaint notions of T-1's and DS-3, and that peering happens in special rooms at various parts of the internet. This is something that was true about 10-13 years ago, but in fact, the major ISPs within the US peer at many many points and effectively have unlimited bandwidth to trade packets.
Further, let's take comcast's 2007 annual report: http://www.comcast.com/2007annualreview/index.htm. They had revenues last year of $31 BILLION dollars with net income of $2.6 BILLION dollars. 21% of that revenue came from Internet access. So something doesn't add up here. If they had such tremendous revenue and really great revenue and revenue growth, what's the complaint? That they have to spend some money to upgrade their capacity?
The fact that people accept all of Comcast's BS without doing research that's readily available on the Internet, and we get self-proclaimed experts ("Bandwidth is limited! Comcast is doing this for our own good!") makes me fear for the human condition. The facts are laid out. We just need to use our noggins a little bit to ignore the Public Relations BS.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Don't tell them. They seem pretty happy with 5GB/month and a poke in the eye to go with it. ;)
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
poke me harder!!! i wanna see that v.h. fly!
charged with a couple hundred thousand volts across their testicles?
I'm a female troll, you insensitive clod!
Female on /.? I call bullplop!
*Highschool shooter waiting to happen locks and loads uranium bullets in AK-47* Care to repeat that, ISPs? Now who's the luser?! Huh?! Tell me WHO IS IT?! AHAHAHAHHA!!
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Check out this article on AT&T's capping limits:
http://www.raidz.net/blog/att-new-capping-limits-unfair-customers